REVISED Unit 2: The Renaissance: Gardens of Delight
Wk1: 14th November: Life in the Renaissance
An overview of the socio-political context of the Renaissance and
the key concerns of its artists
Wk2: 21st November: Humanism and Nature: Maria
Hilmarsdottir
Nature in theory: the relationship between Roman gardens, works
by Brunelleschi, Alberti, Bramante, Petrarch, Francesco Colonna’s
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and Renaissance gardens.
Meet: Room 113 (The second half of the session will be a visit to
the National Gallery to look at paintings)
Wk3: 28th November: The Rural Idyll
How artists translated the rural idyll into paintings
Wk4: 5th December: Patronage: the studiolo and the garden
Case Study 1: The Studiolo of Isabella d’Este
Case Study 2: Three Gardens
Exploring the Medici Villa at Fiesole; Medici family Villa Lante; Villa
d’Este (Hesiod etc.)
Wk5: 12th December: Visit: V & A
Meet: 10.30 The
Cafe (central space next to William Morris Green
Dining Room)
Garden sculpture, fountains, key botanical texts, planting practices
and course review
Further Reading
Aristotle Historia animalium, trans. Richard Cressell. London: Bohn
Library Press, 1862.
Clark, Wilenne B., and Meredith T. McMunn, ed. Beasts and Birds in
the Middle Ages.
Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1989.
Cronin, Grover. “The Bestiary and the Mediaevel Mind — Some
Complexities.” Modern
Language Quarterly 2 (1941): 191-198.
Curley, Michael, ed. Physiologus. Austin: University of Texas Press,
1979.
Eco, Umberto. Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages. New Haven: Yale
University Press,
1988.
Flores, Nona C., ed. Animals in the Middle Ages. New York:
Routledge, 1996.
Hassig, Debra. Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology.
Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995.
White, T.H., trans. The Bestiary: A Book of Beasts. trans. New York:
G.P. Putnam & Sons,
1960.
Wirtjes, Hanneke. The Middle English Physiologus. Oxford: Oxford
University Press,
1991.
Varty, Kenneth. Reynard the Fox: A Study of the Fox in Medieval
Art. New York:
Humanities Press, 1967.
Renaissance
Baxandall, M, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-century Italy
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988)
Burckhardt, J, The architecture of the Italian Renaissance(London:
Secker & Warburg, 1985)
Johnson, G, Renaissance art: a very short introduction (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005)
Murray, L, The High Renaissance and Mannerism: Italy, the North
and Spain (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977)
Richardson, C, K Woods and M Franklin, eds., Renaissance art
reconsidered: an anthology of primary sources (Oxford: Blackwell,
2007)
Richardson, C, ed., Locating Renaissance art (London: Yale
University Press, 2007
Stemp, Richard The Secret Language of the Renaissance