Art History 352A: MEDIEVAL ART
Spring Quarter 2016
MWF 11:30–12:50
Room: Art 003
Professor Ivan Drpić
Office: Room 365 Art Building
E-mail: [email protected]
Office Hours: Wednesdays 1:00–3:00pm and by appointment
Course website: https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1055964
Course Description
This course will introduce you to the art of the Middle Ages. Focusing on key monuments and
objects, we will examine a range of artistic media, from architecture and monumental sculpture
to metalwork, stained glass, ivory carving, and manuscript illumination. We will consider this
rich and often challenging material in its historical context and ask how medieval art was made,
used, seen, and valued by medieval men and women. Issues to be explored include
craftsmanship, materiality, and artistic agency; the legacy of antiquity; cross-cultural and crossconfessional exchange; patronage; the interplay between word and image; cult, devotion, and
ritual; death and the medieval culture of memory; and the changing roles of art-making in
monastic, courtly, and civic settings.
Course Objectives
By successfully completing this course, you will gain familiarity with medieval art and
understand the values, ideals, and forces that shaped it. Additionally, you will develop the skills
of visual analysis and critical reading, master the basic concepts and vocabulary that art
historians use to describe, analyze, and interpret artworks, and achieve heightened awareness of
the interrelation between art, society, and human experience at large.
Course Materials
The required textbook for the course is Marilyn Stokstad, Medieval Art, 2nd ed. (Boulder:
Westview Press, 2004) (hereafter STOKSTAD), available for purchase at the University
Bookstore. A copy of the textbook is also available for 2-hour loan on shelf reserve for the
course at the Art Library. To supplement STOKSTAD, I have assigned a selection of additional
readings, including period sources in translation, seminal art-historical texts, and exemplary
works of recent scholarship. All the additional readings can be accessed online through the
course website (under Files/Course Readings).
A selection of review images for the midterm and final exams is available electronically through
the course website (under Files/Review Images).
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Requirements and Grading
Your grade for the course will be assessed based on the following components:
Class participation
Midterm exam
Critical response paper
Final exam
10%
20%
30%
40%
Lectures: Since the lectures will include a great deal of discussion, your preparation and active
participation are of critical importance for the success of the course as well as for your success in
it. Please complete the assigned readings before class, bring them to class, and be prepared to
discuss the main points or questions they raise. The lectures will often include information that is
not covered in the readings or may offer interpretations that differ from the ones presented in the
readings. Your regular attendance is, therefore, essential.
Exams: There will be two exams. The midterm exam, scheduled for Friday, April 29, will consist
of five slide identifications, two slide comparisons, and five definitions of key terms. The final
exam, scheduled for Wednesday, June 8, will have the same format, except that it will include
one essay question as well. Please note that the final exam will be cumulative. Detailed
descriptions of the two exams will be provided in due course.
Critical response paper: For the description of this assignment, due in class on Friday, May 27,
please see page 7 of the syllabus.
All requirements must be fulfilled for a passing grade.
Course Policies
You are required to take the midterm and final exams as scheduled. Exception is granted only in
case of a documented emergency and must be approved by me.
All assignments will be graded on a 4.0 scale.
The critical response paper is due in class on Friday, May 27. Late submission will be accepted
only in case of a documented emergency or by prior agreement with me. Otherwise, a deduction
of .5 per day late will apply to the grade. The paper must be typed and stapled. Electronic
submissions will not be accepted.
Please arrive to class on time and turn off your cell phone in advance. Students who display
disruptive behavior, such as speaking on the phone, or make offensive and disrespectful remarks
will be asked to leave the class.
For additional policies and procedures of UW School of Art + Art History + Design, see pages 8
of the syllabus.
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COURSE SCHEDULE
Week 1
M, Mar 28
Introduction
W, Mar 30
Approaching Medieval Art
• Elizabeth Sears, “Reading Images,” and Thelma K. Thomas, “Understanding Objects,” in
Reading Medieval Images: The Art Historian and the Object, ed. Elizabeth Sears and
Thelma K. Thomas (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), pp. 1-15.
F, Apr 1
Prelude to the Middle Ages: Rome, Byzantium, and the “Barbarians”
• STOKSTAD, pp. 1-12, 21-34, 45-58, 75-79.
Week 2
M, Apr 4
The Word Made Flesh: The Insular Art of the Book
• STOKSTAD, pp. 94-99.
• Benjamin C. Tilghman, “Writing in Tongues: Mixed Scripts and Style in Insular Art,” in
Insular & Anglo-Saxon Art and Thought in the Early Medieval Period, ed. Colum
Hourihane (Princeton, NJ: Index of Christian Art, Department of Art & Archaeology,
Princeton University, 2011), pp. 93-108.
