On-Line/Live Event
POP-UP WEBINAR | “A Renaissance Christmas 4.0” with Dr. Rocky Ruggiero
December 23, 2024
1 hour
$25.00
EXCLUSIVE WEBINAR BUNDLE
“Exclusive Webinars in October”
Presented by Dr. Rocky Ruggiero and special guests Dr. Laurinda Dixon, Dr. Sally J. Cornelison, and Dr. Balbina Hwang
Dates & Times:
Thursday, October 3, 10, 24 & 31
2:00 – 3:00pm ET | 11:00am – 12:00pm PT |
7:00 – 8:00pm London
EXCLUSIVE WEBINARS | “Exclusive Webinars in October”
Each webinar will include a 45-minute lecture followed by 15-minutes of Q&A.
Please note:
EXCLUSIVE WEBINAR | “The Dark Side of Genius: Artists and Melancholia”
Presented by Dr. Laurinda Dixon
“Feeling blue?”, “Down in the dumps?”, or “In a bad humour?” Most people have expressed these sentiments at one time or another in their lives. But these words once described a real medical disorder, “melancholia,” ruled by the planet Saturn and the element of earth. Aristotle was the first to associate the physical and psychological symptoms of melancholia (depression, sociopathy, pallor, dark ringed eyes, etc.) with intellectual geniuses. But he left artists out of the equation. It was the German polymath Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), who added creative artists to the mix, uniting manual skill, creative genius, and social alienation in a new paradigm of privilege and passion. His famous engraving “Melencolia 1″(1514) became a model for centuries thereafter for artists wishing to present themselves as gifted, erudite, and tortured by the dark side of genius. In the following centuries, Dürer’s model prevailed, as artists continued to define and refine a new elite identity in which self-worth did not depend on noble blood or material wealth, but rather on talent and intellect. They expressed this concept in their own self-portraits, which appealed to an audience whose gaze was trained to discern the invisible internal self by means of external appearances. Though the term “melancholia” has all but vanished from psychological discourse, the condition persists in disorders like depression and bi-polarism. Today, the troubled persona of the artist-genius continues to embody the alienating and depersonalizing forces of civilization.
EXCLUSIVE WEBINAR | “Divine Intervention Saints, Relics, and Miraculous Images in Renaissance Italy”
Presented by Dr. Sally J. Cornelison
Some of the most important Italian late medieval and Renaissance churches, chapels and shrines were built to house the remains of saints such as Francis of Assisi or images of the Virgin Mary that became the focus of popular devotions because of the miracles they effected. This webinar will explore the paintings and sculptures that decorated these sites and advertised the efficacy of the saints and images in question, as well as the people who relied on them to heal their children, protect their cities, and ensure their salvation.
EXCLUSIVE WEBINAR | “The Enlightened Man From the West: Matteo Ricci’s Extraordinary Mission to ‘Open’ China”
Presented by Dr. Balbina Y. Hwang
This story begins with two of the great masters of the Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti.
On a page in his sketchbook now known as the “Codex Atlanticus”, Leonardo da Vinci noted down a highly unusual experience. He claimed to remember from when he was a two- to three-year old child a bird landing on his cradle and sticking its tail feathers into his mouth.
In 1505, Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to design and build his planned tomb. The pope died in 1513, long before the work was completed and Michelangelo had, by then, made significant changes to the original massive design. Far fewer than the forty planned statues, were ultimately made but the most famous of these, that of Moses, sits in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome. Famously, Michelangelo depicted the lawgiver with what appear to be two horns on his head.
About 400 years later, the Viennese neurologist and psychiatrist, Sigmund Freud, applied the principles and techniques of the science and therapeutic technique he invented, psychoanalysis, to da Vinci’s childhood memory and the masterpiece of Michelangelo. In this webinar, I will discuss and analyze the impressively large clinical and historical literature on Freud’s writings on these two subjects. Freud was quite willing to apply psychoanalytic techniques to patients he himself had never had on the famous couch and his work with da Vinci and Michelangelo, while famously wrong in some respects, remains fascinating reading and provides us with unique insights into these two men and, more significantly, into the mind of the father of psychoanalysis himself.
EXCLUSIVE WEBINAR | “What a Relief! – Donatello and the Art of Stiacciato”
Presented by Dr. Rocky Ruggiero
While Donatello is best known for his sublime bronze “David” in the Bargello Museum, his greatest innovation was the development of a technique known as “rilievo schiacciato.” The great Renaissance biographer, Giorgio Vasari wrote, “ And in this genre too Donato [ie Donatello] worked better than any other sculptor, with arte, disegno and inventione.” Rilievo schiacciato, or simply stiacciato, is a type of sculpture where the artist creates an almost impossibly shallow relief, so that objects project only millimeters away from the surface, while also producing a convincing illusion of receding atmospheric space. Join Dr. Rocky as he examines Donatello’s extraordinary production of stiacciato reliefs and the influence they had on future sculptors such as Michelangelo.
