Objects of Knowledge: Renaissance Ornament and Society in Northern Europe 1500-1650

This course explores the themes, subjects, and vocabularies of design that animated the surfaces of the decorative and applied arts of the northern Renaissance. It will examine how ornament and its objects reflected, embodied, or proclaimed definable social and cultural values and expressed the tastes and interests of an age of growing secularization, of reformation in matters of religion, of humanism in education and ethical life, of overseas commercial expansion, and of territorial consolidation among the European rulers. The course is organized around themes including Cosmography, History, Ethics, Nature, and Myth. It will draw on some of the most dazzling achievements of Renaissance craftsmanship in media including metalwork, cabinet making, carving in wood, ivory, and other exotic materials, glass, ceramics, textiles, and scientific and mechanical instruments. Above all, the course seeks to draw out connections between aesthetic and social experience and claim the visual and material sphere of the ornamented object as an important means to communicate knowledge about the world: the structures of power and authority, shared ethical and religious systems, historical ties of community and kinship, as well as, more broadly, a way of engaging with the period fascination with the natural world and of man’s place within it. Working knowledge of French and German is desirable though not essential. 3 credits. Satisfies the pre-1800 requirement.