Reading Art: Learning about Society from Paintings
One of my favorite strands to integrate into history courses is art history. This is an especially prevalent strand in my History of Modern Europe courses: Revolutions in Religion and Reason and Revolutions and Modernity. The essential questions which I am asking my students to consider throughout their work related to this strand are: How does the study of art help us understand the perspective of people in history? What is the benefit of gaining their perspective?
Within my unit on the Renaissance is one of my favorite assignments, created long before me by one of my colleagues and many times over modified and tweaked throughout my years using it, our Renaissance Art Analysis Presentation. Through this assignment, I teach students how to “read” classical art. We examine paintings on a multitude of levels, from the surface scene and styles used to the core message from the patron to their community. Our study of the art begins with learning about Renaissance society and politics—especially patronage, followed by the intellectual movement of Humanism, then the roles of race, class, and gender in society, and finally with the actual techniques and innovations employed by the artists to create their works.
After each student has selected a separate piece of art—mostly paintings, but if a student is particularly interested in sculpture, then exceptions are made—we begin our analysis. Their end goals is to present, through either a speech or video, their findings to the class, allowing the study of one piece of art to become knowledge of a wide collection. Guided by a set of tiered questions, students are led deep into the study of their art piece. This project has long been a student favorite, one often remembered to me by past students, and it has inspired several students to eventually pursue art history degrees.
Below you will find: the assignment sheet, the grading rubric, an example analysis of Botticelli’s Pallas and Centaur presented as an example to students, and a student video from several years ago.
Pallas and Centaur by Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), painted circa 1480-1485, likely commissioned for the wedding of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, cousin of Lorenzo ‘the Magnificent’, to Semiramide Appiani in 1482.