Spolia: Architecture & Reuse c. 300 16

This seminar takes the recent explosion in spolia scholarship as a point of departure to analyze how artists and builders transformed ancient and foreign artifacts and incorporated them into new settings. It also seeks to understand the ways in which reuse has been interpreted and theorized retrospectively by historians, from Vasari who saw spoliation as a pragmatic phenomenon indicative of artistic decline to modern scholars who have argued for a wide range of interpretations—these include, but are not limited to, spolia as aesthetic choice, political gesture, revivalist impulse, religious symbol, triumphalist sign, and apotropaic talisman. While the course will focus primarily on monuments produced Italy and the wider Mediterranean world from late-antiquity to the Renaissance, students will be encouraged to think broadly about reuse as a theoretical problem across art-historical disciplines.