Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute   

After the enthusiasm generated by last year’s lectures on art in the cities of Florence, Amsterdam, Paris and New York, we are pleased to announce a second series of talks that will look at the remarkable bursts of creativity in four European cities at different periods.   During the fifteenth century, the Flemish city of Bruges was a center of artistic activity in Northern Europe that paralleled the achievements of Florence in the South.  In the sixteenth century, Michelangelo, Raphael and other Italian artists were attracted to Rome to work for the Papal Court and the other wealthy and cultured patrons based in the Eternal City.  Revenues from the Spanish colonies in the Americas made Madrid one of the richest cities in the world in the seventeenth Century, and these riches led to commissions from Velazquez and his contemporaries. And in the eighteenth century, the city of London was home to a wide variety of artists. British painters such as Hogarth, Reynolds and Gainsborough, European immigrants such as Angelica Kauffmann and Henry Fuseli, and painters from North America, such as Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley and Gilbert Stuart all contributed to the city’s exciting artistic community. This series of lectures will examine the work of artists based in each of these cities in turn, exploring the paintings and sculpture produced in their historical contexts.

OLLI and Clark Members may register separately for individual sessions or sign up for all four.  

March 8      1:00 – 2:30   More Capitals of Art 1: Bruges in the Fifteenth Century 

March 15    1:00 – 2:30   More Capitals of Art 2: Rome in the Sixteenth Century 

March 22    1:00 – 2:30   More Capitals of Art 3: Madrid in the Seventeenth Century

March 29    1:00 – 2:30   More Capitals of Art 4:  London in the Eighteenth Century