ARTS + ARCHITECTURE
DRAWING INSPIRATION
ARTS + ARCHITECTURE
DRAWING INSPIRATION
Arts + Architecture [A+A] international education travel program focused on the allied arts of architecture, drawing, painting, and sculpture. This travel and studio intensive program recognizes the long-standing tradition and value of the physical experience of travel and drawing research as an integral part of a designer’s education. In short, we call it Drawing Inspiration.
A+A is led by SEÁN MCARDLE accompanied by Architect KEITH SUMMEROUR providing exposure to Italian masterpieces and introduction to the academic excellence of Artists from THE FLORENCE ACADEMY OF ART.
The A+A program focuses on evaluating and understanding the historical, social, cultural, and physical aspects of this particularly rich urban European context through design, research, and, documentation. Field trips throughout Italy and Europe further enhance your educational experience. Special lectures and tours are provided by local Italian educators.
The A+A program commences with arrival in Rome visiting important monuments and museums of the cultural and political capital of the Roman world. The A+A program will be based in Florence, the center of intellectual life during the 14th and 16th centuries providing the ideal location to study the traditions and innovative work made by Renaissance artists and architects in their own respective centuries who shaped our current architectural consciousness and the collective built environment. The program also includes drawing research visits to Venice, Vicenza, and Carrara.
“I am still learning…the greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”
Arts + Architecture Drawing Inspiration Tour /
Sagrestia Nuova (New Sacristy), Basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence, Italy.
Michelangelo: The Sculptor, Painter and Architect and His Legacy in Florence
Michelangelo always pushed the limits of the possible, infusing his art with his soul and intellect. He was often more concerned with the exploration and solution of an artistic problem than with the finished work. One of his greatest and most influential projects in Florence, left incomplete when he departed for Rome in 1534, is the burial chapel, or New Sacristy, in the Medici church of San Lorenzo. The chapel includes a number of greater-than-life-sized marble statues, among them the famous personifications of the four times of day (Day, Night, Dawn, and Dusk).
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) is unique in the history of world art as the only man to attain the highest level in the three arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture. He was also an accomplished poet. Michelangelo’s work represented a new figurative style that the painter and writer Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) called maniera (Mannerism), characterized by expressive power and complex, yet elegant, form. Among the sculptor’s most singular innovations is the figura serpentinata (serpentine figure), in which a small head tops a massive muscular torso and tapering thighs, and the body dynamically twists so that its musculature can be viewed from many angles. This concept, its implied motion augmented when viewed from all sides, continued to influence sculptors and painters throughout the late Renaissance and Baroque eras.
Michelangelo's sculptures in the New Sacristy of San Lorenzo can be viewed in terms of history, technique, and style, and their particular language and historical context analyzed objectively, however, the emotions aroused in those seeing them for the first time or tenth time can not be put into words, you must experience it in your own time. My advice is to take the necessary time to draw inspiration that will have a profound effect on the viewer, who sees them, not as an objective reality, but as a reflection of his own expectations and artistic desires.
Image: Architecture and Sculpture by Michelangelo Buonarroti in 1521–24.
Drawing Inspiration by Program Director Seán McArdle
Arts + Architecture /
Program 2024
The A+A 2024 Calendar Year program includes 3 weeks in Italy from late May to early June, 2024.
The A+A program commences in Rome prior to traveling to Florence for studio orientation. Studio classes start at 9 a.m. each day and travel on field trips generally begins at 7:30 a.m. or earlier. Most afternoons and evenings are typically self-directed. Attendees should expect a “full-time” commitment to the program by being self-disciplined to maximize one's own experience. We believe in Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) statements “I am still learning…the greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”
On studio days, the coursework will include morning instruction in topics related to traditions of architecture including hand-drawing, perspective studies, proportion, history, innovations, and materials, and methods. After lunch, students will have the afternoons to apply the morning lessons either in the studio or in your sketchbook in the rich context of Florence. The A+A program will also include introductions to figurative drawing, painting, anatomy, and interconnected relation between the art.
All students will be required to keep a daily sketchbook. Leonardo Da Vinci (1452 - 1519) started with journals when he was 26 years old and continued to write an average of 3 pages a day producing well over 20,000 pages of notes and sketches spanning across 50 different notebooks related to whatever topics interested him – architecture, proportion, perspective, painting, philosophy, landscape, geography, geology and inventions, and other topics.
A+A program includes several regional research trips via train from Florence. As an example from North to South: Venice, Vicenza, Pisa, Carrara, Sienna, Rome Tivoli, Pompeii, and other important destinations. Slight deviations from this schedule are based on A+A programming.
Week 1 Rome, Tivoli, Pompeii to Florence
Week 2 Florence, Sienna, Pisa, Carrara
Week 3 Florence, Venice, Vicenza
“Who are we, each one of us, if not a combination of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined?”
