The art of the Italian Renaissance
Weekend art history course
30 November 2024 10am - 5pm1 December 2024 10am - 5pm
Benjamin West Lecture Theatre | Burlington Gardens
£420. Includes light refreshments and a wine reception at the end of day one.
Friends of the RA book first
Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael
Join us for a weekend exploring the art of the Italian Renaissance, taught by art historians and curators.
This weekend course will take our exhibition Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence, c. 1504, as its starting point to explore the history of Italian Renaissance art.
Over two days, this course will dive into the rich history of art during this period, providing an insight into many of our best-known artists, and most influential works of art. You will explore the great centres of Rome, Florence and Venice, alongside a range of other cities and sites throughout Italy. You will discover the art of Fresco painting, the influence of Florence and the House of Medici, the evolution of Renaissance villas and gardens, and examine the traditions of workshops, apprentices and masters.
The course will look at the incredible impact of the Italian Renaissance on western art history, tracing its development in Italy, to its European and global influence. You will discover the proto-Renaissance, through the work of Giotto, before exploring the early Renaissance works of Donatello and Botticelli, and later uncovering the bitter rivalry between Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.
Each session will be led by art historians, curators and experts on the Italian Renaissance. No prior knowledge is required, but debate and discussion are encouraged.
If the course is sold out, please contact public.programmes@royalacademy.org.uk to join our waiting list.
Minimum age 18. If you have any access requirements that you’d like to discuss, please contact public.programmes@royalacademy.org.uk.
£420. Includes light refreshments and a wine reception at the end of day one.
Friends of the RA book first
Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael
About the speakers
Dr. Claudia Daniotti is the Acting Senior Tutor of the Middlebury-CMRS Oxford Humanities program and a Research Associate at Keble College, Oxford. An art historian of Renaissance Italy with an emphasis on iconography and the classical tradition, Claudia earned her PhD from the Warburg Institute, and was then a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, University of Warwick (2020-2023) and a Research Fellow at the Center for Italian Modern Art, New York (Fall 2019). Among her publications, is the monograph Reinventing Alexander: Myth, Legend, History in Renaissance Italian Art (Brepols, 2022).
Dr. Paula Nuttall is graduate of the Courtauld and a specialist in renaissance art, with a particular interest in relations between Flanders and Italy, on which she has published widely, most recently a study of Michelangelo’s Bruges Madonna (Burlington Magazine, November 2024). She was formerly Director of the V&A Medieval and Renaissance Year Course, and continues to lecture for the V&A, the Courtauld, the Arts Society and other institutions.
Leslie Primo graduated from Birkbeck College with an MA in Renaissance studies. He lectured at the National Gallery for eighteen years, has contributed to Radio 4’s Moving Pictures, appeared on Sky Arts speaking on Brunelleschi, and on the BBC speaking on Michelangelo and JMW Turner. He was a contributor to the Oxford Companion Guide to Black British History, an art history consultant for the Getty publication, Balthazar: A Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance Art and was published by the Royal Academy Magazine for the Entangled Pasts exhibition, 2023-2024. Leslie’s book, The Foreign Invention of British Art will be published by Thames & Hudson in June 2025.
Professor Guido Rebecchini is Professor of Renaissance and Early Modern Art at the Courtauld, which he joined in 2013. In 2000 he was awarded his PhD at the Warburg Institute. Since then he has held fellowships awarded by the British Academy, Villa I Tatti, CASVA, and the Getty, and has published on sixteenth-century Italian art, especially on Mantua, Rome and Florence. His last book is entitled The Rome of Paul III (1534-1549). Art, Ritual and Urban Renewal (Harvey Miller, 2020). He has co-curated exhibitions on Giulio Romano (2019-2020; 2021-2022) and Parmigianino (2022).
Advolly Richmond is a plants, gardens and social historian based in Shropshire. A fellow of the Linnean Society, she is also a Champion for the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. She lectures and writes on a variety of subjects from the 16th century through to the early 20th century and is currently teaching 'A Social and Cultural History of Italian Renaissance Gardens' at the Department for Continuing Education at the University of Oxford. Advolly’s new book A Short History of Flowers: The stories that make our gardens, was published in March 2024. She also contributes to garden history features on the BBC’s Gardener’s World.
Dr. Per Rumberg is the Jacob Rothschild Head of the Curatorial Department at the National Gallery. He curated numerous exhibitions, including Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence, c. 1504 as well as Charles I: King and Collector and Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan. He studied art history in London, Florence and Berlin and received his Ph.D. from the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Further speakers TBA
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