art_history
Art and Art History

Learning Tuscany: Art and Culture in Italy – Summer 2010

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Study Abroad Office

Priority Deadline: December 1

Application Deadline: February 15

Have questions about the application process? Read the Study Abroad FAQ or Email Erica Katz, Study Abroad Coordinator


The Learning Tuscany program exposes deserving students to art and culture first-hand. Students are given the opportunity to be ambassadors from the United States and Texas, sharing their experiences with students and citizens of Italy. Many make connections that continue to exist today, and many have cited this experience as the most important of their academic careers. Our program is one of the foremost programs of its kind in the United States, and has launched international careers of our alumni. The program has trained students from all four of our divisions (Studio Art, Art History, Design, and Visual Art Studies) and students from other majors.

In Italian culture, life and art are inseparable. Countless examples illustrate this—the still-life quality of window displays in Florence, the artisanal care taken by a Sienese stoneworker replacing part of a medieval byway, the sculpted harmony of the Tuscan countryside. We cannot experience these essential qualities of Italian life in a classroom. Only with time and careful observation can we begin to absorb the richness and rhythm of life, and art, in Italy.

This summer program focuses on the cities and landscapes of Tuscany, and emphasis rests upon understanding the region in which the program is located. All students live in the historic facility of Santa Chiara in the town of Castiglion Fiorentino. They take an art history course and a studio course taught by faculty from the UT Department of Art and Art History. Group discussions and visits to other cities, such as Florence, Siena and Rome, serve to frame student experiences within a broader view of Italy. The integrated approach of the program balances carefully designed trips with work in small groups in order to explore the forces that shaped the Italian city and landscape. Students learn local history, which at Castiglion Fiorentino reaches back to Etruscan times, and live and move among the buildings of past cultures.

Collage of three photos of students in Tuscany

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Additional Images (pdf, 5MB)

Lawrence McFarland's website, containing images from past Learning Tuscany programs

Student Audio Interviews, Part 1
Length: 31 minutes, 7MB

Interview Transcript (pdf)

Student Audio Interviews, Part 2
Length: 38 minutes, 8MB

Interview Transcript (pdf)

Ann Johns, Learning Tuscany Program Director, has created a series of podcasts that student participants can listen to while visiting certain venues (such as the Sistine Chapel). There are sixteen podcasts in this series, with more to come. Short previews of two of them are below.

Learning Tuscany Podcast Series: Sistine Chapel
Length: 1.5 minute, 1MB

Podcast Transcript (pdf)

Learning Tuscany Podcast Series: Uffizi Gallery
Length: 1.5 minute, 1MB

Podcast Transcript (pdf)

Program Information

Learning Tuscany (or program code 353004) at the Study Abroad Office

Illustrated FAQ (pdf)

Leaflet (pdf)
(program overview, application steps and deadlines, costs, etc.)

Program Itinerary (pdf)

Program Faculty

Dr. Ann Johns, Program Director; Lecturer, Art History

Lawrence McFarland, Professor, Studio Art.

Program Curriculum 2010

Program Curriculum (pdf)

ARH 374
Art and the Spectator in Medieval and Renaissance Art
Dr. Ann Johns

In Tuscany, one of the first things we notice about so much of the art and the architecture is that it demands our participation. We need to walk through the space of Siena's gothic cathedral, move around the sculptural drama of a Baroque ensemble by Bernini, and observe how paintings, left in their original environments, command our attention and instill a sense of wonder. In other words, the experience is very different from the way we learn art history in Austin, in a classroom, projected on a flat screen, and systematically ordered and arranged by your professor and your textbook. Art in context gives us a much clearer sense of the original intent of the artist and patron; it's closer to our own contemporary notion of installation art, as it invites us to contemplate relationships between painting, sculpture, architecture, time, and the viewer.

In this course, we will focus on the rich tradition of both Medieval and Renaissance art and architecture in central Italy. Florence, Siena, Rome: these cities and others will be our classrooms. In Florence, we'll explore the long tradition of “speaking statues”; the city commissioned public sculpture on an unheard-of level, and this army of Biblical figures and saints demands our attention at every turn throughout the great Renaissance city. In medieval Siena, we'll observe the city's complex, almost magical relationship with the Virgin Mary, and we'll see examples of paintings that were created to aid and assist the city in governance, in war and peace, and in everyday life. And the entire city of Rome—where we spend 5 days—is a non-stop spectacle, from astonishing ancient Roman ruins to evocative medieval mosaics, Michelangelo's dazzling Sistine Ceiling, the arresting Baroque drama of Caravaggio and Bernini, and finally to the more visceral drama of contemporary Roman life, played out in the streets and piazzas of this great city.

