WesMaps - Wesleyan University Catalog 2023-2024       Summer Session       Winter Session       Home       Archive       Search
CS92PROD
Eloquent Forms: Topics in Italian Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture
ARHA 325
Spring 2024
Section: 01  
Crosslisting: RL&L 325

Early modern Italy was a site of vibrant and wide-ranging innovations in the field of plastic arts. Fueled by fierce competition, financed by extravagant expenditures, and created for a range of religious, commemorative, and decorative functions in both public and private realms, the sculptural medium reached a pinnacle of creative expression, material experimentation, and theoretical engagement in this period. From monumental urban commissions such as fountains to small-scale precious objects sought out by the wealthy collectors, sculptural works profoundly shaped the visual worlds of early modern Italy. This seminar on the making and meaning of sculpture in the Renaissance and Baroque periods will engage students with the works and careers of several key artists of the era, including Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello, Andrea del Verrocchio, Niccolò dell'Arca, Francesco Laurana, Properzia de'Rossi, Michelangelo, Benvenuto Cellini, Giambologna, Leone Leoni, Gianlorenzo Bernini, and Alessandro Algardi, among others. Seminar readings and discussions will be structured around broad themes such as: making and viewing of early modern sculpture; rhetoric of sculptural materials; verisimilitude and sculptural animation; sculpture and the senses; fragmentation and the "non-finito"; touch, desire, and the nude; representations of force and violence; antiquarianism and sculpture collecting; tombs and sculptural commemoration; and monsters and monstrosity in garden sculpture.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ART
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Requirement for: (ARHA-MN)(ARHA)(ARST)
Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available

Last Updated on OCT-10-2024
Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions. Please include a url, course title, faculty name or other page reference in your email ? Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459