Format: Course
Interval: August 11-14, 2019 (4 days, 3 hours/day)
Level: Intermediate/Introductory
Disciplines: Art History, Cultural History, Social History
Audience: The course is open to art history students (all levels), as well as to art aficionados with no previous formal training in art history, who wish to widen their knowledge – or participate to discussions – about Italian Renaissance art.
Workshop description:
Everyone admires the artworks of the greatest Italian Renaissance masters, yet the pathway from apprentice to master that young aspiring artists had to work their way through in fifteenth-century Italy was neither brief nor undemanding. During our first encounter we will discuss the broader social and artistic framework in which specific concepts, institutions, and mechanisms shaped the status and the profession of the Renaissance artist, especially that of the young artists in training. In the remaining sessions we will examine closely three case studies – those of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael, and of their respective teachers, in whose workshops the three future great masters learned the trades of painting and sculpture. Based on testimonies of their contemporaries, early modern written sources, and archive documents, we will glance back at the lives of the young artists and of their instructors, discover their early work, and get a sense of the milieu that shaped the personalities who later, in their prime, defined the art of the High Renaissance.
Day 1 The status and training of the artist during the early Renaissance
Day 2 Leonardo da Vinci in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio
Day 3 Michelangelo in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio
Day 4 Raphael in the workshop of Pietro Perugino
Participants are encouraged to participate actively in class and may bring personal laptops, tablets, and/or smart phones with an internet connection in order to individually access online visual resources if needed. The course relies on visual material presented in PowerPoint, and will be delivered in Romanian and/or English, depending on the audience.
Course instructor: Daniela Langusi
Dr. Daniela Langusi holds a PhD in Art History from The Pennsylvania State University and specializes in European Renaissance and Baroque art. She is currently working as an independent lecturer and researcher on several research projects on modern Romanian art and architecture.