A History of European Art
Scope:
I
n this course, we’ll survey the great monuments of European painting,
sculpture, and architecture from the age of Charlemagne to the onset
of World War II. We’ll spend time together examining major works by
the greatest visual artists of a millennium of Western civilization, including
extensive considerations of such important artists as Giotto, Michelangelo,
Leonardo, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Monet. We’ll place these artists and
their masterpieces in the political, religious, and social context of their time,
so that we have a more profound understanding of both why an artwork was
created and how it responded to a particular set of historical circumstances.
In the course of this survey, we’ll witness the birth and fruition of a brilliant
European civilization, emerging from the shadow of the Roman Empire
and the Middle Ages to become one of the most dominant cultural forces
in history.
In Lecture One, we’ll set the stage for our survey by providing a chronological
overview of the course. I’ll also introduce the ¿ ve essential aspects in the
analysis of works of art: subject, interpretation, style, context, and emotion.
An appreciation of each of these individual elements is crucial to our
understanding of artists and their works. In the ¿ rst lecture, we’ll illustrate
this approach by analyzing several representative masterpieces. Throughout
the course, we’ll employ these key elements to look at paintings, sculpture,
and prints. We’ll also identify and de¿ ne the ¿ ve areas of subject matter that
constitute the major categories of art: narrative or historical art, portraiture,
landscape, still life, and scenes of daily life. During the survey, we will see
how each era emphasized certain subjects in art to communicate important
societal and political ideas and values. Throughout the survey, one of our
goals will be to learn to take time with art—to look at it, consider it, and feel
it without haste—in the hopes that an understanding of art can change and
enhance our lives.
In Lectures Two through Ten we’ll explore the artistic output of the Middle
Ages, from the early architectural monuments of the Carolingian Empire to