Art Historian Dr Matthew Whyte offers a new lecture series, which takes the audience on an art-filled journey through the often beautiful, sometimes scandalous, and always fascinating moments in the development of Western civilisation. This first Autumn Series begins in the Golden Age of Classical Greece, tracing our past forward through the triumphalism of Imperial Rome, the tumultuous ‘Dark Ages’, and finishing with the splendours of the Italian Renaissance.
The lectures can be attended as a series, but are also designed as standalone talks, which can be attended individually.
Dr Whyte has lectured in Art History in University College Cork since 2014, where he completed his PhD in the art and culture of Renaissance Italy.
Tues 17 Sept
The Ideal Body in Ancient Greece & Rome
We begin with Greece, exploring how the writings of Homer, Plato, and Aristotle produced a fascination with the concept of the ideal human. Though remote in time, the Ancient Greeks shared with contemporary culture the preoccupation with what it means to be beautiful. Moving on to Ancient Rome, we explore how a state founded on the liberal values of Republican democracy suddenly found itself in the grips of individuals who used art to make themselves into gods – the Caesars of Imperial Rome. This week, we explore the human form, discussing how it can equally represent beauty, liberalism, power, and corruption.
Tues 24 Sept
Christian Triumph in Late Antiquity
We trace the evolution of Christianity from a mystery cult worshipped in secret to the most predominant cultural force in the West. Despite its popular image as diametrically opposed to pagan culture, this week we explore how Christianity’s formation was as much an adoption of Imperial Roman and Byzantine forms and iconography, concerned as it was with establishing an image of power and control. We will trace how this culture of control extended to the masses through the growing ethos of fear, superstition, indulgence, and salvation which circulated around the year 1000. We explore the development of Romanesque and Gothic churches, with their massive forms and strikingly beautiful sculpture and stained glass, as providing contexts to house masses of pilgrims in search of spiritual sustenance.
Tues 1 Oct
Medieval Europe: A ‘Dark’ Age?
This week we deconstruct the idea that the Middle Ages were a ‘Dark Age’, and instead showcase a period of unparalleled economic, religious, and artistic growth. Defined by the vast inequality inherent in feudal systems, the Middle Ages produced myriad categories of artefact. We explore how the Royal Court in France cultivated the illuminated manuscript as a tool which reflected wealth and status, while also discussing the genuine piety reflected in private devotional art. In a period marred by plague, war, and famine, mortality and the need for prayer and repentance was never far from the minds of the masses. However, in spite of such societal challenges, we will also see how scholars and artists excelled in the study of humanism, a cultural movement visualised by the immortal painting and sculpture of Giotto and Nicola and Giovanni Pisano.
Tues 8 Oct
The Early Renaissance: A New Art
What happens when devout Christianity meets the revival of pagan antiquity, and when the virtues of modesty and spirituality clash with the desire for wealth and status? In the immediate wake of the Black Death, Europe, particularly Italy, witnessed the answer to this question. The Renaissance is known today as a period of unprecedented intellectual, scientific, and artistic advancement. However, it was also a period rife with tensions and contradictions: Christian and pagan, rich and poor, piety and self-aggrandisement, artistic freedom and patronal control. We explore these tensions and innovations through the complex and beautiful art of Donatello, Masaccio, Botticelli, and more, examining their radical depiction of the human form, their reinvention of illusionistic space, and their marriage of Classical form with Christian faith. We also witness the rise of banking families like the infamous Medici, who used art to disguise their fierce ambition behind a curtain of piety.
Tues 15 Oct
Real or Vision?
The Northern Renaissance
In Northern Europe during the fifteenth century, we encounter the meeting point of the radically real with the vibrantly visionary, as artists push the boundaries of oil paint to convince prayerful viewers that theirs was a world where the spiritual was at their fingertips. We explore the photo-realism of Jan Van Eyck, whose Ghent Altarpiece still mystifies viewers through its rendition of real textures and profusion of lifelike characters, as well as the frightening hellscapes of Hieronymus Bosch, whose nightmarish hybrid demons recall Salvador Dalí at his most surreal. We also see how the rise of printmaking was a force for the development of new imagery and ideas, Albrecht Dürer harnessing the technology in the service of humanistic self-expression, while the early expressions of Protestant reform embraced the medium as a means to spread urgent messages.
Tues 22 Oct
The High Renaissance & the ‘Genius Artist’
The sixteenth century saw the creation of the artist-celebrity for the first time in history. Through their prodigious skill and ceaseless innovation, artists such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Raphael were able to achieve an unprecedented level of fame which freed them to an extent from the pressures of patronal control. These artists are among the first to be subject to biographies within their own lifetime, and Michelangelo seized the opportunity to create a mythology around his own genius. This week, we foreground these artists’ most well-known works – Michelangelo’s David and Sistine Chapel frescoes, Raphael’s School of Athens, and Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and Last Supper – questioning how far the artists’ claims about their own genius hold true. We also explore how the nature of their innovation addressed resilient and potentially scandalous issues surrounding questions of physical beauty and sexuality in the face of Christian propriety and the place of Classical subjects in the face of reform.