European Capitals: The Prince and the Artist

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The course will focus on the relationship between artists and princely courts in Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries. Placed at the top of national organization networks in the political, economic, and cultural domains, European capitals offer a privileged place of observation to grasp the dynamics of this relationship. From their capitals, princes organized their political power through the implementation of a symbolic power that relied in particular on artistic production. Artists had the power to represent through images, to organize the spaces of power through architecture and to demonstrate rank through the pomp of the arts. The aim is to examine, through a series of case studies selected according to the period, the institutional context of the artists' attachment to the court and to show how they summon, in their art, the life and glory of their patron.