This course considers visual art in the European Renaissance (approximately 1300-1600) with a specific focus on mobility and “the foreign.” We will consider how the movement of artists, patrons, and objects facilitated artistic exchanges that challenge conventional definitions of the Renaissance. Over the course of the semester, we will explore works of art made by itinerant or travelling artists, such as the Venetian painter Gentile Bellini’s portrait of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire Mehmet II (1480), which was painted in Constantinople. We will also attend to works of art commissioned across borders, such as the Portinari Altarpiece (c. 1475) which was made by the Flemish painter Hugo van der Goes for the Florentine Portinari family, who organized the commission through the Medici Bank’s networks of communication. We will also consider representations of travelers and non-local “others” by painters in Europe and the products of cross-cultural encounters outside of Europe, such as in the monastic complexes established in the colonial Americas. The course aims to articulate the period-specific cultural cachet of being an outsider in the Renaissance and to consider the ways that visual art was shaped by exchange. 

In addition to meeting the First Year Writing Requirements, this course will provide students with the conceptual apparatus and critical terminology for articulating what is at stake in a given work of art. More specifically, you will learn Art Historical research methods and writing techniques, including visual analysis, in which the formal characteristics of an image or object are used to construct and defend an argument. This course will involve object and library-based research assignments, as well as less traditional writing projects designed to encourage creative but still historically convincing engagements with visual art.

Class Format:

This section will be a blend of in-person and virtual learning, with no more than 30% of the class being virtual.