1. Your brief is to select any one object that we have studied in lecture that is not illustrated in Gardner but that you believe is deserving of a place in our new joint collaboration: a new and alternative Introduction to Art History: something of “Dark Side of the Moon” version, introducing readers to the long-neglected, overlooked or especially difficult objects (i.e., not necessarily the popularly recognized “masterpieces” already firmly ensconced within the history of art). Your selection, as a contributing editor, is to reveal in a new light not only the lives of objects but the lives of the artisan-artists who made them and the original viewing publics that engaged with them. In short, you are to write as rich and as comprehensive entry as possible – taking on a possible range of questions (visual, technical, socio-historical, religious, political, multicultural, etc., as the case may be) – on the single historical artifact of your choice.
Please write it with Hieronymus Bosh’s painting: Temptation of St. Anthony triptych, oil on panel, c.1500 (Lisbon)
2. Having had a chance to consider Linda Nochlin’s groundbreaking feminist essay (“Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” from p22- 39), one of your most recent assigned readings, please explain: Why was this kind of gender-based absence the norm during not only the Renaissance and Baroque periods – think of Artemisia Gentileschi – but even during the careers of Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt in the nineteenth century? Cite specific female artists mentioned by Nochlin and offer examples of institutional barriers or constraints that these women may have faced, according to the author. You are then invited to weigh in on Nochlin’s arguments. What are her most compelling points? Perhaps the less convincing ones?
3. What does Michael Baxandall mean by the term “period eye” in his Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (1988)? [Hint: what is the distinction that Baxandall makes between the “ocular process” and the “interpretative process”?] Offer three works of art as specific examples to clarify your explanation. The more detailed and visually supported your explanation, the better the response.
4. According to Baxandall’s Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy, the significance of (1) gesture; (2) dance; (3) math and the gauging process; and (4) color was rarely lost on a beholder in quattrocento Italy. Choose three of these four categories and explain how – according to Baxandall’s text – an artist’s references to each one of these separate elements would have been in keeping with the beholder’s visual expectations. How did a particular image “cooperate” with a viewer’s mental disposition? Remember to offer specific illustrations, whether it is in painting, sculpture or the graphic arts.