Description

This module focusses on artistic production in the city of Florence during the fifteenth century. Rather than domination by a few great masters, in the first weeks we will investigate some of the many workshops and collaborative projects which lay behind the early renaissance. Thus Masolino will be studied alongside Masaccio, while Donatello's and Ghiberti's commissions will be considered in their civic and institutional contexts.

Seminars will be devoted to crucial scientific and technical advances such as mathematical perspective, anatomical studies and new drawing techniques as well as the imitation of ancient art and new approaches to visual narrative. Artistic developments went hand in hand with changing patterns in patronage as new types of painting and sculpture evolved to meet the clients' demands. One object of the module is to examine the general shift from the predominance of guild and corporate patronage for public locations early in the century, towards private and family commissions for the domestic household which encouraged the emergence of new genres such as small bronzes, garden sculpture and mythological painting later in the century.

NB. A knowledge of Italian would be a distinct advantage, but is not a pre-requisite for this module.

Objectives

By the end of the course students should have acquired:

• a familiarity with the works of art produced by a range of painters and sculptors in fifteenth-century Florence
• a knowledge of the social, economic and political conditions that influenced artistic production in the city, and an ability to analyse the works in relation to their historical context
• an understanding of the major technical developments achieved by artists in the period
• the ability to analyse the works of art in terms of fifteenth-century language and art theory

Preliminary reading

 PRELIMINARY READING LIST

• Gene Brucker, Renaissance Florence, New York 1969 (& later eds. Univ. of California Press)
• John M. Najemy, A History of Florence 1200-1575, Oxford 2008 (especially Chapters 8-13)
• Richard Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (various eds)
• Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-century Italy, Oxford 1985 &  later eds.
• Martin Wackernagel, The World of the Florentine Renaissance Artist, trans. Alison Luchs, Princeton 1981
• Evelyn Welch, Art and Society in Italy 1350-1500, Oxford 1997 
• J. Dunkerton, S. Foister, D. Gordon, N. Penny, Giotto to Dürer: Early Renaissance Painting in the National Gallery, London, New Haven and London 1991
• Anabel Thomas, The Painter's Practice in Renaissance Tuscany, Cambridge 1995

 PRIMARY SOURCES

• Cennino Cennini, Il Libro dell'arte, translated by D.V. Thompson as The Crafstman's Handbook, New York 1960 (Dover reprints)
• Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, translation of De pictura, by Cecil Grayson, ed. Martin Kemp, Harmondsworth 1991 (Penguin pb.)
• Creighton Gilbert, Italian Art 1400-1500, Sources and Documents, Englewood Cliffs 1980 
• B.J. Kohl and R. G. Witt, The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society, Philadelphia 1978

 MEDICI PATRONAGE

• Dale Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici and the Florentine Renaissance. The Patron’s Ouevre, New Haven and London 2000
•  Nicolai Rubinstein, The Government of Florence under the Medici 1434-95, Oxford 1966
•  Raymond de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank 1397-1495, Cambridge Mass. 1963
•  John R. Hale, Florence and the Medici. The Pattern of Control, London 1977
•  Alison Brown,  The Medici in Florence: The exercise and language of power, Florence 1992 
•  F.W. Kent, Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Art of Magnficence, Baltimore 2004

 SURVEYS 

• Frederick Hartt, History of Italian Renaissance Art, Thames & Hudson, 4th ed. revised D. Wilkins, London 1994
• James Beck, Italian Renaissance Painting, Harper & Row, New York 1981
• John Pope-Hennessy, An Introduction to Italian Sculpture, vol.1 Italian Gothic Sculpture, vol. II Italian Renaissance Sculpture, Oxford 1986
• Roberta J. M. Olson, Italian Renaissance Sculpture, Thames & Hudson paperback, London 1992