1
FA 44a* Early Renaissance Art in Tuscany from the Age of Dante to the Medici
Professor Roberto Fineschi
Brandeis/ Siena Art Institute Summer Program
This course examines the development of late Medieval and Renaissance Art and Architecture between
1250 and 1500, with an emphasis on the centers of Siena and Florence, and artists who worked in these
cities. Major artists that we will address include Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, Cimabue, Duccio, Giotto,
Simone Martini, the Lorenzetti, Brunelleschi, Masaccio, Ghiberti, Donatello, Alberti, Fra Angelico,
Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, and Pintoricchio. Themes will range from Art, Urbanism and Statecraft in the
Medieval Republic; Art and the cults of Saints Francis and Domenic (and their Sienese exponents
Bernardino and Catherine); Siena and the Virgin Mary; the upheaval of the Black Death; the revival of
Antiquity and Humanist Art; and Medici and Piccolomini patronage.
Requirements:
Given the intensive nature of this course, attendance is required at all sessions.
10%
Participation
40%
Final Exam
25%
3-4 p. Paper and in-class presentation on Duccio Maestà predelle
25%
3-4 p. Paper and on-site talk on Domenico di Bartolo’s frescoes at Osdepale di Santa Maria della
Scala or 15th-century paintings at the Pinacoteca Nazionale
Site Visits:
Class lectures will be supplemented with on-site visits, especially the many works adorning the Cathedral,
Baptistery, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Palazzo Pubblico, Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala, and the
Pinacoteca nazionale in Siena. There will also be scheduled day trips to San Gimignano and Florence.
Site visits are an important part of class activities; students are supposed to take notes during the visits.
They are also kindly advised not to carry bulky backpacks or troublesome objects. In churches, students
should not wear shorts, sleeveless shirts, mini-skirts or baseball caps or flip-flops.
2
Readings:
For each meeting, readings have been selected to stimulate discussion. It is essential that you do the
readings before the class for which they are listed and come to class prepared to grapple with them.
Class sessions will have selections from the basic survey text by Partridge; as well as supplemental
readings, primary texts, or other scholarly essays. All readings will be posted on LATTE.
● Partridge, Loren, Art of Renaissance Florence 1400-1600 (Berkley and Los Angeles: University
of California Press, 2009).
Additional Readings on LATTE:
Additional, more in depth, readings are posted on LATTE. These should be read carefully, and
reflectively, since they have been selected to stimulate class discussion. Students should also consult the
early biographies of artists discussed in class, available on line:
Vasari, Giorgio, The Lives of the Artists, transl. Gaston C. Du Vere.
http://members.efn.org/~acd/vite/VasariLives.html
Study Guides:
Study guides will be distributed concurrent with the presentation of material in class. These will list the
images, terms, and information you are required to know for the final exam.
3
Schedule of classes:
There will be 15 three-hour sessions, which correlate to the weeks of the semester at Brandeis.
1. July 15th. 10 am – 1 pm
Course introduction. Urban, Social, and Spiritual conditions of Siena and Florence in the Age of
Dante (1250-1300): Civic spaces and religious life.
●
Partridge, 10-15.
●
Norman, Diana, “Introduction,” in Painting in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena (New Haven and
London: Yale UP, 2003), 1-39.
●
Site visit: Piazza del Campo and Piazza del Duomo.
2. July 16th. 10 am – 1 pm
Pisa: Cathedral Complex and Sculptural revival of Nicola and Giovanni Pisano; Siena Cathedral.
●
Hartt, Frederick and David Wilkinson, “Tuscan Duecento Art,” in History of Italian Renaissance Art, 7th
ed. (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2011), 57-64.
●
Site visit: Cathedral.
The Madonna: Monumental and Miniature: before Duccio’s Maestà.
●
Norma, Diana, “Early Sienese Painting,” in Painting in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena (New Haven
and London: Yale UP, 2003), 41-69.
●
Site visit: “Crypt”.
3. July 20th. 10 am – 1 pm
The Madonna: Monumental and Miniature: Duccio’s Maestà (ii)
Student presentations on Maestà predelle
●
Norman, Diana, “Duccio: The Recovery of a Reputation,” in Siena, Florence, and Padua: Art, Society, and
Religion 1280-1400 (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1995), 1:48-51; and “A noble panel’: Duccio’s
Maestà,” in Siena, Florence, and Padua: Art, Society, and Religion 1280-1400 (New Haven and London:
Yale UP, 1995), 2:54-81.
