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REBUILDING THE RENAISSANCE PODCAST
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Rebuilding The Renaissance podcast will explore the development of the art, architecture, culture and history in Italy, from ancient Roman times through the Renaissance. Listeners will develop an understanding of Italy’s role in the development of Western civilization and an ability to appreciate and understand works of art in their historical context.
Episodes
Episode 269 – Caravaggio’s St. Jerome (Borghese Gallery)
In 1605, Caravaggio painted an image of St. Jerome for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, and the painting is still located in the Borghese Gallery in Rome, Italy. Caravaggio’s depiction of the Father of the Church is a very quiet and intimate one, where we see a scholar in a sparsely furnished room cons...
Episode 268 – Caravaggio’s “Madonna of the Palafrenieri”
Painted in 1605 for the chapel of the Papal grooms, known as “Palafrenieri,” in the new Basilica of St. Peter, Caravaggio’s painting was removed after only a few days because it was considered indecorous. The stark nudity of the Christ Child, the bulging breasts of the Virgin Mary (who was mod...
Episode 267 – Caravaggio’s “Deposition”
Located in the Pinacoteca of the Vatican Museums, Caravaggio’s “Deposition” was thought by many of his contemporaries to be the painter’s greatest work.  The dramatic representation of very real-looking biblical characters handling the dead body of Christ in a shallow, tenebrously-lit f...
Episode 266 – Caravaggio’s “Death of the Virgin”
Commissioned in 1601 for a chapel in the Roman church of Santa Maria della Scala, Caravaggio’s “Death of the Virgin” was rejected by the Carmelite friars of the church. While some believe it was because of the stark and indecorous representation of the dead Virgin Mary, one of Caravaggio’s b...
Episode 265 – Caravaggio’s “Madonna of Loreto”
Located in the Augustinian church of Sant ’Agostino in Rome, Italy, the “Madonna of Loreto” is one of Caravaggio’s most beautiful paintings. It was painted for the Cavalletti family in 1604 and depicts a barefoot Virgin Mary (who was modeled from a well-known prostitute) standing in a rundow...
Podcast 263 – Caravaggio’s “Incredulity of St. Thomas”
It was for one of his most important patrons, the fabulously wealthy banker, Vincenzo Giustiniani, that Caravaggio painted one of his most moving works – the “Incredulity of St. Thomas.” The skeptical apostle Thomas probes Christ’s wound with his finger in a disturbingly graphic way that onl...
Episode 262 – Answers to Open Questions XIX
From the source of the canvases used for large Venetian paintings in the Renaissance, to the death and burial of Masaccio, to the tradition of Madonarri in the Renaissance, to the difference between chiaroscuro and tenebrism, and much, much more - this episode answers the very questions that you a...
Episode 260 – Caravaggio’s “Supper at Emmaus”
Located in the National Gallery in London, Caravaggio’s “Supper at Emmaus” was painted in 1601 for the influential Cardinal Girolamo Mattei. The painting depicts the episode from the Gospel of Luke where two apostles dine with a traveler and realize to their astonishment that their companion i...
Episode 259 – Caravaggio’s “Conversion of St. Paul”
The second painting that Caravaggio produced for the Cerasi Chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, Italy, depicts the dramatic conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus. While certainly inspired by Raphael’s and Michelangelo’s earlier interpretations of the same subject, Ca...
Episode 258 – Caravaggio’s “Crucifixion of St. Peter”
Caravaggio’s interpretation of St. Peter’s particular martyrdom – crucifixion in an upside-down position – for the Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, Italy, is a moving example of realism and physicality. Three executioners struggle to lift the burly fisherman who seems to embr...
Episode 257 – Caravaggio’s Cerasi Chapel
Located in the Augustinian church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, Italy, the Cerasi Chapel contains two paintings by Caravaggio – the “Crucifixion of St. Peter” and the “Conversion of St. Paul.” The paintings were commissioned by Monsignor Tiberio Cerasi, who was the treasurer general o...
Episode 256 – Caravaggio’s “St. Matthew and the Angel”
In 1602, Caravaggio signed his final contract with the Contarelli family to paint an altarpiece for their family chapel in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, Italy. The first painting (now lost) that Caravaggio produced was rejected because it depicted St. Matthew as a rustic and rather s...
Episode 255 – Caravaggio’s “Calling of St. Matthew”
The “Calling of St. Matthew” was the second of three paintings that Caravaggio executed for the Contarelli Chapel in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, Italy. It depicts the dramatic moment when Christ called Matthew, the tax collector, to follow him in his mission. Caravaggio transfo...
Episode 254 – Caravaggio’s “Martyrdom of St. Matthew”
The first of three paintings that Caravaggio painted for the Contarelli Chapel in the official French church of Rome, San Luigi dei Francesi, the “Martyrdom of St. Matthew" was the artist’s first large scale painting.  It depicts the assassination of the saint and evangelist at high mass in a d...
Episode 253 – Caravaggio and the Contarelli Chapel
Only July 23, 1599, Caravaggio signed the contract with the heirs of Cardinal Matthieu Cointerel (“Contarelli” in Italian) to produce three paintings for their family chapel in the official French church of Rome called San Luigi dei Francesi. This episode examines the history of the church, chap...
Episode 251 – Caravaggio’s Paintings in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence
The Uffizi Gallery in Florence contains three paintings by Caravaggio. Two of them, the “Bacchus” and “The Medusa Shield” were sent by Cardinal Del Monte to Grand Duke Ferdinand de’ Medici, while the third, the “Sacrifice of Isaac,” was acquired later. All three paintings reflect Carav...
Episode 249 – The Life of Caravaggio – The Cursed Painter
Known as the “pittore maledetto” – or the “cursed painter”, Caravaggio not only revolutionized painting at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries with his “hyper-realistic” style, but he also literally turned Rome on its head with his often-criminal behavior. Spending much of his time...
Episode 248 – Answers to Open Questions XVIII
From the water source of the Neptune Fountain in Florence, to the animal symbolism of the Nativity subject, to the restorations of Masacccio’s Brancacci Chapel and “Holy Trinity,” to how Leonardo’s notebook ended up in the Windsor collection, to the accuracy of historical fiction movie and t...
Episode 247 – Titian’s “Pietà” (Accademia Gallery, Venice)
Left unfinished at this death in 1576, Titian’s “Pietà” was intended to serve as his funerary monument. Its extreme use of loose brushstroke and unconventional color combinations led one art historian to describe the painting as an example of “chromatic alchemy.”  ...
Episode 246 – Titian’s “Crowning with Thorns” (Alte Pinakothek, Munich)
Painted in the last year’s of Titian’s life, the “Crowning with Thorns” in Munich revisited a theme that he painted 30 years earlier in a painting today located in the Louvre in Paris. Examined side by side, there is perhaps no better way to demonstrate the dramatic evolution of Titian’s s...
Episode 243 – Paolo Veronese’s “Wedding Feast at Cana” (Louvre, Paris)
In 1562, Veronese was commissioned to paint a massive painting of the “Wedding Feast at Cana” to adorn the end wall of the refectory of the Benedictine monastery of San Giorgio in Venice, Italy. What he produced was an extraordinary impression of typical Venetian revelry in the late 16th century...
Episode 242 – Paolo Veronese’s Church of San Sebastiano in Venice
Paolo Veronese is the third member of the great Venetian late Renaissance trio that also includes Titian and Tintoretto. The church of San Sebastiano in Venice was decorated over 15 years with paintings exclusively by Veronese and is a veritable shrine to the genius of this great painter.  ...
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Young Presidents' Organization
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