3.0

Average Course Rating

The lavish feasts and dynamic jousts associated with medieval and Renaissance celebrations have long been subjects of fascination in popular culture and will be familiar to anyone who has watched House of the Dragon or attended a modern “Renaissance” fair. But what did these celebrations mean in their original context? This course aims to take “play” seriously by examining the wide-ranging material culture of courtly and civic festivities in Germany and the Netherlands from 1400 to 1600. The art created for festive events ranges from panel paintings and tapestries to table fountains and drinking vessels made of expensive and “exotic” materials. Artists were also responsible for the design and construction of ephemeral architecture for triumphal entries as well as the festival books that commemorated them. But these works did more than just facilitate fun; they were tools of communication that made arguments about issues such as social class, identity, and power. They also engaged with the geopolitical and intellectual developments of the period. There are drinking vessels, for instance, made of nautilus shells, Seychelles nuts, or bezoars, whose materials and construction offer insight into global exploration and European colonialism as well as medicinal practices. Automata, machines akin to premodern “robots,” frequently provided entertainment for guests at aristocratic banquets by showing off the latest technological developments. While the study of any historical event faces the daunting task of recuperating what has been lost to time, this rings especially true for the study of festivities. In this course, we turn to these celebrations’ artistic and material traces to illuminate the past. As object-based learning is an important component of this course, we will visit several local collections including the Walters Art Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the National Gallery in Washington, and Johns Hopkins’ Special Collections.