This course will trace the development of the Italian baroque in architecture, sculpture and painting. It will consider a variety of themes relevant to Baroque artistic production, including religious influences on the art of the period, namely the Reformation and the Catholic Counter Reformation; economic influences; central versus peripheral locations; issues of gender and sexuality; patronage; architectural site and meaning; urban planning and transformation; the artist, his workshop and rivalries; decoding the myths of artistic genius; and seventeenth-century primary sources.