Art History 341
Italian Baroque Art

This course will be concerned with the emergence, development and decline of Italian Baroque art in the media of painting, sculpture, architecture and the graphic arts. While the emphasis is on painting, the other media will be of concern. The issue of patronage also will be treated. The course will begin with Rome, where the popes and their circle of influential patrons commissioned the work that artists interpreted throughout the peninsula. It will conclude with Venice, an independent Republic, that maintained its international prestige well into the eighteenth century. We shall touch on the arts of Naples, Genoa, and Florence, but we shall not be able to examine these important regional schools in any depth. The methodological approach to this class is a mixed one: style development; art patronage; gender studies; and religious and secular symbolism and allegory.

Evaluation will be based on 1) one mid-term exam; 2) one final consisting of a second "6- week exam" and a cumulative essay; 3) one written critical evaluation (500 words) giving the argument of the author, the nature of the evidence used, and whether persuasive of one of the essays in your reading packet due at a time to be designated.

Your text books include R. Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750 [5th ed.]; R. Enggass and J. Brown, Italy and Spain 1600-1750, Sources and Documents; Francis Haskell, Patrons and Painters: Art and Society in Baroque Italy [2nd ed.], and a packet with syllabus and assigned essays from Bob's Copy Shop. A supplementary bibliography also will be on reserve in the Kohler Library. Course packet materials are usually so marked.

If anyone intends to take this course as a graduate student or an honors student, see me. You will have slightly different requirements.