Chapter 10
The Counter-Reformation and the Baroque
Emotion, Inquiry, and Absolute Power
The Council of Trent
•
The Council of Trent met in three sessions and spanned the
careers of four different popes over 18 years: 1545—47, 1551—
52, and 1562—63
•
Concentrating on restoring internal Church discipline, the
Council called a halt to the selling of Church offices and religious
goods, required bishops to live in their dioceses and to preach
regularly and interact with their parishioners, and required
bishops to maintain strict celibacy
•
Subsequent treatises on art, written by clergy, called for direct
treatment of subjects, unencumbered by anything “sensuous,”
from brushwork to light effects to even polyphony in music.
Further, they insisted on the use of religious imagery
Michelangelo and the
Rise of Mannerism
•
The Counter-Reformation’s demand for clarity and directness did not
constrain so original an artist as Michelangelo
•
In the Last Judgment fresco for the wall of the Sistine Chapel,
Michelangelo took enormous liberties with the figure, rejecting the
classicizing tendencies of the High Renaissance and manipulating and
distorting the conventional figure
•
His Saint Bartholomew, who was martyred by being skinned alive, sits
just below Christ’s feet, holding in his right hand a knife, the
instrument of his torture, and in his left hand his own flayed skin.
Many scholars believe the face on the flayed skin is a self-portrait of
Michelangelo
Michelangelo, Last Judgment
Fresco, 48'  44', 1534-41
Mannerist Arts
•
As long as painting confined itself to depicting nonreligious subjects
for nonreligious venues, it was more or less free to do as it pleased
•
In the private galleries of the princely courts throughout Europe, this
more indecorous but highly inventive imagery thrived
•
Jupiter and Io, painted by the northern Italian artist Correggio in the
1530s, seems almost intentionally the embodiment of what the
Council of Trent would label “lascivious or impure”
Correggio, Jupiter and Io
Oil on canvas, 69"  29½", Early 1530s
•
Jupiter appears in a dream to Io,
daughter of the king of Argos,
and seduces her disguised as a
cloud
•
In addition to the unabashed
sensuality of the presentation,
the juxtaposition of Io’s fully lit
and well-defined body with
Jupiter’s dark and amorphous
form is fully Mannerist in spirit
El Greco
•
Born Domenico Theotokopulos, El Greco (“The Greek”) traveled from
Crete to Italy to Spain in 1567 where he wedded Mannerism with the
elongated, iconic figures of Byzantine art
•
In his Resurrection, Roman soldiers rise and fall in figura serpentinata
pose around Christ like petals on a blossom, with Christ himself as the
flower’s stamen
•
Resurrection celebrates raw physicality even as it presents the greatest
spiritual mystery of the Christian faith
El Greco,
Resurrection
Oil on canvas, 9‘ ¼"  4'2“,
1597-1604
The Baroque in Italy
•
As the seventeenth century began, the Church felt a need to attract people
back into its fold, and the arts took a sensual turn, an appeal not just to the
intellect but also to the range of human emotion and feeling
•
This appeal was embodied in an increasingly ornate and grandiose form of
expression that came to be known as Baroque
•
Attention to the way viewers would emotionally experience a work of art is
a defining characteristic of the Baroque, a term which may derive from the
Portuguese barroco, literally a large, irregularly-shaped pearl
•
By the middle of the seventeenth century, artists were increasingly
comfortable working in the innovative and exuberant style that had been
inaugurated by Mannerism Baroque, while, at the same time, they still
followed the edicts of the Council of Trent
Baroque Sculpture: Bernini
•
Gian Lorenzo Bernini conceived the Baroque as a compromise
between religious propriety and the exuberant style of Mannerism
•
Probably no image sums up better the Baroque movement than
Bernini’s sculptural program for the Cornato Chapel
•
Bernini’s theme is a pivotal moment in the life of St. Teresa of Ávila
•
The sculptural centerpiece of his chapel decoration is Teresa’s
implicitly erotic swoon, the angel standing over her, having just
withdrawn his penetrating arrow from her “entrails,” as Teresa
throws her head back in ecstasy
Gian Lorenzo Bernini,
The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa
Marble, 11‘ 6", 1645-1652
Master of Light and Dark: Caravaggio
•
Baroque painters, seeking to intensify the viewer’s experience of their
