The aim of this interdisciplinary course, which combines lectures with field-study activities, is to use the remarkable surroundings of Siena and Tuscany to examine the different meanings attached to the past in this city, and how this has been represented. During the Renaissance in Italy, the past acquired a special meaning as humanist scholars and antiquarians looked back to classical Rome, which provided a privileged source of material for the revival of the arts and letters: Humanism. Cultural studies of the objects of research in both their individual significance and their larger historical contexts, through the complex play of stories, symbols, spiritual and religious motives, and secular allegories, will be developed, and students will acquire skills of analysis of images, buildings and written texts, as this interdisciplinary course shows how language, literature, society, art, religion and politics came together in the search for classical origins, history, and style, as well as the survival of specific cultural objects, as the Palio and the “contrade” of Siena, in order to shape distinct past and present identities. Field-studies and field-trips are intended to make the students draw the maximum advantage from the local context, being perfectly preserved Medieval and Renaissance social entities, integrating the conceptual cognitive aspects of their academic learning into the inter-personal and intra-personal levels, in order to be able to develop skills of inter-personal and inter-cultural competence.
Attendance policy:
Successful progress of the program depends on the full cooperation of both students and faculty members: regular attendance and active participation in class are essential parts of the learning process. Attendance at and participation in all class meetings and field-studies are required. More than TWO unjustified absences (that are not medically excused with a written certificate of the doctor or caused by serious sudden family and/or personal occurrences, as for example death of a family member) will result in a lowering of your grade.
Learning outcomes:
By the end of the course, students are able to:
Identify and analyze the history of Italy, Tuscany and Siena, with special regards to its relevance in terms of peoples’ identity.
Identify, along their historical development, the various socio-political and religious symbols, architectural structures and masterpieces of Medieval and early Renaissance art, as messages of power and identity.
Analyze the historical and political context of civic and private art patronage.
Recognize the main artistic evolutions in Tuscany, Siena in particular, until the “Renaissance explosion” as a reflection of the historical evolution of culture and society.
Develop skills to critically evaluate Medieval and Renaissance works and the their contextual backgrounds, in their historical, cultural and socio-political connotations.
Compare historical and socio-political events and principles, as reflected in cultural objects.
Draw the maximum advantage from the local context, being perfectly preserved Medieval and Renaissance social entities, and apply the Holistic 3-D student development Model, with the conceptual cognitive aspects of students’ academic learning integrate into the intra-personal and inter-personal level, in order to be able to develop skills of inter-personal and inter-cultural competence.
Method of presentation:
Each week this course includes one two-hour in-class lecture, and one field-study activity outside the classroom around the city of Siena and other locations in Tuscany, guided by the professor. Lectures will include also Power Point projections, videos, seminar discussions, student presentations and class discussions. Lectures and on-site visits are led by the professor but as the course progresses, a seminar-style presentation is included, whereby students are asked to present specific objects to the class as a whole.
Note: During field-studies students are kindly advised not to carry bulky backpacks or troublesome objects. Photography is usually allowed in parks and gardens but is in general forbidden in museums.
Required work and form of assessment:
Active class participation and class discussion (15%), written mid-term exam in the form of essay-style answers (25%), written final exam in the form of essay-style answers (30%), final research project/7-10page paper +oral presentation of the project to the class (30%).
The written mid-term exam (2 hours in-class) will be based on the topics covered during the first half of the course and will be in the form of short compositions answering to several essay-style questions.
The written final exam (2 hours in-class) will be based on the topics covered during the second half of the course and will be in the form of short compositions answering to several essay-style questions.
Mid-term and final exams: The exams are comprised of the following sections: 1) Slides identification, observation and analysis; 2) topics analysis, 3) topics description and /or comparison, finalized to students’ conclusion. The expectations are in regards to students’ answers based on material considered in class and field-studies, both in lectures and class debates; assigned/required readings (from course-packets and other materials assigned by the instructor). The final exam is comprehensive, although specific questions and greater weight is given to material covered in the second half of the course.
The topic of the personal final research paper is to be chosen by students in consultation with the instructor: written essay (about 7-10 pages) and a oral presentation to the class. The amount of the paper’s pages is not including in the calculation the following items: title, footnotes, bibliography and illustrations.
