ARTH738K

This seminar will explore the secondary and primary literatures pertaining to the humanistic digestion of the antique, also examining how it informed the theory and practice of the visual arts and the education of artists from the later fourteenth through early nineteenth centuries, and beyond. Topics will include the distinction between the rhetorical/probabilistic structure of Renaissance humanistic antiquarianism and modern scientific archaeology; the humanistic philological methods employed in the interpretation of ancient iconography; the politicization of ancient art; the purpose of artists drawings after the antique; the notably unscientific thinking that informed the restoration of fragmentary ancient works; the problem of perceived cultural and artistic continuities between ancient Rome and Renaissance Italy; the relationship between seventeenth-century Roman Classicism and later eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Neoclassicism; the recovery and interpretation of ancient painting; and the use of plaster casts in academic art education.