I can see how he could come across as seeming self-righteous. I think it probably comes from his being Black in a predominantly white field in the UK, as a lot of people tend to dismiss his work even when he has a lot of evidence to back up his arguments.

Just want to remind everyone that this beautiful concert will only be available online for a few more days.

I'm partway through this week's reading assignments and they've brought to mind something I thought I'd share in advance of tomorrow's class. It will probably sound off-topic at first, so please bear with me (if interested). Before I traveled to Istanbul, I watched a few pre-recorded lectures about it, one of which talked about the shift from pagan temple architecture to Byzantine church architecture. Because pagan worship was done outside the temple, the decorative emphasis was on the exterior; whereas with early Christianity, the congregation worshiped inside the building, so the decorative emphasis was on the interior, and most early Christian churches consequently are quite plain on the exterior. The lecture pointed out that this change in architecture was a reflection of a drastic change in the way people worshiped. (I think Ravenna also illustrates this change well.) Then last summer I took a course Emily Maloney gave on Florence and when she talked about the Florentine concept of civic pride and some of the changes in architecture that happened around the same time, I was reminded of these things and contemplated how the Renaissance brought about a fresh change in that the primary emphasis for places of worship once again became the exterior, with many of them painting over or dismantling many of the interior elements such as many earlier frescoes and many earlier fancily decorated private chapels. I posited that it seemed that civic pride placed an emphasis on the exterior of buildings since they were visible to all and not just to the congregation, as had been the case with the architecture of pagan temples.

Here is a slightly later baptismal pool from what was then Thrace, now Bulgaria. Hopefully you can see the steps down in at least one of my photos, which the audio guide said was an indication that both children and adults were being baptized here. I've also included a couple gratuitous photos at the end, one of the beautiful mosaics and a sign about the more general history of the church.

To clarify on my previous post, I don't think "freestanding" was the best word choice; it was more that they would have been separate from the main church area, likely with a separate entrance, whether they were fully freestanding or not. I have just tried to attach some of my photos for examples, and it took me some time to figure out how to attach more than one photo per post. These are photos of the baptistry/baptistery at the Roman town of Aquileia, which was at the top of the Italian peninsula between Venice and Trieste. Hopefully they will all come through in the post. Here is the UNESCO listing for the site: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/825/

Siena's is also still visit-able. Originally baptistries were freestanding as people could not set foot in churches until they were baptized and baptisms didn't happen very often, so my guess would be that most of them simply don't survive. But hopefully someone else on the forum can provide more than an educated guess in response to you.

If I understand correctly, scholars believe from the surviving manuscripts that the musical accompaniments of bassedanse/bassadanza were instrumental pieces that tended to include improvisation. I thought it was interesting that wealthy people started doing a dance that involved physically touching so soon after the Black Plague spread through the region. (Even though they didn't understand germ theory)

On alternate Monday evenings (US EST) I have been watching a virtual early music salon and this week they featured bassedanse, which I was not previously familiar with and have had a bit of time to research last night/this morning. From what I've found, they seem to have been popular with the nobility in many courts from partway through the 14th century to partway through the 16th century, and were known as bassadanza in Italian. The Library of Congress has a page with a brief explanation: https://www.loc.gov/collections/dance-instruction-manuals-from-1490-to-1920/articles-and-essays/western-social-dance-an-overview-of-the-collection/burgundian-dance-in-the-late-middle-ages/ I am glad that the salon guests used a recorder and a small stringed instrument, as the shawm and sackbut that the link mentions were the most common outdoor accompaniments are not pleasant on the ears. While I was on the Library of Congress's page, I checked out their next page, on High Renaissance dances: https://www.loc.gov/collections/dance-instruction-manuals-from-1490-to-1920/articles-and-essays/western-social-dance-an-overview-of-the-collection/renaissance-dance/ This is a longer page with a lot of links to videos showing the dances. At least on my computer, the videos aren't embedded, so I have to download them. But I always think it is interesting to see old music and old dance being performed today.

Some years ago I took a class at my local adult education center called Appreciating Medieval Music, taught by a medievalist who specializes in French medieval music. Per my teacher in that class, it's rather difficult to know much about secular music in most places on the European continent and the British Isles in the medieval period because based on the way most of those societies were at that time, there was a strong bias both towards the Church's music being written down in the first place and the Church's manuscripts surviving.

Hi Kellin, Thanks very much for sharing these. I have a question for clarity that I understand you may not be able to answer since these aren't your words. Near the beginning of Karen's points she says "Charlemagne’s coronation and 'anointment' as 'Holy Roman Emperor' allied Pope and Frankish kings, a union of temporal and secular power. Unified Christianity and Europe." My question is about the last part of that statement; as I understand it from visiting Aachen where Charlemagne had one of his major palaces and where his alleged throne survives in the Cathedral, there was no concept of 'Europe' at the time in the way we have one today. Was I incorrectly informed?

Welcome, Emily! How nice for you to be able to live abroad somewhere that you love so much.

@elaine Thanks, Elaine.

I tried to get all my textbooks on Abebooks, but someone else bought the Turner out from under me after it was in my cart and the site didn't clearly notify me of the fact, so I just finally received my copy this morning after I had to go through belatedly buying it a second time.

I'm not sure what size Janet means by a large class, but my center's language classes are limited to a maximum of 12 people, but we only have 6.

As our class attests, most classes have moved online during the pandemic. I've been taking Italian for Beginners through my local adult education center, but since it is on Zoom, some of my classmates live elsewhere.

@elaine Hi Elaine, I want to echo Janet's comments about your lectures (both the public ones and the class ones) and the guest lectures you choose to feature. I really appreciate how you don't just talk about the art, but about the societies in which it was situated.

@Cheryl Ege Hi Cheryl, I have not been to any of the Greek islands so far so unfortunately I can't help you there, but for Athens I highly recommend visiting the necropolis Kerameikos. A better museum has opened there in the decades since I visited on my program. It was the most deserted ancient site in the city when I was based out of there and friends I've recommended it to have reported the same in more recent years. A basic introduction is at https://www.athensguide.com/kerameikos.html If you are interested in visiting other places on the mainland (beyond Athens) I would also particularly recommend visiting Delphi, though it is pretty crowded.

Hi to Cheryl and Christine. Since you both mentioned what job you've retired from, I feel like I should have included my own. For the last 10 years I've been a freelance historical researcher with a specialty in researching New England history and genealogy in Boston-area archives. (Only one archive has reopened with limited hours here so far in the pandemic)

Hi Elaine, Kellin, and fellow students, I currently live in Boston. I studied abroad in college about 25 years ago, including a program on the art, architecture, archaeology, and military history of Greece from prehistory to the Byzantine era, which was coordinated out of Athens and was my first formal introduction to art history. (I had come to that program through studying anthropology and archaeology for my bachelor's degree.) Since then I have had an interest in learning more art history, which I have primarily done through taking some classes at Lesley University's extension school (and now virtual classes), attending local talks (and now virtual talks), visiting museums, and traveling on my own. I don't have specific expectations for this course and I am greatly looking forward to it.