W, Apr 6
Renovatio Romani Imperii: Charlemagne, the Carolingians, and the Empire
• Einhard, The Life of Charlemagne, trans. Samuel Epes Turner (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1960), pp. 50-67 (Chapters 22-33) (also available at
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/einhard.html).
• STOKSTAD, pp. 101-5.
• William J. Diebold, “The Ruler Portrait of Charles the Bald in the S. Paolo Bible,” The
Art Bulletin 76.1 (1994): 6-18.
F, Apr 8
Carolingian Art
• STOKSTAD, pp. 105-26.
• Paul Meyvaert, “The Medieval Monastic Claustrum,” Gesta 12.1-2 (1973): 53-59.
Week 3
M, Apr 11
Ottonian Art
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• STOKSTAD, pp. 155-56, 173-90.
W, Apr 13
Saints, Relics, and Reliquaries
• Cynthia Hahn, “What Do Reliquaries Do for Relics?,” Numen 57 (2010): 284-316.
F, Apr 15
The Concept of Spolia
• Ilene H. Forsyth, “Art with History: The Role of Spolia in the Cumulative Work of Art,”
in Byzantine East, Latin West: Art-Historical Studies in Honor of Kurt Weitzmann, ed.
Christopher Moss and Katherine Kiefer (Princeton, NJ: Department of Art and
Archaeology, Princeton University, 1995), pp. 153-62.
Week 4
M, Apr 18
The Romanesque I
• STOKSTAD, pp. 191-94, 201-26.
• O. K. Werckmeister, “Cluny III and the Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela,” Gesta
27.1-2 (1988): 103-12.
W, Apr 20
The Romanesque II
• Lesley A. Ling, “The Bayeux Tapestry,” in Making Medieval Art, ed. Philip Lindley
(Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2003), pp. 104-19.
F, Apr 22
***in-class film screening TBA***
Week 5
M, Apr 25
Italy between the Papacy and the Empire
• Caecilia Davis-Weyer, Early Medieval Art 300–1150: Sources and Documents
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1971), pp. 135-41 (“Leo of Ostia: Desiderius’ Church at Monte
Cassino”).
• STOKSTAD, pp. 194-201.
W, Apr 27
Midterm Exam Review
F, Apr 29
MIDTERM EXAM
Week 6
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M, May 2
The Uses of and Resistance to Art-Making: Art and Theological Argument
• Caecilia Davis-Weyer, Early Medieval Art 300–1150: Sources and Documents
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1971), pp. 47-49 (“St. Gregory the Great to Bishop Serenus of
Marseille”), 99-103 (“The Carolingian Controversy about Religious Art”), 168-70 (“St.
Bernard to William of St. Thierry: Ascetic Reaction”).
• Theresa G. Frisch, Gothic Art 1140–c 1450: Sources and Documents (Englewood Cliffs,
N.J., 1971), pp. 4-13 (“Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis: The Patron of the Arts”).
W, May 4
The Cult of Images
• Kirstin Noreen, “Revealing the Sacred: The Icon of Christ in the Sancta Sanctorum,
Rome,” Word & Image 22.3 (2006): 228–37.
F, May 6
The Medieval Artist
• Theophilus Presbyter, De diversis artibus, Prologues to Books I-III, in Theophilus. The
Various Arts, ed. and trans. C. R. Dodwell (London, 1961), pp. 1-4, 36-38, 61-64.
• John van Engen, “Theophilus Presbyter and Rupert of Deutz: The Manual Arts and
Benedictine Theology in the Early Twelfth Century,” Viator 11 (1980): 147-63.
Week 7
M, May 9
Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Mediterranean: Norman Sicily
• STOKSTAD, pp. 143-53.
• William Tronzo, “The Medieval Object-Enigma, and the Problem of the Cappella
Palatina in Palermo,” Word & Image 9.3 (1993): 197-228.
W, May 11
The Holy Land: Pilgrimage, Crusade, and Medieval Imagination
• Jonathan J. G. Alexander, “‘Jerusalem the Golden’: Image and Myth in the Middle Ages
in Western Europe,” in The Real and Ideal Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic
Art, ed. Bianca Kühnel, Jewish Art 23.4 (1997-98): 255-64.
F, May 13
Gothic Innovations
• Michael Camille, Gothic Art: Glorious Visions (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), pp.
9-25.
Week 8
M, May 16
The Gothic Cathedral I
• STOKSTAD, pp. 227-47.
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W, May 18
The Gothic Cathedral II
• STOKSTAD, pp. 261-300, 310-15, 319-22.
F, May 20
Vision and Supervision: The Late Medieval Art of Devotion
• Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “The Visual and the Visionary: The Image in Late Medieval
Monastic Devotions,” in The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in
Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998),
pp. 111-48, 502-10.
Week 9
M, May 23
Merchants and Friars: Late Medieval Italy
• STOKSTAD, pp. 325-34.