●
Site visit: Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.
4
4. July 21st. 10 am – 1 pm
Giotto and Narrative: Florence, Padua, Assisi.
●
Harrison, Charles, “Giotto and the Rise of Painting,” “Arena Chapel: Patronage and Authorship,” in Siena,
Florence, and Padua: Art, Society, and Religion 1280-1400 (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1995),
1:73-96; 2:83-104.
●
Derbes, Anne and Mark Sandona, “Barren Metal and the Fruitful Womb: The Program of Giotto’s Arena
Chapel in Padua,” Art Bulletin 80 (1998): 274-91.
5. July 23rd. 10 am – 1 pm
Siena and the Virgin Mary: Simone Martini and the religious works of the Lorenzetti
●
Hyman, Timothy, Sienese Painting: The Art of a City-Republic: 1278-1477 (London: Thames and Hudson,
2003). 42-93.
●
Norman, Diana, Siena and the Virgin: Art and Politics in a Medieval City State (New Haven and London:
Yale UP, 1995), 45-58; 66-85.
●
Site visit: Pinacoteca nazionale.
6. July 24th. 10 am – 1 pm
Civic Order and Calamity: Palazzo Pubblico frescoes and The Black Death and its Aftermath in
later Medieval Art
●
Norman, Diana, “‘Love Justice, You Who Judge the Earth’: The Paintings of the Sala dei Nove in the
Palazzo Pubblico, Siena,” in Siena, Florence, and Padua: Art, Society, and Religion 1280-1400 (New
Haven, 1995), 145-67.
●
Site visit: Palazzo Pubblico.
7. July 27th. 10 am – 1 pm
Classical Revival in Architecture and Sculpture: Brunelleschi, Donatello, Ghiberti, Della Quercia
(Fonte Gaia)
●
Partridge, 5-8, 19-36.
●
Turner, A. Richard, “Speaking Statues,” in Renaissance Florence: The Invention of a New Art (Upper
Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1997), 51-67.
●
Vasari, Lives of the Artists, Preface to the Second Part:
http://members.efn.org/~acd/vite/VasariPreface2.html
5
8. July 28th. 10 am – 1 pm
Liminal Spirituality: Baptistery doors in Florence; Baptistery fount in Siena
●
Partridge, 37-42, 3-5.
●
Butterfield, Andrew, “Art and Innovation in Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise,” in Gary Radke, ed. The Gates of
Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Renaissance Masterpiece (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2007), 17-41.
●
Site visit: Siena Baptistery.
9. July 29th. 10 am – 1 pm
Masaccio, Alberti’s De Pictura and re-inventing Painting
●
Patridge, 3-5, 43-50.
●
Alberti, Leon Battista, On Painting, trans. Cecil Grayson, (New York: Penguin, 1991), 34-96.
●
Hartt, Frederick and David Wilkinson, “The Brancacci Chapel,” in History of Italian Renaissance Art, 7th
ed. (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2011), 208-220.
10. August 3rd. 10 am – 1 pm
Forms of Piety: Meditation, Beauty, and Robustness (Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Uccello Andrea
del Castagno)
●
Partridge, 53-57,70-72, 78-80, 107-108.
●
Rubin, Partricia, “Vision and Belief,” in Images and Identity in Fifteenth-Century Florence (New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 176-226.
11. August 5th. 10 am – 1 pm
Sienese Art of the Fifteenth Century: Local Cults and Spiritual Healing.
Student presentations in Santa Maria della Scala and Pinacoteca.
●
Norman, Diana, Painting in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena (New Haven and London: Yale UP,
2003), 173-203.
●
Site visit: Santa Maria della Scala and Pinacoteca.
6
12. August 6th. 10 am – 1 pm
Sculpture under the Medici Regime: Donatello and Verrocchio
●
Partridge, 26-7, 73-5, 87-90.
●
McHam, Sarah Blake, “Donatello’s Bronze David and Judith as Metaphors of Medici Rule in Florence,”
Art Bulletin 83 (2001): 32-47.
