Art and Architectural History (3 Credits) Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Florence, Rome, and Venice: Rethinking Renaissance Visual

Culture Professor: Liliana Leopardi, PhD ll348@nyu.edu Course description In this course students will come to evaluate the intellectual and studio practice of Renaissance artists by exploring the complexities, innovations, and magnificence of two centuries of visual production in architecture, painting, sculpture, costume, ornaments, etc. Michael Baxandall first introduced the concept of the Period Eye to Renaissance studies to draw attention to the intellectual schemata through which the Renaissance artists produced works and the viewer saw them. Students will, thus, be lead on a path aimed at reconstructing the social fabric of Renaissance Florence, examining the patterns of patronage, art production and religious and civic institution. Particular attention will be paid to a number of parallel motifs: perspective as way to question and construct seeing; drawing as the preferred method through which Florentine artists explored and solved visual problems; and gender construction as way to decode works of art meant to sustain and re-affirm an homosocial society. The final aim is to challenge the established understanding of Renaissance Florence as a cohesive and homogenous phenomenon and search for and construct a more diverse notion of Florence's aesthetic language and identity. Beyond the assigned textbooks, our visual guide will be the city of Florence itself. Students will be asked to support their visual learning with readings of original sources including Petrarch, Boccaccio, Lorenzo de'Medici, Leonardo, Benvenuto Cellini (a bibliography will be available prior to departure for Italy). Students are encouraged to construct their own trajectory of study and inquiry, exploring those issues that best reflect their interests and inclinations. Connections between art and architecture The art history course is devised in such a way as to provide an historically critical framework against which students in either studio art or architecture may gain a more nuanced understanding of subjects and themes they explore in those courses. By closely examining conception of space in Medieval and Renaissance Florence students will be better able to respond to architecture assignments that ask them to intervene on the contemporary fabric of the city. By examining the Renaissance practice of disegno (drawing) students will have a better sense of the evolution of the concept of mark making, which they will explore in their studio art course. Art History modules on Brunelleschi, perspective, drawing, anatomical conception of the body and identity will be shared with both studio art and architecture courses. Midterm Essay: Architecture or Drawing For students in the Architecture course: Students will be asked to closely compare and contrast the following piazzas: Piazza della Signoria, Piazza del Duomo, and Piazza della Santissima Annunziata. Their direct visual examination of the spaces will be supported by key readings on the Medieval vs. Renaissance concept of Space which will include excerpts from Dominion of the Eye; Brunelleschi, Le Corbusier, Lacan: Architecture, Space and the Construction of Subjectivity; and Non-Science and Nonsense: The Interpretation of Brunelleschis Perspective in Art History. By considering how these spaces differs, and how they were meant to be occupied in the 15th and 16th century, the students will be able to better site their architecture projects, understanding the spatial dynamic of public spaces from both contemporary and historical perspective (see Sample Assignment 1 for Architecture course). For students in the Drawing Course: Students will choose a pictorial cycle or sculpture program that is still currently in situ, and on which they will carry out one of their assignments as given in the Drawing course. They will carry out in depth research on their chosen object in order to understand its function and meaning, both historical and contemporary. Students will be asked to consider a multiplicity of elements: subject

matter, patron, artist, context, religious narrative, social narrative; gender construction, etc. According to the selected object, research will encompass the reading of the latest articles as available through the digital database JSTOR. Final Research Paper: Architecture AND Drawing All students will be asked to write a final research paper of no less than 10 pages that makes use of primary sources to closely examine a chosen work of art, artist or concept. Papers that compare features of the Florentine Renaissance to either the Venetian or the Roman Renaissance are particularly encouraged, as this approach will allow students to fully mature their direct experiences of those cities. Students will be asked to use a minimum of seven sources, two primary and five secondary, and give evidence of their grasp of the various scholarly interpretations on their chosen subject. The final goal of the project is to foster critical thinking and writing skills, enabling the students to understand art and architecture within an evolving and dynamic socio-economic context that also includes our own time.

Grade: Midterm Essay Final Research Essay Research Paper Class Participation 20% 30% 40% 10%

ATTENDANCE POLICY: More than 3 absences will result in the lowering of the final grade by one letter. A+ 97=100%,A=93-96%, A-=90-92%, B+=87-89%, B=83-86%, B-=80-82%, C+=77-79%, C=73-76%, C-=70-72%, D+=67-69%, D=63-66%, D-=60-62%, F=0-59% Textbooks: Richard Turner, Renaissance Florence: the invention of a new art. Prentice Hall Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy. Oxford University Press.

