Authority and Invention: Medieval Art and Architecture

Harvard GSD

This course explores the creative tension between the impulse for originality and the constraint of authoritative models in the invention of new artistic forms in Western Europe from the decline of Rome to the dawn of the Italian Renaissance, approximately 300-1300 A.D. Representative works—architecture, painting, sculpture, and minor arts—are considered in their totality as experiential wholes and placed within the geographical and cultural contexts of current day Italy, Germany, France,…