90700 - Functions and Meanings of Early Modern Art

Learning outcomes

Students gain knowledge of the meaning and function of early modern age works of art (1500-1800), in specific relation to painting and sculpture. In particular, they develop the tools to approach scientific analysis and conservation - a preliminary and necessary base for art promotion - through the analysis of a few meaningful exponents of the discipline, enabling them to start new lines of research, with consequent results in conservation and promotion.

Course contents

Course Syllabus

The course will focus on some art works produce mainly in Bologna, but not exclusively, in order to address crucial issues relating to their original functions and meanings. Set within a broader context, the stylistic and iconographic content of the individual works will be taken into account, together with considerations on the multiplicity of media they were made of, from terracotta and marble sculptures, to panel paintings and prints on paper.

Part 1/a

01 From Passion to Lamentation on the Dead Christ in Italian Renaissance art

02 Niccolò dell’Arca’s Lamentation over the Dead Christ

Part 1/b

03 Saints’ tombs: an introduction

04 The tomb of St Dominic from Nicola Pisano to Niccolò dell’Arca (and beyond)

Part 2/a

05 From poliptych to “pala quadrata”: forms, functions, meanings

06 The polittico Griffoni and the recent exhibition in Bologna

Part 2/b

07 Raphael’s Saint Cecilia altarpiece for San Giovanni in Monte

08 Religious Orders and self-identity

Part 3

09 Early woodcut prints' production and usage in Renaissance Italy

010 Early printed images and cult promotion 

011 Artists and prints: Raphael’s Città di Castello altarpiece

Readings/Bibliography

Part 1/a

D. Boffa, The Touch of Sanctity: Niccolò dell’Arca’s Signature on the Lamentation, in “Source”, 35 (2016), , n. 4, pp. 293-301.

 

R. Klebanoff, Passion, compassion, and the sorrows of women. Niccolò dell’Arca’s "Lamentation over the Dead Christ" for the Bolognese Confraternity of Santa Maria della Vita, in Barbara Wisch - Diane Cole Ahl, eds., Confraternities and the visual arts in Renaissance Italy, Cambridge 2000, pp. 146-172.

 

J. H. Beck, Niccolò dell’Arca, a re-examination, in “The art bulletin”, 47 (1965), pp. 335-344.

 

Part 1/b

M. Dunkelman, What Michelangelo learned in Bologna, in “Artibus et historiae”, 35 (2014), pp. 107-135.

 

R. Klebanoff, Sacred magnificence: civic intervention and the arca of San Domenico in Bologna, in Renaissance Studies , 13 (1999), pp. 412-429.

 

A Moskowitz, Giovanni di Balduccio’s Arca di San Pietro Martire: Form and Function, in “Arte Lombarda” , 96/97 (1991), pp. 7-18.

 

Part 2/a

M. Natale – C. Cavalca, eds., Il polittico Griffoni rinasce a Bologna. La riscoperta di un capolavoro, exhibition catalogue (Bologna 12 marzo - 28 giugno 2020, Bologna, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Palazzo Fava [nuove date apertura mostra: dal 18/05/2020 al 10/01/2021], Cinisello Balsamo (Milan) 2020, pp. 13-28 (M. Natale, Introduzione), 101-120 (C. Cavalca, Il polittico Griffoni). English or Italian edition.

 

Part 2/b

C. Gardner von Teuffel, The Carmelite Altarpiece (circa 1290-1550). The Self-Identification of an Order, in “Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz”, 57 (2015), pp. 2-41.

 

R. Cobianchi, Lo temperato uso del cose. La committenza dell’Osservanza francescana nell’Italia del Rinascimento, Spoleto 2013, pp. 75- 138 (chapters 4 and 5)

S. Mossakowski, Raphael’s “St. Cecia”. An Iconographical Study, in “Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte”, 31 (1968), pp. 1-26.

 

Part 3

R. Cobianchi, Printing a New Saint: Woodcut Production and Canonization of Saints in Late Medieval Italy, in A. K. Frazier, ed., The Saint Between Manuscript and Print in Italy, 1400-1600, Toronto, 2015, pp. 73-98.

 

R. Cobianchi, Raphael, ceremonial banners and devotional prints: new light on Città di Castello's Nicholas of Tolentino Altarpiece, in L. Bourdua – A. Dunlop, eds., Art and the Augustinian Order in Early Renaissance Italy, Aldershot, 2007, pp. 285-315.

 

R. Cobianchi, The Use of Woodcuts in Fifteenth-century Italy, in “Print Quarterly”, 23 (2006), pp. 47-54.

 

M. Bury, The fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century gonfaloni of Perugia, in “Renaissance Studies”, 12 (1998), pp. 67-86.

Teaching methods

Lectures

Assessment methods

Oral examination

Teaching tools

Powerpoint presentation

Office hours

See the website of Roberto Cobianchi