THE UNIVERSITY of EDINBURGH

DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2021/2022

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : Edinburgh College of Art : History of Art

Undergraduate Course: Art of Catholic Reform 1534-1610 (HIAR10123)

Course Outline
SchoolEdinburgh College of Art CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryWhat happens in the second half of the sixteenth century, between the periods called the 'High Renaissance' and 'Mannerism', and the 'Baroque'? Can we call it the 'Art of Catholic Reform'?

Between the 1520s and 1580s the very existence of art was being questioned in Europe. North of the Alps, provoked by Luther's 'protestant reformation', works of art were deliberately destroyed in a frenzy of religious over-enthusiasm. In the 1530s and 1540s Catholic reform ideas came close - dangerously close - to those of the Lutherans and reconciliation looked possible. But by the 1550s Catholic reform meant the assertion of orthodoxy. In Italy the papacy responded with little concern, then disbelief that anyone could question papal supremacy as the only route to salvation and the exclusive source of religious teaching, then a trenchant assertion of papal authority in which art's potential power was exploited.

The Council of Trent closed in 1563 with a session on the role of art. Between the 1560s and 1590s a few important Catholic writers formulated rules for art in an attempt to make it more effective, and more central to the Catholic faith. Whether or not artists paid much attention is a moot point however. By 1610 the consolidation of the previous decades can be detected in an air of triumphalism that characterises papal art.

This course considers the various artistic responses to the reform agenda in Rome - in churches, chapels, palaces and villas.
Course description Course structure:

Weekly seminars will move through a series of roughly chronological case studies as follows:

Week 1: Introduction: from the Council of Trent to Gabriele Paleotti

Week 2: St Peter¿s and the Vatican Palaces

Week 3: Michelangelo

Week 4: The churches of the new religious orders and their decorative programmes

Week 5: Depicting martyrdom

Week 6: Innovative learning week

Week 7: The Venerable English College: traitors or martyrs?

Week 8: Prints and printmaking

Week 9: Secular art?

Week 10: The Accademia di San Luca and the art market in Rome

Week 11: Tombs and monuments

Week 12: Review, art of the Catholic Reform?
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Students MUST have passed: History of Art 2A Reason, Romance, Revolution: Art from 1700 to 1900 (HIAR08027) AND History of Art 2B From Modernism and the Avant-Gardes to Postmodernism and Globalisation (HIAR08028) OR Architectural History 2a: Order & the City (ARHI08006) AND Architectural History 2b: Culture & the City (ARHI08007)
Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2021/22, Not available to visiting students (SS1) Quota:  21
Course Start Semester 1
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20, Formative Assessment Hours 1, Summative Assessment Hours 2, Revision Session Hours 1, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 172 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 50 %, Coursework 50 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) 1 x 3 hour online examination paper (50%) and
1 x 2500 word extended essay (50%)
Feedback For this course there is one piece of formative assessment:

Choose one of the texts included in the course handouts for weeks 1, 2 or 3. What does this text tell us about the so-called ¿reform of art¿ in this period?

Write a short essay of 500-700 words. Include footnotes and bibliography (these will not count in the overall word count in this instance). Please submit your essay via Turnitin no later than the end of week 5. It will be returned to you with comments and an indicative grade by week 7.

Formative Assessment does not count to your final grade/mark but is used to support your learning. Feedback on formative assessment is designed to help you learn more effectively by giving you feedback on your performance and on how it can be improved and/or maintained.

