ART 102: History of Western Art II Reading assignment

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Text Books:

History of Art, Vol. II.  by Janson & Janson.  (6th, 7th, or 8th Edition) Required.Reading assignment: Modules 1 & 2

Chapter 15: The Early Renaissance in Fifteenth-Century Italy

Chapter 16: The High Renaissance in Italy, 1495-1520

Chapter 17:  The Late Renaissance and Mannerism in Sixteenth-Century Italy

Emergence of Islamic Culture in Late Medieval Europe

These video retraces the impact the Islamic intellectual and artist culture, originating in the Moorish cultures of Spain,  as it influences the intellectual world of Medieval Europe.

Please watch the last two episodes of the series, “The Muslim Renaissance”.

An influx Arabic Knowledge Transform Europe 

The Influence of Arab Scholars on European Scientific Thought

“The Medici, Godfathers of the Renaissance”

Please view the follow two episodes from the PBD Empire series  “The Medici, Godfathers of the Renaissance.” 

It will outline the rise of the Medici family in Florence and how they acquired their wealth and influence.

You might have to sign-in with your my.smccd.edu identification to view the films from “Films On Demand”, brought to you through the Skyline College Library.

The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance-Birth of a Dynasty

The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance-The Magnificent Medici

Please note the artists that were working for the Medici:

  • Donatello
  • Brunelleschi
  • Fra Filippo Lippi
  • Leonardo da Vinci
  • Michelangelo
  • Botticelli

The Renaissance & Contrapposto

Please view the follow two videos.  The first is a survey from Sister Wendy of the Renaissance.

The second, which will actually review a lot of the art from the ancient world art, will try to explain why images of people are not realistic.  They will structure their thesis on the Ancient Greeks achieving “beauty and perfection” and then their abandonment of that criteria.  In the discussion of Greek art, an explanation of the “contrapposto” posture will be demonstrated.  This posture was the model for Michelangelo’s statue of “David”.

You might have to sign-in with your my.smccd.edu identification to view the films from “Alexander Street” and “Films On Demand”, brought to you through the Skyline College Library.  If you have trouble accessing these videos, try access through the Skyline Library webpage.  In the “OneSearch” dialog box, you will see a series of taps below the search entry line.  Click on “Videos” and it will then present you with the access pages of the servers of these two videos.

Sister Wendy’s Story of Painting, Episode 3  (access through Alexander Street)

How Art Made the World — More Human Than Human  (access through Films on Demand)

The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck

A discussion of the Arnolfini Portrait with many historic notes about the culture from which the painting emerged to provide contrasts to our present cultural values and expectations.  Take note of the comments about how people could display their wealth during this time and place in Northern Europe.  Also, take into account the great technical abilities of the artist van Eyck using oil paints on an oak wood panel.  The use of canvas was not yet in general use for paintings.

Videos to Watch: The translation of the Bible into English

The following video is a docu-drama (not exactly a documentary) about the struggles of getting the Bible translated into English.  The story of the English Bible very much resembles the emergence of the Protestant or Reformation movement to revise the Catholic Church.

Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the Catholic Church was the only version of Christianity in Europe.  The only other version was that of the Greek Orthodox churches in the North Africa and the Middle East  –  the version that dominated the Byzantine empire.  With the changes in cultural thinking brought about by the Renaissance, people were questioning the practices of the Catholic Church, especially the behavior and teachings of the Pope and Vatican.  With the translation of the Bible into “modern” languages from the ancient Latin version used by the Catholic Church for a 1000 years, people were able to read the biblical text for themselves and create interpretations of the Christian faith based on those readings.  This was in opposition of accepting what the Catholic Church told them was in the Bible.  Of course, in not accepting the Catholic Churches version of Christianity, the power of the Catholic Church would be diminished.  That is why translation of the Bible was banned.  Further, only the leadership of the churches and in the Vatican were allowed to read the Bible; in order that only one interpretation of the Bible was distributed to the rest of the population.  Remember, most people in Middle Ages could not read or write, so few could know that there were other possible interpretations of the Bible and different ways of practicing the Christian faith.

A further complication to maintaining absolute dominance, the Catholic Church had the problem of discoveries by Columbus and other explorers.  The major issue was the discovery of the Americas, the “New World”, by Europeans.  Columbus and others were looking for new trade routes to Asia instead of traveling around Africa.  The problem was that there were no indications, hints or anything close to a prediction in the Bible that the continents on the other side of the world would exist.  Since the Bible was promoted by the Catholic Church as the source of all knowledge and that the Catholic Church in turn knew all that there was to know, the discovery by European explorers of the Americas was unexplainable.  Hence, people began to question the absolute authority of the Catholic Church on knowledge and world views.  If the Church did not know of the Americas, what else didn’t they know?

From this situation of the decline in the belief that the Catholic Church should be the absolute power over culture, education and, by extension, thought, several scholars began to investigate the original texts of the Bible.  These people are described in the video.    The movement to create a more “truthful” version of Christianity, a version not influenced by power and political history, was labeled the “REFORMATION”; in recognition of  people who wanted to reform the Catholic Church.

Another label for the Reformation was the PROTESTANT Movement.  As the title suggests, the root word for Protestant is “protest”.  These were the people who were protesting the manner in which the Catholic Church interpreted the Bible and how it practiced Christianity.

The spread of the Reformation and Protestant Movements was fueled by the publications of the Bible into local languages like English.   BTW, the version of English we speak today, Modern English, only developed about 250 years ago.  Thus, the first Bibles in Old English would be barely understood today.

“Secrets of the Dead:  The Battle for the Bible”