Details
ONLINE ART HISTORY COURSE
Artemisia Gentileschi: Breaking Rules in Baroque Italy
Course Description:
Artemisia Gentileschi is one of the most famous female painters of the early modern era. Her works now command millions at auction, but in her own time she complained of being underpaid. In this course, we’ll examine Artemisia’s unusual life as a female painter and her travels across the Italian peninsula in search of patrons and fame. By examining how male painters such as her father Orazio, Caravaggio, and Titian influenced her style, and investigating how Artemisia in turn influenced Neapolitan painters we’ll hone connoisseurship skills. Using methods that go back to Giorgio Vasari, we’ll also look at the power of biography for understanding – and sometimes misunderstanding – an artist’s choices and career. Finally, we’ll question what it meant in the Baroque era when a woman’s place was not in the home, but in the studio.
Instructor:
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 Assistant Director for Teaching and Learning at Syracuse University London, where she has taught art history and history classes on Italian Art in London and the UK; Women and Art: London and UK; and Underground London.
She worked on the reinstallation of the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and then then with the sculpture dealer Patricia Wengraf. Meghan has published various articles and essays on the architectural patronage of the 16th-century mystic nun Sister Domenica da Paradiso, miraculous paintings in Renaissance Florence, and Italian Renaissance and Baroque sculpture.
Course Objectives:
- To understand possibilities for women artists in the early modern era
- To develop an eye for recognizing consistencies in an artist’s style
- To critically debate how biography impacts an artist’s output
- To reflect on the importance of travel for artists in the Renaissance and Baroque eras
Virtual Classroom: Upon registration, participants will have full access to an online educational platform with videos of recordings, syllabus, readings and discussion forum. Each lecture lasts around 1 hour 15 minutes.
Credits: Certificate of Completion
Access: Students have lifetime and unlimited streaming access to the course content.
Supplemental Readings:
Readings are provided to students to enhance the course experience.
