This course explores art and architecture produced on the Italian peninsula between the late thirteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries, considering monuments in relation to specific, local circumstances of production and fertile cross-cultural and international exchange. This course will also consider the new kinds of discourse brought to bear on art and artmaking in the period, and its continuing implications. The conventional story of the Italian Renaissance, centered on Florence and featuring star artists, has exerted a powerful hold. How ought more expansive, inclusive, and critical stories about the artwork produced on the Italian peninsula in this period be told?. Prerequisite: ARTH 103 or ARTH 104 or HUMN 103 or HUMN 104 or HUMN 105.