ARTH 4450 - Representations of Women in the Italian Renaissance

(crosslisted)
(also FGSS 4510, VISST 4450) # (HA-AS)

Fall. 4 credits.

Co-meets with ARTH 6450/FGSS 6450.

C. Lazzaro.

This seminar investigates representations of women in portraits of upper class women, images of ideal beauty, and of courtesans and poets. It examines the conventions of representing women, whether the Virgin Mary and saints, or heroines such as Judith and Lucretia, and the gender roles that they reinforce. The seminar also studies women artists and women patrons, considering both what they painted and commissioned, compared with their male counterparts, and how they functioned as independent women within the constraints of their society. Readings discuss all these issues from a variety of points of view. The aim of most of these readings, and especially of class discussion, is to see the complexities, ambiguities, and contradictions of this society.