Cambridge University Reporter


History of Art Tripos, 2007: Special Subjects

The Faculty Board of Architecture and History of Art give notice that they have approved the following special subjects for the History of Art Tripos, 2007 (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 313):

Please note that some special subjects will be capped, especially in cases where students need to look at manuscripts etc. in museums. However, the level of capping will be left to the individual Lecturers concerned, in which case preference will be given to final-year students.

Paper 3/4. Rome: from Imperial capital to Holy City, AD 300-1300

This course will consider the transformation of antique Rome from late Antiquity to the Duecento. The Early Christian city appropriated the legacy of the ancients, transforming antique structures into Christian places of worship and imposing new typologies and meanings. The re-use of spolia and the continuity of craft traditions kept alive aspects of imperial culture throughout the Early Christian and Medieval period. Later, as the city shrank to a small nucleus on the banks of the Tiber and ancient monuments fell into ruin, the relationship between antiquity and the Christian tradition shifted. The dynamics of the relationship between the papacy and the commune of Rome further complicated the city's evolution. The course will consider Rome in its broadest sense: its urban planning, devotional and secular architecture, mosaics, frescoes, and sculpture.

Paper 5/6. Art in early Medieval Europe: 'Non Angli, sed angeli'

'Non Angli, sed angeli' is what the future Pope Gregory the Great is supposed to have said at the sight of fair-haired Anglo-Saxon boys being sold as slaves in Rome: tradition has it that he was so struck by this encounter that he set about the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity (Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, II,1). This special subject explores the momentous changes that the advent of Christianity brought about in Anglo-Saxon England and which are testified to by the developments in the figurative and decorative arts that flourished from the end of the sixth century to the time of Offa (end of the eighth century). Questions of continuity and change, patronage and experiment, the relationship between a text-based religion and images, travel, and the migration of ideas and sources will be investigated using a wealth of material: manuscripts, sculpture, metalwork, and architecture, as well as the coinage of the time. This artistic period will be studied in a wide western-European context, so that far from being considered 'the Dark Ages', it might be more properly appreciated in its vibrant vitality as a first renaissance.

Paper 7/8. Titian

Tiziano Vecellio, called Titian (c. 1488-1576) was the dominant Venetian painter of the sixteenth century and has remained one of the most universally admired of Western artists. Famed above all as an incomparable colourist, Titian was a remarkably adventurous and varied artist who essayed all the genres currently practised and left his mark upon them all. His career has few parallels in longevity and productiveness and he has been very much studied. However, many major problems remain to be resolved: of attribution, of dating, and of meaning. This course will aim to provide a coherent account of Titian's artistic production, with particular attention paid to the different phases of his art, its variety, and the painter's constant experimentation. The focus will be on issues of style, development, dating, and meaning, and the approach will be primarily visual. Some attention will be paid to Titian's relations with other painters such as Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, and Tintoretto, and with his most significant patrons, but his art will stand centre-stage.

Paper 9/10. Dürer and his time

A study of Dürer as a painter, an engraver, a draughtsman, and a theorist demonstrates his prevailing place in the Northern Renaissance. His travels are studied and the impact of new ideas and forms on the development of his art. This involves a comparative analysis of Italian and Northern trends. However, the principal aim is to show the place of Dürer's production within his social and cultural environment (humanist, popular, religious, etc.). This approach should allow an understanding not only of the artistic but also of the cultural aspects of Dürer's art.

Paper 11/12. To be replaced

Paper 13/14. Cubism and its legacies, 1907-1925

This course will explore the making and meanings of Cubism, its critical reception, and its influence on related art movements in Europe before and after the First World War, including Orphism, Futurism, Purism, and Constructivism. As a movement, 'Cubism' will be considered in its broadest span, from the radical deformations of Picasso's proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) to the neo-classicism of the post-war Cubist 'call to order'. We will investigate Picasso and Braque's close aesthetic partnership between 1908 and 1914, and examine the categories of 'analytic' and 'synthetic' Cubism, collage, and construction. However, we will also question the conventional narrative of Cubism as a heroic partnership, extending our focus to the major figures of public, 'Salon' Cubism, such as Gleizes, Metzinger, and Le Fauconnier; the survival of Cubism after the War, and its impact on sculpture, architecture, and the decorative arts up until 1925. Throughout, questions of style and technique will be grounded in an analysis of institutional frameworks and theoretical debates, revealing the broader cultural influences underlying Cubism's revolutionary formal language.

Paper 15/16. The Arts and Crafts Movement

This course examines the Arts and Crafts Movement, an international phenomenon of enormous scope and influence which dates roughly from the 1850s to the First World War. By looking at the work of a range of different artists, critics, architects, and designers, the course assesses both the Movement's intellectual ambitions, and its complex social and political aims. The course begins by addressing the theoretical pre-history of Arts and Crafts ideas in the writing of figures such as A. W. N. Pugin and John Ruskin, both of whom campaigned for artistic unity and 'honesty' in design. It then examines the activities of William Morris and his firm, the communal guilds and workshops of the 1880s, and architects such as Philip Webb and Richard Norman Shaw. The position of Charles Rennie Mackintosh within the Arts and Crafts Movement is also assessed. The second half of the course studies the Movement's expansion outside Britain, from the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright in America to the rise of a new vanguard of design in Austria and Germany. Attention is paid throughout to the way in which ideas that developed within a local, decorative art context continue to inform contemporary debates on the role and responsibilities of art and design.

Paper 17/18. Painting in France from the Ancien Régime to the Second Empire, c. 1770-c. 1855

This option will deal with French painting during a period of extreme political turbulence and great artistic fertility. Although the emphasis will be on the great painters whose work dominates the period - David, Gros, Girodet, Ingres, Géricault, Delacroix, Corot, Millet, and Courbet among others - their activity will be set within the context of governmental change, which brought changes in the pattern and content of state commissions, and broader cultural movements, in which some attention will be paid to contemporary developments in literature. This period is often thought of as comprising Neo-Classicism, Romanticism, and Realism, but it will be seen that such stylistic labels are quite inadequate to describe the wide range of art produced in France at the time.

Paper 19/20. British architects and Italy from Jones to Soane

This paper explores the varying ways in which British architecture was transformed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by the impact of Italian architecture, whether through publications or travel. Attention is paid to the shift of interest from Palladio to antique architecture, both Roman and Greek, as in the temples at Paestum and in Sicily. This involves study of the travels and designs of architects such as Jones, Burlington, Chambers, Adam, and Soane, as well as the impact of the archaeologist, engraver, and architectural theorist, Piranesi.