ARTH-205 Renaissance Perspectives: European Art 1300-1600 (3)

This course situates works of visual art, including painting, printmaking, sculpture, and architecture, into their socio-historical contexts. By characterizing Renaissance art as a form of visual communication, students examine societal contexts in order to understand its power and meaning, while analyzing artworks as products of complex social encounters between artists, communities, patrons, consumers, viewers, and critics. Students reassess commonly held assumptions regarding high art and the artist as genius, and critically examine the term “Renaissance” itself, with reference to questions of geography, gender, race, class, and sexuality. At the forefront is the question “Whose Renaissance?” AU Core Habits of Mind: Socio-Historical Inquiry. Usually Offered: fall and spring.