W, May 25
Death, Commemoration, and the Afterlife: The Medieval Tomb
• P. Binski, Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation (London: British Museum Press,
1996), 70-122.
F, May 27
Pleasures and Pastimes: Art at Court
• Anne Dunlop, “The Look of Love,” in A Wider Trecento: Studies in 13th- and 14thCentury European Art Presented to Julian Gardner, ed. Louise Bourdua and Robert
Gibbs (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), pp. 154-65.
CRITICAL RESPONSE PAPER DUE IN CLASS
Week 10
M, May 30
MEMORIAL DAY – No class
W, Jun 1
The End of the Middle Ages: The Ghent Altarpiece
• Bernhard Ridderbos, “Jan (and Hubert?) van Eyck: The Ghent Altarpiece,” in Early
Netherlandish Paintings: Rediscovery, Reception and Research, ed. Bernhard Ridderbos,
Anne van Buren, and Henk van Veen (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005),
pp. 42-59.
• Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1954),
pp. 242-64 (“Art and Life”).
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F, Jun 3
Final Exam Review
W, Jun 8
FINAL EXAM: 2:30–4:20pm, Room 003 Art Building
CRITICAL RESPONSE PAPER
For this assignment you will read Meyer Schapiro, “The Sculptures of Souillac,” in Medieval
Studies in Memory of A. Kingsley Porter, vol. 2, ed. Wilhelm R. W. Koehler (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1939), pp. 359-87, available electronically through the course website
(under Files/Course Readings). This is a seminal essay on a major Romanesque sculptural
program, written by one of the leading art historians of the twentieth century.
Write a five-page paper—double-spaced, with 1-1.25 inch margins and in a 12-point font—
analyzing and critically responding to Schapiro’s essay. Your paper should address the following
questions:
• What are the author’s arguments about the sculptures at Souillac, their form, function,
and meaning?
• How does he relate the sculptures’ formal properties to their content?
• What kinds of evidence does the author present in support of his claims?
• How would you assess his arguments? Do you find them persuasive? Do you agree or
disagree with what he argues, and why?
In your paper, you should draw on your own visual analysis of the sculptures as well as on your
knowledge of medieval art and society derived from the course readings, lectures, and class
discussions.
To facilitate your visual analysis, additional images of the sculptures at Souillac and related
sculptural programs discussed by Schapiro will be available through the course website (under
Files/Souillac).
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UW SCHOOL OF ART + ART HISTORY + DESIGN POLICIES AND PROCEDURES
Equal opportunity: The School of Art + Art History + Design reaffirms its policy of equal
opportunity regardless of race, color, creed, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation,
age, marital status, disability, or status as a disabled veteran or Vietnam-era veteran in
accordance with UW policy and applicable federal and state statutes and regulations.
Disability accommodation: If you would like to request academic accommodations due to a
disability, please contact Disabled Student Services, Schmitz, Room 448, (206) 543-8924
(V/TTY) or [email protected]. If you have a letter from Disabled Student Services
indicating you have a disability that requires academic accommodation, please present the letter
to me so we can discuss the accommodations you might need for the class.
Plagiarism: Plagiarism is defined as using in your own work the creations, ideas, words,
inventions, or work of someone else without formally acknowledging them through the use of
quotation marks, footnotes, bibliography, or other reference. Please check with me if you have
questions about what constitutes plagiarism. Instances of plagiarism will be referred to the Vice
Provost/Special Assistant to the President for Student Relations and may lead to disciplinary
action.
Incomplete grades: An incomplete is given only when you: have been in attendance and done
satisfactory work through the eighth week of the quarter; and have furnished satisfactory proof to
me that the work cannot be completed because of illness or other circumstances beyond your
control.
Concerns about the course: Talk with me as soon as possible. If you are not comfortable talking
with me or are not satisfied with the response that you receive, you may contact the Director of
Advising and Student Services, Judith Clark, Art Building, Room 104, (206) 543-0646. If you
are not satisfied with the response that you receive, you may contact the Director of the School
of Art + Art History + Design, Jamie Walker, Art Building, Room 102.
Grade appeal procedure: If you are concerned that the grade you received for this class is
incorrect, contact me to discuss the matter. If the matter is not resolved to your satisfaction, make
an appointment with the Director of Academic Advising and Student Services, Judith Clark, Art
Building, Room 104, (206) 543-0646. If necessary, submit a written appeal to the Director of the
School of Art + Art History + Design who will take the matter under advisement and call a
faculty committee to review your course work and make a final determination concerning the
grade dispute.
Materials fees: All art and art history classes have materials fee that are billed on your tuition
statement. Information is available in Art Building, Room 104. If you drop a class in the first five
days of the quarter, the fee is automatically removed from the quarterly billing. If you drop after
the first five days (and before using any class materials), you must petition for a refund. The
School of Art + Art History + Design cannot process any petitions received after noon on the last
day of the quarter.
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