For this course, we will focus on seminar-style discussions, on-site presentations, post-field trip analyses, and group projects based on works of art in our own hometown of Castiglion Fiorentino. In the first 2 weeks, we will review the essentials of the history of art in the region of Tuscany, and we will also read Richard Turner's Renaissance Florence, along with selected readings (posted on Blackboard) relating to elements of spectacle and viewer participation in the art of Medieval and Renaissance Italy. On alternating days, we'll be traveling to Florence, Siena, and Arezzo, in order to experience, first hand, the art and architecture of the region. We spend week three in Rome, where we see a carefully-chosen array of art from antiquity through the 17th century. After an extended break (during which time students are encouraged to travel to other parts of Italy or Europe), we return to Castiglion Fiorentino. While we continue to take excursions to other cities and sites, the primary focus for these remaining weeks is for you to use your newly found knowledge of the art, culture, and language of Italy to work on group projects, in which you focus on specific monuments or objects within the town itself. Past groups have worked on such local monuments as frescoes by the Renaissance painter Signorelli, the history and function of the old city gates, the restoration of a huge and beautiful late medieval crucifix, and the history of local relics and reliquaries. This year, students will be encouraged to integrate the work they've created in Lawrence McFarland's photography class into their presentations and final reports.

ART 319 / ART 320K / ART 379T
Photography: Cultural Documentation of Tuscany
Lawrence McFarland, Professor

This is a digital photography class. There will be four books used as major sources of information. The Italian Photographic Documentation classes will use Italy Observed: In Photography and Literature by Charles Traub, Rizzoli International Publications, Landscape in Italy by John Sims, Little, Brown and Company, Italy: One Hundred Years of Photography by Cesare Colombo and Susan Sontag, Rizzoli International Publications, and Observations: Essays on Documentary Photography by David Featherstone, The Friends of Photography.

Documentary photography is an important aspect of contemporary photographic art. It employs the use of a camera to collect visual information in an intelligent and “straight” or un'manipulated manner. Unlike journalistic photography, which is directed toward news and deadlines, documentary photography locks information in a time and space reference for future appreciation and visual investigation.

Italy is a very diverse country. Religion has played an important part in the history of Italy, from the pre-Christian era through early Christianity to the rise and dominance of Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican. Evidence in the form of religious artifacts, sculpture, architecture, and tombs abounds throughout the country, lending itself to photographic documentation.

Socially and politically, Italy has had a rich and changing history which has affected the landscape, architecture, towns and customs of the country. From 2000 B.C. and throughout antiquity the Etruscan, Greek, and Latin civilizations flourished in Italy, leaving evidence of their influence. The Byzantine era, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and more recent history have all contributed to the multifaceted Italian culture.

The landscape of Italy is dotted with vestiges of the many cultures that have occupied these areas. This course cultivates intrinsic land use as it applies to the concept of documentary photography. The varied aspects of the Italian landscape, its former and current usage, offer a diverse visual investigation involving a long historical time frame that is unique. Documentary photography uses historical information as pivotal concerns for contemporary cultural consciousness.

An anthropological approach can be used in investigating the landscape: its geological features, land use, farming methods, and the cities. This methodology is also useful for evaluating cultural vestiges, including ruins, gardens, villas, tombs, museums, galleries, architectural sites, waterways, footways, trade routes, military highways and modern highways. These cultural artifacts are an integral part of the landscape, hence the uniqueness of the multi-layered Italian landscape.

Today Europe is changing. These changes, coupled with the new openness that is taking place, make now a most auspicious time for documenting Italy in reference to its past. We will be visiting many cities on field trips, including Siena, Rome, Arezzo, and Florence. This will allow a broad base for comparing through photographic documentation the cultures around Castiglion Fiorentino with more diverse and populated areas.

There will be at least one major four day field trip to Rome. These will also be shorter day trips to former Etruscan cities close to Castiglion Fiorentino.

Lectures from the assigned textbooks will be presented in class. From this external input the students will gain knowledge for their hands-on experience of the Italian culture. The students final assignment will be to produce and publish an on-line book of their experience at Blurb.

This course is being offered as a studio art course to fulfill any studio art requirement for a B.F.A. or B.A. degree; or as a requirement for any other degree plan on campus that requires a Fine Arts component or for a particular degree plan. This course is open for anyone to apply.

Learning Tuscany program pages: