Focusing on Giotto’s life, works, and historiography, this seminar will guide students systematically through the history of Western art and architecture in its Vasarian and post-Vasarian construction from a critical point of view of 2023 Berkeley: Giotto’s biography and legend, designs and drawings, architecture and paintings, historical context, social, political, and theological conditions, literary connections, critical afterlife, artistic responses, and centuries of Giotto historiography up to the present day (with a special focus on Michelangelo). We will read classic texts by authors such as Augustine, Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Vasari, while striving to bring new questions into our approaches to the works, their historical contexts, and to the wide, multilingual bibliography. 

This course fulfills the following Major requirements: Geographical area (A), and Chronological period (II).

Conducted in English. Italian and texts in French, Spanish, and German will be introduced as requested by the students. 

Object lessons in the Bancroft Rare Books and Manuscript Library and the Berkeley Art Museum will complement a variety of historical, art historical, media historical, and visual components of the class. 

This course is designed to connect with other and further studies in wider fields including but not limited to Medieval Studies, Renaissance & Early Modern Studies, critical theory, interdisciplinary studies, and literature studies.