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Academic Year 2005/2006


Violence and Redemption: Themes in European Art of the Seventeenth Century
ARHA 232 FA

This course surveys works of European painting and sculpture in the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth century in Italy, Spain, France, and the Netherlands. We will examine works by Caravaggio, Bernini, Velazquez, Rubens and others and relate them to their social, political, and religious contexts. The course will, in particular, explore the ways in which images of violence--including war, martyrdom, seduction, and rape--both inform and contrast with depictions of religious experience--including conversion, revelation, ecstasy, gnosis, and theophany--often in the same work and between different works by the same artist. Other themes will include the nature and role of Baroque "realism," the parallel tradition of Baroque "classicism," art as princely "propaganda," the relationship between art and literature, questions of gender, portraiture and identity, and the role of the spectator.

MAJOR READINGS

Howard Hibbard, CARAVAGGIO
Tod A. Marder, BERNINI AND THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE
Jonathan Brown, VELAZQUEZ: PAINTER AND COURTIER
Svetlana Alpers, THE MAKING OF RUBENS
Robin Blake, ANTHONY VAN DYCK: A LIFE, 1599-1641
Daniel Arasse, VERMEER: FAITH IN PAINTING
Ernst Van de Wetering, REMBRANDT: THE PAINTER AT WORK
Elizabeth Cropper and Charles Dempsey, NICOLAS POUSSIN: FRIENDSHIP AND THE LOVE OF PAINTING
Mary Vidal, WATTEAU'S PAINTED CONVERSATIONS: ART, LITERATURE, AND TALK IN SEVENTEENTH- AND EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE
Svetlana Alpers, Michael Baxandall, TIEPOLO AND THE PICTORIAL INTELLIGENCE

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Midterm exam, group presentation, research paper, final exam.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS and/or COMMENTS

No prior experience in art history is necessary.

COURSE FORMAT: Lecture/Discussion

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ART    Grading Mode: Graded   

Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-30-2006


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