The Renaissance at Home

Course tutor: Lydia Goodson (art historian)

The Warburg Institute offers The Renaissance at Home as a virtual class via Zoom meeting weekly for five weeks. The course is designed for students, researchers and the general public with some prior understanding of Renaissance art history. 

This short course of five classes offers an introduction to the study of the renaissance home, and to the art and the objects made for domestic life in renaissance Italy. The period saw a huge increase in the production of decorated objects and paintings for the home, and these were accompanied by treatises and literary texts advising on appropriate use and the decoration of the domestic space. In recent decades there has been considerable scholarly focus on the Renaissance home and the course will take an interdisciplinary approach to examine the textual, literary, and material evidence for the interpretation and reconstruction by historians of the domestic environment. It will look in detail at how the rooms of the home were occupied and furnished and at how these reflect the aspirations and values of householders in the urban centres of early modern Italy.  

The first half of each class will take the form of a lecture. After a short break, the second part will run in a seminar format. The tutor will encourage discussion and active participation. 

A reading list of books and articles will be made available to registered students before the course. Reading will be optional but will enhance the learning opportunities.

Week 1: An introduction to the Renaissance home: evidence and interpretation
In this class we will explore the historiography of the early modern domestic space, and discuss the evidence used by historians to reconstruct the renaissance home. Reading for this session will include examples of inventories, prescriptive texts and correspondence, as well as close looking at paintings and surviving household objects.

Week 2: Living in the casa: public and private life
This class will focus on the lived experience in the renaissance home. We will consider the interior and exterior architecture of domestic space and interrogate evidence of how different areas of the home were used.  Surviving objects and buildings will help us to understand the gendered nature of interior space and domestic furnishings. We will also look at the less-studied homes of the non-elites, such as those of the artisans and local traders. 

Week 3: Behind the bedroom door
The camera or bedroom performed a pivotal role in the renaissance home. It was not only a private space for married couples and where childbirth took place, thus ensuring the family lineage, but was also where favoured guests were entertained, and precious possessions were displayed. In this class we will look closely at surviving furnishings from the camera and interrogate what their appearance and decoration tell us about the space they were designed for.

Week 4: The Study
A space for business but also for academic pursuits, the studiolo can be seen as the physical embodiment of the aspirational renaissance man. This class will focus on the records and the surviving objects of richly ornamented studioli which were furnished to reflect and to stimulate a contemplative and academic life. Although generally a male space, we will also look at the records of the studioli of one of the most important female patrons of the period, Isabella d’Este.

Week 5: The kitchen and dining culture
In the newly wealthy urban centres of renaissance Italy the rituals and etiquette of entertaining and dining became increasingly elaborate. Conformity to the correct dining etiquette was considered essential to a civilised and educated life, and prescriptive texts circulated these new standards. In this class we will look at these texts together with the material evidence of dining culture, in the form of tableware, recipes and contemporary depictions.

Dr Lydia Goodson is an art historian and writer. Her postdoctoral research centres on artistic production and patronage in early modern Italy, and on the production and reception of the textiles known as Tovaglie Perugine. Lydia is co-editor, with Michelle O’Malley, of the forthcoming volume, Artists’ Workshop Practice in the Renaissance (Brill 2025). Lydia regularly reviews exhibitions for The Burlington Magazine, and lectures widely on the Italian renaissance. She is an accredited Arts Society Lecturer and an Art History Tutor at CityLit. In 2023, Lydia was Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Dutch institute for Art History in Florence.  

Registration and payment (for 5 online classes taught across 5 consecutive weeks): 

£115 Standard
£100 Warburg staff & fellows/external students/unwaged
£70 SAS & LAHP-funded students 
£60 Warburg students

Schedule:
2.00-3.30pm, every Tuesday, 13 May to 10 June 2025 inclusive.

Please note, the running of this course is dependent on student uptake. Places limited: please book early. 

image: Domenico Ghirlandaio: Birth of St Mary, Santa Maria Novella, Firenze