Florence Program

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Heaven, Hell and Purgatory: The Relationship Between Italian Art and the Christian Religion

Instructor: Janet Smith
Elective course, 4 credits

Although artists have never been to Heaven, Hell or Purgatory, this has never stopped them from representing all three. This course will study the development in Italian art of depictions of these destinations for the Christian soul, from about 1250 to 1650.

Loggia della Signoria in Florence.

It will look at literary sources, such as the Apocalypse, Virgil’s Aeneid and particularly Dante’s Divine Comedy. Tombs, funerary chapels and funerary practices, relics, altarpieces, saints and their feast days, angels and demons, Last Judgements, and ceiling and dome paintings of the heavens are some of the topics students will investigate. Giotto, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Luca Signorelli and Michelangelo will be protagonists, but many other artists will play important parts. We will visit the small “Purgatory Museum” when we are in Rome.

Most of the classes will be on site and student power point presentations will pull the course together at the end. Some background in the history of Christianity and/or Italy would be helpful but is not required.