Humanities 4/5
Visual Art
Baroque: Some Fundamentals of Visual Style
[The baroque,] in place of the perfect, the completed, gives the restless, the becoming, in place of the
limited, the conceivable, gives the limitless, the colossal. The ideal of beautiful proportion vanishes, interest
concentrates not on being, but on happening. The masses, heavy and thickset, come into movement.
— Heinrich Wölfflin
In his study Principles of Art History, Heinrich Wölfflin distinguishes between Renaissance and
Baroque style. While acknowledging many national stylistic tendencies which complicate any simple approach
to the question of a transition from Renaissance to Baroque style (for instance, he notes the contrast between the
more restless surfaces of Flemish art compared to the relative stability and calm of Dutch art), he also believes
that it is possible to discern general principles behind the development of style. He proposes five contrasts to
help describe the differences between the two styles in question. These contrasts, or oppositions, each relate to
some important general characteristics of how art works are organized. In each case, the first term of the
contrast is associated with Renaissance style, the second with the Baroque. The contrasts are:
1. Linear vs. Painterly
Renaissance art tends to define forms with clear contours. Even given that the development of chiaroscuro
(light/dark contrasts) is a Renaissance phenomenon, the use of light and dark in a Renaissance image generally
does not interfere with the viewer’s clear understanding of the boundaries of an object. As an example,
Wölfflin suggests Dürer’s St. Jerome in His Study. Even though the artist has made great use of lights and
darks, the emphasis is still on the integrity of each form (object) in the object and its distinctness. On the other
hand, Baroque art, being more painterly, defines masses rather than forms, and the Baroque artist is not
concerned with making sure that we know exactly where forms begin and end in space. Rembrandt’s etching of
St. Jerome helps to make the point: forms seem to dissolve in light. The Baroque artist does not hesitate to
create patterns of light and dark which transgress the boundaries of objects.
2. Plane vs. Recession
While Renaissance art is oriented towards the flat plane, the surface of the picture surface presented as parallel
to the principle planes being represented, Baroque art tends towards diagonal axes of movement which draw us
into the picture and distract us from the flatness of the picture plane.
3. Closed vs. Open
Renaissance art draws attention to its own rationality, to the clear horizontal and vertical orientations (relating
to the ideal of knowing exactly where objects are located) of the image or constructed form. Baroque creations,
in contrast, attempt to hide their underlying structures. A Baroque copy of a Renaissance masterpiece such as
Raphael’s Disputa will, quite characteristically, transform the symmetry of the original into a marked
asymmetry.
4. Multiplicity and Unity
In this oppositional pair, Wölfflin addresses the issue of how art works of each style achieve effects of unity.
He [somewhat confusingly?] distinguishes between “multiple unity” (Renaissance style) and “unified unity”
(Baroque style). By this he means that the Renaissance artist presents a number of clearly identifiable parts
(“articulated”) which are subordinated to an overall arrangement or emphasis or single effect. Leonardo’s Last
Supper is one excellent example among many: Within each group of apostles, each apostle is clearly defined;
moreover, each group of apostles is also distinct. However, each individual and all three groups are subsumed
or organized into a unified whole with the focal point of the composition being Jesus’ head. Leonardo takes
advantage of the privileged central position of the picture, where viewer’s attention is naturally drawn. A
Baroque artist will not worry about maintaining the individual integrity of forms and parts, being instead more
concerned with achieving an overall effect. Often, this effect involves a strong sense of movement, and in
many Baroque art works, the viewer will distinguish a specific figure only with difficulty, the much stronger
visual impression being of the overall swirl of dynamic motion.
5. Clearness and Unclearness
Wölfflin notes that “for classic [Renaissance] art, all beauty meant exhaustive revelation of the form; in baroque
art, absolute clearness is obscured even where a perfect rendering of facts is aimed at. The pictorial appearance
no longer coincides with the maximum of objective clearness, but evades it.” The opposition between clearness
and unclearness may take many forms, and is obviously related to many of the oppositional pairs already
discsussed. That is, the Baroque tendency to obscure forms in the painterly manner of presentation certainly
leads to less “clearness.” Other areas of representational style which are relevant include the use of color. In
this realm, Wölfflin notes that, while Renaissance artists such as Leonardo knew of and observed the effects of
colored reflections — that is, realized that the color of an object may depend upon the reflection of light from a
nearby colored surface onto that object — he refrained from applying this knowledge to any great extent in his
paintings, as he felt that to do so would be to risk clarity. Baroque artists, striving for a type of art in which, as
Wölfflin argues, “there is always an unsolved remainder,” did not hesitate to make greater use of such color
effects. In terms of spatial organization, as well, Baroque artists present ambigous situations (e.g., pictures
within pictures where the boundaries of each are not clearly articulated, or where it is unclear, as some critics
argue is the case with Velazquez’s Jesus in the House of Marth and Mary, whether we are looking at a mirror, a
painted image, or an opening in a wall).