Syllabus:
1) Structures - geography, religion, people
2) Romanesque beginnings
3) Late Romanesque or Early Gothic?
4) Linear style
5) Art and court of Charles IV.
6) Beautiful style
7) Art and the Hussite revolution
8) Late Gothic art
9) New inspirations - Renaissance vs. Gothic
10) Older and new traditions
11) Excursion: Agnes Cloister
12) Excursion: Strahov Monastery
The course will introduce the history of Czech art from the advent of Christianity to the late Renaissance (end of the 16th century). Emphasis will be placed especially on European context: the reception of foreign forms and designs, their development in the Bohemian and Moravian environment, as well as dissemination of the concepts with Czech origin back to Europe. Attention will be paid to both iconographic and formal issues of the art as well as its social context. The aim of the course is to offer a general overview of the visual culture of medieval and renaissance Czech lands accessible even to these students who do not have to have a deeper knowledge of
Czech history and affairs. Art production will, therefore, be conceived primarily in a comparative way with regard to the current way of presentation of these artefacts and monuments and the issue of their interpretation within the contemporary art historical discourse. An integral part of the course will be excursions to Prague's galleries and other monuments, where participants will have selected works of art from the autopsy and discuss their form and contemporary presentation.