Special Topics: Women, Art and Culture in Italy Trends in Social & Global Studies Program Fall 2018 Semester - Florence

This course will explore the role and status of women in connection to Italian Art from the late Middle Ages to the eighteenth century. After an introduction to key issues and theoretical approaches in the study of women in the arts, the course will proceed thematically and chronologically to explore what it meant to grow up female and what life was like for women from the late fourteenth century through the 1700s.

The course will proceed by analyzing depictions of women including saints, personifications and the Virgin Mary as well as female portraits and the nude--both by male and female artists. We will furthermore discuss the role that women played as art commissioners. Famous aristocrats will serve as illustrious examples of female art patronage through three centuries of art history: Isabella d'Este of Mantua (1474-1539), and women closely connected to the Medici court in Florence such as Eleonora da Toledo (1522-1562), Vittoria della Rovere (1622-1694) and Anna Maria Luisa de'Medici (1667-1743).

We will finally consider the historical and social prerequisites for the appearance of female artists in history and the socio-cultural conditions these women had to live and work under. Exemplary figures like Sofonisba Anguissola (1532-1625), Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614), Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653), Rosalba Carriera (1673-1757), Giulia Lama (1681-1747) as well as non-Italians Angelika Kauffmann (1741-1807) and Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842) will be discussed in detail.