All the course components are expected to show, when applicable, the application of the Holistic 3-D student development Model, with the conceptual cognitive aspects of students’ academic learning integrate into the intra-personal and inter-personal level, in order to be able to develop skills of inter-personal and inter-cultural competence.
Attendance is mandatory and punctual reading of assigned material is strongly recommended.
content:
(Please be aware that the sequence and therefore the objects of the content, particularly regarding field-studies, may vary and be modified depending on the season and availability of the different locations to be visited)
Week 1. Origins: Medieval and Renaissance Urban Foundation Myths
Lecture: Considers the general issue of how Italian cities in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries looked to the ancient past (Roman, Greek, Etruscan, mythological) to formulate their own foundation legends; and how written sources were interpreted in visual terms to represent these legends. How was the past used to enrich the cultural identity of the historic present, and what lessons did the classical past offer?
Visit: She-wolves and the Strada Romana (S. Domenico, “cult of the reliques”, Banchi di Sopra, Piazza Tolomei, Croce del Travaglio, Loggia della Mercanzia, “Strada Romana”). The visit will introduce students to the iconographic and mythological armature of the city.
Cultural studies: introduction to the object, concept of Culture, Italian cultural, socio-historical and artistic context and its literary representations (newspapers and magazine articles; from Tobias Jones’ The Dark Heart of Italy; Dario Castagno, “Us versus Them” in Too Much Tuscan Sun; Fabri Fibra and Gianna Nannini’s In Italia)
Week 2. Origins: A Sense of Place. Recent and Remote Past in the Sienese Urban Landscape
Lecture: Takes up the theme of the previous class and addresses the specific case study of Siena’s foundation myth. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, many legends concerning the mythical origins of Siena and its noble families were born. The foundation legends of Italian towns often traced their origins to a Trojan exile, escapees from the fire of Troy or Romans fleeing some dangerous threat. According to local tradition, for instance, Siena was founded by Aschius and Senius, Remus’ sons, after they ran away from Rome to escape the rage of their uncle Romulus. Before leaving Rome, the two brothers stole the Roman she-wolf statue from the temple of Apollo. That sculpture became the symbol of Siena as well as Rome. We consider sculpted and painted representations of the she-wolf, for example, and see how this imagery was projected onto the public space of the city to present a distinct urban identity.
Visit: She-wolves (Sala delle Lupe, Piazza del Campo), “Strada Romana” and Ornato Office (Loggia della Mercanzia), and the Duomo precinct (piazza Postierla, piazza Duomo, Duomo). A natural continuation of the previous visit, this will bring students into closer and more detailed contact with one of the most complex and richly layered architectural and artistic monuments of the city.
Cultural studies: Concept of Common Good and Civitas-Communitas. Italian society, history and artistic Renaissance and its literary representation in Anglo-American culture (E.M. Forster’s A Room with A View).
Week 3. Origins and Buon Governo: Political Iconography in Sienese Art. Building Lorenzetti’s Ideal.
Lecture: Siena developed a totally distinct urban image and artistic style. The city’s more tangible claims to Roman origins can be traced in the topography, and continue into the artistic language and iconography of civic commissions. This class considers how arts served the civic ideal, and how the competitive spirit fostered by the city’s institutions also served as a vital spur to the process of artistic renewal from the early 1300s.
Visit: Siena, conclusion of the previous visit and Piazza del Campo.
Cultural studies: Italian Renaissance and its literary representation in Anglo-American culture (from George Eliot’s Romola, from Mary McCarthy’s The Stones of Florence).
Week 4: Buon Governo: Political Iconography in Sienese Art. The Urban Image Projected: Art, Architecture and Ritual Use of the City
Lecture: Takes as its starting point the central political allegory of Good and Bad Government by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and views the development of Siena’s urban form through the idealized image that it presents. Here again, classical and archaic ideals (represented in the allegoricalimages of virtues) provide the underpinning of the city’s civic program of government andcultural patronage.
Visit: Palazzo Pubblico. Continuing directly from the lecture, this visit allows students to enter into the direct dialogue between civic culture and politics in the painted halls of Siena’s government building.
