Semester:
Offered:
Shawon Kinew
What is known as the Renaissance was a period of intense cultural transformation, and it is a history whose legacy we have inherited. From the construction of the liberal arts to the Doctrine of Discovery (only rejected by the Vatican in 2023), we live with the traditions of this period and its repercussions. Artists reached an unprecedented stature creating some of the most powerful works of art in Europe. This course traces an artistic narrative that moves from Giotto to Caravaggio as it coincided with Columbus’ disastrous voyages, the Sack of Rome and the Catholic Reformation. We will look closely at the art of Masaccio, Donatello, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian and Raphael and their contemporaries. We will be attentive to meaning and interpretation, both the ways artists made meaning and the ways we find it the Italian Renaissance, in its beauty and in its power.