The Detailed Imagination: Netherlandish Painting in the Age of Jan van Eyck (U00929)

? Credit Points : 20 ? SCQF Level : 10 ? Acronym : ACE-3-HvanEyck

The course will consider the work of the leading Netherlandish painters of the fifteenth century, in particular the Van Eyck brothers, Robert Campin, Petrus Christus, Rogier van der Weyden, Hugo van der Goes, Hans Memling and Bosch. It aims to introduce students to the principal surviving paintings of the period and the main issues art historians have addressed in relation to their study. The work of Jan van Eyck (d. 1441), his contemporaries and followers, is distinguished by an extraordinary attention to detailed naturalism of the most microscopic kind, unprecedented in the history of Western painting, and rarely employed by artists in subsequent periods. The rapid rise of this detailed naturalism is an artistic phenomenon that presents those who study it with many problems of historical interpretation. To what extent can these paintings be understood as reflections of the world as viewed by their artists directly from life? Or are they essentially works of the imagination, contrived to appear 'real' because of their attention to detail? Despite having been the subject of considerable study, art historians remain unclear about why this brand of naturalism appeared where and when it did. The course will engage with this issue throughout, investigating the historical contexts of the paintings, and asking what legacy this detailed vision bequeathed to the ensuing development of Western Visual culture, from Dutch painting of the seventeenth century to the advent of photography and its impact. Other issues addressed include: developments in patronage from the court to the marketplace; the theological social implications of naturalistic painting; the introduction of new genres and their function; problems in iconographic interpretation; the eye of the spectator and changes in viewing habits; and distinctions between devotional and secular purposes of painting. The social position of artists and the development of new techniques of painting will also be investigated.

Entry Requirements

? Pre-requisites : A pass in either History of Art 2 or Architectural History 2a and 2b

Variants

? This course has variants for part year visiting students, as follows

The Detailed Imagination: Netherlandish Painting in the Age of Jan van Eyck(VS1) (Semester 1 (Blocks 1-2))

Subject Areas

Home subject area

History of Art, (School of Arts, Culture and Environment, Schedule A)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : 3rd year

? Delivery Period : Semester 1 (Blocks 1-2)

? Contact Teaching Time : 3 hour(s) per week for 11 weeks

First Class Information

Date	Start	End	Room	Area	Additional Information
20/09/2007	09:00	11:00

All of the following classes

Type	Day	Start	End	Area
Lecture	Monday	10:00	10:50	Central

? Additional Class Information : Seminars will take place on Thursdays 9-10.50am and 11.10-1pm. Students will attend one of these.

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

Throughout this course students will be encouraged to draw their own conclusions on the basis of visual and documentary evidence. Once having learned to engage with the material, by developing verbal skills to explain the visual characteristics of the paintings in question, students will be encouraged to defend their points of view on any particular issue, both in presentations and in written work. From the outset of the course, emphasis in seminars will be placed on fundamental art historical questions concerning matters of attribution, chronology, stylistic development and iconographical interpretation. These should enable students to develop a feeling for the period, the problems in visual culture it raises, and appropriate methods of addressing these problems. The accompanying lectures, however, will suggest further approaches and modes of analysis that students will be encouraged to challenge and/or apply in presenting seminar papers. Students will be persuaded to decide for themselves what they consider the crucial and most interesting issues of the period, though they will naturally be expected to defend the views they express through relevant argument and by using appropriate evidence. Apart from developing skills based on promoting intellectual independence, the course will also encourage the application of these more widely by posing broad questions about stylistic change and the uses of naturalism throughout the history of Western visual culture. Generic skills based on the ability to catalogue, to explain technical features, to gather pertinent and reliable information, to develop coherent arguments, and to analyse visual and documentary evidence, all have application in fields beyond the art historical viewpoint advanced in this course.