Dr. Dennis Romano

Dr. John Paoletti

Renaissance art is made to communicate ideas – social, political, religious, historical – to the viewer.  Of course, that raises issues of who is talking to whom and how should that address be structured.  That means that the intended viewer played (and still plays) a critical ...

Dr. Sally Cornelison

Today, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, food processors, and other appliances simplify the ever-present need to clean house and put food on the table, among other chores. This lecture explores moralizing and instructional treatises, paintings, prints, and the study of urban con...

with Quentin Hardy

Artificial Intelligence is powerful, futuristic, and a little scary. But away from the hype, it’s quite familiar, and closely tied to some of the most powerful themes and aspirations of the Renaissance: Imitation, perfection, classical learning and a new exploration of the wor...

Dr. Jeremy Wasser

A central tenet of the Christian faith is that Jesus was crucified by the Romans and died on the cross at Golgotha. The art of the Middle Ages and Renaissance is replete with representations of Christ’s Passion prior to the crucifixion and of Christ crucified including works by...

Dr. Fabrizio Ricciardelli

In Europe city-states developed following diverse origins. There were: 1) ancient roman cities; 2) new cities founded near castles; 3) new cities founded near monasteries; 4) cities built in hostile but naturally protected environment (like Venice); 5) settlements estab...

Prints for the People: How the Printing Press Revolutionized Renaissance Art and Thought

Dr. Laurinda Dixon

The invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-fifteenth century began an unprecedented technological revolution in the Western world. For the first time, books and ...

Love, Corruption, & Pursuit of the Oscar: Three Revolutionary Academy Nominated Italian Films From 1969/70

Dr. Peter Weller & Jordan Ledy

The Second World War leveled a fascist, then partisan Italy. Using real locations, a film movement emerged, now called Neorealism. However, we might just cal...

Disruptive technologies decimating big chunks of the economy. Social-media unrest. Fake news. Shady international dealings, and religious wars. And that's before we get to Da Vinci and Raphael. Yes, we're talking about the Renaissance, a time not only of great art and thought, but of technologica...

Dr. Gary Radke

Italians have always loved to eat—and show off what they’re eating—so join us in exploring how Renaissance Italians took dining to new heights. Even without tomatoes and cannellini beans (which were just being discovered in the Americas), Renaissance Italians set healthy tables th...

The Florentine Renaissance conjures images of beautiful frescoes and altarpieces, of snow-white marble statues in sinewy poses and the soaring dome of Santa Maria del Fiore—the handiwork of the city’s brilliant artists and architects. But equally if not more important for the centuries to follow ...

"It is neither easy nor agreeable to dredge this abyss of viciousness, and yet I think it must be done, because what could be perpetrated yesterday could be attempted again tomorrow…" writes Italian Jewish author Primo Levi in his well-known memoir of survival, If This is a Man (Se questo è un uo...

What do you think of when you hear the name Leonardo da Vinci – artist, inventor, Renaissance Man? But what about Leonardo as an anatomist, physiologist, cardiovascular researcher, or biomedical engineer?
Beginning around 1510, Leonardo had the opportunity to observe dissections by the great cont...

Renaissance artists’ fascination with the real world led them to explore and depict surprisingly engaging representations of ugly subjects, not just beautiful and idealizing ones. While many people maligned the unfortunate or ugly as evil, artists often found unrecognized beauty and meaning in im...

Five days before Italy’s official Dante Day on March 25, 2021, you can get a head start on the 700th anniversary celebrations by “meeting” the Supreme Poet himself, in a LIVE STREAM conversation DIRECT FROM FLORENCE, ITALY, hosted by Professor Eric Nicholson of Syracuse University Florence and NY...

Mention of Renaissance Florence tends to make us think of beautiful frescoes and altarpieces, of snow-white marble statues and Brunelleschi’s dome rising above the city’s cathedral. But Renaissance Florence had other heroes, too: manuscript hunters, teachers, scribes, scholars, librarians, and bo...

The extraordinary art collection of Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1577-1633), housed in the famous Villa Borghese in Rome, was assembled and commissioned according to the concept of paragone. Based on the famous simile by poet Horace ut pictura poesis (painting is like poetry) in antiquity and theo...

Mafia-type organizations in Italy continue to not only survive but thrive in the present day despite the attempts by the Italian State to combat the phenomenon. One of the major obstacles to fighting the mafia is the persistence of social acceptance and support for these organizations in communit...

The Renaissance created innovations in finance, commerce, and the power of a personal brand. Ideas of Credit, Faith, and Fortune all took on double-edged meanings that are with us today - and explain why the face of an unknown man by Botticelli sold for $90 million this year.
Quentin Hardy is the...

among the few masterpieces left to us by Leonardo da Vinci. Yet not much is known about the painting. Furthermore, for over 500 years, it was believed that the brownish monochrome look of the Adoration was the work of Leonardo. That is, until Maurizio Seracini’s in-depth scientific analysis of 20...

With Susan Jaques

In September 1778, Russia’s art-loving tsarina Catherine the Great whisked a letter off to her Rome art dealer.: “I will make a vow to St. Raphael that I will have loggias built whatever the cost and will place the copies in them…I will have neither peace nor repose until this ...

Dr. Paolo Alei

This webinar lecture will lead you into the mysterious meander of subterranean Naples. We will explore the so-called terre sante (holy lands), namely underground cemeteries, where for centuries Neapolitans have amassed dead bodies especially in times of pandemics. The Cemetery of ...

Dante has been honored for centuries as il Sommo Poeta (the Supreme Poet). But was he also il Sommo Dottore (the Supreme Doctor)? Although there is no firm evidence that Dante ever formally attended university, this gap in his education did not prevent him from having a deep understanding of comp...

Ross King

Why does virtually every city, town and village in Italy have a monument to Giuseppe Garibaldi? Ross King, author of The Shortest History of Italy, will look at the role of Garibaldi and others in the Risorgimento, the dramatic and pivotal period when the Italian peninsula - divided in...