The specific availability for this course is not currently known. If you would like to know if this course will be offered during your session, please contact us.

Full Description

Course Description

An in depth study of the drawings, paintings and writings on art of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). This course seeks to define Leonardo’s development as a painter and as a draftsman. The student will become familiar not only with Leonardo’s individual masterpieces, but also with his working methods, interests, inventiveness, and indebtedness to other artist’s works. He will gain insight in the design process of painted works through attentive analysis of the preparatory drawings while considering the practice they reflect in the context of Leonardo’s theories on painting. The course will also investigate the meaning of Leonardo’s anatomical and physiognomic studies. In addition, his activity as a sculptor will be studied in relation to his drawings and paintings. Though not a single sculpture by Leonardo’s hand is known, his drawings and paintings provide ample evidence for his use of sculptural models he had made for the purpose of study, a practice that was common to Florentine painters of the Renaissance.

Course descriptions may be subject to occasional, minor modifications at the discretion of the instructor.

Textbooks

-Leonardo on Painting, ed. by Martin Kemp, Yale University Press, New Haven and London 1989 (or later editions)
-G. Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, ed. J. Conaway Bondanella and P. Bondanella, Oxford 1991
-K. Clark, Leonardo da Vinci, introduction by M. Kemp, Penguin Books 1989

Additional Bibliography will be distributed in class.

During orientation at the Institute, students will receive a list of textbooks they are required to purchase. Students should not purchase any texts before orientation.