The Great Courses: Great Artists of the Italian Renaissance

No era of artistic achievement is as renowned as the Renaissance, and no country holds a higher place in that period than Italy. The supreme works created during this time and place have established a canon of beauty that pervades Western culture to this day. These 36 lectures cover art history at the times of the Early Renaissance and the High Renaissance, which extended from about 1400 to about 1520. The first 25 lectures examine the artists of Central Italy, where Florence is located, then the focus shifts to Northern Italy. You'll cover the works of more than 40 artists, among them: Donatello, whose sculpture was unequaled before Michelangelo; Leonardo da Vinci, the genius whose name is synonymous with the High Renaissance; Andrea Mantegna, the master painter who was also an innovator in spatial illusionism; as well as many others including Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and Botticelli. Many works are explored in considerable depth, with searching commentary by Professor Kloss that is both enlightening and personal. For example, you'll discover how Donatello's St. George is able to give the power of thought to the head of George; how Leonardo Da Vinci's Ginevra de' Benci is more a projection of the artist's own secretive personality than a record of the sitter's; how Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling invented poses of the human body used by artists for the remainder of the century; and how Raphael's Baldassare Castiglione is a masterpiece of perfectly defined volumes. Altogether, the Renaissance lasted about 120 years, and the period of the High Renaissance a little over 40 years. No later Western art can be discussed without reference to this era - especially as it matured and flourished in the cities of Italy.