ARTH 6600 The Social Contexts of Art: Mannerism, Counter-Reformation, and Controversy: Art in Sixteenth-Century Italy

• Tuesdays, 2:45-5:45 pm
• Instructor: Dr. Steven Stowell

This course will explore the art of painting and sculpture from Italy in the sixteenth century, during which time the “High Renaissance” style gradually gave way to “Mannerism”, a style that has been described as self-consciously stylized, eccentric and anti-classical. The sixteenth-century in Italy was a period of enormous artistic change: new attitudes towards artists, which recognized their intellectual qualities, emerged through treatises and writings about art; new institutions for teaching and studying art arose in recently founded art academies. Various evidence also suggests that works of sacred art became increasingly appreciated as the artists’ individual vision of a sacred theme. At the same time, the uses of images became a subject of great controversy during the Protestant Reformation (when many sacred images were destroyed), and the subsequent Counter-Reformation of the Catholic church (which led numerous writings on the correct use of images). These interrelated issues will be explored in this course through primary sources (writings on art such as biographies of artists, treatises on art, etc.), case studies on particular artists (for example Jacopo Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino and others), as well as explorations of specific themes and contexts (the art academy; art in Italy in its global context; issues regarding gender and sexuality).