Dr. Evelyn Lincoln of Brown University will present the address “Reading, Writing and Disegno in the Renaissance Workshop” on Friday, Sept. 20, at 4:30 p.m. at Hope College in Cook Auditorium of the De Pree Art Center.
The public is invited. Admission is free.
The lecture is part of the “Breaking Artistic Barriers” series coordinated by the college’s department of art and art history, which during 2013-14 is featuring the theme “Disegno.” Rooted in 16th-century Italian Renaissance theory, the term “disegno” (or “design”) refers to the creative idea in the mind of the artist—an idea often embodied in the preliminary drawing.
The goal of this year’s theme is to explore the principle of “disegno” through a contemporary, 21st-century lens. Lincoln’s talk will explore the meaning and importance of disegno in its original context of the Italian Renaissance and discuss how the concepts continue to operate in contemporary art and design.
Lincoln is an associate professor of the history of art and architecture and Italian studies at Brown University in Providence, R.I., and is an internationally renowned scholar on Italian Renaissance prints, printmaking and book illustration. In her book “The Invention of the Italian Renaissance Printmaker” (Yale University Press, 2000), she discusses the history of printing in the formation of artists’ careers in late 15th- and early 16th-century Italy, and she identifies the roots of disegno, which was judged to be the intellectual and practical basis of all artistic practice. In 2014, she will publish “Brilliant Discourse: Pictures and Readers in Early Modern Rome” (Yale University Press, 2014).
The De Pree Art Center is located at 160 E. 12th St., on Columbia Avenue at 12th Street.