Start Date
30 September, 2025
There will be 10 weekly meetings on Tuesday, 2 - 4pm, starting from 30 September.
Overview
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) had an extraordinarily long and productive artistic career. Within his own lifetime, his creativity was heralded as ‘divine’, and his various biographers (unprecedented in itself for a living artist), guided by Michelangelo’s own self-mythologising, presented him as a uniquely original figure, free of any contemporary influence and towering far above his peers. This course will challenge this mythology, and place Michelangelo back into detailed relation with the art and society of his time, so that we might better understand the nature of his actual achievement. (Due to time pressure, we will look only at Michelangelo’s paintings and sculpture, considering his architecture only in passing.)
The course aims to place Michelangelo’s major art-works back into their original art-historical, political and historical contexts, so that participants might be better able to assess these works’ contemporary impact, and gain a better understanding of Michelangelo’s artistic achievement.
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 Michelangelo in more detail, and wanting to consider more closely the inter-relations between the making of an art-work and its time.
Syllabus
Week 1: Florence and Rome: early works
Week 2: Rome and Florence: the Pieta and David
Week 3: Florence: The Madonna and Child theme
Week 4: Florence and Rome: The Battle of Cascina' and the Julian Tomb
Week 5: Rome: The Sistine Ceiling #1
Week 6: Rome: The Sistine Ceiling #2
Week 7: Rome: Collaboration with Sebastiano del Piombo
Week 8: Florence: The Medici Chapel
Week 9: Rome: The Last Judgement
Week 10: Rome: The Pauline Chapel and late works
Please note that the ‘last date available to book’ date is only a guide. We reserve the right to close bookings earlier.
In order to avoid disappointment, please be sure enrol as soon as possible. Registrations will not be processed until the following day if received after 3pm.
Course Lecturer: Dr Peter Finch
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.
Courses fees: Full fee £155/Concession £80.
Back to: Continuing Education