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 ...

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...

Dr. Jeremy Wasser

This story begins with two of the great masters of the Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti.

On a page in his sketchbook now known as the Codex Atlanticus, Leonardo da Vinci noted down a highly unusual experience. He claimed to remember from when he wa...

Dr. Joe Luzzi

For centuries, especially during the Enlightenment and the Romantic Age, European travelers from England, France, and many other nations would travel to Italy for extensive periods to explore the riches of Italian art and culture. In this seminar, Joseph Luzzi, the Asher B. Edelman...

Dr. Laurinda Dixon

"Feeling blue?", "Down in the dumps?", or "In a bad humour?" Most people have expressed these sentiments at one time or another in their lives. But these words once described a real medical disorder, "melancholia," ruled by the planet Saturn and the element of earth. Aristot...

Dr. Sally J. Cornelison

Description: Some of the most important Italian late medieval and Renaissance churches, chapels and shrines were built to house the remains of saints such as Francis of Assisi or images of the Virgin Mary that became the focus of popular devotions because of the miracles ...

The Enlightened Man from the West: Matteo RIcci's Extraordinary Mission to 'Open' China

Dr. Balbina Hwang

In 1582, Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit missionary and polymath from Macerata (Italy) arrived in Macao, the only place in all of China that foreigners were allowed to visit and inhabit at the time....

Dr. Wayne Kalayjian

Join structural engineer Wayne Kalayjian, author of Saving Michelangelo’s Dome, for a fascinating discussion on Renaissance art, Enlightenment thinking, and the birth of modern engineering practice.

In 1742, when the legendary dome atop St. Peter’s Basilica—designed by arti...

Dr. John Paoletti

Siena’s greatest impact on the history of art occurred in the 13th through the 15th centuries. During this time the city’s painting, sculpture and architecture constantly reinforced ideas of history as a determinant for the future, of religion – places, ceremonies, institutions...

Dr. Gary Radke

The history of Florentine Renaissance art is full of famous competitions, but collaboration was essential, too.  Learn how artists and patrons worked with and against one another to get the best from one another. Examples will range from the early fifteenth to sixteenth century, i...