Lecture

PowerpointLink opens in a new window

Seminar Questions

• Why and how were visual materials produced in the Renaissance?
• In what ways were visual materials perceived differently in the Renaissance than now?
• To what extent, and in what ways, do visual materials offer reliable evidence of the past?

Images

Analyse ONE of the following images:

Bertoldo di Giovanni, Pazzi Conspiracy MedalLink opens in a new window (1478)

Botticelli, Sandro, 'The Mystical NativityLink opens in a new window' (c. 1500)

Carpaccio, Vittore, 'The Dream of St UrsulaLink opens in a new window' (1495)

Lotto, Lorenzo, 'Portrait of Andrea OdoniLink opens in a new window' (1527)

Barbari, Iacopo, Map of VeniceLink opens in a new window (1500)

Raimondi, Marcantonio, Apollo and the Muses on ParnassusLink opens in a new window (after Raphael) (c. 1514-20)

Raimondi, Marcantonio, Portrait of AretinoLink opens in a new window (c. 1520-25)

Sultan Suleyman with helmetLink opens in a new window (Venice, 1532)

Vico, Enea, The Academy of Baccio BandinelliLink opens in a new window (1550)

Vecellio, Cesare, The Sultan's FavouriteLink opens in a new window, from Of Ancient and Modern Dress of Diverse Parts of the World (1590)

For advice about interpreting visual material, click hereLink opens in a new window. See also the items by Baxandall, Burke, and Jordanova below.

Bibliography

For the visual arts in Venice, click hereLink opens in a new window. For the visual arts in the Italian princely courts, click here.

Alberti, Leon Battista, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, with a Foreword by Angelo Poliziano, trans. Neil Leach and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, Mass., 1991)

Alberti, Leon Battista, On Painting, ed. and trans. Rocco Sinisgalli (Cambridge, 2011)

Auslander, Leora, 'Beyond Words', American Historical Review 110 (2005): 1015-45.

Battistini, Matilde, Symbols and Allegories in Art, trans. Stephen Sartarelli (Los Angeles, 2005)

Baxandall, Michael, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition (1350-1450) (Oxford, 1971)

Baxandall, Michael, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-century Italy, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1988), pp. 29-44.

Berger, John, Ways of Seeing (Harmondsworth, 2008)

Burke, Peter, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical EvidenceLink opens in a new window (London, 2001)

Burke, Peter, "The Renaissance, Individualism, and the Portrait", History of European Ideas 21 (1995) 393-400.

Cast, David J., ed., The Ashgate Research Companion to Giorgio Vasari Link opens in a new window(Farnham, 2014)

Cennini, Cennino, The Craftsman's Handbook, trans D. V. Thompson (New York, 1954), Chapter 1Link opens in a new window.

Clark, Stuart, Vanities of the Eye. Vision in Early Modern European Culture (Oxford, 2007)

Dowden, Ken, and Niall Livingstone, eds, A Companion to Greek Mythology (Chichester, 2011). Wiley e-book

Findlen, Paula, ed., Early Modern Things: Objects and Their Histories, 1500–1800 (New York, 2013)

Fortini Brown,Patricia, Venetian narrative painting in the age of Carpaccio (New Haven, 1988)

Fraser-Jenkins, A.D., ‘Cosimo de’ Medici’s patronage of architecture and the theory of magnificenceLink opens in a new window’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 33 (1970), 162-170. JSTOR

Gaskell, Ivan, ‘Visual History’, in Peter Burke (ed.), New Perspectives on Historical Writing (1991: second edn, Cambridge 2000), pp. 187–217

Gilbert, Creighton E., ‘What did the Renaissance patron buyLink opens in a new window?’ Renaissance Quarterly 51 (1998), 392-450. JSTOR

Goldthwaite, Richard A., Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1300-1600 (Baltimore, 1993)

Haskell, Francis, History and its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past (London, 1995)

Howard, Peter, 'Preaching Magnificence in Renaissance FlorenceLink opens in a new window', Renaissance Quarterly 61/2 (2008), 325-69

Jordanova, Ludmilla, 'Approaching Visual MaterialsLink opens in a new window', in Simon Gunn and Lucy Faire (eds), Research Methods for History (Edinburgh, 2011), pp. 30-47.

Jordanova, Ludmilla, The Look of the Past: visual and material evidence in historical practice (Cambridge, 2012)

Leach, Andrew, What is Architectural History? (Cambridge, 2010)

Mirabella, Bella (ed.), Ornamentalism: The Art of Renaissance AccessoriesLink opens in a new window (Ann Arbor, MI, 2012)

Nelson, Jonathan K., and Richard J. Zeckhauser (eds), The Patron's Payoff : Conspicuous Commissions in Italian Renaissance Art (Princeton, 2008)

Nochlin, Linda, Representing Women (London, 1999)

O'Malley, Michelle, and Evelyn Welch, (eds), The Material Renaissance (Manchester, 2010)

Palladio, Andrea, The Four Books of ArchitectureLink opens in a new window, trans Robert Tavernor and Richard Schofield (Cambridge, Mass., 1997)

Scribner, Bob, ‘Ways of seeing in the age of Dürer’, in Dagmar Eichberger and Charles Zika (eds), Dürer and his Culture (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 93-117.

Serlio, Sebastiano, Serlio on Domestic Architecture (New York, 1997)

Vasari, Giorgio, The Lives of the Artists, ed. and trans. George Bull, 2 vols (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987) [Also online hereLink opens in a new window]

Welch, Evelyn, 'Public Magnificence and Private Display: Giovanni Pontano's De splendore (1498) and the Domestic ArtsLink opens in a new window', Journal of Design History (2002) 15(4), 211-21.

Welch, Evelyn, Shopping in the Renaissance. Consumer Cultures in Italy 1400–1600 (New Haven, CT, 2005), Introduction.

E-resources

ArtcyclopediaLink opens in a new window

Greek Mythology LinkLink opens in a new window

Iconography linksLink opens in a new window 

Renaissance Festival BooksLink opens in a new window

Visual Interests: The Intellectual Legacy of Michael BaxandallLink opens in a new window (videos of a conference which discusses the 'period eye')

Web Gallery of ArtLink opens in a new window