NEW Course 17
Carlo Crivelli and His Contemporaries: A Different Perspective on Fifteenth-Century Italian Art
Dr Amanda Hilliam
Summer School – Online
Monday 5 – Friday 9 July 2021
£395
Course description
Lauded by the artist Audrey Flack as a “Gothic, Baroque Super-Realist” in 1981, the Venetian painter Carlo Crivelli (c.1430-95) resists straightforward categorisation. His paintings merge traditional techniques such as the gold ground with witty effects of pictorial illusion, and as such possess both ‘medieval’ and ‘Renaissance’ characteristics. It therefore comes as little surprise that art historians since Vasari have neglected and misinterpreted his work. However, Crivelli is now witnessing a moment of recognition: a series of recent exhibitions and publications have shed new light on this most daring and technically skilled Venetian painter.
This course takes a broad view of Crivelli’s work. We will examine his artistic origins in the Veneto and the reasons for his great success in the Marches on the Adriatic coast. We will explore his work in relation to that of his contemporaries, including Mantegna and Cosimo Tura, and we will consider his innovative responses to the devotional needs of his patrons, who were largely Franciscan and Dominican friars. Finally, paying close attention to the physical qualities of the paintings themselves, we will ask what makes Crivelli’s work distinctive. His intelligent use of ornament and play on spatial dimensions deliberately counter naturalism, forcing us to reconsider existing narratives of fifteenth-century Italian art and to map out a wider context for Crivelli and his contemporaries.