VSA2530

Baroque art

John Gregory

8 points
* 3 hours per week
* Second semester
* Clayton

Objectives On completion of this subject, students should have gained an understanding of the main patterns of change in seventeenth-century European art and architecture, learnt to consider critically the relationship between those changes and significant cultural and social movements of the time, and developed skills in interpreting the style and iconography of pre-modern art.

Synopsis A study of selected aspects of European art and architecture during the period approximately 1575 to 1675. The subject traces the emergence of baroque art in Italy at the turn of the seventeenth century, and subsequent developments and variations in Italy, Spain, France, Flanders and Holland. Artists included are Caravaggio, Bernini, Poussin, Velazquez, Rembrandt and Vermeer. Particular themes to be investigated will include the challenge of religious experience and the invigoration of allegory and mythology; the divergent claims of naturalism and idealism; radical reinterpretations of space and vision; the increasing scope of portraiture, and landscape and genre painting; `theatricality' and music in relation to the visual arts; the status and representation of woman; and the role of theories of literature and expression. Twentieth-century theory will be considered wherever applicable.

Assessment Seminar paper (1500 words): 25%
* Essay (3000 words): 50%
* Visual test (1.5 hours): 25%

Prescribed texts

Enggass R and Brown J Italy and Spain 1600- 1750 (sources and documents) Prentice-Hall, 1970
Wittkower R Art and architecture in Italy, 1600- 1750 rev. edn, Pelican, 1975