| Description: | This course is for students who have a background in art history and are interested in an in-depth exploration of the artistic production of 15th century Italy with a special focus on Florence and its social, political and devotional context. This century underwent an extraordinary renewal in all fields of human knowledge, from literature and philosophy to the visual arts, the latter being an important way of investigating nature for the Renaissance mentality. Painters, sculptors, goldsmiths, and architects were greatly inspired by antiquity, they studied ancient written sources and were supported by the interpretations of contemporary humanists, who also contributed to establishing the civic pride that characterized the Italian Renaissance. Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masaccio and Botticelli as well as Mantegna and Piero della Francesca are the artists on whom emphasis is placed, although they are never examined in isolation since constant references are made to social and political conditions, patronage, the artists' personalities, their training, and the materials and techniques they used. The course starts with the contest for the Baptistery Doors (1401) which involved Ghiberti and Brunelleschi, two of the main artists of the time in Florence, and ends with the careers of Botticelli and Ghirlandaio. Great importance is given to iconography and to cultural developments that affected works of art (for example Christian and mythological interests, and humanistic and Neoplatonic philosophy), to the different styles and techniques used by the artists and to the relationship between works of art and patronage. |