Apart from consistent class attendance and participation, students will be required to write two essays, each 10 pages long. Both will demand that students think independently and synthetically, putting together texts and works of art in original ways. For the first students will discuss works of art in relation to one of the most influential devotional texts of the late Middle Ages, St. Bernard's Sermons on the Song of Songs . For the second students will place works of art in the light of Renaissance traditions stemming from Plato and Petrarch. The art of devotion.
Divine love produces ecstasy.
Botticelli and the neoplatonic vernacular. Petrarchan revival and the love of painting. On the Beauty of Women . Read your Plato. Pornography and the limits of art.