Art History courses online and in London

From the foam-born Venus to the warlike widow Judith, female figures drawn from mythology, scripture, and legend have captivated artists for centuries. Powerful, dangerous, seductive, virtuous, and often all of these at once, they offered a visual language through which ideas about gender, beauty and power could be explored, celebrated, and contested.

A course examining the foundations of Islamic visual culture under the Early Umayyad and ‘Abbassid Caliphates, and the formative influences that went into development of Islamic architecture and decorative arts.

This course will take the case study of four statues of David produced in Florence during the Renaissance by Donatello, Verrocchio and Michelangelo, to chart the developments in sculpture at this time.

In this study day we will learn about the Prophet Muhammad, his life in 7th century Mecca and Medina, and the foundation of the formative constitution of Islam. The story of his life and revelations will be illustrated with artwork from iconic manuscripts made in the 14th - 16th centuries under Muslim rulers of the Ilkhanid, Timurid, Safavid and Ottoman Dynasties.

This course will provide you with a visual toolkit that will enable you to understand and analyse the appearance of paintings. You will explore their formal qualities, in other words the things that make paintings look the way they do. You will discover how an artist gets from a blank canvas, wood panel, sheet of paper to a finished artwork, and the visual decisions that have to be made along the way.

Discover Michelangelo’s 'genius' across sculpture, painting, architecture, and poetry. This course traces his artistic journey within the dynamic world of 16th century Italy from the High Renaissance to Mannerism. It explores his encounters with contemporaries like Leonardo and Raphael, and examines how Vasari and Condivi’s biographies shaped his enduring reputation as Il Divino.

Explore Romanticism as an international movement, focusing on Francisco Goya (1746-1828) as its key example, considering issues such as historic context, biography, material experimentation and artistic and theoretic interests.

This course explores the main themes and intercultural aspects of ‘Crusader Art’. This fluid term denotes the extraordinary range of works of art and architecture produced in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem c. 1099-1291 by Muslim and Christian Latin or Byzantine artists for a multicultural clientele in the Holy Land. The influence of the booty of the 1204 Fourth Crusade will also be considered.

This course will examine visual culture borne of World War One - experiences and responses, propaganda and commemoration in paintings, prints and sculptures.

An intensive study day on the development of the Qur’an as a book and the role of patronage at important centres of production. We also look at the evolution of Arabic calligraphy, layout, and illumination; with a survey of evolving styles, the impact on secular book design, and the methods and materials of making.

Develop a greater understanding of art history and how to analyse the cultural meaning of an artwork by going in-depth with the ideas of prominent art historians. This course explores the complex links between visual form (or style) and historical context and is meant to train you for art historical level interpretation. Please note: this course is academically focussed.