Rethinking Italian Renaissance Art - Part II: The Evolving Cinquecento

Kerr Houston, professor of art history, theory and criticism, Maryland Institute College of Art

ONLINE PROGRAM

Concentrating on specific examples, this lecture will detail how our shared understanding of Italian art of the 1500s has evolved in recent decades. For instance, scholars drawing on reception theory and somaesthetic learning have stressed the importance of embodied looking and offered exciting new ways of thinking about Cellini’s Perseus and the devotional works at the Sacro Monte di Varallo. Art historians have also stressed the relationship between art, systems of exchange, the age of exploration, and colonialism - themes central to the Walters Art Museum’s 2012 exhibit Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe and Jill Burke’s studies of the Renaissance nude. We will consider re-readings of Giorgio Vasari’s Vite, including attempts to situate his writings in relation to literary tropes and cultural norms - and a radical suggestion involving Vasari as an author. This lecture will end by trying to imagine how the field of Renaissance art history may continue to develop in the coming years.

$15 fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)