TOPICS: ART & REFORM IN ITALY in Spring 2020 (AH3091B)

The Counter-Reformation in Italy is often described as a reactionary opposition to the emergence of Protestant doctrines and devotional practices in defense of Catholic tradition. Yet, this narrative does not acknowledge that the challenge to define what it meant to transmit divine truths through man-made images, texts, rituals, and liturgical objects of veneration was a struggle that was reproduced on both sides of the religious divide. This course will examine the ways in which painters in sixteenth-century Reformation Italy, as makers of religious imagery, responded to the debate over human mediation of the divine. How did painters navigate the fraught relationship between the man-made and the divine image? What did a so-called “unmediated,” direct encounter with God look like – was it even possible? We will look at how artists addressed these questions and others in their works in order to examine the relationship between art and reform in Italy during the period of 1500-1600. Topics of discussion will include: the status of the sacred image, the threat of idolatry, heresy and the bible, the problem of beauty and decorum, and the role of the imagination in artistic invention.