Artists and Court Life in Sixteenth-Century Italy October 19, 2010

John Paoletti, Professor Emeritus of Art History, Wesleyan University.

During the sixteenth century in central Italy the models of order and verisimilitude that had structured Renaissance narratives were re-investigated to meet the needs of an increasingly elegant court life. Although aware of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael, younger artists like Pontormo, Bronzino, and Parmigianino became increasingly more inventive in their elegant distortions of the human figure and in their witty complications of narrative and setting, turning the act of looking into an act of social distancing, of witty repartee, and, ultimately, of social control.

This Week's Topic:

October 19
The Court as a Rigid Reconstruction of the Social Order

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