Arts of the Renaissance and Reformation

3 credits · Undergraduate

The West's "modern" era had its beginnings in the 15th and 16th centuries. Social and economic organization, religious and political thought, were reconfigured into forms we recognize today. Within these configurations, art took on new roles: a commodity in a nascent capitalist society, a vehicle of propaganda by church and state, an expression of an individual's genius. In aesthetic terms, it took on properties which defined the modern. Italy and the Netherlands each contributed to the revolution in pictorial expression. This course investigates those contributions and considers how art expressed the world view of this age.