ARTH 092. Arts of Power in Early Modern Europe

This course will investigate the relationship between the visual arts and the art of propaganda. We will study how sovereigns in Europe from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries-emperors and empresses, kings and queens, dukes and duchesses, and popes-as well as other patrons, such as city leaders, merchants and nuns, commissioned works to justify and secure their power. These works ranged from buildings, paintings, sculptures and prints to ephemeral festival carts, triumphal arches, stage sets, ice sculptures and banquet decorations. Through these commissions patrons made explicit their taste, erudition, financial status, and ambition and put on full display the hierarchies and values that shaped the warring city-states and nations of Europe.
Arts and Humanities.
1 credit.
Spring 2028 Reilly.
Catalog chapter: Art History
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/art-history

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