Description
This course focuses on the major artistic monuments in Italian Early and High Baroque Art and their development. It is designed to examine the architecture, sculpture and painting within the context of religious, political and social history, centering upon the city of Rome from about 1600-1700.

The course will first introduce the students to fundamental concepts and topics of Baroque Art before providing a general historical survey of Roman history from Pope Sixtus V. to Paul V. It will then explore single artists by discussing the form and function of some of their most famous works in a roughly chronological order. Caravaggio and his deep influence on painting in Italy as well as Europe will be discussed before analysing the classical art of the Carracci and their followers. In a next step, Guido Reni, Peter Paul Rubens as well as Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin and the specific development of their artworks will be examined.

Carlo Maderno and the following study of Gian Lorenzo Bernini as the major representative of Roman Baroque sculpture and architecture will constitute the base for focusing on artists like Francesco Borromini, Pietro da Cortona, Carlo Fontana, Stefano Maderno and Francesco Mochi.

Objectives
By the end of the course, the students will:
• gain a broad historical knowledge of the major Baroque monuments of Rome
• gain an understanding of the developments in the visual arts in Rome during the 17th c.
• be familiar with different techniques, practical problems in executing pieces of art and major achievements of Italian and particularly Roman Baroque
• be able to describe and discuss works of art in their political, social, religious context
• develops visual skills to allow them to recognize different styles and schools from the end of the 16th to the end of the 17th c.

Course Materials
Vernon Hyde Minor, Baroque and Rococo. Art and culture. London 1999.
Rudolf Wittkower, Art and architecture in Italy 1600-1750, 3 vols, Yale History of Art 1999.

There is an additional course fee for museum visits and travel.