Course Description
GRONINGEN SUMMERSCHOOL Roma 2010
Course n. 1
Artists, Patrons and the Evangelical Inspiration
Monday, June 28th, Morning
Tuesday, June 29th, Afternoon
Instructor:
Prof.dr. H.Th. van Veen (Henk)
University of Groningen
Professor in Arthistory
In Italy, from the late 1520s into the 1550s, long-established religious practices and convictions were being (con)tested and new intents and forms of devotion and spirituality delineated themselves. This spiritual renewal and reform left its clear mark not only on a wide variety of literary texts, but also on a considerable body of paintings, prints and sculptures. It is on this body of works that we will be concentrating. We will analyze the works in question as regards their style and subject matter and we will look into the artists who made them and the persons and/or groups for whom these works were made. Doing this implies that we will discuss issues such as the connection between these works and the devotional texts that inspired them; the ways in which cultural and aesthetic attitudes on the one hand and religious convictions and feelings of devotion on the other were linked up together, both with the painters and with the patrons/receivers of the works; the ways this linkage of devotional and aesthetic feeling was testimony to new notions about art, its aims and its experience; the way these works were looked upon afterwards, when the Counter-Reformational Church of Rome had formulated its rules and restrictions on the imagery and use of religious art.
More specifically, we will focus on the works of art that are testimony to the devotions and spiritualities that developed the ambiance of the so-called ‘evangelismo’, the brand of evangelical creed that, in its various shades (valdesianismo, nicodemiso, etc.), took a remarkable hold on the cultural elites in the cities and courts of Italy in the first half of the sixteenth century. This implies that we will focus on works by artists such as Michelangelo, Pontormo, Lorenzo Lotto, Andrea Sansovino, Baccio Bandinelli, Giulio Romano, Parmigianino.
Course n. 2
Literature as a test-case for exploring boundaries in a changing culture
Monday, June 28th, Afternoon
Tuesday, June 29th, Morning
Instructor:
Prof.dr. P.G.Bossier (Philiep)
University of Groningen
Chair of Early-Modern Romance Literature
During the first decades of Cinquecento Italy until the crucial years around 1550-60, a surprising amount of authors were active in the field of what we nowadays would call ‘broad professionalism’: Ortesio Lando, Antonfrancesco Doni, Lodovico Domenichi, Niccolò Franco, Ludovico Dolce, and many others. Many of them are currently gathered by scholars under the term of irregolari. And some of them are directly linked to the paramount figure of Pietro Aretino. In this context of editorial practice, very often linked to the programs of the leading tipografie in Venice but also in Rome, we have constantly evidence of a lot of mixed cultures in exploring new kinds of literacy. Moreover, a strong publication policy is the dominant guideline for those writers looking to expose themselves in an explicit way to the audience. New boundaries of authorship are explored and experimentations with challenging formats in literature are signals of new dynamics in post-humanistic renaissance. Hence, the aim of this course is to analyze the complexity of changing matters in literature in those decades just before the ultimate turn-over marked by the Council of Trent (1545-63). Two main issues will be discussed. On the one hand, literature is re-defining itself by a growing reference to the changing practice in contemporary fine arts. On the other hand, daring spiritual matters are becoming more and more an evident challenge for an elaborate self-fashioning by the new generations of authors. In short, literature changes function and is looking for allied strategies in order to built a new readership in Italy, based on literature and art as ‘’instruments of truth’’.
Course n. 4
Spirituality and the Arts in the Counterreformation
Thursday, July 1, Morning
Instructor:
Dr. B. Treffers (Bert)
Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome
Head of the Department of Arthistory
In the last two decades, we tend to question the old concept of the counterreformation as a movement which reacted to the great schism triggered of by Luther and other protestant reformers. The Catholic Church has always known reform movements which wanted to change the Church from within. Therefore there is a great continuity within the Institution itself. The Sixteenth Century therefore was also a period in which many catholic reformers looked back not only to what was seen as early Christianity, but also to periods of immense innovations of which the twelfth and thirteenth century were the most important. In the Cinquecento there was even a renewal of medieval mysticism which achieved its culmination in the Seventeenth Century, the age of the so called Baroque. Exponents of this reform movement within the Catholic Church were amongst others Saint Gaetano da Thiene, Saint Filippo Neri, Saint Ignace. New orders arose, but existent orders as the Franciscans went back to what they thought to be there roots. Of the three reformers mentioned, the most fascinating is Saint Filippo Neri, who formed the centre of a most popular movement, in which preaching, discussion on religious themes and the use of music were the essential toolstodeepen the so called personal devotion. Strangely enough the arts seemed to be out of step and reached their maturity as religious and devotional tools only in the last quarter of the Sixteenth- and early years of the Seventeenth Century, with painters like the Carracci and Caravaggio; in the field of music it was Emilio de’ Cavalieri who created a musical form which was to be a first example of what we later wouldcall the Oratory. Rome is therefore the place where one can study this development better than in any other city of Italy. Around 1600 everything new, also in the sense of renovation, took form in this once again Caput Mundi of the Western world.
Course n. 5
"Lecture": Soft Iconoclasm in early sixteenth-century Italy
Thursday, July 1, Afternoon
Instructor:
Prof. Dr. A. Nagel (Alexander)
Institute of Fine Arts, New York
Professor of Fine Arts
Did Italy have a reformation? What form did it take? How did the basic Italian commitment to image-making square with a Reform model? This lecture investigates one understudied trend from the first half of the sixteenth century in Italy: the placement of sacrament tabernacles on high altars, in place of altarpieces. In what sense, it asks, was the eucharist an alternative, even an antidote, to image-making in Italy in this period? How did the placement of tabernacles at the center of worship reframe the function of images? We will look at examples all over italy in this period, finishing with one work, the high altar of Vicenza, that is the closest that Italian art came to aniconism in this period.
Course n. 6
"Class": How systemic critique produced pornography in Italy in the 1520s
Thursday, July 1, Afternoon
Instructor:
Prof. Dr. A. Nagel (Alexander)
Institute of Fine Arts, New York
Professor of Fine Arts
In northern Europe sixteenth-century reformers of a milder stripe proposed that religious art did not need to be smashed but only relocated, and thus secularized. A similar debate was occurring in Italy, and reached an acute point in the 1520s: is beautiful religious art hypocrisy? How does one distinguish between the meaningful and the pleasurable in a work of art? The main players here are the critic and pornographer Pietro Aretino and the humanist and reformer Gan Matteo Giberti. The scandal of the series of pornographic images, I Modi, will figure prominently in the discussion.
