ARTH 6450 - [Representations of Women in the Italian Renaissance]

(crosslisted) FGSS 6450

Next Offered: 2020-2021. 4 credits. Student option grading.

Co-meets with ARTH 4450/FGSS 4510/VISST 4450.

C. Lazzaro.

This seminar investigates representations of both historical women-upper class ladies in portraits, artists, poets, and courtesans, and of notions of female essence, ideal beauty, virtuous conduct, the erotic, and the role of images in the female life cycle. 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. Female artists and patrons are considered through both what they painted and commissioned, and how they functioned as independent women within the constraints of their society. Readings discuss these issues from a variety of points of view. The aim of class discussion is to see the complexities, ambiguities, and contradictions of this society.