FRA ANGELICO

SECRET MESSAGES OF FAITH: FRA ANGELICO’S FRESCOES FOR THE MONASTERY OF SAN MARCO
Called Angelico for his exquisite depictions of paradise, the paintings of the 15th century Dominican friar, Fra Angelico, have been beloved for centuries. The more than 40 frescoes Fra Angelico painted to decorate the walls of the monastery of San Marco remain one of the highlights for any visitor to Florence. Although Christ is a constant presence in the frescoes, their sequence does not refer to any single biblical text, a seeming randomness that has frustrated scholarly interpretation for centuries. In this fascinating lecture, Dr. John T. Spike unravels their secret messages, persuasively showing that Fra Angelico drew upon the mystical writings of the early church fathers to construct a non-linear, spiritual exercise that would guide the faithful to perfect union with God.

MICHELANGELO

MICHELANGELO AND THE PRICE OF FAME
How did the world’s most famous artist become the wealthiest? Drawing upon new research for his forthcoming biography of the artist, Dr. John T. Spike contends that Michelangelo adroitly managed his career and contracts. Tracing Michelangelo’s family history, Dr. Spike explores the derivation of his unusual name—Michelangelo di Ludovico Buonarroti Simoni—and argues that Michelangelo’s preoccupation with wealth was driven by his desire to restore his family to its former prominence. Among the major monuments of Michelangelo’s art investigated in this intriguing discussion are the Doni Tondo, the façade of San Lorenzo, and the sculptures of Moses and The Slaves from the tomb of Pope Julius II.

MICHELANGELO: CLASSIC OR ROMANTIC?
A luminary amongst luminaries, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) is always counted among the most highly exalted artists of all time, renowned for his exceptional ability to portray human experience in all its glory and tragedy. Along with Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, Michelangelo discovered and exemplified the classical style of the Renaissance. Classicism looked to ancient Greek and Roman sculpture for models of beauty, proportion, and symmetry from which to create an ideal world. But was Michelangelo’s art truly classical? Dr. John T. Spike shows that Michelangelo’s immense and enduring authority derives from his genius for energizing classical equilibrium with surges of emotional passion.

MICHELANGELO: ANATOMY / ARCHITECTURE
Even in his earliest sculptures, Michelangelo conceived the human figure as analogous to architecture. In his only recorded statement of theory, he states, "It is certain that the members of architecture derive from the limbs of the body. Whoever has not been or is not a good master of the human figure, most of all, of anatomy, cannot understand anything about architecture."  The thesis is amply illustrated through Michelangelo’s numerous sheets of architectural and anatomical drawings.

CARAVAGGIO

MICHELANGELO MERISI DA CARAVAGGIO : A BRIEF LIFE
In this lecture, Dr. John T. Spike places Caravaggio’s major paintings within the context of the master’s brief yet meteoric career.

CARAVAGGIO AND THE ORIGINS OF STILL LIFE PAINTING
Whether triumphant floral bouquets, allegories, hunting and game pictures, or intimate pastel-tinted flowers, still life paintings have always appealed to the five senses. Caravaggio transformed still lifes from a minor to a major genre, famously saying, ‘it cost him just as much effort to paint a picture of flowers as one of figures.’ The author of two books devoted exclusively to Italian Still Life painting, Spike is “the outstanding expert of the subject ... with a competence I unhesitatingly acknowledge” (Luigi Salerno). In this lecture, Dr. John T. Spike traces Caravaggio’s influence on Roman still life paintings in the 17th and 18th centuries.

THE ART OF AMBIGUITY: CARAVAGGIO’S ROMAN-PERIOD PAINTINGS
The brilliant 17th century Italian painter, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610), depicted religious themes in contemporary settings with a style based in visible reality. Habitually transgressing the boundary between the sacred and the profane, Caravaggio is renowned as one of the greatest religious painters of all time. His early successes, however, were also based on his genius for treating themes of deception, trickery, and disguise. Like his contemporary, Shakespeare, Caravaggio combined realism with artifice in ways that have resulted in a puzzling diversity of interpretations. Dr. John T. Spike proposes that these paintings reflect Caravaggio’s delight in calculated ambiguities.

AMAZING GRACE: CARAVAGGIO’S LATER PAINTINGS
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) shocked his contemporaries by portraying the saints and virgins of Christianity with the faces and bodies of his companions and lovers from the streets of Rome. Yet, more than merely provocative, Caravaggio’s paintings, particularly in the last decade of his short and scandalous life, reflect his profound consideration of the controversial theological questions: Who will receive God’s grace, Who will be saved? John T. Spike shows that, beginning with The Calling of Saint Matthew, Caravaggio’s later paintings continually posed these questions through biblical stories, exposing the artist’s restless longing to experience the amazing delights of God’s grace for himself.

CARAVAGGIO AND SHAKESPEARE
Ten years before Shakespeare invented Hamlet, Caravaggio painted Saint Francis in solitary dialogue with a skull.  John Spike's innovative lecture compares works by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) and William Shakespeare (1564-1616), offering lively evidence of the convergences between these contemporaries and the cultural currents of the early modern age.  

CARAVAGGIO’S OPTICAL REALITIES
The brilliant early 17th century painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) reset the course of art history with his hyper-real depictions of religious scenes in contemporary settings. But, how faithful to reality were Caravaggio’s paintings? Dr. John T. Spike argues that, aided by the new technology of optics, Caravaggio deliberately reworked select elements of his paintings, such as the scale of hands, the sharpness of leaves, or the way figures overlap, to skillfully orchestrate optical illusions that created the immediacy and visual impact for which his paintings are justly celebrated.

MATTIA PRETI

MATTIA PRETI: IL CAVALIER CALABRESE
Dr. Spike wrote his doctoral dissertation for Harvard University on the life and paintings of Mattia Preti (Taverna 1613-1699 Malta). In 1999 in commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary of his death, the governments of Malta, his home for the last 40 years of his life, and Taverna, Mattia Preti’s birthplace, sponsored the publication of Spike’s comprehensive Catalogue Raisonné of the paintings of Mattia Preti. In this lecture, Dr. John T. Spike places Preti’s major paintings within the context of the master’s career.

A LIFE WELL-LIVED: 17TH-CENTURY OLD MASTERS SHOW THE WAY
Religious, political, and military turmoil dominated 17th-century Europe as the balance of power shifted from church to state, and competition accelerated to maintain and extend colonies in distant corners of the globe. How did one live a good life in a world characterized by constant violence? The answers embraced by the leading thinkers of the day came from the now little known theory of Neo-Stoicism which offered practical advice on how to live in ways that were both morally sound and politically effective. Combining Christian and pagan thought, Neo-Stoicism promoted rational reflection to soothe the soul in times of emotional distress. Art historians have long credited the great French painter, Nicolas Poussin, with a monopoly on Neo-Stoicism because of his extremely rational, cool, and restrained style. Yet, Dr. John T. Spike demonstrates there is more than abundant evidence that Neo-Stoic thought underlies the work of many of the great 17th-century painters, including the sumptuously dramatic paintings of Rubens and the martyrdoms of Mattia Preti. Despite their wildly differing styles, their message remains the same.

FUNDAMENTALS OF THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN ART:
A series of lectures based on Dr. Spike’s graduate course of the same title at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum jointly with the European University in Rome. The monuments of Italian art and architecture are discussed in the context of the Christian message as expressed by artists ranging in date from the Catacombs to Caravaggio. Different fundamentals of Christian art are identified including, narration, symbolism, abstraction, power, miracle and love.