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, 2008-09:
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.
'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.
This special subject examines the exceptionally fertile period of French medieval art and architecture between the era of monastic reform and the end of the building boom at the end of the 13th century. Starting with Romanesque art in such areas as Normandy and Burgundy, it will examine the major sources of art comment in the 12th century including the writings of St Bernard and Abbot Suger. The Parisian art milieu c. 1150, including Saint-Denis, will act as a springboard to further consideration of the development of Gothic architecture in northern and eastern France (Notre-Dame, Paris, Laon, Soissons, Chartres, Bourges, etc.). Developments in metalwork and portal sculpture will be considered, and also illumination. High Gothic (Reims, Amiens) will follow, with consideration of the portfolio of Villard d'Honnecourt. The Parisian milieu will then be returned to with examination of Gothic architecture and 'scholasticism', the Sainte-Chapelle and Court art under Louis IX and the emergence of Rayonnant. Issues for discussion will include Gothic sculpture, theology and 'moralitas', the reception of French art and architecture in Western Europe more generally, and the loss of authority of French architecture to the geographical 'margins' from 1300.
Tiziano Vecellio, called Titian (c. 1488-1576) was the dominant Venetian painter of the 16th 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 practiced 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.
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.
The evolution of the Venetian townscape depended on a range of distinctive factors. This course examines the peculiar physical problems of building on marshy lagoon islands and the reasons lying behind this choice of site. Through the chosen period, the changing nature of the respective roles of client, craftsman, and architect is investigated. We consider the nature of Venetian society, both secular and religious, and the architectural settings that evolved to accommodate it. In the context of the city's role as a great international emporium, we analyse how trading contacts influenced architectural expression. With the help of written descriptions and visual renderings of the townscape, the ideological content embodied in both private and public building is explored.
This course will cover the history of the Surrealist movement from its birth in Paris in 1924 to the dissolution of 'historical Surrealism' in 1969. It will focus on the developments of Surrealism during this fascinating period of French history and explore its revolutionary role in art, literature, and politics in France in the inter- and post-war years: from its birth in the aftermath of World War I, to its engagement with Marxism and psychoanalysis in the 1930s, to its exile in New York during World War II, to its post-war international exhibitions. Students will be encouraged to examine Surrealist art from a number of thematic perspectives - including desire, mythology, occultism, and utopianism - and to generally consider the relationship between Surrealist art and politics (gender, racial, and national) so that its successes and failures, and its legacy today, can be critically assessed.
By 1500 Moscow had established its hegemony over the other Russian principalities and during the reign of Ivan the Terrible finally mastered the Tartars. Moscow's political supremacy was matched by that of the Orthodox Church; in 1589 the Metropolitan of the city was elevated to the rank of Patriarch. Moscow was filled with churches, many rebuilt after the fire of 1547 and richly decorated with frescoes and icons by a succession of leading artists. As well as new commissions, miracle-working icons were brought to the city from the subjugated Russian principalities; together with relics acquired in Constantinople and elsewhere in the Orthodox world, they were used to legitimize Moscow's claim to be the Third Rome, the successor to Constantinople, which since 1453 had been in the hands of the Ottoman Turks.
In Moscow, the sacred art of icon painting was central to political as well as religious life; it was an expression of Orthodox doctrine which constituted the ideological basis of the State. In the course of the 16th and 17th centuries, icons were at the core of a series of politico-religious crises, which resulted in a violent schism within the Orthodox Church and threatened the stability of the state. The principal issue was that of Tradition, i.e. the upholding of the Orthodox faith and had two aspects: relations between the Greek Orthodox and the Russian Orthodox on the one hand; and, on the other, the influx of western ideas and sacred art.
This course will focus on the role of the icon in the social and political life of the period.
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.
The century from c.1750 to c.1850 was one of almost unprecedented development in British architecture. New relationships with the ruined buildings of the ancient Graeco-Roman world emerged in response to the effects of the Grand Tour and of the incipient science of archaeology, while an indigenous antithesis was represented by surviving or revived Gothic forms. The ideologies of the Picturesque and of Romanticism incorporated both classicism and medievalism, as well as more exotic forms of architecture inspired by Britain's trading links with the Far East. This was also the period in which Britain emerged as the world's first industrial nation, leading not just to new building materials and building types but also to rapid expansion of cities. In this Special Subject, the architectural effects of changing political and social imperatives in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries will be studied against the background of longstanding British traditions in building and landscape design.
This course will study painting in Britain during a period of unprecedented change. It will consider the importance of institutions as well as individuals, and will examine artists' careers in the light of political and social developments during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The course begins with the emergence of William Hogarth as a painter and a propagandist for his profession, before looking at the impact of the early Industrial Revolution upon the output of artists such as Joseph Wright and George Stubbs. It will then proceed to what may legitimately be labelled as 'the age of Reynolds', whose Discourses will provide the critical text for an examination of artistic theory and practice in the closing decades of the century. Finally attention will turn to landscape painting, and that 'decade of English naturalism' at the beginning of the nineteenth century which is associated with both Constable and Turner, before following the very different, though parallel trajectories of their respective careers.