Architecture & Power in the Renaissance

4 credits · Undergraduate

The art of the Italian Renaissance is one that engaged broadly with questions of representation, in both practice and theory, with long-lasting consequences for the visual culture of the Western world. If such a phenomenon might be especially evident in the figural arts, it is perhaps even more important for the more abstract language of architecture. Indeed, the Italian architecture of the fifteenth and sixteenth century formulated the vocabulary and rules of a new idiom, that of classicism, which soon became predominant in all of Europe before migrating to the New World. How does one decipher such a popular albeit cryptic language? What are the principles that regulate this method of composition? And what are the cultural conflicts and political messages that lie behind the apparent normativity of this style?