Content

PART ONE: ANTIQUITY

1. Background: Eastern and Mediterranean roots of Western art. The Near East and Egypt as creative focus: architectural and plastic arguments. Before Greece: the art of the Aegean cultures (Cyclades, Crete, Mycenae).

2. Greek art (6th century BC – 2nd century BC): Greek civilization: history and cultural patterns. Myths and Iconographic development. The archaic Greece and the creation of the architectural model. Painted ceramics. Sculpture: the progression of naturalism. The Classical era: religious architecture and monumental sculpture. Hellenism: monumental trends of the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC.

3. Roman art (3rd century BC- 3rd century AD): Precedents: Etruscan art and the importance of Hellenism as a substrate. Monumental and domestic architecture in the Republican era. Portraiture as an intentional paradigm. A historiographical vision of Roman painting: the Pompeian styles. Art of the Empire: architecture as a political expression (forums, temples, buildings for leisure, honorary arches). Evolution of figurative arts until the 3rd century AD.

PART TWO: LATE ANTIQUITY AND HIGH MIDDLE AGES

4. The art of Late Antiquity (4th-5th centuries): Historical context: late roman and post roman world in the West. Evolution of Roman architecture: palaces, basilicas. Christianity and new models of religious buildings. Visual arts: evolution and rethinking of Naturalism. The splendor of mosaic in architectural decoration. From Rome to Constantinople: architecture in the time of Justinian. The value of the sumptuary arts (miniature, ivory carving, metalwork).

 5. A look at the East (8th-15th centuries): Character and romanity of the Byzantine Empire. The iconoclastic period and the fight for images. The apogee of the empire in the Macedonian and Comnen era. Churches, monasteries, palaces. Mural decoration: techniques, iconography. Figurative arts: miniature, icon painting, sculpture, metalwork. Evolution of art in Late Byzantium. A panoramicapproach to Islamic art: Umayyad and Abbasid architecture. Specificities of Andalusian art: from the caliphate to taifa kingdoms. Decorative arts in medieval Islam.

6. The art of the West in Early Middle Ages (6th-10th centuries): The weight of the Late Antiquity inheritance in the art of the barbarian kingdoms: Visigoth Spain, Langobardic Italy, Merovingian Gaul. The Carolingian Empire and the cultural renovatio. Carolingian architecture and its iconographic values. A renewed splendor for sumptuary arts: miniature, ivory carving, metalwork. The art of the Asturian monarchy.

PART THREE: THE MEDIEVAL WEST

7. Romanesque art (11th-13th centuries): Significance and origins of Romanesque architecture around the year 1000. First Romanesque: a redefinition of High Medieval architecture and decoration. Cathedrals and monasteries in high Romanesque (ca. 1060 - 1150). Decorative sculpture as the dominant language. Luxury and sumptuousness inside the church: mural painting, liturgical furniture. The arts of the object (miniature, metalwork, textiles) and the role of women artists. A final explosion: late Romanesque and the 1200 style.

8. The Gothic (12th-15th centuries): The definition of the Gothic in the Île-de-France. New French cathedrals and their decoration. Other models: Italy, Germany, meridional Gothic. Arts of color: miniature, painting, stained glass. The crisis of the 14th century and the reformulation of medieval world. International Gothic and the splendor of the sumptuary arts (metalwork, enamels, fabrics). Late painting and sculpture: a new approach to Naturalism.