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The Italian Renaissance Villa
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Begins: Thursday 11 February 2027
Until: Thursday 11 March 2027
(11:00 to 13:00 each Thursday) - Online Zoom Event, link details will be emailed to attendees on the morning of the event
- Lecturer: Dorigen Caldwell
In this course we will take an in-depth look at the villa culture that emerged in Italy during the later fifteenth century, and developed into a major focus of artistic patronage in the Cinquecento. Informed by both the writings and the remains of classical antiquity, the villa was framed as a place of contemplation and leisure, a counterpoint to the political and financial affairs associated with the city palace. From the country retreats of Lorenzo il Magnifico, to the papal villas of Renaissance Rome, and the grandiose estates built in the Veneto by Andrea Palladio, the villa became a signifier of wealth, status and classical learning. A focus on the villa as a type will allow us to explore not only architecture, painting, sculpture and garden designs, but the different cultural contexts of Medicean Florence, Papal Rome and the Venetian terraferma.
Week 1 – Villa Culture and Lorenzo de’ Medici
Week 2 – Popes and Bankers: the suburban villa in early 16thC Rome
Week 3 – Later Papal villas: Villa Giulia, the Casino of Pius IV and the Tower of the Winds
Week 4 – Cardinals’ Retreats from Bagnaia to Tivoli
Week 5 – Andrea Palladio and the Classical Paradigm
Lecturer
Dr Dorigen Caldwell is Senior Lecturer in Italian Renaissance Art at Birkbeck, University of London, having gained her doctorate at the Warburg Institute. She previously taught at UCL and the American University in Rome, and continues to contribute to the V&A Academy short courses. Dorigen has published in numerous academic journals, including the Burlington Magazine, Renaissance Studies, Art History and the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. She specialises in Italian art of the later sixteenth century, and is currently writing a book entitled Piety, Patronage and Politics in Early Modern Rome.