A few days ago I had my first art history class since 2020! It was a nice way to pick up right where I had left off. I was genuinely surprised when Professor Plesch said that we wouldn’t need to memorize pieces, but I feel that making flashcards for pieces and ideas won’t hurt for this course.
Anyway, I appreciated the pace and the depth of Professor Plesch’s lecture. It was electrifying, in a way, and I had never really considered the Renaissance to be a regional resurgence in appreciation and reverence for Roman material culture. From the reading in the book, I learned that the Renaissance, as we think of it today, occurred only in those city-states where the artistic influence of early Christian and Roman aesthetics could be co-opted and that Gothic influences were an important factor in Italian art in this time (especially in the north of Italy, around Milan).
I really liked learning about the campanilismo. I never really knew Italy to be a place where identity and unity with your birthplace was so important, and I never knew it would have pertained to staying within the sight-line of your town’s bell tower! I’m excited to continue learning about crucial pieces of art history, and the quirky contextual facts that go along with understanding the wider atmosphere in which a piece of art was created.