Notes regarding credits...

Fall 3= 30 hrs of instr
Fall 4/Win 2/Yr 2= 45 hrs of instr

Note: A placement exam will be required when you arrive on site.

Intermediate

This course is designed for students who have completed or tested out of a minimum of two semesters (or three quarters) of college-level French. However, students must take a placement exam to determine the course level into which they will be able to enroll.

Objectives:
1. To learn how to view, analyze, and understand an object of art.
2. To discover the major historical currents of art in France, from the 16th to the 19th century.
3. To place the artists and their masterpieces in the historic and artistic context of the era, to shed light on the relationship between art and literature.
4. To show the evidence of links between French art and that of the other countries in Europe.

Program (first semester):

16th Century: The French Renaissance
-The Fontainebleau School (Rosso, Primatice, Cellini, Jean Cousin, etc.) and mannerisms in art
-Development of portrait art: the Clouets, Corneille de Lyon, etc.
-Major sculptors: Jean Goujon, Germain Pilon, etc.
-the Second Fontainebleau School

17th Century: a religious century
-Caravage, Baroque art, realism and the use and light, and the French “caravagesques” painters
-Rubens in Luxembourg: the apotheosis of Baroque and color
-Classicism: Poussin, Champaigne, etc.
-Creation of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture
-The artists of Louis XIV: the royal yards (Versailles, Marly, etc.): Le Brun, Puget, etc.

Program (second semester):
18th Century: The Enlightenment
-Rocaille Art: new themes and the triumph of color: Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, etc.
-Chardin, from still-life painting to the “petit genre”
-The Diderot painters, art criticism: Chardin, Greuze and moral painting
-Revival of the Antiquity: David and Neoclassicism, the Revolution
-The Neoclassicism of the French Revolution

19th Century: The age of Revolution
-Persistence of Neoclassicism under the Empire: David and the neoclassical painters
-Pre-Romanticism and Romanticism: Gros, Gericault, Delacroix, etc.
-Ingres and the “ingresque” painters: idealism and academism
-Courbet and Realism
-Manet and Impressionism: Degas, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, etc.

Grading: 3 grades (a written or oral presentation, a final exam, and in-class participation)

Educational Tools: Slides, several visits to the Louvre

**This course can serve as excellent preparation for college-level art history studies**