ARTH 27.02 Living Stone: Sculpture in Early Modern Italy
Early modern sculptors like Michelangelo and Bernini pushed the boundaries of their craft, blurring the line between illusion and reality. Through bold experiments, marble was transformed into flesh, bronze into fluid fabric, and stucco into weightless clouds. The labor of chiseling, casting, modeling, and carving became a testing ground for larger debates in the arts. What is the relationship between the ‘dirty work’ of sculpture and artistic inspiration? Can an artist truly imitate a living, breathing body? This course will consider major changes in how sculpture was designed, experienced, and understood between the years 1400 and 1800. Our focus will be on artists and workshops in Italy with comparisons to other geographies. Topics to be considered include: originality and the sculptural copy; urban sculpture and fountains; the monumental and the miniature; gender, sexuality, and the sculpted body; materials and materiality; and theories of enlivenment.
Instructor
Kassler-Taub