Project information
The Fall of an Empire or the Rise of Europe? (FERE)

In the traditional historiographical narrative, the arrival of the “barbarians” corresponds to the end of the greatest civilization of the antique Mediterranean: the Roman Empire. But was the situation so simple? Who were these “barbarians”? And did the Empire really collapse or was it rather transformed? The goal of this course is to focus on the artistic, visual, material, and performative cultures that coexisted in this extraordinary moment of history. To reach this objective, we will firstly focus on the prejudices constructed from the Renaissance to our days about what was commonly considered as the “Dark Ages”. Secondly, we will be investigating the role of medias in changing history: from sculptures to “bidimensional” images, from roll to codex, from the illusive image to the iconic one. Third, we will analyze the role played by the meeting of cultures – constitutive for the investigated period – in the birth of the “Middle Ages”.