Cultural studies: Italian Mezzadria system in Tuscany and its literary representation in Anglo-American culture (from Francesca Alexander’s Roadside Songs of Tuscany).
Week 5. Buon Governo: Political Iconography in Central Italian Art. Art, Government and Urban Identity
Lecture: Even outside the city of Siena, within the territories of the ancient Republic but also in other cities, the themes of mythical origins and of Good and Bad government can also be traced in culture and the figurative arts. This class opens the discussion that has so far focused on Sienese material to a consideration of other central Italian communal towns, including, for example, San Gimignano. How were the arts employed as a medium for the transmission of local identity and political messages? San Gimignano as the perfectly preserved example of the medieval town, with its towers and city structure.
Visit: San Gimignano.
Cultural studies: Italian and Tuscan (S. Gimignano, Siena and Florence) society, history and Gothic and Renaissance art and its literary representation in Anglo-American culture (from Henry James’s Italian Hours and Portrait of A Lady).
Week 6: Class content review, and written mid-term exam.
Week 7: All’antica Private Patronage in the Domestic Setting (Pienza). Building Pius II’s Ideal Renaissance City
Lecture: A key component of the architectural history of Medieval and Renaissance Italy is the means by which classical models inspired architects and patrons to design new types of urban center, more closely inspired by ancient Roman ideals of symmetry and order. Pienza is an ideal city, and a remarkable and early case of a single patron marshalling all the arts in one creative impulse, forging a new and sophisticated urban centre, becoming the realization of the ideal Renaissance city, and all Renaissance main principles, UNESCO world heritage since 1996.
Visit: Pienza (piazza Pio II, Palazzo Piccolomini, Duomo). During the Renaissance urban planning criteria were renewed within the tradition of classical literary canons; Pienza is perhaps a unique context within which to consider such change.
Cultural studies: Renaissance art and architecture. Renaissance ideals, concepts, principles and human applications.
Week 8: Buon Governo: Political Iconography in Central Italian Art. Art, Government and Urban Identity
Lecture: Good government, as seen in the previous class, is a central theme of Siena’s civic tradition of government. This lecture considers the role of pilgrimage and devotional ritual as a motivating factor for fortunes of Siena’s prestigious hospital of Santa Maria della Scala, and other religious buildings lining the urban section of the via Francigena that connected pilgrims from Northern Europe to Rome. How did artistic and cultural ideas travel along this route?
Visit: Siena, Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala (Sala del Pellegrinaio, S.Caterina della Notte, Jacopo della Quercia’s ‘Fonte Gaia’). Movement through pilgrimage and trade were a key feature of early modern life ; the city’s historic hospital is a unique venue to consider cultural mobility and the transfer of ideas and images.
Cultural studies: Medieval medicine and society and Renaissance art. Medieval and Renaissance ideals, concepts, principles and human applications. Principle of Common Good and Common Care.
Week 9. Origins and Rivalry: the Past in the Present. A Sense of Place. Recent and Remote Past in the Sienese Urban Landscape and contemporary Palio and Contrade.
Lecture: Takes up the theme of the previous class and addresses the specific case study of Siena’s contemporary urban fabric. We consider areas of the town and see how Siena’s history and its past artistic and socio-political imagery was projected onto the public space of the city to present a distinct urban identity. This especially following the rivalry Siena-Florence as reflected into the urban fabric by the rivalry among the Guelph Tolomei family and the Ghibelline Salimbeni family, later projected into the rivalries among Contradas in the Palio from the 1500’s to the contemporary period.
Visit: Siena, Oratory, church and museums of Civetta, Piazza Tolomei, Castellare degli Ugurgeri, Palazzo Tolomei. Siena’s real past was constantly evoked and altered for the purpose of an ever-changing present; this visit seeks to show how the “presence of the past” is particularly strong in the present days. The urban domestic environment, viewed both as a facade and a more intimate interior, models and prototypes from the eleventh to the present century; this visit offers a chronologically ordered analysis of the development of the residential types, starting from the noble fortified palace Castellare to the Palazzo nobiliare (noble family palace).
Cultural studies: Siena, the past in the present. History and Identity and its literary representations in Dante’s Divina Commedia. Siena, the past in the present, between history and myth (the Palio).
