The Department of Art History's foreign study program offers students the extraordinary opportunity to study intensively the major artistic monuments of Italy in the land where they were produced. Based in Rome, one of Europe's richest artistic centers, the program examines the monuments of the city, their creators, their patrons, and their various audiences. The curriculum encourages students to see art and architecture not as isolated phenomena, but rather as they exist within larger cultural and historical contexts.

The Art History FS comprises three courses, two devoted to Art History and conducted in English and one to Italian language. One course is taught by a faculty member of the Department of Art History and offers an advanced thematic approach to the study of Art History in light of Roman monuments from antiquity to the present. A cross-temporal selection of sites of particular art-historical interest (e.g., the Roman Forum, St. Peter's Basilica, the Capitoline, the Vatican, and major churches from the early Christian through Baroque periods) and of major artistic figures (e.g., Fra Angelico, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Bernini, Canova) is studied in detail, with attention to issues of narrative, iconography, social history, gender, perception, patronage, and stylistic analysis. This course also includes one or more field trips to sites outside Rome (in recent years, destinations have included Naples, Pompeii, Tivoli, Florence, and Venice). A second course is taught by a non-Dartmouth specialist and examines an array of architectural monuments, both religious and secular. It pays special attention to the evolution of architectural forms as manifested by specific types of buildings, such as the Christian basilica, the Renaissance princely palace, urban planning and the villa. Taught by a local instructor, the third course focuses on Italian language and covers grammar equivalent to Italian 2 at Dartmouth. The two courses in Art History are conducted in situ, thus allowing attention to be paid to art's special characteristics, particularly in regard to spatial context, scale, and qualities of light and color. On the basis of their first-hand observation, students are required to perform regular, in-depth analyses of works of art.

Students are required to take all three FSP courses and should plan on taking Italian 1 or its equivalent as close as possible to the FSP term.

• Art History 10: The History of Art in Rome
  
• Art History 11: Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Architecture in Rome
  
• Art History 12: The Language and Culture of Rome

Prerequisites

• Italian 1 or its equivalent  
• One of the following courses: Art History 1, 21, 22, 25, 30, 31