Renaissance Italy: a Case Study for Aesthetic Theory

This course is designed for students with some background in aesthetic theory or art history. Its aims are twofold: first, to examine the fraught and complex relationships between art and its conditions of production, and, second, to take this as an opportunity to orient ourselves in a crucial period in the history of western art. It is no coincidence that we choose the Renaissance as our case study, since arguments have been made – and we’ll read some of them – that aesthetic theory itself, as a distinct philosophical preoccupation, arises just then, a new age giving rise to new needs that call forth not only a new art but a concomitant way of thinking about art, i.e., art that requires thinking as its complement.

In addition to a series of scholarly articles, we will read excerpts from Vasari’s Lives of Painters, Baxandall’s Painting and Experience in 15^th Century Italy, Summers’ The Judgments of Sense: Renaissance Naturalism and the Rise of Aesthetics, and E. H. Gombrich on Norms and Forms; Studies in the Art of the Renaissance. Our primary way of engaging these texts will be through seminars, research projects, and art historical presentations. This is a program that will demand a high level of student involvement.

Depending on availability, students may have the opportunity to participate in a month-long group contract for coordinated study in Florence, Italy, during the first summer session; participation in this program is not a requirement for the summer trip.