Week 10. Buon Governo: Political Iconography in Siena. Art, Government and Urban Identity. Building History in the Public Setting: Religious and Civic Palaces, History and Memory
Lecture: Takes up the themes of the previous classes and addresses the specific case study of the Duomo area. We consider sculpted, painted and architectural realizations and see how Sienese imagery was projected onto the public space of the city to present a distinct urban identity. This class will focus also on its cultural background and specific semantic connotations. In the central nave of the Sienese Cathedral, a she-wolf breast-feeding two twins is represented on the pavement. This is the most emblematic symbol of the Sienese identity. The animal is placed in front of the Ficus Ruminalis, the tree near which the shepherd Faustulus found Romulus and Remus after they were abandoned along the Tiber River. The entire series of the cathedral pavement will be examined, starting from the entrance, the “purest temple of the Virgin Mary” (as the carved words near the main door say – the cathedral is devoted to the Virgin Mary), the scenes inspired by the Classical era (Sibyls, Hermes Trismegistos, the Greek philosophers Socrates and Crates), the episodes from Jewish history to the salvation by Jesus Christ. Christ is never pictured on the pavement.
Visit: Museo dell’Opera del Duomo; Facciatone; Piazza del Duomo; Duomo Crypt and Baptistry.
Lecture: Takes up the previous class’ theme of the Sienese foundation myth as a Renaissance creation linking the city to Rome and from it as starting point turns back to the beginning of the course in examining the real historical origins of the city of Siena, which refer to the pre-Roman civilization of the Etruscans.
Visit: Ancient Hospital of Santa Maria della Scala: Etruscan and Archeological Museum, “Carnaio”, (underground Medieval hospital common burial, as during 1348 Black death times)and other relevant underground locations.
Cultural studies: the ‘mythical’ Tuscany, the legend of Etruscan Siena and its literary representation in Anglo-American culture (D.H. Lawrence’s Etruscan Places).
Week 11. All’antica Private Patronage in the Domestic Setting (Siena). Building History in the Domestic Setting: Palaces and Memory
Lecture: This class turns from the public sphere to that of the domestic interior, and private residence. The principal object of the discussion is the emergence of a new residential type during the Renaissance: the family palace. This new architectural typology was defined by its use of classical architectural typologies, and thus relied on the growing erudition of artists, who had an increasingly developed knowledge of Roman ruins. This class will focus also on its cultural background and specific semantic connotations.
Visit: Piazza Salimbeni (collection of the Banca Monte dei Paschi) and Rocca Salimbeni. The urban domestic environment, viewed both as a facade and a more intimate interior, models and prototypes from the eleventh to the sixteenth century; this visit offers a chronologically ordered analysis of the development of that residential type, starting from the Castellare to the Palazzo nobiliare (noble family palace).
Cultural studies: Siena, the past in the present. History and Identity and its literary representations. The Palio: from Kate Simon’s Italy: The Places in Between.
Week 12. All’antica Private Patronage in the Domestic Setting (Siena)
Lecture: Continuing from the previous class, we consider the architectural exterior ordering of the palace, and the material goods that enriched these. Inspired by classical models, we will examine the finest example of Florentine renaissance palazzos in Siena, as perfect applications of ideals and guidelines by Renaissance theorist Leon Battista Alberti.
Visit: Palazzo, Piazza e Loggia Piccolomini, Palazzo delle Papesse, Palazzo Chigi Saracini. The visit continues from the previous week, and may conclude with the remarkable interior of the Palazzo Chigi Saracini, an interesting example of a collector’s home.
Cultural studies: Siena and Florence, the past in the present (rivalry and identity) and its literary representations.
Week 13. Class content review, final research paper/project give in, oral presentation and written final exam
Required readings:
Course-pack.
Recommended readings:
Anne Fortier, Juliet
Notes:
Supplementary material to complement class work may be given by the instructor in order to improve and enrich students’ comprehension.
