Tuesday the 25th of January saw the fourth and final talk in the first half of our 2022, winter, Art History and Appreciation Zoom Talks. In our first series, in early 2021, we completed a survey of Western Art from roughly 1300 to the mid-1700s. This year’s entire series focuses on the Art of the North-East of Italy, specifically the great Art Cities of that region like Padua, Verona, Mantua and Vicenza.

This may sounds a whole lot more specialized than our 2021 course. Yet in fact, it still forms a great introduction to Art History as a subject in general. All over the world, University Art History departments routinely use Italian Art to teach the entire discipline and methodology to their undergraduates, introducing them to ideas ranging from iconography to patronage. That’s both because, and the reason why the Italian Renaissance is the best-studied, most widely taught art in the world. So if you’d like an enjoyable, highly accessible introduction, to the whole wonderful, vastly enriching world of Art History and Appreciation, these talks could well be for you.

During the first part of our course so far, during Talks 1-4, we have already encountered great names like Giotto, looking closely at his legendary frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel; as well as other giants of Italian Art like the sculptor Donatello; the remarkable Bellini family (father Jacopo and sons Gentile and Giovanni) and that master of perspective- and the “all’antica manner”- Andrea Mantegna.

Now we pause for breath and a one-week “mid-term break” before we resume the talks, on Tuesday 8th of February. Looking ahead here at my images and slides for the second half of the course (Talks 5-8 inclusive) I can see images of further great works by Andrea Mantegna, as well as by Titian, Raphael, Leonardo, Giulio Romano and many, many others. Incidentally, current guests on all our Zoom slide talks will testify to just how richly, lavishly illustrated they are, with literally hundreds of slides in each talk, showing every art work in many details in order to illustrate many different aspects of its composition, themes, subject matter, symbolism and technique)

For the second half of our talks (Talks 5-8) we continue our focus on painting and sculpture, but also introduce a new and important art historical thread, looking also at the architecture of Renaissance Italy in conjunction with its painting, including significant figures like Leon Alberti, Giulio Romano, and Andrea Palladio. We also look at the global impact that Renaissance Italy had on architecture all over the world. In that contect we shall also focus, in our final talk on Andrea Palladio (1508-1589) and his, quite extraordinary, influence on 18th century architecture in Britain, the United Stares, and we shall see, in particular, in Ireland.

Here is some sense of what we have coming up…

Tues 15 February: Talk 5: the Palaces of Mantua 1: The Gonzaga family, and the genius of Andrea Mantegna at the Palazzo Ducale. 

Tues 15 February: Talk 6: the Palaces of Mantua 2: Understanding Mannerism and its links to Raphael and Michelangelo: Titian, and Giuilo Romano and his Palazzo Te

Tues 22 February Talk 7: The architecture of Andrea Palladio in his native city of Vincenza: Theatre, Villas, Churches and Palazzi.

Tuesday 01 March Talk 8:  Andrea Palladio and his foundations for Irish Georgian architecture.   

If you would like to join us for the second half of our talks, a black ticket for Talk 5-8 tickets is available up until 5pm Monday 7th of February (2022) for just €50 plus a small booking fee. The block ticket allows you to attend all 4 talks TALK 5- 8, either live and/or recorded. in other words, the links for both the live and recorded versions are sent out automatically to all ticket-holders each week, in two separate emails. (One email the evening before the live talk and another email for the recorded version, a few hours after the live event) You can use the green “Buy Now’ button on our website to find and purchase the “Talks 5-8” ticket, or you can use this direct link.

If you wish to catch up on the recorded talks 1-4, in recorded form only of course, it is still possible to buy the ticket from our website, and we will send you an email with the links for all four recorded talks 1-4 inclusive. These talks come in the form of four videos, hosted on the Vimeo platform, which are accessible only to our guests and subscribers. Here just below is a list of the first 4 talks which have already been delivered and which are now videos on on the Vimeo platform

Talks 1 -Giotto and the North-east of Italy

Talks 2  -Art Treasures of the historic churches of Verona

Talks 3 -Art Treasures of the Castelvecchio in Verona, and of Vicenza’s Civic Museum

Talks 4  Padua, its Basilica of saint Anthony, its 1300s Frescos and the work of Donatello in Padua.

You can use the green “Buy Now’ button on our website to find and purchase the earlier “Talks 1-4” ticket or you can use this direct link to access the block ticket for (recorded versions of) Talks 1-4.