Winter/Spring Courses 2006
Modern Art in Italy, 1850-2005
Professor Barbara Buenger
4 credits
The course is designed to introduce you to a broad span of modern Italian art history in its historical, cultural, and social contexts. Although the primary emphasis is on Italian painting, sculpture, architecture, and design, we will also consider Italy's position within the larger international history of modern art, particularly as Italians responded to, acquired, and mounted major shows of international art from the turn of the century on. I will cover major figures and movements with an eye to their national and international connections: from the 19th-century movements of the Macchiaioli, realism, and Liberty Style to pre-World War I divisionism, symbolism, and futurism; interwar Scuola Metafisica, Novecento, Second Futurism, fascist, and other kinds of figural art; postwar neo-realist and figural styles; modern Italian design; and abstraction, minimalia, informel, arte povera, and transavanguardia from the 1960s to the present. I am far less interested to have you amass a large body of facts and information than to have you learn to see, read, and talk about these works in context.
The class will be half lecture and half on-site visits in which the students will participate as presenters. Weekly visits to Florence will examine late-19th and 20th-century architecture & the modern plans for Florence; modern collections in the Pitti Palace, Marini, and Della Ragione collections; and temporary exhibitions in museums or private galleries. Required or optional field trips will include visits to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice; National Gallery of Modern Art and other modern galleries in Rome; the Gori collection and private galleries in Pistoia; Bologna; Milan; Prato; and Viareggio.
Required Readings:
Classical Mythology and the Italian Renaissance
Professor Laura McClure, University of Wisconsin
4 credits
A renewed interest in Classical learning commenced at the end of the Medieval period and became fully developed during the Italian Renaissance. Central to this project was the study and appropriation of classical mythology, particularly as transmitted by the Roman poet Ovid. Influenced by neoplatonism, Renaissance artists such as Botticelli, Michelangelo, and Titian often employed allegorical and symbolic images drawn from classical mythology, and interpreted them as symbols for concepts acceptable to contemporary Christians. This course will provide students with a basic understanding of Greek and Roman mythology through a close reading of several Greek tragedies and all of Ovid's Metamorphoses, as well as supplementary textbook readings. Once equipped with a working knowledge of classical mythology, students will explore how Renaissance scholars adapted these stories to express their own ideas through on-site analyses of paintings and sculptures found in the museums of Florence and Rome.
Required Readings:
Dante and the Classical Tradition
Professor Laura McClure
4 credits
Dante Alighieri's monumental poem, La divina commedia, is a profound Christian meditation on human temporal and eternal destiny. It draws not only on the poet's own experience of exile from his native city of Florence, but also serves as an allegory, taking the form of a journey through hell, purgatory, and paradise. The meticulous structure of the poem has been compared to the architecture of a medieval cathedral. Although a Christian writing in the vernacular rather than in Latin, the poet was fully conversant with classical literature and philosophy, particularly Vergil's Aeneid, a poem that profoundly influenced his own vision of hell. The course begins with an overview of the literary and artistic traditions that influenced Dante, focusing on classical epics by Homer and Vergil as well as the art and architecture of the periods. A brief consideration of early Christian literature and architecture will serve as a link between the classical and medieval worlds. The remainder of the course will be devoted to a close reading of Dante's Inferno with a view to how the poet uses classical imagery and thought to represent a Christian viewpoint. Class outings will explore the remains of the Roman forum and environs, including the coliseum, and, closer to home, Etruscan art and architecture, as well as Dante's Florence.
Required Readings:
Masterpieces of Italian Renaissance Culture:
Castiglione, Machiavelli, Ariosto
Professor Ullrich Langer, University of Wisconsin
4 credits
This course will introduce students to three key works of the Italian Renaissance that influenced the course of European culture. Castiglione's Book of the Courtier is a synthesis of classic moral thought that became an aesthetic ideal for European culture the court and determined discussions of art, grace, the roles of women and men, the good king and the tyrant. Machiavelli's The Prince is one of the key texts of European political thought, using classical concepts and subverting them to accommodate political realities of 16th century Italy. Finally, Ariosto's Orlando furioso is arguably Europe's greatest chivalric romance, featuring fantastical plots and epic and erotic themes, in an ironic vision of history. The semester will be evenly divided so that we can examine each of these works in their intellectual and cultural contexts.
Required Readings:
The Love Lyric and Painting in the Renaissance
Professor Ullrich Langer, University of Wisconsin
4 credits
This course will focus on the love lyric of Petrarch and Ronsard, in the context of painting, specifically paintings gathered in Florentine collections, and in the collections of Italian artists who were invited to the French court. We will survey the main features and conventions of love lyric. The course will also examine thematic and aesthetic parallels between poetry and visual representation of female beauty, as well as introducing rhetorical concepts that link the two arts (such as variety, copia, perspicuity, etc.) We will read a bilingual edition of Petrarch's Rime sparse, and an English translation of selected poems of Ronsard's Amours. The artists studied will include Rosso, Primaticcio, Botticelli, Raphael and Cellini.