Brief Biography of Instructor:
Amanda Bruttini was born in Siena in 1970. She graduated with a degree in Oriental Philosophy and Medicine, with a specialization in Indo-Tibetan Philosophy and Medicine, completed in India where she lived and did research for nine years. Following further anthropological research, she has completed and conducted several fieldwork seminars and courses in the USA (California and New York), Mexico, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Nepal, Pakistan and Europe (Italy, Spain, England, Austria, Switzertland). She then graduated, with honours, for the second time, from the Università degli Studi di Siena with a degree in Foreign Literatures (English, Anglo-American and Ispano-American) and Cultural Studies with a thesis on Shakespearian connections and the concept of identity in Marina Warner. She has a PhD from the Santa Chiara College di Siena in Literary Theory, Translation and Cultural Studies, specializing in Post-Colonial Comparative Studies and Anthropology. She currently collaborates with the Università di Siena as a tutor, researcher and lecturer. She has taught for U.S. study abroad programs in Siena (including University of California, Lewis and Clark College, and Swarthmore College). Some of her research project, other than the publication of different scientific articles and her thesis, pay particular attention to the artistic, literary and anthropological branches of Cultural Studies referring to the fields of identity, memory, hybridization, and the oral-written relationship. She also continues her work on the practice on re-writing (Shakespeare) and of travel writing. Her main interest is to study the means of power and see how it is reflected in the various arts, in the different historical periods.
The aim of this interdisciplinary course, which combines lectures with field-study activities, is to use the remarkable surroundings of Siena and Tuscany to examine the different meanings attached to the past in this city, and how this has been represented. During the Renaissance in Italy, the past acquired a special meaning as humanist scholars and antiquarians looked back to classical Rome, which provided a privileged source of material for the revival of the arts and letters: Humanism. Cultural studies of the objects of research in both their individual significance and their larger historical contexts, through the complex play of stories, symbols, spiritual and religious motives, and secular allegories, will be developed, and students will acquire skills of analysis of images, buildings and written texts, as this interdisciplinary course shows how language, literature, society, art, religion and politics came together in the search for classical origins, history, and style, as well as the survival of specific cultural objects, as the Palio and the “contrade” of Siena, in order to shape distinct past and present identities. Field-studies and field-trips are intended to make the students draw the maximum advantage from the local context, being perfectly preserved Medieval and Renaissance social entities, integrating the conceptual cognitive aspects of their academic learning into the inter-personal and intra-personal levels, in order to be able to develop skills of inter-personal and inter-cultural competence.
Successful progress of the program depends on the full cooperation of both students and faculty members: regular attendance and active participation in class are essential parts of the learning process. Attendance at and participation in all class meetings and field-studies are required. More than TWO unjustified absences (that are not medically excused with a written certificate of the doctor or caused by serious sudden family and/or personal occurrences, as for example death of a family member) will result in a lowering of your grade.
By the end of the course, students are able to:
Each week this course includes one two-hour in-class lecture, and one field-study activity outside the classroom around the city of Siena and other locations in Tuscany, guided by the professor. Lectures will include also Power Point projections, videos, seminar discussions, student presentations and class discussions. Lectures and on-site visits are led by the professor but as the course progresses, a seminar-style presentation is included, whereby students are asked to present specific objects to the class as a whole.
Note: During field-studies students are kindly advised not to carry bulky backpacks or troublesome objects. Photography is usually allowed in parks and gardens but is in general forbidden in museums.
Active class participation and class discussion (15%), written mid-term exam in the form of essay-style answers (25%), written final exam in the form of essay-style answers (30%), final research project/7-10page paper +oral presentation of the project to the class (30%).
Attendance is mandatory and punctual reading of assigned material is strongly recommended.
(Please be aware that the sequence and therefore the objects of the content, particularly regarding field-studies, may vary and be modified depending on the season and availability of the different locations to be visited)
Week 1. Origins: Medieval and Renaissance Urban Foundation Myths
Lecture: Considers the general issue of how Italian cities in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries looked to the ancient past (Roman, Greek, Etruscan, mythological) to formulate their own foundation legends; and how written sources were interpreted in visual terms to represent these legends. How was the past used to enrich the cultural identity of the historic present, and what lessons did the classical past offer?
Visit: She-wolves and the Strada Romana (S. Domenico, “cult of the reliques”, Banchi di Sopra, Piazza Tolomei, Croce del Travaglio, Loggia della Mercanzia, “Strada Romana”). The visit will introduce students to the iconographic and mythological armature of the city.
