ART 331 - Seminar in Northern Art

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2016/17a: Art and Science in the Age of Vermeer. The seminar explores the importance of empirical investigation in the “Age of Observation” to developments in seventeenth century Dutch art and thought. After examining responses to nature on the part of earlier northern European painters such as Jan van Eyck, Albrecht Dürer, and Pieter Bruegel, we go on to consider, among other topics, the impact of lenses and the camera obscura on the art of Vermeer and his scientific and artistic contemporaries, relationships between botanical illustration and Dutch still life painting, and Rembrandt’s depictions of anatomy lessons. Susan Kuretsky.

Prerequisite(s): permission of the instructor

One 2-hour period.