Day 1 - Introduction
When students enter the room, a computer or slide projection of the main panel of the Allegory will be displayed on a screen or wall. The image should be low enough to stand in front of, and large enough for a handful of students to "enter" as participants in the fresco. To the side of the room another screen will be set up for an overhead projector. The projector will be used to write down student reactions to the slide.
Ask for one or two volunteers to stand to the side of the image with a pointer. Begin by asking the students basic questions about the image:
- What do you see in the picture?
- Where is this scene taking place?
Once they indicate their initial impressions, continue with more subjective questions:
- What might the differing sizes of the participants indicate?
- How might the people at the bottom be distinguished by their dress, position in relation to the larger figures, or the group they are placed with?
The teacher will write the reactions of the volunteers on a side board, and encourage the students to ask questions as well.
When the students have finished pointing out the composition of the fresco, ask them or two new volunteers to take their place "in" the fresco as participants. Then have other students ask them personal questions about what they are doing, who they are, and who the figures above them might be. Record their reactions along with the other information.
Have the students return to their seats and review the answers to the questions on the board.
At this point identify the artist, when the work was painted and where it was painted. Have the class discuss the following:
- Why might the artist have chosen to paint the fresco in the town hall?
- Who was meant to see it?
- Who might have commissioned the work? Do you think they had a say in what or who was depicted?
Finish the lesson by defining the terms fresco, patron, client and allegory.
Assignment: Ask students to sum up the theme of the fresco in one sentence. Have students read material from their textbook on the economic and political life of the Renaissance city-state and civic humanism. (Alternatively, the textbook section may be replaced or supplemented by excerpts from Leonardi Bruni's Panegyric to the City of Florence and/or Poggio Bracciolini's On Avarice. Both selections are useful primary sources for depicting the rebirth of "town pride," the importance of ostentation and classical forms in art and architecture as outward signs of civic beauty, the desire for social harmony and the primacy of the merchant class and its wealth in achieving a just and well run city.)
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