At first sight, readers of Franz Boas’ Primitive Art (1927) did not need to worry about theories.... Read more about Thursday Seminar: "Franz Boas’ Primitive Art between Morphology and Evolution Theory"

“Magical Realism” is an oxymoron coined by the German critic Franz Roh in 1925 to describe artworks that endowed realism with an uncanny effect. ... Read more about Thursday Seminar "Magic Realism in 1920s Italy and Quattrocento painting"

As if revisiting the religion’s primordial decision in favor of an exoteric, rather than esoteric, identity, the Italian painters of the fourteenth century populated Christian subjects and scenes with semi-outsiders:... Read more about Thursday Seminar "Margin and center in early Renaissance painting"

Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici (c.1360-1429) – one of the richest and most eminent Florentines of his day – was buried in the Old Sacristy of San Lorenzo in Florence. But why did he choose a sacristy as his burial place?

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”

The transatlantic slave trade and the plantation complex are well-studied subjects, but scholars have rightly pointed out that we do not clearly understand the earliest phases, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. ... Read more about Thursday Seminar “Economic Institutions and Networks between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. The Genoese Trading Diaspora (ca. 1450-1530)”

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.... Read more about Thursday Seminar “In the Archives of the Inquisition: The Case of Vittoria Colonna”

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.... Read more about Thursday Seminar “The Amerasian extension in the European imaginary, 1492-1700”

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”

Boccaccio’s tale of Calandrino and the heliotrope is justly celebrated as a masterful reflection on art and illusion. In this seminar, Justin Steinberg will explore the political dimension of this reflection.... Read more about Thursday Seminar "The Artist and the Police: Decameron 8.3"

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.... Read more about Thursday Seminar “Bramante and the untidy unfolding of the ‘High Renaissance’”

The origin of the madrigal is a recurring topic in musicology. Did it evolve out of the frottola (Einstein 1949), the chanson and motet (Fenlon and Haar 1988) or the carnival song (A. Cummings 2004)?... Read more about Thursday Seminar “Revisiting the origins of the madrigal”

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.... Read more about Thursday Seminar “Exuberant lines: On so-called ‘calligraphic’ drawings in 17th-century Italy”

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.... Read more about Thursday Seminar: “The Paradoxical Queen in the Garden: Maria de’ Medici at Fontainebleau”

“Writing, Mobility and Distance in the Making of the Society of Jesus (1540-1573)” / "La Biblioteca Hernandina: Hernando Colón’s New Cartography of Knowledge"

... Read more about Thursday Seminar: Paul Nelles / José María Pérez Fernández