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.
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.
Week One: The Baroque in Italy: Sacred & Profane
Discover the turmoil, tenacity, and triumphalism of the Counter Reformation in Baroque Rome in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a time of radical innovation and considerable turmoil in the history of art. Artists such as Caravaggio and Gianlorenzo Bernini navigated the strict rules placed on art by the Council of Trent to restore the church’s legitimacy after the Reformation. In this context, stunningly beautiful and spiritually stirring sculpture and architecture became as familiar, relevant, and responsive to the environment as the scandalous and often violent imagery associated with Caravaggio, whose unprecedented style caused a sensation in painting which reverberated across Europe.
Week Two: The Dutch Golden Age
While the heightened spiritual urgency of the Counter-Reformation church dominated the arts in Italy, an entirely distinct visual revolution was taking place north of the Alps. In the new Protestant context, the need for religious imagery had all but vanished in the wake of the Reformation. For the first time since Late Antiquity, religious subjects no longer dominated art’s raison d’être. Face with this, artists such as Jan Steen, Franz Hals, Rembrandt van Rijn, Johannes Vermeer, and many others, famously sought new subjects by appealing to the wishes of a new market. The religious altarpiece was supplanted by new subjects – landscape, still life, scenes of everyday life, and a reimagined approach to portraiture. Still loaded with symbols and hidden meanings, these new subjects capture a fascinating reflection of life in the Dutch Golden Age.
Week Three: Envisioning Status: Baroque Spain & France
As Italian artists pursued new ways of capturing the extravagance and power of the Catholic Church in the Counter Reformation, Spanish painters created a quiet, contemplative, and almost ascetic vision of conservative religiosity. However, other powers were also at play, as a destabilised monarchy sought to regain an image of power under King Philip IV, famously employing Diego Velázquez who set an entirely new standard for how a painter can secure the image and power of a nation. As the Baroque period progressed, this search for power and status brought about a new movement among French artists known as Rococo. An emerging bourgeoisie, tired of the moralising tone of religious art, sought out images which reflected their lives, replete as they were with the pursuit of leisure and love. This light, delicate, and sometimes indulgent style, however, was not without its critics, who began to see declare it ‘a feast for the senses but a famine for the soul.’
Week Four: The Art of the Enlightenment
1,300 years after the fall of the Roman Empire, and more than 2,000 years since the Golden Age of Ancient Greece, the visual forms of the Classical world found a renewed and direct relevance in a new intellectual context – the Enlightenment. In the most vigorous Classical revival since the Renaissance, and indeed in an even more direct manner, Europe saw a resurgence of interest in the art of Ancient Greece and Rome which changed the visual fabric of the world – from the Court House in Cork to the White House in Washington DC, we continue to see the impact of this time. Far from merely an aesthetic interest, though, Enlightenment thinkers adopted the Classical Ideal as a solution to the myriad problems the Enlightenment sought to address. The separation of Church and State, the dissolution of the antiquated concept of monarchy, and the oppressive class structures woven throughout civilisation were just some of the issues which Enlightenment thinkers challenged. From the French Revolution to the Act of Union in Ireland, visual art and Neoclassicism famously became a vehicle for ideological resistance, propaganda, and beauty which sought to bring a vision of the ideal society to life.
Week Five: Romanticism & the Triumph of Spirit
In the wake of the Enlightenment’s efforts to revolutionise human civilisation through the championing of reason and rationality, there emerged a movement for whom the Enlightenment had neglected a key aspect of human experience: the spirit. In response, artists, musicians, poets, writers, and thinkers ushered in the movement we now know as Romanticism, which sought to explore those aspects of the condition that could not be known through the exercise of reason or the pursuit of science: how can we quantify a feeling such as love? How can we qualify superstition using rational means? How can we capture and represent the experience of terror or awe? The response to such questions created some of the most famously stirring, beautiful, and evocative works of art, music, and literature ever created. This week we delve into the realm of the spirit, seeing how landscape, narrative, and expressive introspection defined the work of artists like Francisco de Goya, Eugène Delacroix, and Caspar David Friedrich.
Week Six: Canova in Cork: Our Collection & Artists in the 19th Century
In 1818, a vast collection of plaster casts departed the studio of famed sculptor Antonio Canova in Rome, destined for the Prince Regent of England George Augustus Frederick (later King George IV, reg. 1820-30). A gift of political significance, this collection, with the help of happenstance, was presented to Lord Listowel, President of the Cork Society of Arts. For two hundred years, these casts have been on display to the public. Their history tells a story beginning in the Napoleonic Wars, linking to the political situation between Ireland and England, as well as the culture surrounding art, collecting, and even the relationship with the human body in Ireland in the Age of Enlightenment. Equally, this collection gives fascinating insights into the formation of the Crawford Art Gallery, the School of Art, and the budding careers of many of Cork’s most renowned artists. This week, we delve into these histories, examining the history and significance of art in Cork since the arrival of the Canova Casts.