The Italian High Renaissance: Genius and Collaboration

The course will take a fresh look at the works of the five most revered masters of painting in the Italian High Renaissance, concentrating on the tumultuous years between 1500 and 1530: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Correggio, and Titian—five geniuses whose works astounded the world and shaped western European painting for centuries to come. It was the age of the emergence of the unique individual, but also, as recent scholarship and exhibits have revealed, an era of unprecedented dialogue and teamwork among these artists and their students, workshop associates, advisers, literary colleagues, and patrons. Masterworks like The Last Supper and the Sistine Ceiling take on new meaning when they are seen in this wider context and their authors not as loners but as leaders of a movement.