Topic: Michelangelo and "Manenrism"

Although the history of the High Renaissance is much studied, art history students at all
levels have rarely had the opportunity to fully and adequately address the transition of Italian mid-
to-late 16th century art.  Therefore, Michelangelo and "Mannerism" will approach the subject
with a familiar frame of reference - the work of Michelangelo - and question the relation of a
problematic word (maniera), as it has been applied to the visual arts.  The course will include an
overview of the period, student presentations, and readings and discussions of both the standard
and recent scholarly writings on Michelangelo and the "Maniera," as it is coined by S.J. Freedberg
in his seminal books, Painting in Italy 1500-1600, (1st ed. 1971).  Regarding recent literature, we
will give special attention to a recently-published book, which is the first in almost thirty years to
give a connected account of the same subject: Marcia B. Hall's After Raphael: Painting in
Central Italy in the Sixteenth Century (1999).