CSCH.3002 01 DECODING DAVINCI
Mary Magdalene and the Art of Northern Renaissace
Course Description:
"This interdisciplinary seminar takes as its point of departure Dan Brown’s contemporary fictional thriller, The DaVinci Code (Anchor/Doubleday 2003). Students are expected to read the book over the summer, before the course begins. During the course, students will be introduced to a wide array of primary texts as well as visual materials that will help them come to a more sophisticated, critical understanding of some of the factual and interpretive assertions made by Dan Brown with regard to church history, the historical identity of Saint Mary Magdalene, her relationship with Christ, as well as the life and work of Leonardo da Vinci.
In the first part of the course, students will read sections of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, as well as other Early Christian writings, not only to come to a better understanding of the historical identity of Mary Magdalene, but also of the place of these different types of writings in the history of the early Early Church. The debate about the Magdalene’s identity – was she or wasn’t she a reformed prostitute? -- will be followed through the 16th Century and into the modern era.
In the second part of the course, students will be introduced to the discipline of art history -- and will explore how the life of Mary Magdalene was given visual form by artists in the Christian West. Class discussions and readings will encourage students to examine relationships between text and image, as well as to appreciate how the feminist critique of art history allows for new types of questions to be asked about images of women. They will then be introduced to the life and work of one of the best known, but perhaps least-understood, artists of the Italian Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci. Class discussions and readings will allow for an in-depth analysis of the da Vinci’s oeuvre, training, stylistic development, and importance to the development of the High Renaissance style in Italy. Students will read Leonardo’s own writings on the subjects of art, the paragone, and the status of the artist. Students will also read the work of several authors, each of whom in one way or another “invents” da Vinci, contributing to the myths and legends surrounding the life and work of the artist, and blurring the line between fact and fiction, from the sixteenth century biography written by Giorgio Vasari, to Sigmund Freud’s famous psychobiography Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood." Prof. Rafanelli's course description.
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