Sensory Wonders: Art of the Renaissance

Course starts Wednesday 19 May 2027

This is an in-person course which requires your attendance at the weekly meetings in Oxford on Wednesdays, 10.30am-12.30pm.

Week 1: Sight and Vision: New Perspectives

Week 2: Taste and Feasting

Week 3: Sacred Scents and a World of Perfume

Week 4: Touch, Textiles and Clothing

Week 5: Music and Collecting the World

Optional Ashmolean Museum exhibition guided tour

Students will also be able to join an optional trip to the Ashmolean Museum exhibition, guided by Dr Leah Clark, one of the curators, after one of the classes. This is expected to take place after the last class on 16 June (week 5) at 1.15pm. An additional date may need to be added depending on student numbers.

Please note: students will have to arrange their own transport for the field trip, and cover the cost of any entry fees.

Course aims

To introduce students to Renaissance art and material culture through the history of the senses, exploring how sight, taste, smell, touch, and sound shaped the production and experience of art in a period characterised by expanding global connections and exchanges.

Course objectives

By the end of the course, you will have been given the opportunity to have:

1. Explored how sight, taste, smell, touch, and sound shaped the production, experience, and interpretation of Renaissance art and material culture.
2. Examined how materials, objects, technologies, and artistic practices circulated through expanding networks of trade, travel, diplomacy, and exploration, connecting Europe with cultures across the wider world.
3. Developed skills in close visual and material analysis, using sensory approaches to reflect critically on conventional understandings of Renaissance art and its global contexts.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this course, you will have been given the opportunity to:

• Develop your understanding of how sensory experience shaped the production, use, and reception of art and material culture during the Renaissance.
• Recognise how global exchanges of materials, objects, technologies, and ideas transformed Renaissance visual and material culture.
• Practise analysing artworks and objects through close looking and attention to their material and sensory qualities, and relate them to their wider social, cultural, and historical contexts.

Level and demands

The Department’s Weekly Classes are taught at first year undergraduate level.

Teaching methods

Teaching will combine illustrated lectures with discussion, close looking, and object-based learning. Students will be encouraged to consider artworks and artefacts not only as images, but as material and sensory objects that were touched, worn, smelled, heard, tasted, and experienced within particular social settings. Comparative case studies and group discussion will help students explore connections between Renaissance Europe and the wider world, while developing confidence in interpreting unfamiliar objects and materials.

Assessment methods

This course is not accredited, so there are no assessments or coursework.

Dr Joaquin Cruz Lamas

Joaquín Cruz Lamas teaches History of Art at the University of Oxford and has taught Philosophy at King’s College London and Universidad Panamericana, Mexico. He did an MA in Christianity and the Arts at King’s College London and has recently completed a doctorate in Theology and Religious Studies on sacred architecture, Marian devotion, and religious identity in colonial Mexico. His research focuses on the intersections of theology, philosophy, and visual culture, and he is currently developing a project on the devotional practices related to the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Dr Leah Clark – Curator-led tour, optional Ashmolean Museum exhibition visit

Dr Leah Clark is Associate Professor of History of Art at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford. She is co-curator of  Renaissance Worlds: Art & the Senses, Her recent publications include Early Modern Transcultural Objects (forthcoming 2027) and the award-winning Courtly Mediators: Transcultural Objects Between Renaissance Italy and the Islamic World (2023).

Digital badge

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be issued with an official digital badge from the Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford. In order to be issued with your badge, you will need to have attended at least 80% of the course.

After the course, you will receive an email with a link and instructions on how to download your digital badge. You will be able to add this badge to your email signature and share it on social media if you choose to do so.

Fees

Funding

If you are in receipt of a UK state benefit, or are a care-leaver in the UK, you may be eligible for a reduction of 50% of tuition fees. Please see the below link for full details: Concessionary fees for short courses

Recommended reading

Recommended reading is optional and you are not required to purchase these books to study this course.

Preparatory reading

• The Routledge Companion to Global Renaissance Art / Campbell, Stephen J., and Stephanie Porras, eds.
• European Art and the Wider World 1350-1550, Art and Its Global Histories. / Christian, Kathleen, and Leah R. Clark, eds.
• Courtly mediators: Transcultural objects between Renaissance Italy and the Islamic world / Clark, Leah R.
• Renaissance art: a very short introduction / Johnson, Geraldine A.
• Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy 1400–1600 / Welch, Evelyn

Recommended Reading List

Library facilities

All short course students (online and in-person) may register to borrow from the Oxford Lifelong Learning Library, for the duration of their course.

Further information about the Oxford Lifelong Learning Library can be found on the library website. 

Module code: O26P535ARW

How to enrol

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