ARTH 28.02 Going for Baroque
This course surveys the principal monuments of painting, sculpture and printmaking produced in Europe during the seventeenth century, the age of the Baroque. Considered within the broader political, religious, and social context of the period, these artistic achievements will be discussed thematically, according to types of subject matter and in relation to issues that were of particular interest to artists, such as naturalism and the engagement of the viewer, the passage of time, and the transforming power of light. The course will explore the ways religious and political institutions exploited the arts for their own propagandistic ends, and examine as well how images of the period satisfied patrons’ interests in the familiar and exotic, optical illusions, and spectacle and drama. Among the artists whose works will be discussed are Caravaggio, Bernini, Artemisia Gentileschi, Velazquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Jan Steen and Poussin.