paintings, sought to manipulate light and dark to great advantage
•
The acknowledged master of light and dark, and perhaps the most
influential painter of his day, was Michelangelo Mensi, known as
Caravaggio
•
Time and again his paintings dramatize the moment of conversion
through use of a technique known as tenebrism
•
Tenebrism makes use of large areas of dark contrasting sharply with
smaller brightly illuminated areas
Caravaggio
The Calling of Saint Matthew
Conversion of Saint Paul
Oil on canvas, 11‘ 1"  11‘ 5", ca. 1599-1600
Oil on canvas, 90½"  68-7/8", ca. 1601
Artemisia Gentileschi
•
One of Caravaggio’s most important followers, and one of the first
female artists to achieve an international reputation, was Artemisia
Gentileschi, the daughter of one of Caravaggio’s closest friends
•
She was raped at 19 by Agostino Tassi, a Florentine artist who served
as her teacher. Her father filed suit against Tassi, and during the trial
Gentileschi was tortured with thumbscrews and subjected to
examinations by midwives
•
During and after the trial, she painted five separate versions of the
biblical story of Judith and Holofernes, suggesting that in this series
she transforms her personal tragedy into her painting. In all of them,
Judith is a self-portrait of the artist
Artemisia Gentileschi,
Judith and Maidservant with Head of Holofernes
Oil on canvas, 72½"  55¾", ca. 1625
Venice and Baroque Music
•
In the sixteenth century, the Council of Trent rejected the use of
secular music, which by definition it deemed lascivious and impure,
as a model for sacred compositions
•
The division between secular and religious music was far less
pronounced in Venice. Venetian composers felt freer to experiment
and work in a variety of forms
•
Venice became the center of musical innovation in Europe, home to
the harmonies of Giovanni Gabrieli and the concertos of Antonio
Vivaldi and birthplace of Claudio Monteverdi’s new, text-based
musical form, the opera
The Secular Baroque in the North
•
A more austere Baroque style dominated northern Europe in the
seventeenth century, with Amsterdam at its center
•
The city’s thriving economy led to a tendency to excess that was
balanced by the conservatism of the Dutch Reformed Church, whose
Calvinist fathers found no place for art in the Calvinist liturgy, by and
large banning art from its churches
•
But the prosperous Dutch populace avidly collected pictures, the
most popular of which were still lifes, landscapes, and genre scenes
Still Lifes
•
Still lifes are paintings
dedicated to the
representation of common
household items and food
•
Example of vanitas painting –
reminder that earthly
pleasures do not last
•
Vanitas works reflect righteous
Protestant principles
Johannes Goedaert, Flowers in a Wan-li Vase with Blue-Tit
ca. 1660
Landscape
•
Landscapes such as this
one may reflect Dutch
national pride at
reclaiming extensive lands
from the sea (similar to
God’s re-creation of the
world after the Flood)
•
The religious undertone is
symbolized by the great
Gothic church rising over a
flat, reclaimed landscape,
lit by an almost celestial
light
Jacob von Ruisdael,
View of Haarlem from the Dunes at Overveen
ca. 1670
Genre Paintings
Jan Vermeer,
Woman with a Pearl Necklace
ca. 1664
•
Paintings that depict events
from everyday life were
another favorite of the Dutch
public
•
One of the masters of this type
of painting was Jan Vermeer,
whose works illuminate—and
celebrate—the material reality
of Dutch life
•
The woman portrayed here
brims with self-confidence,
and nothing in the painting
suggests that Vermeer intends
a moralistic message of some
sort
Rembrandt van Rijn
•
In the seventeenth century, Rembrandt was the leading painter in
Amsterdam and by far its most sought after portrait painter
•
His work was distinguished by his ability to build up the figure
with short dashes of paint or, alternately, long fluid lines of loose,
gestural brushwork. The result, paradoxically, is an image of
extreme clarity
•
One of his most important contributions to the art of portraiture
is his use of light to animate the figure
Rembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp
1632
This painting was commissioned by Dr. Tulp to celebrate his second public
anatomy demonstration performed in Amsterdam on January 31, 1632.
Baroque Music in the North
•
Like Baroque art, Baroque music sought to be new and original, as
Catholic and Protestant churches constantly demanded new music
for their services
•
The Baroque era produced more new instruments than any other.
