Art in Europe,

c. 1565–c. 1650
(a.k.a ―Late Mannerism and the
Early Baroque‖)

PROF. MARK ROSEN

Course Information

AHST 3316 Section: 001

Fall 2010
TTh 11:30–12:45, plus one required museum visit on your own time

Professor Contact Information

Office: JO 4.636
Email: mark.rosen@utdallas.edu
Office phone: 972-883-2367
Office hours: Wed. noon–1 pm or by appointment

Course Pre-requisites, Co-requisites, and/or Other Restrictions

Prerequisites: The introductory Art History Survey (AHST 1303 and 1304) or AP Art History in
High School; AHST 2331 or ARTS 1301 are also acceptable prereqs.

Course Description

Rather than attempt to survey the entirety of Baroque and Rococo art (a period which covers
nearly 200 years in Europe), this course attempts to capture one of the most significant and
paradigmatic moments in the history of art: the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In
the grand narrative, this is when ―Renaissance‖ becomes ―Baroque‖—although neither term was
used at the time, both being more or less modern inventions referring to artistic style rather than
issues of politics, nationality, patronage, or other practicalities of the artist’s working life. But
while those terms (―Renaissance‖ and ―Baroque‖) have some problems, there really can be no
doubt that something significant changed in the approach to artmaking in the period, that it
happened first in Italy and in the Netherlands, and that it soon spread widely across Europe to the
point where we can talk about seventeenth century painting, sculpture, and architecture in
concretely distinct terms from the century that preceded it. This class will focus on this critical
period while covering a wide range of important artists who defined this shift.

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Why begin around 1565? Three important events occur in Italy in the 1560s that seem to close a
chapter on ―Renaissance art‖: the death of Michelangelo ―the divine‖ (an epithet used at his
funeral) in 1564; the publication of Giorgio Vasari’s monumental revised edition of the Lives of
the Artists in 1568; and the closing session, in 1563, of the Council of Trent, which published
newly methodical approaches for dealing with reformers, heretics, and what it saw as distracting
and licentious attitudes in art. All three had a great impact on debates of the future of art, and all
would also in some sense influence the direction of art not only in Italy but throughout all of
Europe. For that reason, we will begin in Italy before moving outward; but Italy will serve as the
foundation throughout the entire course, and will get the greatest attention.

Why end around 1650? That date is more arbitrary than the first, but it nonetheless indicates a
moment when the leading living European masters—among them Rembrandt, Poussin, Vermeer,
Velazquez, and Bernini—had replaced or transcended the paradigms of the sixteenth century that
had continued to inform or haunt the artists of the early seventeenth century.

Among the subjects we will discuss are: the structures of the centers of power in Europe at the
time; the reform of religious art and sacred architecture in the later sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries; the varieties of artistic training available to artists; the emergence of the
first significant women painters in Europe; the spread of the Italian style to the rest of Europe and
other instances of cross-cultural influence; the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants
and the ways in which they shaped the artistic production of the North; the rise of genre painting;
and the conscious acceptance or rejection of past artistic models upon the present.

Students in this course are not expected to have a background in any of this material but are expected to
bring fresh perspectives to the course. Although it is a lecture class, the readings will also play an
important role. Reading responses will be required throughout the semester, as well as a visual analysis of
a painting at the Meadows Museum at SMU. A list of terms or captions that relate to the images will be
handed out each class. Many of these images are also in the readings, although not everything we see in
class will be. The image presentations seen in class will be posted on eLearning at the end of each week.

Student Learning Objectives

• Students will grasp the interdisciplinary ways that historical works of art can be
understood, with the goal that they can carry this skill beyond this class to studying or evaluating
artworks from other periods and cultures.
• Students will develop their skills of visual analysis and critical reading through writing a
series of short essays.
• Students will become familiar with current methodologies and approaches to historical
inquiry.

Textbooks and Materials

Required book: Ann Sutherland Harris, Seventeenth-Century Art & Architecture, 2d edition
(Pearson, 2008)

Other required readings will be available online through electronic course reserves. The
password will be given out on the first day of class. Note that these readings are in integral part

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of the class and will be discussed directly much more often than the textbook, so you should take
care when reading them.

Readings should be done before each class meeting. Some readings will be discussed during the
lecture and it is expected that students will be prepared to participate in the discussion and be
familiar with the works.

