This course offers you a journey through the rich pageant of Renaissance art and culture, giving you the critical tools with which to analyze, understand and appreciate more fully the works of art produced in central Italy from the mid-thirteenth to mid-fifteenth centuries. We will look closely at the way in which changing styles in art reflected contemporary history and cultural attitudes. Through in-class presentations and also visits to museums, churches and other places of historical or artistic interest in and around Siena and Florence, this course gives you every opportunity to place your studies from the classroom in context and to see works by the great masters in the original.