Barocco
Siglos 17 & 18
Martin Luther
• 95 Theses
• Schism from the
Catholic Church
• Against selling of
indulgences
• Stated the
corruption of the
Catholic Church,
including the
Pope
• Arguments spread
via the printing press
(1440)
• Began the Protestant
Reformation
Council of Trent
(1545-1563)
• Catholic response to
the Protestant
Reformation
• Cleaned up the
corruption
• Affirmed their
Catholic doctrine
• Decided that it was
important to
educate its
members
• However, most
were illiterate.
SOLUTION: Art should be used to
explain the profound dogmas of the
faith to everyone, not just the educated.
SOLUTION: Art should be used to
explain the profound dogmas of the
faith to everyone, not just the educated.
SO… Religious art was to be direct,
emotionally persuasive, and powerful in
order to fire the spiritual imagination and
inspire the viewer to greater holiness.
Things to Look for in Baroque Art:
•Images are direct, obvious, and dramatic.
The Crucifixion
of Saint Peter,
by Caravaggio,
1601
Caravaggio’s paintings were so
realistic that patrons sometimes
rejected them as too “vulgar.”
In this painting, St. Peter is being
crucified. He asked to be hung
from his cross upside-down as not
to imitate his Lord.
The divine light shines on Peter
while the faces of the Romans are
obscured by shadows.
Peter seems to be much heavier
than one would expect-three men
are struggling to lift him,
symbolizing the great weight of
their crime.
Things to Look for in Baroque Art:
•Images are direct, obvious, and dramatic.
•Tries to draw the viewer in to participate in the scene.
The Ecstasy of St.
Teresa, by
Giovanni
Lorenzo Bernini,
1652
A common theme
for Baroque artists
was the miraculous
moment where the
divine met the
earthly.
Things to Look for in Baroque Art:
•Images are direct, obvious, and dramatic.
•Tries to draw the viewer in to participate in the scene.
•Depictions feel physically and psychologically real. Emotionally
intense.
Things to Look for in Baroque Art:
•Images are direct, obvious, and dramatic.
•Tries to draw the viewer in to participate in the scene.
•Depictions feel physically and psychologically real. Emotionally
intense.
•Extravagant settings and ornamentation.
Things to Look for in Baroque Art:
•Images are direct, obvious, and dramatic.
•Tries to draw the viewer in to participate in the scene.
•Depictions feel physically and psychologically real. Emotionally
intense.
•Extravagant settings and ornamentation.
•Dramatic use of color.
Things to Look for in Baroque Art:
•Images are direct, obvious, and dramatic.
•Tries to draw the viewer in to participate in the scene.
•Depictions feel physically and psychologically real. Emotionally
intense.
•Extravagant settings and ornamentation.
•Dramatic use of color.
•Dramatic contrasts between light and dark, light and shadow.
The
Conversion on
the Way to
Damascus, by
Caravaggio,
1601
Depicted is the moment where
Saul (soon to be Paul) has a
conversion experience on the
road to Damascus.
Again we see the Baroque
theme of the divine suddenly
intruding into the earthly
sphere.
The man and the horse, who
symbolize the ordinary earthly
world and are not privy to the
full experience, are deep in
shadow.
Things to Look for in Baroque Art:
•Images are direct, obvious, and dramatic.
•Tries to draw the viewer in to participate in the scene.
•Depictions feel physically and psychologically real. Emotionally
intense.
•Extravagant settings and ornamentation.
•Dramatic use of color.
•Dramatic contrasts between light and dark, light and shadow.
•As opposed to Renaissance art with its clearly defined planes, with
each figure placed in isolation from each other, Baroque art has
continuous overlapping of figures and elements.
Things to Look for in Baroque Art:
•Images are direct, obvious, and dramatic.
•Tries to draw the viewer in to participate in the scene.
•Depictions feel physically and psychologically real. Emotionally
intense.
•Extravagant settings and ornamentation.
•Dramatic use of color.
•Dramatic contrasts between light and dark, light and shadow.
•As opposed to Renaissance art with its clearly defined planes, with
each figure placed in isolation from each other, Baroque art has
continuous overlapping of figures and elements.
•Common themes: grandiose visions, ecstasies and conversions,
martyrdom and death, intense light, intense psychological moments.
Diego Velázquez
1599-1660
de España
Las Meninas, 1656
Las Meninas is one of the most profound and enigmatic paintings in the world.
You are the king. You stand patiently posing for your portrait, while the royal painter looks somberly back at you
from behind his canvas. This is the position into which Velázquez puts the viewer of Las Meninas. It's a big and
paradoxical picture, a portrait not of the king and queen – who are only reflected in the painting in a bright mirror at
the back of a high, deep room – but of the anxious court mirrored in their – our – eyes. Velázquez shows us the
world a monarch sees.
The "meninas" are identically-dressed maids who fuss over the Infanta Margaret Theresa, an expensively dressed
little girl who even as she plays in front of her royal parents appears on her mettle, under scrutiny. She looks
nervously at them while two court dwarfs and a dog are on hand to provide entertainment. One dwarf kicks the dog.
It's a grave, chilly little world. No one (except the dog-kicker) seems relaxed and no one looks emotionally close to
the monarchs – to us, who stand where they stand. The scene is intensely theatrical, everyone in their costumes and
everyone on best behaviour. But at a door in the background a man is coming with news from Spain's vast and,
when Velázquez was at work, decaying empire.
Presumably Philip IV of Spain was happy with this ingenious conceptual portrait. As painter to the king, Velázquez
was showered with honours. But this painting menaces the fabric of reality and the illusion of identity with its
consummate game of mirrors. Do kings and queens exist only in the eyes of others? And if that is true of monarchs
then who on earth are you and I, transported uneasily by Velázquez into the skin of royalty, attended by a painter
who looks at us, polite, exact, and utterly ruthless in his craft?
La rendición
(surrender) de Breda,
1934-35
How military leaders treat their vanquished enemies conveys much of their
character. In early modern Europe, paintings of military victories usually
followed a preconceived structure: the victorious commander appeared
seated high on his horse, or on a throne, while the capitulating general
would kneel on the ground. Degraded and humiliated, the conquered army
leader would prostrate himself in submission to the contempt of the
triumphant general. But what happens if these dynamics are shifted? What
would an image of an honorable commander showing respect for a
conquered army communicate? Would a magnanimous leader be seen as
weak? And how could abstract concepts such as honor or magnanimity be
represented? Velazquez’s The Surrender of Breda revolutionized the genre
of military painting precisely by emphasizing that to win with elegance and
magnanimity is what defines a great leader, and not merely the ferocious
capacity to triumph in combat.
Las Meninas, 1656
La rendición (surrender) de Breda, 1634-35