Once a week, links to images shown in class will be posted on our class eLearning site. These
will be image groups by lecture number, each with a thumbnail that can be clicked on for a high-
resolution scan. Those images are hosted on a website called ARTStor (www.arstor.org). You
will need to create a (free) account on the site, something which can be done through a computer
logged into the UTD network or proxy server.

Papers and Assignments

There will be three written papers for this course. Two of them (due 9/14 and 11/23) are three-
page reading responses. The other (due 11/4) is a four-page visual analysis of El Greco’s
Pentecost, a painting from the Prado Museum in Madrid that will be visiting Dallas this fall for a
short residency at the Meadows Museum at SMU. There is no ―final paper,‖ which means that
each one of these carries equal weight in the final grade (10% each).

During the semester, there will be two class meetings entirely be led by students—Sept. 16 and
Nov. 2. The class will be divided into four groups, two of which will present on each of those
days. You and five or six fellow classmates will determine how to present an artwork and how to
budget your time and energy to presenting it to the group, as well as leading discussion about it.
There will not be a written component to this presentation, but the quality of the presentation and
discussion will be graded.

For information regarding plagiarism and other issues of academic integrity, see the university’s
website: http://provost.utdallas.edu/home/syllabus-policies-and-procedures-text. Let me confirm
that it plagiarism a very serious offense and will not be tolerated. It will result in your being
forced to rewrite a paper or accept a failing grade for the assignment. Your own intellectual
honesty is of the greatest importance in this class.

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 Assignments & Academic Calendar
[All readings except Harris are on electronic reserve.]

Class Topic Reading

20 Aug. Art and Politics in Europe

in the Late Sixteenth
Century
25 Aug. ITALY: Mid-Sixteenth
Century Florence under
the Medici
27 Aug. ITALY: Late-Sixteenth
Century Rome: The
Papacy and the Structure
of Roman Patronage
2 Sept. ITALY: Palace and Villa
7 Sept. ITALY: Late-Sixteenth
Century Innovators
9 Sept. NO CLASS—
ROSH HASHANAH
HOLIDAY
14 Sept. ITALY: Annibale Carracci
and the Farnese Gallery;
Intro to Caravaggio
FIRST PAPER DUE
16 Sept. ITALY: Caravaggio’s
Calling of St. Matthew and
The Martyrdom of St.
Matthew
[Two student groups lead
discussion]
Harris, xxi–xxiii
Janet Cox-Rearick, ―Art at the Court of Duke Cosimo I de’
Medici (1537–1574),‖ in The Medici, Michelangelo, and
the Art of Late Renaissance Florence (New Haven, 2002),
35–45
Anthony Blunt, ―The Council of Trent and Religious Art,‖
in Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450–1600 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1962), 103–136
Claudia Lazzaro-Bruno, ―The Villa Lante at Bagnaia: An
Allegory of Art and Nature,‖ Art Bulletin 59 (1977): 553–
560
Harris, 1–23
Charles Dempsey, ―The Carracci Reform of Painting,‖ in
The Age of Correggio and the Carracci (exh. cat., 1986),
237–54.
Harris, 23–49
Giovanni Pietro Bellori, ―Lives of the Carracci,‖ in Italian
and Spanish Art, 1600–1750: Sources and Documents
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 69–86
Irving Lavin, ―Caravaggio’s Calling of St. Matthew: The
Identity of the Protagonist,‖ in Past-Present (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993), 84–99
John Varriano, ―Violence,‖ in Caravaggio: The Art of
Realism (University Park: Penn State University Press,
2006), 73–84

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 21 Sept. ITALY: Deeper into Harris, 50–56
Caravaggio; Orazio and
Artemisia Gentileschi Mary Garrard, ―Artemisia and Susanna,‖ in Feminism and
Art History, ed. N. Broude and M. Garrard (NY, 1982),
146–71
23 Sept. MIDTERM EXAM
28 Sept. ITALY: The Carracci Harris, 56–77, 113–141
School; Pietro da Cortona;
Foreign Visitors to Rome Biographies of Reni, Lanfranco, etc., in Italian and
Spanish Art, 1600–1750: Sources and Documents
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 86–108
30 Sept. ITALY: Sculpture Harris, 78–113

