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Semester 2

How to Make Italian Renaissance Art: Media, Methods and Materials in Theory and Practice 1400-1550 (HIAR10114)

Subject

History of Art

College

CAHSS

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

3

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Visiting students must have completed 3 History of Art courses at grade B or above, and please note that we will not consider History courses unrelated to Art, or practical Art courses, towards these pre-requisites. We will only consider University/College level courses. Please see Additional Restrictions below.

Course Summary

How were renaissance artworks made? Where did pigments, supports, bronze and marble come from, and how were they transformed into cultural icons like Michelangelo's David, Botticelli's Birth of Venus or Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa? This course will take a hands-on approach to the methods and materials of renaissance art, allowing students to handle some of the more common materials in class and to use this insight to analyse objects from the period. This is not just a course about making art, however, it will also consider how the materials used in these objects are bound up with their cultural and economic value; for example, how the advent of printing brought up new issues relating to copyright and artistic identity;how the purity of gold leaf could also be condemned as ostentation; and how the manipulation of one material into another could lead artists to be compared to alchemists, and even to God.

Course Description

Seminar List: **1. Introduction: An introduction to Wikis, setting homework to register and log in to class wiki; Renaissance techniques "quick quiz" to see how much students already know; I will use this to influence the teaching throughout. **2. Paper and pen: How fundamental was cheap paper for the revolution in art and communication that occurred in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? What's the difference between paper and parchment? What kind of materials and working methods do they support? We will have hands on sessions with metalpoint, pen and ink, charcoal and chalks to consider why certain materials are chosen for certain jobs. **3. Theories of Design: This class will look at the practice and theory of drawing and disegno, particularly the relationship between the ideation of a composition and its execution. This will incorporate a visit to the prints and drawings room at the NGS. **4. Colour: We'll consider the international networks of trade responsible for renaissance pigments, and consider how different shades of colours had different meanings in renaissance Italy. **5. Eggs and Oils: Another hands on session where we will compare the qualities of different media - oil, tempera and fresco - in class, and look at them on the renaissance paintings in a visit to the NGS. **6. Reading week. **7. Bronze, Silver and Gold: We will look at casting techniques by sculptors, and who really made largescale renaissance bronzes - which may have been designed by artists, but were often cast by cannon or bell makers in foundries designed for cannons and other artillery. We will also consider the central role of goldsmiths in developing printmaking, and the market for small expensive precious metal objects in the renaissance home. This will include a visit to the NMS when their renaissance bronzes come back on display. **8. Marble: Making largescale stone sculpture has particular challenges. We will look not only at the technical approaches used by sculptors, but also the engineering problems involved in moving these enormously heavy objects into position. **9. Wood: The skills of woodworkers were highly prized by contemporaries, especially in making furniture for churches and domestic space, frames for paintings - which were generally more costly than the painting itself - and their innovative use of perspective in intarsia. In another hands-on session, we will consider the qualities of different types of wood and the challenges in working it. **10. Ceramics: Innovations in ceramic technique are often ignored in traditional accounts of renaissance art, yet ceramics were highly prized at the time. This class will focus on the tin-glazed terracotta Della Robbia altarpiece and majolica banqueting service at the NMS to consider how biases against coloured sculpture may have affected our understanding of renaissance art. **11. Conclusions: This will be a revision class to bring together different aspects of the course and reflect on what we have learned.

Assessment Information

Written Exam 50%, Coursework 50%, Practical Exam 0%

Additional Restrictions

Unless you are nominated on a History of Art exchange agreement, visiting students are only permitted to enrol in one 3rd year History of Art course each, per semester, before the start of the relevant semester’s welcome period – and spaces on each course are limited so cannot be guaranteed for any student. Enrolment in a second course from this group will depend on whether there are still spaces available in the January Welcome Period, and cannot be guaranteed. It is NOT appropriate for students to contact staff within this subject area to ask for an exception to be made; all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. This is due to the extremely limited number of spaces available in this very popular subject area.

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