“La Piu Grassa Minerva (Minerva in Her Fullness)” Theories of Art and Architecture From 1300 to 1600

The nature of art has been described by the philosopher Richard Wollheim as “one of the most elusive of the traditional problems of human culture.” It has been defined as a vehicle for the expression or communication of emotions and ideas, a means of exploring and appreciating formal elements for their own sake, and as mimesis or representation. An inquiry into the various ways that artists, patrons, and, a new phenomenon, art critics, developed a comprehensive theory of something we now know as the fine arts and addressed this issue from a complex perspective of religious belief, prescientific concepts of nature, complicated theories of the self, and an increasing interest in classical aesthetics, rhetoric, and poetics. Readings will cover theories of subject matter and formal composition, ideas and words, works and their authors. Focus will be on the theory and practice of Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Titian; historical phenomena and movements such as theory and the craftman’s skill; visual poetics and humanism; neo-Platonism and the limits of mimesis; Aristotelian poetics and moral narrative; Reformation iconoclasm; Counter Reform orthodoxy; and Venetian inventive naturalism.