The Department of Early Modern Art History offers insight into the broad spectrum of media, genres, and materials that characterize early modern European art and material culture in a global context. Seminars and lectures offer students introductions into the history, theory, and historiography of art historical and interdisciplinary early modern studies (15th-19th century). The Chair’s emphasis lies on questions posed within the frameworks of visual studies and the anthropology of art: how do images function in sacred and profane contexts? Which specific tasks are delegated to art and objects at different historical moments?
The course of study includes established fields of early modern art history (Italian Renaissance, cultic object and image, questions pertaining to the relationship between image and body, political iconography) as well as newer topics related to building a global mode of writing art history (art and expansion, global transfer of images, transcultural networks). Alongside Italian art, the Chair offers students a focus on the arts of Portugal and Spain in the age of empire, as well as on the Netherlands and outside of Europe (especially in the context of Portuguese trade and expansion). The Chair works to develop methodologies and approaches based on the objects of investigation within the field of early modern art. Critical interrogation of historical and contemporary methods of art history, therefore, plays a key role in the Chair’s pedagogy. Collaboration with museums and international research programs is greatly encouraged and institutionally supported.