Selections of Filippo Baldinucci, ―Life of Bernini,‖ from A

Documentary History of Art, vol. II, ed. Elizabeth Holt
(NY: Doubleday, 1958), 106–123
5 Oct. ITALY: 17th-century Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy 1600–
Roman Architecture 1750 (New Haven, 1999), 39–62, 75–95.
7 Oct. ITALY: Bernini and Howard Hibbard, Bernini (Pelican, 1965), 116-141
Urban VIII
12 Oct. FLANDERS: Politics and Harris, 143–174
Painting in the Late
Sixteenth Century
14 Oct. FLANDERS: Rubens and Arnout Balis, ―Antwerp, Foster-Mother of the Arts: Its
Antwerp Contribution to the Artistic Culture of Europe in the
Seventeenth Century,‖ in Antwerp: Story of a Metropolis
(Antwerp, 1993), 115–37.
19 Oct. FLANDERS: Rubens and Harris, 174–197
Europe
21 Oct. MIDTERM EXAM
26 Oct. SPAIN: Counter- Harris, 199–224
Reformation Spain
Hugh-Trevor Roper, Princes and Artists (NY: Harper and
Row, 1976), 47–83
28 Oct. SPAIN: Velazaquez and Harris, 224–249
the Habsburg Court
Jonathan Brown, ―Velazquez and Philip IV,‖ in Velazquez:
Painter and Courtier, 241–64.

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 2 Nov. SPAIN: Velazquez’s Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York:
Spinners and Las Meninas Vintage, 1970), 3–16.

[2 Student groups lead Svetlana Alpers, The Vexations of Art (New Haven, 2007),
discussion] 135–180
4 Nov. FRANCE: The French Harris, 251–284
Renaissance and the Early
Seventeenth Century

SECOND PAPER DUE

9 Nov. FRANCE: Poussin, Harris, 285–321
Lorraine and Landscape
Painting Selections of Poussin’s Letters, from A Documentary
History of Art, vol. II, ed. Elizabeth Holt (NY: Doubleday,
1958), 141–159

Philippe de Champaigne, ―On Poussin’s Rebecca and

Eliezer,‖ in John Rupert Martin, Baroque (NY: Harper and
Row, 1977), 290–96
11 Nov. ENGLAND: The Harris, 401–415
Elizabethan Renaissance
and the Early Seventeenth Andrew and Catherine Belsey, ―Icons of Divinity: Portraits
Century of Elizabeth I,‖ in Lucy Gent and Nigel Llewellyn, eds.,
Renaissance Bodies (London, 1990): 11–35, 242–45
16 Nov. ENGLAND/FLANDERS: Ellis Kirkham Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, 1530–1790
Van Dyck’s English (New Haven, 1994), 50–71
Portraits
18 Nov. DUTCH REPUBLIC: Harris, 323–361
Politics and Painting;
Rembrandt’s Rise Gary Schwartz, Rembrandt (NY, 1985), 119–31
23 Nov. DUTCH REPUBLIC: Harris, 361–368
Rembrandt and the Studio
Mieke Bal, ―Between Focalization and Voyeurism: The
THIRD PAPER DUE Representation of Vision,‖ in Reading Rembrandt
(Chicago, 1991), 138–76.
25 Nov. NO CLASS—
THANKSGIVING
30 Nov. DUTCH REPUBLIC: Harris, 368–399
Dutch Genre
2 Dec. CONCLUSIONS
Final Exam Review
14 Dec. Final Exam at 11 am

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Grading Policy

Short papers: 30% (10% each)

Midterms: 20%
Final Exam: 30%
In-class Presentation (9/16 or 11/2): 10%
Attendance and Participation: 10%

Course & Instructor Policies

Office hours are meant for the benefit of you students, so use them! They can be used to discuss
class materials, assignments, and questions arising from the readings, or other issues you’d like to
discuss. If you can’t make it to the scheduled hours, you can make an appointment with me at
some other time.
I can be reached by email and will make efforts to respond in a timely manner, but I’m not on call
at all hours; use email sparingly, please.
All major assignments must be completed to successfully pass the class (you can’t skip the first
paper and still expect to get a B+).
No written assignments will be accepted via email.
Late assignments will be marked down substantially.
Please turn off your phone and refrain from texting in class. It’s a drag for everyone.
Class begins at 11:30. If you must come in late, try to be as quiet as possible.
You may have no more than three unexcused absences—beyond that, you will get a zero for your
participation grade.

These descriptions and timelines are subject to change at the discretion of the Professor.

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