We owe the Italian Renaissance picture more than the ideal human figure. Experiments in figuration, whether they involve contour or sfumato, cannot exist without ground, here understood in three senses of the word: first, the preparation of a given support (such as a gesso ground on panel); second, the plane on which figures stand; and third, the field in and against which figuration occurs.... Read more about Thursday Seminar “Point, Ground, Figure, Field”
Renaissance doctors, philosophers, theologians, poets, and musicians understood that all sensible experiences of time and space were linked, to a certain extent, to the cosmic order by a universal harmony, an astral-magic rhythm that influenced everything from the rotation of the planets down to the musicality of the pulse.... Read more about Thursday Seminar “Titian and the Skies of Tomorrow”
We owe the Italian Renaissance picture more than the ideal human figure. Experiments in figuration, whether they involve contour or sfumato, cannot exist without ground, here understood in three senses of the word: first, the preparation of a given support (such as a gesso ground on panel); second, the plane on which figures stand; and third, the field in and against which figuration occurs.... 
Asian and American (and sometimes African) toponyms, peoples, terrain, flora, fauna, atmospheres, and cultural productions mingled in the European consciousness long after Columbus, and even as the Pacific was being regularly traversed by European galleons.... 
In 1982, a priest working on the records from the Galileo trial in the archive of the Roman Inquisition accidentally landed upon a file devoted to Vittoria Colonna, the Marchesa of Pescara.... 
Bramante is widely credited for having pioneered a new and assertively antique architectural style in Rome at almost the very start of the sixteenth century, as is supposedly demonstrated by his Tempietto which is almost universally agreed to date from around 1502.... 
In this talk, Nicola Suthor will discuss the long-standing literary tradition of a controversial artistic performance first demonstrated in ancient Greece and consisting of drawing a form or figure by means of a single continuous line.... 
From the moment of his marriage to his new consort Maria de’ Medici in 1600, Henri IV began to sanction imagery that promoted her value to the French monarchy....