"Portinari Altar" (left panel), ca. 1478, by Hugo van der Goes
The Renaissance is conventionally seen as a single, continuously unfolding movement that transformed the thinking and the artistic vision of the West. In this day-long seminar, art historian Nigel McGilchrist traces a rich visual itinerary through a different revolution: One rooted in multiple renaissances.
Building on the remains of one collapsed civilization, Rome, and nourished by the legacy of another, Byzantium, a radically new and modern visual language was created whose beauty still inspires today. Fueled by the wealth generated through international finance and trade between the North and South of Europe—especially the cities of Florence and Bruges—two quite different methods and styles of painting emerged from these two worlds.
Both great in different ways, they seemed irreconcilable until a prospering Venice fused their indivudual techniques and lessons into a new style of international art that was exported across the continent and exerted its influence for the next two centuries.
Exploration of this moment of wide-ranging ferment leads from the grand ruins and sculpture of Rome and the sublime art of Byzantium into the studios of van Eyck, Giotto, Donatello, and Duccio. It encompasses Bellini, Titian, and Memling; the stained-glass workshops of the north and the building sites of Italy; the clashes between Michelangelo and Leonardo; the court of Emperor Charles V; and the all-powerful counting houses of the Dukes of Burgundy and of the Medici family.
9:30–10:45 a.m. A Hemishpere in Evolution
Europe and the Mediterranean around the year 1400; the visible legacy of Rome and Byzantium; and the aspiring city states of Italy. The classically inspired sculpture of Donatello and Pisano and the frescos of Masaccio in Florence. The Council of Florence and the fall of Constantinople.
11 a.m.–12:15 p.m. Flemish Refinement
Climate, light, and a turbulent history fashioned an art in the North of Europe radically dissimilar from that in Italy: miniature, translucent, and achieved with quite different materials. How merchants and traders bought and displayed the art of the van Eycks, Rogier van der Weyden, and Hugo van der Goes to the wonderment of Italian artists.
12:15–1:30 p.m. Lunch (Participants provide their own).
1:30–2:45 p.m. Florentine Intellect
The great debate about art in Florence beteen da Vinci and the “accepters” of Flemish technique and Michelangelo and the “rejecters.” The resulting nature of Florentine art: clear, aloof, and intellectual.
3–4:15 p.m. Venice: The Last Renaissance
As Flemish artistic magic arrives in Venice in 1475, there is no debate—just an immediate assimilation into a new style that was rich, sensual, and uniquely Venetian, and whose versatility appealed to the international courts of Europe. Bellini, Giorgione, and Titian conquered the continent with their taste and were to influence its artists for the next two hundred years.
McGilchrist worked for the Italian Ministry of Arts as a conservator of wall paintings, established the Anglo-Italian Institute in Rome, and worked for the Italian Ministry of Culture at the time when the conservation of the Sistine Chapel was in progress.
World Art History Certificate elective: Earn 1 credit
