‘any classification or any signpost in the landscape is welcomed for its help in the mastering of an unstructured reality’E. H. Gombrich, “Norm and Form: The Stylistic Categories of Art History and their Origins in Renaissance Ideals”, in his book Norm and Form: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, I (London: Phaidon, 1966), 82–83
This lecture was the first of our term of Current Approaches to the History of Art. It’s interesting to note that it is also the earliest and first in chronological terms. Using the terms High Renaissance and Mannerism, Dr Caldwell sets out to explore the labels and divisions that, though they have their roots in the 16th century, were set in stone in the modern era. She was also to examine how we came to categorise label artistic styles and be aware of its artificial subjective disciplines.
