ART 332 - Seminar in Italian Renaissance and Baroque Art

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2024/25b: Creativity and Materiality in Early Modern Art and Science. Drawing on the interlaced histories of art and science, this course considers the nature of ingenuity in early modern Europe, c. 1400-1700. How was artisanal and scientific knowledge formulated and disseminated? How can we reconcile seemingly fantastical tales of human and material metamorphosis with the highly sophisticated and inventive new thinking that introduced modernity? We examine the projects of polymathic “Renaissance thinkers” such as Leonardo da Vinci, and the collaborations of artists, scientists, and humanists such as the circle of Galileo. The course focuses on matter and materials; practice and processes; and human corporeality and creativity. We consider works of art from paintings and sculpture to grottoes and automata, inventions such as the microscope and telescope, and texts from Ovid and Lucretius to Cassiano del Pozzo and Montaigne. Topics to be considered include notions of metamorphosis; alchemy; philosophic theories of living matter and materials; books of recipes and secrets; the relation of art and nature; beliefs about sexuality and gender in nature; human manipulation of plant and animal life; and the collecting of art, flora, and fauna in the rapidly globalizing early modern world. Yvonne Elet.

Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS