ONLINE ART HISTORY COURSE
“Married, Mistress or Mortuary: Women’s Portraits in the Renaissance”

Course Description:

During the Renaissance, upper-class women were commemorated in art three times in their life: when they were about to be married or just after, if they were a particularly valued mistress, or after they died. Depending on their status, their portraits were sent to future husbands, hidden behind curtains, and displayed in private family chapels. Once passed down as heirlooms, many of these portraits are now displayed anonymously in museums across the world.

This course will examine how we can identify stages of women’s lives through portraiture, how we might identify them, and what such portraits can tell us about life for women in Renaissance Italy.

Virtual Classroom: Full access to an online educational platform with videos of recordings, syllabus and readings.

Location: LIVE INTERACTIVE ON-LINE ART HISTORY LECTURES

Optional Readings:
Information will be provided upon registration.

Complete syllabus will be provided upon registration.

• ALL LECTURES WILL BE RECORDED AND AVAILABLE FOR VIEWING AT YOUR CONVENIENCE IN OUR VIDEO LIBRARY FOR TWO WEEKS AFTER THE COURSE HAS ENDED.

LECTURE 1 -Married

-Friday, February 2

During the Renaissance, marriages among the upper classes were business deals, brokered across courts throughout the peninsula. In order to know what one’s future spouse would look like (or to make a choice), prospective suitors relied on portraits sent to them. To celebrate a successful union, marriage portraits were then commissioned, either celebrating the couple or the woman’s fertility. This class will examine how we can identify and read engagement and marriage portraits from the Renaissance.

LECTURE 2 - Mistress

-Friday, February 9

Whether married or single, Renaissance men looked to mistresses to amuse them, enhance their status or provide sons if their own wives could not provide them. Their status was commemorated in portraits by some of the most famous artists of the day. Some of the women were professionals, who worked as courtesans across Italy. Others were women of the court, and a few, unusually, became wives.

LECTURE 3 - Mortuary

-Friday, February 16

Once deceased, a woman moved into the realm of memory. If she had brought money and connections to the man’s family, and provided him an heir (or several), she could be commemorated in painting or a tomb. Some women made sure to incorporate themselves into memorial displays for their pre-deceased husbands, providing us with valuable information about women’s agency in the Renaissance.

Dr. Meghan Callahan has lived and worked in London since 2006. Like Rocky, she earned her Master’s degree in Art History from Syracuse University as a Florence Fellow. She has a Ph.D. in Art History from Rutgers University. Meghan is the Director of Ithaca College London, where she teaches a history course called Underground London.

She worked on the reinstallation of the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and then with the sculpture dealer Patricia Wengraf. Meghan has published various articles and essays on the 16th-century mystic nun Sister Domenica da Paradiso, miraculous paintings in Renaissance Florence, and Italian Renaissance and Baroque sculpture.