Art Across the Ages

Part Three - Lectures 17 - 24

17. Renaissance Painting beyond the Alps
We move our attention to northern Europe and the countries associated with the Northern Renaissance. The range of subjects, both secular and religious, is as rich and varied as the range of emotions and moods conveyed. In addition, we find an emphasis on carefully articulated details, jewel-like tones, and, linear surfaces.

18. Renaissance Sculpture—Toward Florence
This lecture backtracks chronologically to accompany sculpture on a path that parallels the chronology and the conceptual developments encompassed by the previous three lectures on painting. Among the trends we observe are a slow stylistic shift between Gothic and reborn Classical styles, a move in sculptural aesthetics toward a humanistic fleshiness, and the beginning of a growing dynamism.

19. Toward High Renaissance in Central Italy
This lecture continues to follow the extraordinary role of Florence in producing and attracting artists—both painters and sculptors—in the second half of the 15th century, beginning with the poetic sensibilities of Botticelli and concluding with the beginning of the career of Leonardo.

20. High Renaissance in Central Italy
Our look at the High Renaissance—beginning with Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo—includes a close examination of Leonardo's Last Supper, which is said to have brought the High Renaissance era into full focus. To better appreciate Leonardo's innovations with this fresco, we compare it with renderings of the same subject by Ghirlandaio and Castagno.

21. The Rebirth of Classical Dynamism
Our discussion of a work by Perugino— Raphael's teacher in Umbria—and a similar work by Raphael himself leads us to a focus on architecture, including Brunelleschi's famous dome in Florence, until we arrive at Michelangelo and his own architecture, sculpture, and painting—including his Sistine Chapel frescoes.

22. The Light of the Veneto
This lecture shifts north to the great Venetian painters of the late 15th through late 16th centuries. The preoccupation with light is of particular note for these artists, in part a result of the unusual effect of light on water and the reflection of both on the majestic city of Venice.

23. 16th-Century Northern European Painting
This lecture returns to the Northern Renaissance and its intense and varied productivity in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, examining significant works by giants such as Dürer, Bosch, Cranach the Elder, and Van Leyden. Circling back to Dürer's remarkable self-portrait, we arrive on new ground: the artistic preoccupation with self that will lead toward modernity.

24. Transformation of People, Objects, Ideas
This lecture continues where the previous lecture left off, moving deeper into the 16th century in Northern painting—and artists such as Altdorfer, Holbein the Younger, and Bruegel the Elder—noting that world's growing interest in studies of common people and everyday objects in diverse landscapes and settings.