ACADEMIC SEMESTER IN FLORENCE

Lucia Giardino
19th Century European Art

The European Nineteenth century was a time of colonial expansion and development of new methods in industry, farming, financial markets, and government. Constitutions and parliamentary systems weakened monarchs and the church and offered the vote to broader populations. Thinkers such as Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot sought to use reason and scientific method in their Inquiries. The idea of spontaneity, direct expression, and natural feelings began to transform the arts, encouraging artists to explore the extremes in human nature, from heroism to insanity and despair. The period was characterized by rapid and violent changes in the society and in the arts, and it eventually brought to the rise of Modernism.

The course starts with the analysis of French and Italian art during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic period. We will concentrate on the perception that the foreign visitors had of Florence, and how this perception influenced and had repercussions on the development of Italian XIX century art, architecture and aesthetics. We will treat the main themes of Romanticism (the heroic era of Nationalism and Democracy; Dreams and Nightmares; Nature and Landscape; the Journey and the fascination of the East), and movements, such as the Italian Purism and the English Pre-Raphaelites, that varyingly interpreted some of its traits. The course will continue with the study of artists, who, in different degrees investigated the "real" and opened to the "modern world" - Social Realists, Macchiaioli, Impressionists - and it will conclude with the Post-Impressionists.

The consequences of Modernism in the city of Florence will be analyzed in detail and fieldtrips to specific site and museums will be accordingly planned.

Lucia Giardino / Biography

After two scholarships in Amsterdam (NL) and in London (UK), Lucia Giardino graduated in History of Art at the University of Florence with a thesis on the cross-relationship between music and visual art during the decade 1963-1973.

In 2004 she was a PhD candidate at the University of Chieti. She is presently working on the thesis, centered on figure of the photo-reporter Enrico Ciriello, of the post-graduate Specialization in History of Art at the University of Siena.

Lucia Giardino has been teaching Art History to undergraduate students since 1999. She lectured on Nineteenth Century Landscape at the University of Chieti, and in Fall 2005, she was awarded with a temporary position at the University of North Carolina, in Chapel Hill. She holds a regular position as art history professor in an American university located in Florence, where she mainly teaches European Modern Art and Contemporary Art from 1960's up to the latest generations . Since 2003 she also teaches the course Renaissance Art at the Italian Courts of the Fifteenth Century and carries on researches on the same topic.

Other professional experiences include the collaboration with the educational department of the Acton Collection of Villa La Pietra, property of the New York University in Florence.