13. August 7th. 10 am – 1 pm
Medici Artists: Gozzoli, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio
●
Patridge, 64-9, 83-6, 94-97.
●
Politian, Le stanze per la Giostra del Magnifico Giuliano de’Medici, trans. David Quint
(University Park,
1993), selections.
●
Dempsey, Charles, The Portrayal of Love: Botticelli’s Primavera and Humanist Culture at the Time of
Lorenzo the Magnificent (Princeton, 1992), 20-49.
14. August 10th. 10 am – 1 pm
Piccolomini Patronage in Pienza and Siena Cathedral
●
Norman, Diana, Painting in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena (New Haven and London: Yale UP,
2003), 237-50.
●
Site Visit: Cathedral: Pintoricchio frescoes in Piccolomini library; Michelangelo’s Piccolomini Altar.
15. August 12th. 10am – 1 pm
Final exam
7
Supplemental Readings:
Derbes, Anne and Mark Sandona, “Barren Metal and the Fruitful Womb: The Program of Giotto’s Arena Chapel in
Padua,” Art Bulletin 80 (1998): 274-91.
Cooper, Donal and Janet Robson, The Making of Assisi: The Pope, the Franciscans, and the Painting of the Basilica
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013).
Norman, Diana, “‘Love Justice, You Who Judge the Earth’: The Paintings of the Sala dei Nove
in the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena,” in Siena, Florence, and Padua: Art, Society, and Religion 1280-1400 (New Haven,
1995), 145-67.
Norman, Diana, “Change and Continuity: Art and Religion after the Black Death,” in Siena, Florence, and Padua:
Art, Society, and Religion 1280-1400 (New Haven, 1995), 177-95.
Norman, Diana. Siena and the Virgin. Art and Politics in the Late Medieval City State (New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 1999).
Lorenzo Ghiberti, Antonio Manetti, and Richard Krautheimer, in Hyman, Isabelle, ed., “The Contest for the
Baptistery Door,” in Brunelleschi in Perspective (Engelwood Cliffs, 1974), 38-59.
Turner, A. Richard, “Speaking Statues,” in Renaissance Florence: The Invention of a New Art (Upper Saddle River:
Prentice Hall, 1997), 51-67.
Ghiberti, Lorenzo, “Commentaries,” in Italian Art 1400-1500: Sources and Documents, ed. and transl. Creighton E.
Gilbert (Evanston, 1992).
Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Oxford, 1972), 29-40, 109-28.
Lubeck, Jules, “Masaccio’s Brancacci Chapel Frescoes,” in Storytelling in Christian Art from Giotto to Donatello
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 205-225.
Alberti, Leon Battista, On Painting, trans. Cecil Grayson, (New York: Penguin, 1991), 34-96.
Hood, William, “Fra Angelico at San Marco: Art and the Liturgy of a Cloistered Life,” in Christianity and the
Renaissance: Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattrocento, ed. Timothy Verdon (Syracuse, 1990), 108-131.
8
Steinberg, Leo, and Edgerton, Samuel, “‘How shall this be?’: Reflections on Filippo Lippi's Annunciation in
London,” Artibus et historiae VIII/16 (1987): 25-53.
Hayum, Andrée, “A Renaissance Audience Considered: The Nuns at S. Apollonia and Castagno’s Last Supper,” Art
Bulletin 88 (2006): 243-266.
Freuler, G. “Sienese Quattrocento Painting in the Service of Spiritual Propaganda,” in E. Borsook, ed. The Italian
Altarpiece Function and Design (Oxford, 1994).
McHam, Sarah Blake, “Donatello’s Bronze David and Judith as Metaphors of Medici Rule in
Florence,” Art Bulletin 83 (2001): 32-47.
Randolph, Adrian, from “Homosocial Desire and Donatello’s Bronze David,” in Engaging Symbols: Gender,
Politics, and Public Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence (New Haven, 2002), 160-92.
Politian, Le stanze per la Giostra del Magnifico Giuliano de’Medici, trans. David Quint
(University Park, 1993),
2-77 (Book 1, Book 2:1-20).
Dempsey, Charles, The Portrayal of Love: Botticelli’s Primavera and Humanist Culture at the
Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent (Princeton, 1992), 20-49.