Art History Lecture Series, Orientations in Renaissance Art

In this lecture, Alexander Nagel, Professor of Fine Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, illustrates some ways in which art produced during the Renaissance period points ­eastward towards Constantinople, towards the Holy Land, and to places further east, even as far as China. Nagel focuses on the forms this "orientation" took between 1492-1507, years during which new lands were being discovered, to great fanfare, but were still believed to belong to the continent of Asia. These themes are explored through an extended ­examination of works by the Italian painter, Andrea Mantegna. This lecture is part of an art history lecture series cosponsored by the Institute for Advanced Study and the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University.