Cultural studies: introduction to the object, concept of Culture, Italian cultural, socio-historical and artistic context and its literary representations (newspapers and magazine articles; from Tobias Jones’ The Dark Heart of Italy; Dario Castagno, “Us versus Them” in Too Much Tuscan Sun; Fabri Fibra and Gianna Nannini’s In Italia)
Week 2. Origins: A Sense of Place. Recent and Remote Past in the Sienese Urban Landscape
Lecture: Takes up the theme of the previous class and addresses the specific case study of Siena’s foundation myth. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, many legends concerning the mythical origins of Siena and its noble families were born. The foundation legends of Italian towns often traced their origins to a Trojan exile, escapees from the fire of Troy or Romans fleeing some dangerous threat. According to local tradition, for instance, Siena was founded by Aschius and Senius, Remus’ sons, after they ran away from Rome to escape the rage of their uncle Romulus. Before leaving Rome, the two brothers stole the Roman she-wolf statue from the temple of Apollo. That sculpture became the symbol of Siena as well as Rome. We consider sculpted and painted representations of the she-wolf, for example, and see how this imagery was projected onto the public space of the city to present a distinct urban identity.
Visit: She-wolves (Sala delle Lupe, Piazza del Campo), “Strada Romana” and Ornato Office (Loggia della Mercanzia), and the Duomo precinct (piazza Postierla, piazza Duomo, Duomo). A natural continuation of the previous visit, this will bring students into closer and more detailed contact with one of the most complex and richly layered architectural and artistic monuments of the city.
Cultural studies: Concept of Common Good and Civitas-Communitas. Italian society, history and artistic Renaissance and its literary representation in Anglo-American culture (E.M. Forster’s A Room with A View).
Week 3. Origins and Buon Governo: Political Iconography in Sienese Art. Building Lorenzetti’s Ideal.
Lecture: Siena developed a totally distinct urban image and artistic style. The city’s more tangible claims to Roman origins can be traced in the topography, and continue into the artistic language and iconography of civic commissions. This class considers how arts served the civic ideal, and how the competitive spirit fostered by the city’s institutions also served as a vital spur to the process of artistic renewal from the early 1300s.
Visit: Siena, conclusion of the previous visit and Piazza del Campo.
Cultural studies: Italian Renaissance and its literary representation in Anglo-American culture (from George Eliot’s Romola, from Mary McCarthy’s The Stones of Florence).
Week 4: Buon Governo: Political Iconography in Sienese Art. The Urban Image Projected: Art, Architecture and Ritual Use of the City
Lecture: Takes as its starting point the central political allegory of Good and Bad Government by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and views the development of Siena’s urban form through the idealized image that it presents. Here again, classical and archaic ideals (represented in the allegoricalimages of virtues) provide the underpinning of the city’s civic program of government andcultural patronage.
Visit: Palazzo Pubblico. Continuing directly from the lecture, this visit allows students to enter into the direct dialogue between civic culture and politics in the painted halls of Siena’s government building.
Cultural studies: Italian Mezzadria system in Tuscany and its literary representation in Anglo-American culture (from Francesca Alexander’s Roadside Songs of Tuscany).
Week 5. Buon Governo: Political Iconography in Central Italian Art. Art, Government and Urban Identity
Lecture: Even outside the city of Siena, within the territories of the ancient Republic but also in other cities, the themes of mythical origins and of Good and Bad government can also be traced in culture and the figurative arts. This class opens the discussion that has so far focused on Sienese material to a consideration of other central Italian communal towns, including, for example, San Gimignano. How were the arts employed as a medium for the transmission of local identity and political messages? San Gimignano as the perfectly preserved example of the medieval town, with its towers and city structure.
Visit: San Gimignano.
Cultural studies: Italian and Tuscan (S. Gimignano, Siena and Florence) society, history and Gothic and Renaissance art and its literary representation in Anglo-American culture (from Henry James’s Italian Hours and Portrait of A Lady).
Week 6: Class content review, and written mid-term exam.
