ART 235: Pre-Modern Art History

In How to Read Bible Stories and Myths in Art, Patrick De Rynck explores the roots  of Western civilization from three different angles: He introduces the reader to the best-known stories from the Bible and mythology; he presents a selection of exquisite masterpieces by some of the world's greatest painters; and he shows the reader how these painters interpreted these famous scenes. Using the same highly visual approach that made his How to Read a Painting a popular success, De Rynck shows how artists portrayed the main subjects of Western art. Old Masters such as Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, and countless others rendered these stirring, poignant, bloodthirsty, and even erotic tales on panel or canvas, in the process creating a familiar way of visualizing our collective imagination.

Life, Myth, and Art in Ancient Rome celebrates the many achievements of Roman culture and delves into its dark side. Romans erected structures so well built and engineered that they still stand millennia later, yet these same buildings also showcased blood sports as public entertainment. Placing the art in its cultural context, the author covers themes that have long inspired the Western imagination, including the rise and fall of emperors, the life and death of the gladiator, the belief in omens and prophecy, and, ultimately, the establishment of Christianity.

As archetypes of human virtue and vice, the gods and heroes of ancient Greece and Rome have figured prominently in Western culture. In art, they have been portrayed time and time again, especially during the Renaissance, Baroque, and Neoclassical periods. The characters are each described in entries summarizing their distinctive stories, their special attributes, and the ways in which artists have depicted them. Each entry is richly illustrated with reproductions of works of art in which the god or hero is pictured, giving readers a chance to examine images of the character and to understand the work of art better. The informative guide first surveys the pantheon of the Greco-Roman world, then focuses on characters from the Trojan War and The Odyssey. The next sections describe kings, philosophers, warriors, and other historical figures.

This book is a study of Ovid and his poetry as a cultural phenomenon, exploring the influence of Ovid on literature, especially English literature, but it also takes a wider perspective, including, for example, the visual arts. The essays cover the period from the twelfth century, when there was an upsurge of interest in Ovid, through to the decline in his fortunes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They are critical and comparative in approach and collectively give a detailed sense of Ovid's importance in Western culture. Topics covered include Ovid's influence on Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Dryden, T. S. Eliot, the myths of Daedalus and Icarus and Pygmalion, and the influence of Ovid's poetry on art.