Art History Renaissance to 20th Century

Giotto's Arena Chapel, funded by the Scrovegni, uses illusionism and trompe l'oeil fresco to explore usury and indulgences, linking to Dante's Divine Comedy.

Raphael’s School of Athens centers Plato and Aristotle in one-point perspective, framed by trompe-l’œil architecture, while Platonic versus Aristotelian ideas merge with humanist references to Masaccio and Michelangelo.

Michelangelo’s last judgment on the Sistine Chapel back wall epitomizes a mannerist approach with dramatic distortion and hyperreal anatomy, featuring Charon, Minos, Laocoön, and Greco-Roman myth.

William Hogarth, a prolific printmaker, uses Beer Street and Gin Lane to moralize urban vice, critiques rococo, and showcases serial prints like the Harlot's Progress.

Explore late 18th-century history painting and its shift toward 19th-century styles, focusing on Benjamin West's death of General Wolfe, frieze composition, sfumato, chiaroscuro, and tenebrism.

Explore 19th-century romanticism through Walpole's faux Gothic Strawberry Hill and Ruskin's Gothic Revival. Examine Turner's atmospheric scenes, Goya's caprices and horrors of war, and Gericault's raft of the Medusa.

Explore 19th-century impressionism through Degas and color theory, examining pastel techniques, optical mixing, non-local colors, and the influence of Japanese prints and photography on cropping and light.

Explore how Paul Cézanne, a post-impressionist and father of cubism, breaks form into geometric blocks, uses warm and cool color, and composes landscapes from multiple viewpoints.

George Seurat advances post-impressionism with pointillism and divisionism, using dotted color and a framed composition to depict a Sunday park crowd at la Grande Jatte, reflecting Parisian leisure and class.

Survey of 19th-century American painting from transcendentalist ecology and Hudson River School. It links literature and painting through Durand, Bierstadt, Eakins, Homer, and Tanner.

Explore Picasso's evolution from teen mastery and cubist experiments to synthetic cubism, African art influences, and powerful works like Guernica, highlighting his playful yet groundbreaking approach.

Explore surrealism's engagement with the unconscious mind, dreams, Freud's theories, cognitive dissonance, and art-historical references through Magritte, Dalí, Frida Kahlo, and Francis Bacon.