Art of the Italian Renaissance Courts

3 units

This course examines the art and architecture of the Italian Renaissance courts during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Concentrating primarily on the dynastic centers of Milan, Mantua, Ferrara, and Urbino, the course explores the ways in which Renaissance art operated in the service of the court as a powerful tool of statecraft. We will consider the union of art and politics by examining the patronage of the secular princes, while also analyzing how the visual identity of the state intersected with presentations of gender and religious difference in the Italian Renaissance city-states. The course will provide new insights into famous masterworks by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea Mantegna and place their work within a larger discourse that incorporates less well-know local art by painters including Garofalo and Dosso Dossi. This course is grounded in a close engagement with primary sources-both visual and textual, evoking through such documents the multiple contexts in which art and power were produced, received, and experienced. To this end, we will study in-depth the art and architecture executed in the Italian courts through lectures and through readings such as Cole's small survey book and selected articles and essays exploring Italian court art from a variety of different methodological perspectives. In addition, we will study the monument's relationship to contemporary writings, particularly Alberti's writings on the art of building: Castiglione's description of the customs, tastes, and culture of Renaissance court life in the Book of the Courtier; and Vasari's Lives of the Artists.