ARTH 3440 - [Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael]

(crosslisted)
(also VISST 3443) # (HA-AS)

4 credits.

Next offered 2012–2013.

C. Lazzaro.

This course focuses on three great Renaissance artists, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. It examines each as both thinker and artist, through his writings as well as his painting, sculpture, and architecture. It also analyzes the contemporary constructions of the artist as genius and as courtier in biographies and other writings about them. Leonardo was an extraordinarily innovative painter partly because of the breadth of his thinking, and we will examine his treatises on artistic practice as well as anatomy, natural science, and engineering. Michelangelo invented grandiose artistic projects for his ambitious patrons, and his novel visual language has parallels with the verbal language in his poetry. Raphael was the consummate court artist, whose activities as antiquarian and archaeologist helped him to produce a new classicism.