ARTH 498 Special Topics in the History of Art and Architecture: The Art of Storytelling in High Renaissance and Mannerist Painting: Large-Scale Narrative Painting in Florence and Rome

• Instructor: Dr. Steven Stowell

This course will explore large-scale narrative paintings in late-fifteenth and sixteenth-century Italy, during which time the “High Renaissance” style gradually gave way to “Mannerism”, a style that has been described as self-consciously stylized, eccentric and anti-classical. Some of the most well-known, and influential images to arise from this period – by artists such as Filippino Lippi, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Pontormo – were paintings depicting sacred, mythological, or secular/historical narratives. By exploring a selection of key works, this course will help students to develop an appreciation for the rich, often manifold meanings of such works, and to understand how these paintings were implicated in the complex, turbulent histories during which they were created. With a special attention to political and religious history, this course will look especially at how art-making was intimately tied to various crises and controversies in sixteenth-century Italy. Such topics will include: the political upheavals of the Italian wars; the disastrous impact of the Sack of Rome; the controversies surrounding images during the Reformation, as well as other issues. This course will involve a mixture of readings, discussions, close visual analysis, class presentations and independent research.