Alžběta Filipová, M.A., PhD.
alzbeta.filipova@phil.muni.cz
Reception hours: Monday 12.30 – 14.30
Periods of Art History I:
from Prehistory to Trajan
I. INTRODUCTION
Program of the Course
Introduction
Prehistoric art
Cultures of Mesopotamia
Egyptian art
Hittite art
Achaemenid art (Ancient Persia)
Aegean Art: the Cyclades and Mycenae, Archaic Greece
Greek art: Classical and Hellenistic period
Etruscan art
Roman art
"The bright colours denote those
countries that are the Subjects of
history, previous to the discovery of
America".
Eurocentrism
Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574)
“The Father of Art History”
Giotto di Bondone 1267–1337)
Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475–1564)
Hagesandros, Athenedoros, and
Polydoros, Laocoon and His Sons,
Marble, Roman copy after an
original from ca. 200 BCE,
found in the Baths of Trajan,
Rome, 1506
Vatican Museums
“The precursors of
Raphael and Michelangelo,
or the Birth of the Arts of
Drawing and Sculpture in
the Age of the Reindeer”
Émile Bayard, engraving, for Louis
Figuier, L’Homme Primitif, Paris 1870
“There really is no such thing as Art. There
are only artists. Once these were men who
took coloured earth and roughed out the
forms of a bison on the wall of a cave; today
some buy their paints, and design posters for
the hoardings.“
“In the chapters which follow I shall discuss
the history of art, that is the history of
building, of picture-making and of statuemaking.
I think that knowing something of
this history helps us to understand why artists
worked in a particular way, or why they aimed
at certain effects.“
Painting? Sculpture? Architecture?
Horse from Lascaux 21 000 BC Věstonická venuše 29 000–
25 000 BC
Stonehenge 3000 BC
Minor Arts? Applied Arts? Decorative Arts?
Seated goddess with a
child, Hittite Empire
(Central Anatolia), 1300–
1200 BCE, gold, 4,3 x 1,7
x 1,9 cm
Wedjat Eye Amulet, c. 1,070–
664 BCE, Egypt, faience and
aragonite, 6,5 cm large
Petroglyph depicting a possibly sleeping antelope,
located at Tassili n’Ajjer in southern Algeria 10,000-
6,000 BC
Cuevas de la Manos (Cave of the Hands), 2 periods: 13,000–9,000
BCE and 7,000–3,300 BCE, Argentina
Stone mask from the region of Hebron (Israel),
c. 7,000 BCE
What is ART ?
When does it START?
Anthropology vs. Art History
The Coatlicue Statue, Aztec,
ca. 1500, Museum of
Anthropology Mexico
City
Michelangelo, Bacchus,
1497, Florence, Museo
del Bargello
Image – Medium – Body
Bildwissenschaft = Science of the Image
“A work of art—be it a picture, a sculpture, or a
print—is a tangible object with a history, an object
that can be classified, dated, and exhibited. An
image, on the other hand, defies such attempts of
reification, even to the extent that it often straddles
the boundary between physical and mental
existence.“
René Magritte, La trahison des images, oil on canvas, 1928–1929, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Power of Images
A doll with spells from Keos, Greece, 4th–3rd Century BC
BODY
NATURE
DEATH (and AFTERLIFE)
GODS
POWER
Assesment and criteria methods
Oral examination of materials presented during the lessons + visual litteracy of the periods discussed in
the course (50% of the final grade)
Presentation of a chosen topic (one artefact) that relates to the period from Prehistory to the 2nd
Century CE, provided with an abstract and bibliography at these dates:
1. Choice of a topic + bibliography – 14. October 2024
2. Abstract – 28. October 2024
Students without an accepted presentation topic will not be allowed to pass the exam.
The course is valued with 10 ECTS = 250–300 hours of work divided between presence at classes (only
18 hours) and self study and reading.
DU1701 Periods of Art History I: from Prehistory to Trajan
Alžběta Filipová, M.A., PhD.
alzbeta.filipova@phil.muni.cz
(write an email only in questions of life and death)
Reception hours:
Monday 12.30 – 14.30
in K 04 (Armenian Cabinet)
Course Assistant
Bc. Paulína Horváthová
Reception hours: Thursday 12.00 – 14.00 in K 04