Course overview
From the earthy naturalism and dramatic light effects of Caravaggio's paintings to the material opulence and glorious spectacle of Louis XIVs court at Versailles, Baroque art, architecture, and music offered new sensory experiences that aimed to stimulate and manipulate the emotions. The stylistic complexities of Baroque visual culture were not only an intrinsic manifestation of the continuing religious wars and other conflicts that complicated the Christian worldview and geopolitical map of early modern Europe but also created new networks of intellectual exchange. In this online course, we will investigate the myriad ways artists and patrons created private and public monuments and works of art that embodied the affective dynamism of the Baroque style from the fight against Protestant heresy during the Counter-Reformation to the development of new genres of still life, landscape, and peasants. We will analyse diverse artistic innovations in Italy, France, Spain, Flanders, and the Dutch Republic in sacred and secular works by Gianlorenzo Bernini, Caravaggio, the Carracci brothers, Artemisia Gentileschi, Diego Velázquez, Francisco de Zurbarán, Jusepe de Ribera, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer, Georges de la Tour, Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain among other male and female artists. Topics will cover representations of gender and power, women and creativity, the body, anatomy, and physiognomy, the plague, death, and disease, innovations in portraiture, self-fabrication of cultural identities, and intersections between art and scientific discoveries of the natural world, including botany and entomology. Throughout the course, you will map the cultural reverberations of the Baroque ethos of the emotions within and beyond the creative practices and material culture of seventeenth-century Europe to encounter Neo-Baroque modes of literature, film, and popular entertainment today.
Course learning outcomes
- Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of some of the major artists, monuments, and principal issues that characterise the origins of the Baroque style in reference to social, religious, and political developments within and beyond seventeenth-century Europe.
- Apply disciplinary specific vocabulary and digital research tools to identify, analyse, and interpret the visual qualities and material properties of diverse images and objects.
- Communicate issues and ideas derived from scholarly sources in both oral and written forms of expression coherently, cooperatively, and respectfully in a supportive virtual learning community.
- Develop insightful arguments and persuasive conclusions based on critical evaluation and synthesis of primary and secondary sources.
- Reflect on the affective dimensions of the visual arts and other modes of creativity in past and present cultural contexts.