City by City: The Renaissance North of the Alps

Excellent six week online course form the National Gallery looking at the history and art of the main centres in Northern Europe in the Renaissance.

Jo Walton took us clearly though the period splitting the lectures geographically starting with France focusing on Paris, Dijon and the Loire, moving on to Bruges and Flanders, the court of the Holy Roman Empire, Nuremberg and Durer, London and the Hanseatic League and finishing with Antwerp. This order did take us on a rough chronology of the time as well with some overlap.

In each case Walton blended the history of the area and the art it produced showing how the two often went hand in hand for example when rulers used art to promote and control their image or competed with each other to commissioned the richest and best work. She tired things together clearly so I now have a much better overview of the history of the period although I’m not sure I will ever understand the intricacies of the Hapsburgs. Despite this being a period I studied at university I realised there are huge gaps in my knowledge and I wonder if I might have been better to approach the subject more visually even back then.

Walton produced good handouts for each week with an overview of the themes, a very useful who’s who, a definition of any technical terms which would come up, a book list, the usual slide list as well as some options for homework for the next week. I’m afraid to say to say I didn’t so the homework but it was a nice idea.

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