Arts + Architecture /
Inspiration+ Instruction
Arts + Architecture Drawing Inspiration Tour / Florence Baptistery
Filippo Brunelleschi: Architect and the birth of the Renaissance
Architect Filippo Brunelleschi’s (1387 - 1446) rediscovery of linear perspective had a profound impact on early Renaissance Artists including Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Artists in the early 15th century had learned to portray the human form with faithful accuracy through careful observation and anatomical dissection but did not have the knowledge of representation of physical space until Brunelleschi shared his understanding of perspective by a painting demonstration of the Baptistery in Florence in 1420.
A+A City Tours + Museums
Donato Bramante / Sacred Geometry in Rome
Rome
Known as “The Eternal City,” Rome holds some of the most important monuments of antiquity and long maintained its stature as the cultural and political capital of the Roman world. Within the confines of the historic center of the city and the Holy See (the Vatican) are an astounding 25,000 archaeological and environmental points of interest. Roman monumental architecture abounds with the Colosseum, the Forum Romanum, the Pantheon, the Imperial Forums, the Baths of Caracalla, the Circus Maximus, Castel Sant’Angelo, and numerous Roman temples, among many other important buildings. As one of the holiest sites of the Catholic faith, the impressive number of churches and basilicas are important for Christianity and as inspirational architectural monuments, such as St. Peters, Santa Maria Maggiore, St. John Lateran, and Santa Maria in Trastevere. Likewise, the Appian Way and the Catacombs are impressive for their historical and spiritual significance. Extraordinary works of art are housed in major museums in Rome. Parks and numerous outdoor spaces offer the exceptional ambiance of the city, including the Spanish Steps, the Piazza Navona, the Piazza del Popolo, and the Piazza of the Trevi Fountain.
Rome Museums Tours
Pantheon / Museum of Roman Civilization / Roman Forum / Roman Amphitheatre / Vatican Museum / Galleria Borghese / Castel Sant'Angelo / Tempietto di San Pietro by Donato Bramante / MAXXI Museum by Zaha Hadid / Pompeii / Hadrian's Villa
Florence
The historical center of the city of Florence has a long and splendid history. Originally founded on the site of an early Etruscan settlement, the present city was established by Julius Caesar in 59 B.C. Florence became a great mercantile and banking center during the medieval period and is recognized as being one of the most important European cities of its time. Credited as the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance, Florence has often been termed “the Athens of the Middle Ages.” The city enjoyed great renown under the Medici, who attracted brilliant artists, architects, philosophers, and scholars to their court. Works of great masters, such as Giotto, Masaccio, Brunelleschi, Leonardo, Botticelli, and Michelangelo were created here and can be seen in the various museums in the city. Great architecture abounds with masterpieces like the Florence Cathedral (the Duomo), the Palazzo Pitti, Santa Croce, the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, the Palazzo Vecchio, the Basilica of San Lorenzo, the Bargello, and the Ponte Vecchio. The historic center of Florence has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Florence Museums Tours
Uffizi / Palazzo Pitti / Boboli Gardens / Gallerie dell'Accademia / Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore / Bargello / Orsanmichele / Basilica of San Lorenzo, Medici Chapel Sagrestia Nuova / Ospedale degli Innocenti by Fillipo Brunelleschi / Santa Maria Novella Santa Croce / Pazzi Chapel
Veneto
A major center of the Veneto (the mainland region around the urban archipelago of Venice). An important locus of intellectual life during the 15th and 16th centuries, the area has an abundant architectural heritage, all within an hour of Vicenza – from the works of local Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio to the 20th-century creations of modern master Carlo Scarpa.
Venice
The city of Venice continues to charm with its unique topography spread over 118 small islands separated by canals and connected by over 400 bridges. Known as “La Serenissima” (the Most Serene Republic), the city-state of Venice was already powerful by the year 1000 and was a leading political, cultural, and commercial center. Architectural masterpieces dating to the Medieval and Renaissance periods, like the Doge’s Palace, the Piazza and Basilica of San Marco, and the beautiful Ponte Rialto and Ponte del Sospiri (The Bridge of Sighs), reinforce the charm of the city. Works by the master painters Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, Bellini, and Carpaccio defined the Venetian style and can still be viewed throughout the city.
Veneto / Venice Tours
Gallerie dell'Accademia / Doge's Palace / Vicenza Teatro Olimpico by Andrea Palladio Villa / La Rotonda by Andrea Palladio, Castelvecchio Museum and Brion Cemetery Water Pavilion in Verona by Carlo Scarpa.
Carrara
Located in the Apuan Alps in northwest Tuscany, the famed Carrara quarries were opened by the Romans in the 2nd century B.C., and since then millions of tons of white marble have been quarried for over 2,000 years. Marble from Carrara transformed from a city of brick to a gleaming city of marble, and it was from here that Michelangelo selected blocks from which he carved the beautiful Pietà and the towering David. An optional trip to Carrara with one of the faculty will be possible along with a tour of the quarries.
Carrara Museum Tours
Carrara Marble Museum / Carrara Quarry Tour / Marble Carving Studio
“Who are we, each one of us, if not a combination of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined?”