HISTORY OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN ART

Academic year
2024/2025 Syllabus of previous years
Official course title
STORIA DELL'ARTE PALEOCRISTIANA SP.
Course code
FM0215 (AF:512509 AR:292366)
Modality
On campus classes
ECTS credits
6
Degree level
Master's Degree Programme (DM270)
Educational sector code
L-ART/01
Period
3rd Term
Course year
1
Moodle
Go to Moodle page
The class is included among the similar or supplementary training activities of the Master's Degree "History of Arts and Conservation of Artistic Heritage" (programme: "Medieval and Byzantine"). The course aims to deepen the knowledge of the various forms of expression of early Christian art (architecture, sculpture, mosaics, sumptuary art).
- Knowledge and understanding: assimilation of the notions, reflections and concepts transmitted during the lessons;
- Ability to apply knowledge and understanding: to be able to bring back the works of art and the artistic phenomena treated in class in the socio-cultural and spatial-temporal areas of belonging;
- Ability to judge: to be able to grasp the most significant aspects of each work of art, whether they belong to the formal, iconographic, iconological, symbolic, socio-cultural, aesthetic fields;
- Communication skills: knowing how to describe works of art and artistic phenomena treated in class using the specific terminology of the discipline; be able to express clearly, and grammatically correct, notions, reflections and concepts acquired during the lessons;
- Learning skills: at the end of the course the student must be able to provide a reading at the same time analytical and critical of the works of art and artistic phenomena treated, integrating the knowledge acquired during the lessons to read the texts indicated.
No prerequisite is required.
The course aims to deepen the knowledge of Early Christian art through the analysis of the material heritage of Late Ancient and Early Medieval Rome, an heritage of essential significance for the study of the artistic production of the Early Christian age. The study of the still existing material evidence will be constantly flanked by the analysis of the sources that transmit the memory of important lost works.
The lectures will retrace, in a diachronic sense, the artistic seasons that occurred in Rome between the 4th and 7th centuries.
The main focus will be on monumental evidence in the fields of architecture (ecclesiastical buildings with a central plan and basilica, baptisteries, mausoleums), sculpture (sarcophagi and liturgical furnishings) and decoration (floor and wall mosaics, paintings, opus sectile). The technical-execution methods, material components, iconographic themes, formal aspects, patronage and function will be examined in order to provide students with the necessary tools to understand the language that innervated Christian art in its first phase of formation.
The oral exam will focus on the contents of the lessons and compulsory texts (see above, "Reference texts").
Classroom-taught with PowerPoint projection containing documentary and illustrative material, specially prepared by the teacher.
Use of the Moodle multimedia platform, for the provision of documentary and illustrative materials in pdf format.
Italian
Course attendance is strongly recommended.
oral
Definitive programme.
Last update of the programme: 08/11/2024