Shaping the Renaissance: the contest of styles 1400-1430

10 weekly sessions on campus, on Tuesdays at 2-4pm, starting from Tuesday 28 April - we are no longer taking enrolments for this course.

Overview

This course will investigate the gradual emergence of a recognisably ‘Renaissance’ style of Italian art over the period 1400-1430, considering a range of centres of artistic production but with particular emphasis on Florence. We will look at a series of major works of painting and sculpture, in order to track how a new and distinctive style of art came gradually into dominance through a complex jostling and mixing of styles (not least through the paradox of artists inventing their own versions of an ‘antique’ classicism). 

We will focus on a range of artists, especially the contributions of Donatello, Ghiberti, and Masaccio. We will look at their art-works with an emphasis on the original patronage, purpose and location of each, in an attempt to understand more precisely the historical, social and art-historical circumstances of their making.

We aim to provide participants with a detailed account of the contest of styles in early Quattrocento art (especially in Florence), to help them understand the process that by 1430 had led to the emergence of an increasingly dominant and distinctive mix of characteristics that we now term the ‘Renaissance’ style of Italian art.

No prior knowledge about the subject area is assumed, and the course is suitable for both beginners and those with more experience of art history: the course is intended for anyone interested in engaging with the period in more detail, and wanting to consider more closely the inter-relations between the making of an art-work and its time.

Syllabus

1. Sculpture: the Trecento background; the Baptistry Doors competition
2. The 1400s: Ghiberti’s first Doors; Nanni di Banco and Donatello; Jacopo della Quercia
3. The 1410s: Ghiberti’s first Doors (continued); statues for Orsanmichele
4. The 1410s: Orsanmichele (continued); Ghiberti’s first doors (continued)
5. Painting 1400-20: Lorenzo Monaco, Gentile da Fabriano and International Gothic
6. The 1420s: painting and sculpture in Florence; Ghiberti’s first doors (continued)
7. The 1420s: sculpture at the Campanile and Orsanmichele; the Baptistry font at Siena
8. Painting in the 1420s: Masolino and Masaccio (the Brancacci Chapel)
9. The Brancacci Chapel, and Masaccio’s Trinity 
10. Donatello and rilievo schiacciato in the 1420s; Ghiberti’s second Doors

Course lecturer

With an academic background originally focusing on British Romantic literature, Peter has been teaching literature and the history of art to a wide variety of adult audiences for many years. Nowadays, his emphasis falls on the history of art, with a particular focus on Italian and Northern European art of the early modern (Renaissance) period, 1300-1600. He is currently writing a book on the shifting relations over this timespan between the ‘inner’ world imaged by an art-work within its frame and the outer world of the beholder.

Course fee

• Standard fee: £155
• Concession fee: £80.