Week 7: All’antica Private Patronage in the Domestic Setting (Pienza). Building Pius II’s Ideal Renaissance City
Lecture: A key component of the architectural history of Medieval and Renaissance Italy is the means by which classical models inspired architects and patrons to design new types of urban center, more closely inspired by ancient Roman ideals of symmetry and order. Pienza is an ideal city, and a remarkable and early case of a single patron marshalling all the arts in one creative impulse, forging a new and sophisticated urban centre, becoming the realization of the ideal Renaissance city, and all Renaissance main principles, UNESCO world heritage since 1996.
Visit: Pienza (piazza Pio II, Palazzo Piccolomini, Duomo). During the Renaissance urban planning criteria were renewed within the tradition of classical literary canons; Pienza is perhaps a unique context within which to consider such change.
Cultural studies: Renaissance art and architecture. Renaissance ideals, concepts, principles and human applications.
Week 8: Buon Governo: Political Iconography in Central Italian Art. Art, Government and Urban Identity
Lecture: Good government, as seen in the previous class, is a central theme of Siena’s civic tradition of government. This lecture considers the role of pilgrimage and devotional ritual as a motivating factor for fortunes of Siena’s prestigious hospital of Santa Maria della Scala, and other religious buildings lining the urban section of the via Francigena that connected pilgrims from Northern Europe to Rome. How did artistic and cultural ideas travel along this route?
Visit: Siena, Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala (Sala del Pellegrinaio, S.Caterina della Notte, Jacopo della Quercia’s ‘Fonte Gaia’). Movement through pilgrimage and trade were a key feature of early modern life ; the city’s historic hospital is a unique venue to consider cultural mobility and the transfer of ideas and images.
Cultural studies: Medieval medicine and society and Renaissance art. Medieval and Renaissance ideals, concepts, principles and human applications. Principle of Common Good and Common Care.
Week 9. Origins and Rivalry: the Past in the Present. A Sense of Place. Recent and Remote Past in the Sienese Urban Landscape and contemporary Palio and Contrade.
Lecture: Takes up the theme of the previous class and addresses the specific case study of Siena’s contemporary urban fabric. We consider areas of the town and see how Siena’s history and its past artistic and socio-political imagery was projected onto the public space of the city to present a distinct urban identity. This especially following the rivalry Siena-Florence as reflected into the urban fabric by the rivalry among the Guelph Tolomei family and the Ghibelline Salimbeni family, later projected into the rivalries among Contradas in the Palio from the 1500’s to the contemporary period.
Visit: Siena, Oratory, church and museums of Civetta, Piazza Tolomei, Castellare degli Ugurgeri, Palazzo Tolomei. Siena’s real past was constantly evoked and altered for the purpose of an ever-changing present; this visit seeks to show how the “presence of the past” is particularly strong in the present days. The urban domestic environment, viewed both as a facade and a more intimate interior, models and prototypes from the eleventh to the present century; this visit offers a chronologically ordered analysis of the development of the residential types, starting from the noble fortified palace Castellare to the Palazzo nobiliare (noble family palace).
Cultural studies: Siena, the past in the present. History and Identity and its literary representations in Dante’s Divina Commedia. Siena, the past in the present, between history and myth (the Palio).
Week 10. Buon Governo: Political Iconography in Siena. Art, Government and Urban Identity. Building History in the Public Setting: Religious and Civic Palaces, History and Memory
Lecture: Takes up the themes of the previous classes and addresses the specific case study of the Duomo area. We consider sculpted, painted and architectural realizations and see how Sienese imagery was projected onto the public space of the city to present a distinct urban identity. This class will focus also on its cultural background and specific semantic connotations. In the central nave of the Sienese Cathedral, a she-wolf breast-feeding two twins is represented on the pavement. This is the most emblematic symbol of the Sienese identity. The animal is placed in front of the Ficus Ruminalis, the tree near which the shepherd Faustulus found Romulus and Remus after they were abandoned along the Tiber River. The entire series of the cathedral pavement will be examined, starting from the entrance, the “purest temple of the Virgin Mary” (as the carved words near the main door say – the cathedral is devoted to the Virgin Mary), the scenes inspired by the Classical era (Sibyls, Hermes Trismegistos, the Greek philosophers Socrates and Crates), the episodes from Jewish history to the salvation by Jesus Christ. Christ is never pictured on the pavement.
