Not offered 2007-2008
ARTH 432 Domestic Visual Culture in Renaissance Florence (Same as Women's and Gender Studies 432)
Fifteenth-century Florence nurtured a burgeoning culture of image production. This remarkable proliferation of images, and the rapid development of visual idioms, has given the Tuscan city a privileged art historical position as the birthplace of the Renaissance and, traditionally, the basis of the first chapter in the story of artistic development and progress in the west. The domestic palace, as it emerged during this period, was a crucial site for the production and reception of new kinds of objects; indeed, many Renaissance touchstones-Botticelli's Birth of Venus, Leonardo's Mona Lisa, and Michelangelo's Doni Tondo, to name
just a few examples-were originally commissioned for (and viewed within) a domestic setting. In this course we will examine the Renaissance palace itself, as well as a constellation
of diverse images once housed within it including traditional panel paintings, painted furniture and wall-hangings, ceramics, and ritual objects. We will pose questions about the relationship between these images and the people who commissioned them and lived with
them, focusing especially on issues of gender and power. Our investigation of domestic art
will be grounded in the larger historiographic problem of Renaissance individualism; in other words, we will use this material in order to consider, critique, and refine traditional conceptions of the Renaissance as a historical period.
Format: seminar. Requirements: evaluation will be based on oral participation and short response papers, one oral presentation, and a 15-20 page research paper.
Enrollment limit: 12. Preference given to seniors.
SOLUM