Art Party: Renaissance Art, Costume, and Celebration

Catalog description

Celebrations such as festivals, ceremonies, and masquerades played an important role in the crafting of cultural identity in the early modern period (1400-1800). Parties promoted the creation of new and exciting artworks and gave artists license to experiment. In this course, students explore the artistic, architectural, and sartorial aspects of celebration. Situated in both courtly and community contexts - including royal weddings with elaborate fireworks displays and folk carnivals filled with costume, song, and dance - we uncover the ideologies embedded in large-scale celebrations that often occurred in urban spaces. We interrogate the term ‘Renaissance’ and expand beyond the European contexts often associated with it, noting how celebrations connected global cultures in the interwoven world of the 15th-18th centuries. Through paintings, popular prints, masks and costume, ephemeral architecture, fireworks displays, cultures of feasting and drinking, and more, we explore how celebrations defined/defied social norms and upheld/subverted political narratives.