A Shift from Materials to Skills Writing Assignment

A Shift from Materials to Skills Writing Assignment

Assignment: Choose one of the questions below and write a 3-4 page, double spaced essay. For your answer draw from lectures, discussion sections, the assigned readings, and the Met timeline when pertinent. Use MLA in text citation for references or quotations drawn from the assigned readings. MLA in-text citation style uses the author’s last name and the page number from which the quotation or paraphrase is taken, for example: (Smith 163). For the Met timeline, include a footnote with the http link where you found the idea or quote.

Approach: Again, we are looking for composed and thoughtful essays with clearly defined theses and points of view. Please underline your thesis. Remember to use the question as a starting point, but do not simply restate it as your thesis. Choose your examples of art and architecture carefully to make sure they work together in your essay to help develop your thesis. Think hard about what the question is asking you to demonstrate. Remember that even if the question does not explicitly ask you for historical information, we assume that you will frame your answer with the relevant background information that you have learned in class. The questions assume that in answering, you will provide the historical context, drawing on the required readings when pertinent. But the questions now also ask you to use visual analysis more explicitly to provide evidence for your arguments.

Questions:

#1 How does Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good and Bad Government in Siena’s Town Hall function as a work of political theory? In your essay you should discuss in depth at least three visual details in the fresco (these can be either individual walls or portions of walls, or smaller details such as individual figures or sets of figures).

#2 How do we know that in 15th c. Florence the focus of both patrons and artists shifted from materials to skill and why did this shift occur? Your essay should include an in depth discussion of three examples of works of art that illustrate and explain the terms of this shift.

#3 How do artist’s self-portraits reflect the changing status of the arts and artists in the Renaissance? Your essay should have in depth discussion of two examples of artist’s self-portraits that illustrate how the issue of status was attacked through portraiture.

#4 The literary theorist Stephen Greenblatt used the term “self-fashioning” to describe the uniquely Renaissance focus on constructing an identity and public persona according to a set of socially acceptable standards, and the conscious effort to imitate a praised model in society. How does the new genre of portraiture that emerged in the Renaissance reflect these ideas? Your essay should discuss in depth three different examples of portraiture.

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