Required Readings :
Commedia dell'arte and the Italian Comic Tradition
Professor Martin Walsh, Residential College, University of Michigan
4 credits
An introduction to the commedi dell'arte, the masked, improvised comedy of the Italian Renaissance. Students will experiment with the principal 'masks' (Pantalone, Arlecchino, il Capitano, etc.), a period scenario, and the creation of comic 'business' (the lazzi). This practical theater workshop will be conducted in the context of the study of literary comedies: Machiavelli's Mandragola, Moliere's Scapin, Goldoni's Servant Of Two Masters, Gozzi's King Stag, and works of the contemporary playwright (and Nobel Prize winner) Dario Fo.
Required Readings:
Carnival, Carnevale, Fastnacht: The World Upside Down
Professor Martin Walsh, Residential College, University of Michigan
4 credits
A study of the festival of Carnival from late medieval times to today. Focus will be on the historical Carnevale of Rome, Florence and Venice, as well as the current practice of the festival in Tuscany, northern Italy, the Alps, and southern Germany. Readings will include selections from Bakhtin's Rabelais And His World, Goethe's Roman Carnival, Lorenzo di Medici's Carnival songs, Hans Sachs of Nuremberg's Carnival plays. The course will prominently feature a field trip to a major northern Italian Carnevale.
Required Readings:
European Societies
Professor Ettore Recchi
4 credits
This course seeks to illustrate long- and short-term dynamics of social change in Western Europe. Starting from a historical overview of national identities and the post-WW II integration process, the basic puzzle ‘What it means to be a European?' will be addressed. As a general objective, the course is designed to stimulate students to have a comprehensive view of the conflicting political and societal forces driving contemporary Europe towards unification on the one hand and further territorial and cultural divisions on the other. The course is organized in three teaching units:
a) National identities in Western Europe: a long-term historical perspective;
b) The European integration process and the European Union
c) A comparative analysis of European societies. Students are required to participate actively and do a presentation on one of the course subjects.
Attendance is mandatory. Any absence will affect final grades. Participation, presentation, and two tests (mid-term and final) will form the basis for the final evaluation.
Required Readings:
Masters and Workshops in Renaissance Florence
Professor Josephine Rogers Mariotti
4 credits
The workshop or ‘bottega' constituted the basic unit and structure of artistic activity in the renaissance, a heritage that can be traced back to antiquity. The of the artist as an isolated entity in the creative process - a concept more applicable to the Art works conserve their intrinsic value, but interest has shifted to the complex reality in which they are born, the relationships of the artists to patrons, the activity and production of the workshops, their structure and their organization, their role in Florentine life and society. Florence is a perfect setting for studies of this kind. The workshop, the training ground for painters, sculptors, carpenters, goldsmiths, etc. throughout the centuries, is still a part of the city's artisan tradition today. Our studies will center on major workshops active in Florence during the 15th and 16th centuries, investigating the primary role of "disegno" and the knowledge of technique and manual expertise that characterize the city's artistic tradition. In class sessions will be alternated with visits to museums, monuments, restoration centers, and when possible contemporary workshops.
Students will be assigned investigative projects regarding various fields of artistic activity: painting, sculpture, jewelry, carpentry etc. They will be expected to integrate their studies of the contemporary Florentine workshop with their acquired knowledge of the history behind the tradition.
Required Readings:
The Origins and Birth of the Renaissance Style in the Arts
Professor Josephine Rogers-Mariotti
4 credits
Florence offers the unique opportunity of studying “in situ” the works of the great masters of the Renaissance. This course will therefore focus on the birth of the Renaissance style, strictly defined as the artistic movement originating in Florence at the beginning of the Quattrocento (1400s), tracing its development up to the initial stages of the following century, the Cinquecento (1500s). Beginning with early precedents – the so-called proto-renaissance – we will see that episodes dating as early as the mid-1200s share with the later age basic figurative principles that will emerge in full in the “new style” of the 15th century. How this relates to the coeval humanist movement will be one of our major considerations in the conviction that the history of artistic form is an expression of the history of the human spirit. Our goal shall be to continue in these types of cultural and contextual comparisons throughout the entire survey of the lives and works of the significant personalities in the history of the figurative arts within the time period under discussion. Florence's contacts and cultural exchanges with other major centers in Italy will necessarily be part of our interest and will, in some cases, be complemented by organized excursions to places outside Florence.
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 artists and their creations
Required Readings:
First Semester Italian
Professor Silvia Sammicheli
4 credits
Second Semester Italian Professor
Professor Silvia Sammicheli
4 credits
Third Semester Italian
Professor Lucrezia Sarcinelli
4 credits
Fourth Semester Italian
Professor Silvia Sammicheli
4 credits
Advanced Italian
Professor Lucrezia Sarcinelli
3 credits
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