Weekly schedule

June 9 Introduction to Florence and its Key Monuments. Introduction to Renaissance Ideal from Giotto to Michelangelo. Readings: Turner: Introduction; Baxandall: Introduction June 13 Siena Lorenzettis Good and Bad Government. The rise of painting in Siena. June 15 Orsanmichele: Guilds and patterns of conspicuous Consumption. The Rise of the City Baptistery and Duomo, Palazzo della Signoria. Readings: Trachtenberg What Brunelleschi saw Monument and Site at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence; Turner: chapter three; Brunelleschis Dome. Saalman Santa Maria Del Fiore; Toker Florence Cathedral Design June 20 The rise of Perspective: Santa Croce, Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Baptistery Doors. Readings: Turner: Chapter five; Hall Tramezzo in Santa Croce, Florence, Reconstructed. June 22 Private Patronage of Religious Institutions: San Marcos Monastery, and the Sassetti Chapel. The Medici Palace: Frescos by Benozzo Gozzoli. Readings: Turner, pp. 117-122; pp.147-150 Readings: Start Reading the Baxandall Book first half. June 27 Donatello, Michelangelo, Cellini: Sculpture as cultural and political programme the Opera del Duomo. Readings: Turner: Chapter seven; Continue Reading the Baxandall Book. June 29: Donatello, Michelangelo, Cellini: Sculpture as cultural and political programme The Bargello and the Accademia. Jstor article: Regarding Michelangelos Bacchus by Ralph Lieberman Homosociality in Florence: Simons Homosociality and Erotics in Italian Renaissance Art July 5-7 Venice Trip July 11 Uffizi visit From International Gothic to Mannerism: Botticelli and Humanism; Botticelli's "Primavera": A Lesson for the Bride Lilian Zirpolo

Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Autumn, 1991 - Winter, 1992), pp. 24-28 And Leonardo and the intellectual role of the Artist JSTOR- Readings: The Gothic Leonardo: Towards a Reassessment of the RenaissanceJoseph Manca Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 17, No. 34 (1996), pp. 121-158; July 13 Visit to the Restoration Labs. 9.30. Take Home Midterm DUE. July 18: Palazzo Pitti: the Medici Royal House in the 16th century A new Model of Princely Life. July 20 Uffizi visit: The Venetian Experience: Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto. Take Accademia notes to class today. July 25 In Class Review. July 27 Final In class essay. RESEARCH PAPER DUE

Bibliography Benton, Tim. The three cities compared: urbanism. In Siena, Florence, and Padua: Art, Society, and Religion 1280-1400. vol. 2 (New Haven, 1995), 7-28. Christiansen, K. Some Observations on the Brancacci Chapel frescoes after their cleaning, Burlington Magazine 133 (Jan. 1991), pp. 5-20. Crum, Roger J. "Cosmos, the World of Cosimo: The Iconography of the Uffizi Facade." The Art Bulletin 71 (1989): 237-253. Elam, C. Lorenzo deMedicis Sculpture Garden, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 36: 1/2 (1992), pp. 41-83. Elam, C. Brunelleschi and Donatello in the Old Sacristy. Burlington Magazine 129 (1987), pp. 8-22. Ettlinger, L.D. The Liturgical Function of Michelangelos Medici Chapel, MKIF 22 (1978), pp. 287-304 Farago, C. Leonardos Battle of Anghiari: A Study in the Exchange between Theory and Practice. Art Bulletin lxxvi (1994): 301-30. Fusco, Laurie. The Use of Sculptural Models by Painters in Fifteenth-Century Italy. Art Bulletin 64 (1982): 175-94. Gombrich, E. Botticellis Mythologies, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 8 (1945), 7-60. Griffiths, G. The Political Significance of Uccellos Battle of San Romano. JWCI XLI (1978): 313-16. Hatfield, R. Cosimo de Medici and the Chapel of his Palace. in Ames-Lewis, ed. Cosimo il Vecchio de Medici, 1389-1464; essays in commemoration of the 600th anniversary of Cosimo de Medicis birth. Oxford, 1992. Hyman, I. The Venice Connection: Questions about Brunelleschi and the East. in Florence and Venice: Comparisons and Relations ed. S. Bertelli, vol. I Florence, 1979. Joannides, P. Creative distortion in the Renaissance: Lippi, Leonardo, and Parmigianino, Apollo 136 (Oct. 1992), pp. 239-46. Joannides, P. Michelangelos Medici Chapel: Some New Suggestions,

Burlington Magazine 114 (1972), pp. 541-55. Salmon, F. The Site of Michelangelos Laurentian Library. JSAH 49 (1990), pp. 407-29. Satkowski, L. The Palazzo Pitti: Planning and Use in the Granducal Era, Journal for the Society of Architectural Historians 42 (1983), pp. 336-49. Schneider, Laurie Donatellos Bronze David in Art Bulletin, vol. 55, no.2 pp. 213-16 Simons, Patricia Homosociality and erotics in Italian Renaissance Portraiture Trachtenberg, M. Why the Pazzi Chapel is not by Brunelleschi, Casabella 60: 635 (June 1996), pp. 58-77 Trachtenberg, M. The Old Sacristy as Model in Early Renaissance Church Architecture, in Leglise dans larchitecture de la Renaissance. Trachtenberg, M. Archaeology, Merriment, and Murder: The First Cortile of the Palazzo Vecchio and its Transformations in the late Florentine Republic, Art Bulletin 71 (1989), 565-609. Van Os. The Black Death and Sienese Painting, Art History 4:3 (1981), 23749. Woods-Marsden, J. Ritratto al Naturale: Questions of Realism and Idealism in Early Renaissance Portraits. Art Journal (Fall 1987), pp. 209-216. Weil-Garris Posner, Kathleen. "Raphael's Transfiguration and the Legacy of Leonardo." The Art Quarterly 35, no. 4 (1972): 343-374.