High Renaissance to Baroque 12/13 at Victoria and Albert Museum

A course in art history. The Renaissance filtered through Europe from Italy, affecting all the arts. The invention of printing meant that books and prints reached a new and wider audience, and quickly popularised new styles. At the same time, the Reformation wrought havoc with the established order and a century of war and revolution followed. In some parts of Europe iconoclasm meant the destruction of religious art, and by the mid-17th-century Europe was divided into Roman Catholic and Protestant states. The course will examine the changes in patronage, with the rise of a prosperous middle class wanting portraits and genre paintings as well as consumer goods such as maiolica and textiles, and consider the effect of wars and economic policies on the production of art, metalwork and furniture, and the influence of trading voyages on imports of luxury goods from the East.