The Italian Renaissance: Art and Creativity

The Italian Renaissance invokes a period of cultural invigoration, experimentation, and innovation generated by a confluence of artistic, philosophical, intellectual, and political influences stimulated by cross cultural encounters, forms of social and material exchange, and development of trade and global networks. This online course examines visual and textual sources and theories about art and creativity in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy beyond the cult of antiquity, with a focus on major artists and patrons associated with Florence, Venice, and Rome. Special topics to be studied include materials and materiality, patronage and collecting activities, the emerging concept of the artist as opposed to artisan, artistic competition, impact of political conflicts and incessant warfare raging across the Italian peninsula, polymathic creative practice, representations of the body, gender, race, and sexuality, and intersections between art, technologies, and scientific curiosity about the natural world. While works of art and primary literary sources will be studied in national and international online collections and digital depositories, these resources will be supplemented whenever possible by object-based learning experiences to provide an imaginative portal into the people, places, objects, and values that composed Italian Renaissance art, society, and culture.