Visit: Museo dell’Opera del Duomo; Facciatone; Piazza del Duomo; Duomo Crypt and Baptistry.
Lecture: Takes up the previous class’ theme of the Sienese foundation myth as a Renaissance creation linking the city to Rome and from it as starting point turns back to the beginning of the course in examining the real historical origins of the city of Siena, which refer to the pre-Roman civilization of the Etruscans.
Visit: Ancient Hospital of Santa Maria della Scala: Etruscan and Archeological Museum, “Carnaio”, (underground Medieval hospital common burial, as during 1348 Black death times)and other relevant underground locations.
Cultural studies: the ‘mythical’ Tuscany, the legend of Etruscan Siena and its literary representation in Anglo-American culture (D.H. Lawrence’s Etruscan Places).
Week 11. All’antica Private Patronage in the Domestic Setting (Siena). Building History in the Domestic Setting: Palaces and Memory
Lecture: This class turns from the public sphere to that of the domestic interior, and private residence. The principal object of the discussion is the emergence of a new residential type during the Renaissance: the family palace. This new architectural typology was defined by its use of classical architectural typologies, and thus relied on the growing erudition of artists, who had an increasingly developed knowledge of Roman ruins. This class will focus also on its cultural background and specific semantic connotations.
Visit: Piazza Salimbeni (collection of the Banca Monte dei Paschi) and Rocca Salimbeni. The urban domestic environment, viewed both as a facade and a more intimate interior, models and prototypes from the eleventh to the sixteenth century; this visit offers a chronologically ordered analysis of the development of that residential type, starting from the Castellare to the Palazzo nobiliare (noble family palace).
Cultural studies: Siena, the past in the present. History and Identity and its literary representations. The Palio: from Kate Simon’s Italy: The Places in Between.
Week 12. All’antica Private Patronage in the Domestic Setting (Siena)
Lecture: Continuing from the previous class, we consider the architectural exterior ordering of the palace, and the material goods that enriched these. Inspired by classical models, we will examine the finest example of Florentine renaissance palazzos in Siena, as perfect applications of ideals and guidelines by Renaissance theorist Leon Battista Alberti.
Visit: Palazzo, Piazza e Loggia Piccolomini, Palazzo delle Papesse, Palazzo Chigi Saracini. The visit continues from the previous week, and may conclude with the remarkable interior of the Palazzo Chigi Saracini, an interesting example of a collector’s home.
Cultural studies: Siena and Florence, the past in the present (rivalry and identity) and its literary representations.
Week 13. Class content review, final research paper/project give in, oral presentation and written final exam
Course-pack.
Anne Fortier, Juliet
Supplementary material to complement class work may be given by the instructor in order to improve and enrich students’ comprehension.
Amanda Bruttini was born in Siena in 1970. She graduated with a degree in Oriental Philosophy and Medicine, with a specialization in Indo-Tibetan Philosophy and Medicine, completed in India where she lived and did research for nine years. Following further anthropological research, she has completed and conducted several fieldwork seminars and courses in the USA (California and New York), Mexico, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Nepal, Pakistan and Europe (Italy, Spain, England, Austria, Switzertland). She then graduated, with honours, for the second time, from the Università degli Studi di Siena with a degree in Foreign Literatures (English, Anglo-American and Ispano-American) and Cultural Studies with a thesis on Shakespearian connections and the concept of identity in Marina Warner. She has a PhD from the Santa Chiara College di Siena in Literary Theory, Translation and Cultural Studies, specializing in Post-Colonial Comparative Studies and Anthropology. She currently collaborates with the Università di Siena as a tutor, researcher and lecturer. She has taught for U.S. study abroad programs in Siena (including University of California, Lewis and Clark College, and Swarthmore College). Some of her research project, other than the publication of different scientific articles and her thesis, pay particular attention to the artistic, literary and anthropological branches of Cultural Studies referring to the fields of identity, memory, hybridization, and the oral-written relationship. She also continues her work on the practice on re-writing (Shakespeare) and of travel writing. Her main interest is to study the means of power and see how it is reflected in the various arts, in the different historical periods.