Fall Courses 2005
The Franciscan Revolution
Professor Caroline Bruzelius, Duke University
4 credits
The religious movement initiated by St. Francis had a profound impact on the art, architecture, and urban planning of the medieval city. This course will examine the religious environment of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries in order to place the Franciscan movement in a historical context, and then, by using contemporary sources (the various lives of Francis, the writings of Saint Bonaventure and other authors) attempt to understand the character of this movement and its conflicted development through the thirteenth century. We shall pay special attention to the role of the Franciscans in the context of the commercial revolution of the thirteenth century and how this order, in conjunction with other mendicant groups, had a role in shaping not only the medieval city and its urban spaces, but also the character of piety in the medieval city.
Required Readings:
Florentine Renaissance Art:
From the Age of Lorenzo il Magnifico to Cosimo I: 1469-1539
Professor Josephine Rogers Mariotti, University of Michigan
4 credits
The course proposes to survey the development of the arts in Florence from the time of Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici (the Magnificent) to the early reign of Cosimo I, the second Duke of Tuscany. We will begin with a survey of the artistic culture and major workshops of late 15th century Florence – those of Pollaiolo, Verrocchio, Botticelli, Perugino, and Ghirlandaio. This constitutes the training ground of the masters of the High Renaissance whose lives and works will be our next focus. These include, among others, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, Filippino Lippi, Fra Bartolomeo, Andrea del Sarto. More than monographic coverage of each, our studies will attempt to reconstruct their stylistic and cultural interactions and environment. We will witness the decorative cycles of Michelangelo and Raphael in the Vatican in Rome - paragons of a "golden age" dramatically interrupted by the "Sack of Rome" of 1527- and trace the spread of their “grand manners” into the next phase of development termed as ‘Mannerism' or "Maniera", a label that we will endeavor to define.
Our investigation of this “post-classic” era begins with the early experimental and expressively charged art of Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino and other Tuscan masters that we will compare with that of the followers of Raphael and Michelangelo in Rome and beyond. We will explore and attempt to define the points of tangency and fusion as well as the diversities that lead to the transformations in style and content now largely defined by the term ‘mannerism'. The early stages of artistic activity in Florence at the time of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici will afford us the opportunity to examine works by some of the epoch's greatest protagonists, such as Agnolo Bronzino, Francesco Salviati, Parmigianino and others.
In-class sessions will alternate with visits to monuments and museums in and around Florence allowing students to integrate their academic studies with direct experience of the works and artists under study.
Required Readings:
This course introduces students to the urban history, morphology and spatial experiences of cities in general, and Florence in particular. Structured around lectures and on-site projects, the course will engage students through a variety of forms of representation (drawing, photography, analytical and cartographic constructs) to translate spatial, experiential, and material aspects of Florence. Lectures will introduce the development of Florence and provide broader historical and cultural perspectives. Weekly site visits to Florence and project assignments will be organized in conjunction with the lecture topics and extend pertinent themes through the aforementioned representational methods. As the primary means of engaging course material, these analytical projects comprise a significant portion of the coursework.
Required Readings:
A comparative study of the major films of Italy's modernist masters of cinema. Fellini's screen is filled with multitudes, chatter, hectic activity, good humor, while Antonioni's dwells on isolation, emptiness, seeming silence. In different ways, however, both celebrate art itself as life-affirming response to a perceived nothingness that underlies existence. Following in the tradition of the great literary experimentalists of modernism (particularly Joyce, Hemingway, and Beckett), Fellini and Antonioni offer us the joy of artistic process and vision as equipment, however minimal, for living.
Required Readings:
Text analysis, research, rehearsal, and performance of scenes from two Italian modernist classics of dramatic literature, “Six Characters in Search of an Author” and “Enrico IV” by Luigi Pirandello. Examination of performance choices as critical acts. Exploration through these texts of received assumptions about individual personality, the nature of reality, the status of theatrical illusion and the relationship between art and life. No previous acting experience required.
Required Readings:
Study of the culture war between 18th century Italian playwrights Goldoni – theatrical reformer, bourgeois realist, representative of the influence of the Enlightenment; and Gozzi – satirirst, conservative, defender of the traditional improvised theater of commedia dell'arte. Close reading of Gozzi's tales for the theatre: “The Raven,” “The King Stag,” “Turandot,” “The Serpent Woman,” and “The Green Bird;” and Goldoni's comedies: “The Servant of Two Masters,” “The Venetian Twins,” and “The Fan.” Exploration of Goldoni's use of the stage as a mirror of his society. Examination of the modernity of Gozzi's theatricality, his anticipation of Brecht's alienation effect, and the romance as an expression of ideological angst.
Required Readings:
Italian Language
First Semester Italian
Professor Silvia Sammicheli
4 credits
Second Semester Italian
Professor Silvia Sammicheli
4 credits
Third Semester Italian
Professor Lucrezia Sarcinelli
4 credits
Fourth Semester Italian
Professor Lucrezia Sarcinelli
4 credits
Advanced Italian
Professor Lucrezia Sarcinelli
3 credits
Italian for Architects
Professor Sammicheli
3 credits
 |
