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79-323/A2 Leonardo and the Renaissance K. Neal
6 units MWF 11:30-12:20
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) exemplifies the Renaissance ideal of the uomo
universale, the "universal man" whose powerful intellect ranged with
astonishing insight over many fields-art, architecture, anatomy, civil and
military engineering, aeronautics, and the natural sciences.  Reputedly the
most brilliant figure of his age, he was also one of the most enigmatic and
contradictory: though a master of charm, he was also an icy cynic who
regarded human beings as "sacks for food"; though a pagan and a misogynist,
in The Last Supper he created Christianity's most popular devotional image
and in the Mona Lisa the most famous woman in the world.  This course will
survey Leonardo's career in the context of the Italian Renaissance, and
also examine the work of other universal men such as Filippo Brunelleschi,
Leon Battista Alberti, and Leonardo's younger rival, the only slightly less
versatile Michelangelo Buonarroti.

79-355/A2 The American Skyscraper K. Neal
6 units MWF 1:30-2:20
Returning to America in 1904, the novelist Henry James complained that
"monsters of greed" had transformed the New York of his youth into "a huge
jagged city."  During his absence, the skyscraper had been born from a
marriage of technology and commercial growth, and was beginning-not without
opposition-to dominate the country's urban skylines.  Focusing on such
major monuments as Adler and Sullivan's Wainwright Building (1891), William
Van Alen's Chrysler Building (1930), and Mies van der Rohe's Seagram
Building (1958), this course will trace the development of America's
greatest contribution to the Western cityscape from the first "elevator
buildings" of the 1870s, through the Art Deco towers of the 1920s and the
gleaming glass monoliths that proliferated after World War II, to the
Postmodern skyscraper of today.