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. 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...

Esteban Nigro

Magna Graecia is the name given in Antiquity to the territory occupied by Greek settlers in the south of the Italian peninsula and in Sicily in the 8th century BC. And just as we all sometimes must name things provisionally, the Greeks also initially called many new cities “neapoli...

Dr. Joe Luzzi

The Italians have a saying traduttore, traditore – that is, the “translator" of a book can often be a “traitor” to it if he fails to capture both its letter and its spirit! In this in-person event, Joseph Luzzi, the Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature at Bard College, will joi...

Dr. Jeremy Wasser

In the North African city of Alexandria, sometime between the 2nd and 4th centuries CE, a Christian scholar put pen to parchment and produced a manuscript known as the Physiologus. The title of the work speaks directly to the identity of this unknown author and is often transla...

Dr. Laurinda Dixon

Traveling to Italy in search of art and architecture is a great adventure. Here travelers can still experience art in situ – that is, where and how it was intended to be seen, rather than hanging isolated on museum walls. Much of Italy’s Renaissance heritage has been lovingly...

Dr. Sally J. Cornelison

Just in time for Valentine’s Day! The theme of love, as well as its possible pitfalls, was represented in a variety of artistic media during the Italian Renaissance. This webinar will explore paintings and frescoes created to celebrate marriage and encourage procreation, ...

Dr. Daniel Zolli

Even in an age filled with versatile artists, Donatello (1386-1466) stands out for his uncommon range. Though best known for the outsize body of marble and bronze sculpture that he produced over a sixty-year career (his bronze David remains a standard introduction to fifteenth-c...

Dr. Meghan Callahan

Women artists tended not to become sculptors, as the more physical work of sculpting was seen as “man’s work.” However, since the 16th century and into the 21st, women carved marble and designed bronzes.
This talk will cover the art of sculptors Anne Seymour Damer (1748–1828)...

Dr. Paolo Alei

This lecture will virtually take you on a pilgrimage to the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome as envisioned by Bernini in the 17th century. We will ideally walk on the Bridge of Castel Sant’Angelo and through Piazza San Pietro to reach the glorious Baldacchino, and finally the Cathe...

Ross King

For centuries, the tale of Romulus and Remus — twins abandoned at birth, nursed by a she-wolf, and fated to found the city of Rome in 753 BCE — has captured the imagination of historians and storytellers alike. But how much of this legend is true? And what does archaeology reveal about...

With Wayne Kalayjian

Join structural engineer and the author of Saving Michelangelo’s Dome, Wayne Kalayjian, for a fascinating discussion of two defining and titanic landmarks of the Italian Renaissance: the domes at Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence (by Filippo Brunelleschi) and St. Peter’s Bas...

Leon Battista Alberti in Exile: Tracing the path to the First Modern Book on Painting
Dr. Peter Weller

The prodigy poet, playwright, architect, painter, and humanist savant Leon Battista Alberti emerged in 1435 with “De pictura” ['On Painting'], the modern era's earliest discourse on Western art...

Dr. Niall Atkinson

In 1427 the fiscal crisis of the Florentine economy caused by its disastrous wars against the duchy of Milan prompted it to make a massive overhaul of is taxation policies. The resulting Florentine Census (Catasto) would become the first modern taxation policy in the Western w...