OSPFLOR 27F: Architecture & Power in the Renaissance (Way: A-II)

Instructor: Donetti, Dario

The artistic revolution of the Italian Renaissance was intimately intertwined with a socioeconomic one: the emergence of capitalism in early modern Florence. The new naturalism of painting and sculpture translated a changing understanding of the material world into images, while architecture revived the language of antiquity. Across fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy, monumental buildings articulated the vocabulary and rules of a new idiom, that of Classicism, which soon became the public language of European elites before migrating to the New World. How can we decipher this widely shared yet cryptic system of signs? What principles governed its methods of composition? And what cultural conflicts and political messages lay behind the apparent normativity of this style?

This course addresses these questions through the study of architectural monuments from the Italian Renaissance, with particular attention to their strategies of communication in relation to systems of patronage and to the beholder. The architectural theories of the period, together with influential critical interpretations of early modern architecture, will inform our analysis of phenomena including innovation and resistance, identity and universality, transition and conservation. Students will develop the visual literacy necessary to discern the underlying grammar of classical architecture, understand its ideological implications, and assess its relevance to the representation of power today. This course has an enrollement cap of 23.

Units: 4 | Grading Basis: Letter grade | Way: A-II | Component: Seminar
Category: Elective

*All courses are subject to change.