Even traditional instruments were almost totally transformed. This
was the golden age of the organ, a very ancient instrument dating
from the third century BCE
•
Perhaps the greatest northern composer was Johann Sebastian Bach,
while in England, the music of German-born George Frederic Handel
defined the Baroque style
"Polyphonic Texture in Music"
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From Bach to the Future (length: 4:02). Item #34807
Absolutism and the Baroque Court
•
By the start of the eighteenth century, almost every court in Europe
modeled itself on the court of King Louis XIV of France
•
Louis, who thought of himself as Le Roi Soleil (“the Sun King”), so
successfully asserted his authority over the French people, the
aristocracy, and the Church that the era in which he ruled has become
known as the Age of Absolutism
•
He also was the absolute judge of taste at the French court and a
great patron of the arts, believing that championing the greatest in
art would establish himself as the greatest of kings
Versailles
•
From the moment that Louis XIV initiated the project at Versailles, it
was understood that the new palace must be unequalled in grandeur,
unparalleled in scale and size, and unsurpassed in lavish decoration
and ornament
•
The Hall of Mirrors, begun in 1678, shows in 30 paintings framed by
stuccowork on the ceiling Louis as a Roman emperor, astute
administrator, and military genius
•
The methodical, geometrical design of the gardens has come to be
known as the French garden
Versailles
Hall of Mirrors
North flowerbed
The Painting of Peter Paul Rubens
•
One of Louis’s favorite artists was the Flemish painter Peter Paul
Rubens
•
Ruben’s style, almost literally a “fleshing out” of the late Italian
Renaissance tradition, is so distinctive that it came to be known
as “Rubenesque.” His nudes are notable for the way in which
their flesh folds and drapes across their bodies
•
In keeping with his northern roots, Rubens gave a painting such
as The Kermis moralistic undertones. The couples’ base, animal
instincts mirror the posture of the dog with its nose in the clothdraped tub at the bottom center of the canvas
Peter Paul Rubens, The Kermis
Oil on canvas, 56-5/8"  102¾", ca. 1635
The Painting of Nicholas Poussin
•
A debate raged at Louis’s court as to who was the better painter—
Rubens or Nicholas Poussin, a Frenchman who had spent most of his
life in Rome
•
Advocating a classical approach to painting, he believed that subject
matter should be drawn from classical mythology or Christian tradition,
not everyday life
•
There could be no loose brushwork, no “rough style”; restraint and
decorum had to govern all aspects of pictorial composition
•
Most typically poussiniste is the compositional geometry of horizontals
and verticals
Nicholas Poussin, Arcadian Shepherds
Oil on canvas, 33½"  47 5/8", 1638-1639
Music and Dance at the
Court of Louis XIV
• Louis admired in particular
comédie-ballets—part opera,
part ballet
• These performances often
featured the king himself, who
had considerable talent as a
dancer
• Louis’s Royal Academy of Dance
soon established the rules for
the five positions of ballet that
became the basis of classical
dance
Louis XIV as the sun in the Ballet da la Nuit. 1653
The English Court
•
In England the arts were dramatically affected by tensions between
the absolutist monarchy of the English Stuarts and the much more
conservative Protestant population
•
Civil war from 1642 to 1648 resulted in Charles I being executed for
treason and Oliver Cromwell, leader of the Puritan faction. Cromwell
soon dissolved Parliament, assumed the role of Lord Protector, and
imposed “godly” laws: no swearing, drunkenness, cockfighting, or
commerce on Sunday
•
The tension between the Catholic-leaning English monarchy and the
more Puritan-oriented Parliament is clearly visible in works by Flemish
artist Anthony van Dyck, court painter to Charles I
Anthony van Dyck Charles I at the Hunt
Oil on canvas 8‘ 11"  6‘ 11", 1635
•
Charles I at the Hunt flatters the
king, presenting him as a full head
higher than the grooms behind
him
•
The angle of his jauntily cocked
cavalier’s hat is echoed in the
trees above his head and the neck
of his horse
•
He is the embodiment of the
Cavalier, as his royal supporters
were known
Anthony Van Dyck, Alexander Henderson,
Presbyterian Divine and Diplomatist
Oil on canvas, 50"  41½", ca. 1641
•
Alexander Henderson was one
of the most important figures
in the Church of Scotland
•
With his short-cropped hair
and dark, simple clothing, he
is presented in contrast to
Charles
•
His sole prop is a Bible, which
he holds as though he had
just been reading it
The Arts of the Spanish Court
• The Spanish court understood that in order to assert its absolutist
authority it needed to impress the people through its patronage of
the arts
• Philip IV hired Rubens to paint a cycle of 112 mythologies for his
hunting lodge
• In the spring of 1623, Diego Velázquez was summoned to paint a
portrait of the king. An appointment as court painter quickly
followed, and Velázquez became the only artist permitted to paint
the king
Diego Velázquez,
Las Meninas (The Maids of Honor)
Oil on canvas, 10' ¾"  9' ¾", 1656
•
Las Meninas is a life-size
grouping and Velázquez’s last
great royal commission
•
It elevates the portrait to a level
of complexity almost
unmatched in the history of art
•
The source of this complexity is
the competing focal points of
the composition—the Infanta
Margarita, her attendants, a
spot outside the painting
The Spanish Baroque in the Americas
•
The Americas were Spain’s greatest source of wealth, and Spanish
culture quickly took hold in both North and South America
•
Indigenous native populations Indianized the Christian art imposed
on them, creating a unique visual culture, part Baroque, part Indian
•
An extremely popular technique among the painters of Peru was
brocateado, the application of gold leaf to canvas, used especially
for creating elaborate brocadelike effects on saints’ garments
Luis Niño, Our Lady of the
Victory of Málaga
Oil on canvas overlaid with gold and silver, 59½"  43¾", ca. 1737