The Renaissance Embodied

Renaissance depictions of the body range from muscular, idealized nudes to decaying, but ambulatory, corpses. Artists dissected human cadavers and, for the first time since antiquity, reflected the use of living models in their workshops and studios. In this course, we examine art that embodied power and sexuality, death and disease, the divine and demonic, the marginalized and the fantastic. We consider a diverse set of bodies as they were represented in paintings, sculpture, drawings, decorative arts and prints in relation to contemporary religious, political and social concerns.