Freud’s Italian Renaissance

Broadcast 15 – 22 May, 2024. Duration: 4 hours 9 minutes

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Whilst Freud surrounded himself with antiquities from ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, when it came to more recent examples of the visual arts, it was the Italian Renaissance that most captured his imagination. From his absorption in the Signorelli Frescos in Orvieto, which became the subject for the first chapter of ‘The Psychology of Everyday Life’, to the hours spent in contemplation of Michelangelo’s sculpture of Moses in Rome, Freud was fascinated with the puzzles and enigmas that he saw in Renaissance art.

This course examines Freud’s fascination for the Italian Renaissance, focussing primarily on two key texts: ‘Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood’ and ‘The Moses of Michelangelo’. We will contextualise Freud’s readings of Renaissance figures by exploring the sources he drew on, analyse his arguments with close readings of the texts, and discuss his findings in the light of thinkers such as Aby Warburg and Gilles Deleuze and artists such as Francis Bacon.

This course consists of two sessions:
Part 1 – Freud and Leonardo: Memories, Sexuality and Sublimation
Part 2 – Freud and ‘The Moses of Michelangelo’: Figures, Conflicts and Ambivalence

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The course is delivered by the Freud Museum’s Research Manager Tom DeRose.