Painting, sculpture, and graphic art in France, the Netherlands, Germany, and England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are studied in this course with special emphasis on the major figures of this period, from Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden to Matthias Grunewald, Hieronymus Bosch, Albrecht Durer, Hans Holbein, and Pieter Bruegel. Topics include the transformation of craft into art as a self-reflective and intellectual practice (Kunst); the emergence of oil painting as a transformative media; the German sculpted altarpiece and the triptych as Northern genres; visual art and the Reformation; the emergence of graphic culture and the fine art print; witchcraft and mystical nature in German art; classicism in the north; and the birth of secular art—portraiture, landscape, and scenes of everyday life.
Term 1, Tuesday/Thursday, 11:00–12:30 pm
Hieronymus Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights (detail), c. 1500, oil on panel
