Yo, da Vinci, you talkin’ to me?

It’s like you went to a wrestling match and a lecture broke out. Michelangelo’s human figures versus the compositions of Titian? Rembrandt’s Dutch school vs. Caravaggio’s Catholic Baroque? What kind of art class is this?

“It’s presented in a theatrical style,” admits Dr. Bruce Elliot, who will appear in period garb. “And with a fair amount of storytelling.”

His lecture series “Great Artistic Rivalries” begins Dec. 2 at the Vintage House.

With his Ph.D in History, the Berkeley grad takes the master painters out of their studios and into the real world they inhabited and influenced.

Within major cultural movements such as the High Renaissance, there evolved different schools of art. The masters of those genres were often contemporaries, and tracked – with admiration or jealousy – what their peers were up to.

“Whether collaborative or advisorial,” Elliot said, “ historically the range extended from friendly competition to fierce personal rivalry.”

The intensity was important to the evolution of their art. “These were contemporaries in active competition. They were very much aware of what the others were doing.”

Often the competition was quite literal, as the artists vied for patrons and the top commissions of the day. “It was important to their art,” he said.

Elliot’s style is to create a historical context for the Great Masters. “We tend to think of the artists alone in their studio, and not of the world in which they lived,” Elliot said. The notion, sort of like picturing how Picasso, Matisse and Norman Rockwell thrived simultaneously, creates a new perspective on art history.

Elliot, who once ran a tile business in Sonoma, said that coming to acadamia from the “real world” influenced his teaching style. He blends information and wit, and makes ideas three dimensional through historical context. (The giant screen helps, too.)

Teaching a class aimed at lifelong learners, as he does at Stanford and Berkeley, allows him to indulge his more theatrical side. Things are a bit more staid in the shadow of the campus Ivory Tower, he admitted, where “not much attention is paid to making ideas interesting and accessible.”

“Great Artistic Rivalries” begins Dec. 2 with High Renaissance and how the Human Figure camp of da Vinci and Michelangelo co-existed with the Composition school of Raphael and Titian.

The three-session series will run on consecutive Thursdays from 10 a.m. to noon.

The fee is $55 for the series or $20 per session. Register at [email protected] or 996.0311.