Summer Courses

Art History: MICHELANGELO, CARAVAGGIO, BERNINI

Credit hours:-- Contact hours: 45

Dept: Art and Design

Course Description:

	The course will focus on major artistic movements from Michelangelo to Caravaggio and Bernini. We will begin by analyzing Michelangelo Buonarroti as an architect, painter and sculptor who served as a foundation and model for following generations and as a figure in art history who is most closely associated with the “High Renaissance.” The course will examine his exemplary artistic creations that paved the way to a period that is vaguely circumscribed by the term “Baroque”.
	We will then focus on Michelangelo da Merisi, known as Caravaggio, who developed a unique and, at times, shockingly dramatic style in 17th century painting. We will analyze issues of severe criticism and other problems in his troubled life and the tremendous influence this artist exerted on the art of Europe.
	Our studies will then take us to Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who is synonymous with High Baroque. The course will examine his artistic life as a sculptor and architect who found compelling and outstanding visual embodiment for the aspirations of Roman Counter-Reformation and the idea of triumphant Catholicism as well as secular absolutism.

Lectures in the classroom, on-site visits in Florence as well as a 2-day Rome excursion will provide the student with a detailed knowledge of the three artists and their oeuvre within the context of political, religious and social history.

Instructor: Angela Oberer was born and raised in Germany.
She graduated from Bonn University with a master’s thesis on “The Cross Relic at the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista in Venice”. After being a Fellow at the Bonn Graduate Colloquium “The Renaissance in Italy and its European Reception: Art / History/ Literature”, she won a Scholarship at the Kress Foundation at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.

Her doctoral thesis, submitted at the Technische Universitaet of Berlin, is entitled “The Fresco Cycle of Signorelli and Sodoma in Monte Oliveto Maggiore”.

Angela Oberer has been working with American students and teaching at American colleges and universities since 2003.