The Renaissance Body (U03244)

? Credit Points : 20 ? SCQF Level : 10 ? Acronym : ACE-4-RenaiBody

Before the fifteenth century, representations of naked bodies were largely confined to scenes of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, or the lost souls of the damned in hell. By the mid sixteenth century, painted and sculpted nudes populated princely palaces, middle-class homes and even churches and chapels. This interdisciplinary course will investigate the reasons behind this phenomenon. What did it mean to be naked in the Renaissance? How was the artistic development of the nude linked to changing attitudes towards anatomy, gender and the body?
Over the last twenty years, the history of sexuality and the body has been one of the biggest growth areas in renaissance studies and the humanities as a whole. This is a field full of new discoveries and sometimes startling observations ? for example, in the latter part of the fifteenth century, more than half of the Florentine male population (around 70,000 men) were indicted for engaging in homosexual relations; the term ?courtesan? was coined to describe unmarried ladies who attended parties at the papal court; and the beginnings of printed pornography can be traced back to the Raphael workshop.
Starting with attitudes towards the body and spirituality in fourteenth century Italy, this interdisciplinary course will consider the development of the nude in both Italy and Northern Europe. We will consider the work of artists such as Giotto, Donatello, Jan van Eyck, Botticelli, Durer, Michelangelo and Titian as contributing to and reflecting broader cultural changes - religious reform, gender relations, notions of individuality and developments in medicine and anatomy.

Entry Requirements

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

? Prohibited combinations : This course is not available to students on the BA Humanities and Social Science degree.

Subject Areas

Home subject area

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

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : 4th year

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

? Contact Teaching Time : 2 hour(s) per week for 11 weeks

First Class Information

Date	Start	End	Room	Area	Additional Information
18/09/2007	09:00	10:50

? Additional Class Information : Seminars take place on Tuesday from 9 to 10.50am and from 11.10 to 1pm. Students are expected to attend one of these seminars.

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

? A knowledge changing artistic representations of the body in Europe during the later middle ages and renaissance (c. 1300-1550)
? experience of interdisciplinary study and research ? including art and literary history, social history and the history of science.
? A critical engagement with the often contradictory and unstable meanings attached to representations of the body, and a greater understanding of how these representations operated within their broader culture
? critical engagement with methodological approaches towards the study of the body including feminism, gender/sexuality, identity, and the social history of art
? skills in visual and textual analysis and historical thinking through the use of medieval and renaissance texts and images, which will form a crucial element of seminar teaching