You are also encouraged to plan ahead and discuss the plan for your summative essay with the course organiser.
Exam Information
Exam Diet Paper Name Hours & Minutes
Main Exam Diet S1 (December)3 hour online examination paper3:00
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Acquire a knowledge of the relationship between art and politics in Rome in the 16th century and the impact of Rome's history and topography on its art and architecture.
  2. Recognise key works of art and their significance and discuss key themes and debates raised by the art of the period, and deploy this awareness in presentations and written work.
  3. Identify and exploit different kinds of primary and secondary sources to support your studies.
Reading List
James S. Ackerman, 'The Gesù in the light of contemporary church design', in Baroque Art: The Jesuit Contribution, Rudolf Wittkower and Irma B. Jaffe eds (Fordham University Press), pp.15-28 (also in Cole, Sixteenth Century Italian Art, pp.368-87)
Yoni Ascher, 'Manifest humbleness: self-commemoration in the time of the Catholic Reform', Sixteenth Century Journal 35/2 (2004), pp.329-56
Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque: Jesuit Art in Rome, 1565-1610 (University of Toronto Press, 2003)
Michael Bury, 'The taste for prints in Italy to c. 1600', Print Quarterly 2 (1985), pp.12-26.
Michael Bury, 'On some engravings by Giorgio Ghisi commonly called 'reproductive', Print Quarterly 10/1 (1993), pp.4-19 (also in Cole, Sixteenth Century Italian Art, pp.275-90)
Michael Bury, 'Infringing privileges and copying in Rome, c. 1600', Print Quarterly 22/2 (2005), 133-8.
Louis Cellauro, 'The Casino of Pius IV in the Vatican', Papers of the British School at Rome 63 (1995), pp.183-214
Michael W. Cole, Sixteenth Century Italian Art (Blackwell, 2006)
Charles Dempsey, Review of Stuart Lingo, Federico Barocci: Allure and Devotion in Late Renaissance Painting, Art Bulletin Vol. 92/3 (2010), pp.251-256
John Dillenberger, Images and Relics: Theological Perceptions and Visual Images in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Oxford University Press, 1995)
Una Roman D'Elia, 'Drawing Christ's blood: Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna and the aesthetics of reform', Renaissance Quarterly 59/1 (2006), 90-129.
Creighton E. Gilbert, Caravaggio and his Two Cardinals (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995)
David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History of Response (University of Chicago, 1989)
Marcia B. Hall, 'Michelangelo's Last Judgment: resurrection of the body and predestination', The Art Bulletin 58/1 (1976), pp.85-92
Marcia B. Hall, The Sacred Image in the Age of Art (Yale, 2011)
Alexandra Hertz, 'Cardinal Cesare Baronio's restoration of Ss. Nereo ed Achilleo and S. Cesareo de'Appia', Art Bulletin 70 (1988), pp.590-620
Kathryn B. Hiesinger, 'The Fregoso Monument: a study in sixteenth-century tomb monuments and Catholic Reform', The Burlington Magazine 118, no. 878 (1976), pp.282-93
Pamela M. Jones, 'Art theory as ideology: Gabriele Paleotti's hierarchical notion of painting's universality and reception', in Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America, 1450-1650, Claire Farago ed. (Yale, 1995), pp.127-39
Joseph Leo Koerner, The Reformation of the Image (University of Chicago Press, 2004)
Stuart Lingo, Federico Barocci: Allure and Devotion in Late Renaissance Painting (Yale, 2008)
Peter M. Lukehart, The Accademia Seminars: The Accademia di San Lucca in Rome, c. 1590-1635 (CASVA Seminar Papers 2, Yale, 2009)
Diarmid MacCulloch, Mary Laven and Eamon Duffy, 'Recent trends in the study of Christianity in sixteenth-century europe', Renaissance Quarterly 59/3 (2006), pp.697-731.
Alexander Nagel, 'Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna', (in Cole, Sixteenth Century Italian Art, pp.324-67)
Alexander Nagel, Michelangelo and the Reform of Art (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Steven F. Ostrow, Art and Spirituality in Counter-Reformation Rome: The Sistine and Pauline Chapels in S. Maria Maggiore (Cambridge University Press, 1996)
Carol M. Richardson, ;Durante Alberti, the Martyrs' Picture and the Venerable English College, Rome', Papers of the British School at Rome, 73 (2005), pp.223-263
Clare Robertson, Il gran cardinale': Alessandro Farnese, Patron of the Arts (Yale, 1992)
Melinda Schlitt, 'Painting, criticism, and Michelangelo's Last Judgement in the age of the Counter-Reformation', in Michelagelo's 'Last Judgement', Marcia B. Hall ed. (Cambridge University Press), pp.113-49
Livia Stoenescu, 'Ancient prototypes reinstantiated: Zuccari's Encounter of Christ and Veronica of 1594,' Art Bulletin 93/4 (2011), pp.423-448
Charles de Tolnay, 'Michalengelo and Vittoria Colonna', Michelangelo V: The Final Period (Princeton, 1960), pp.51-69 (also in Cole, Sixteenth Century Italian Art, pp.306-23)
Ian Verstegen, 'Federico Barocci, Federico Borromeo and their Oratorian orbit', Renaissance Quarterly 56/1 (2003), pp.56-87
Graham Smith, The Casino of Pius IV (Princeton University Press, 1977) - review by Loren W. Partridge in The Art Bulletin 60/2 (June 1978), pp.369-372,
Rebecca Zorach (ed.), The Virtual Tourist in Renaissance Rome (University of Chicago Library, 2008)
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
KeywordsNot entered
Contacts
Course organiserProf Carol Richardson
Tel: (0131 6)50 4119
Email: C.M.Richardson@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMiss Ellie McCartney
Tel: (0131 6)51 5879
Email: emccartn@exseed.ed.ac.uk
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