Baroque Art
The Ornate Age
What is Art? Are we Art? Is Art Art?
 Baroque art lasted from 1600-1750
 Baroque was a marriage between the advanced techniques and
grand scale of the Renaissance to the emotion, intensity and drama
of Mannerism
 Baroque art expanded the role of art into everyday life
 Like explorers did, artists also built upon past discoveries
 The most common element: a sensitivity to and absolute mastery of
light to achieve maximum emotional impact
 Flow of Baroque: Rome (1600: Cathedrals to display family triumphs
to attract new worshipers to Catholicism)  France (divine-right
monarchs spending like pharaohs on palaces—think my palace at
Versailles)
 Paintings tended to be still lifes, portraits, landscapes, and scenes
from daily life
 Religious art flourished in Catholic countries
 Religious art was forbidden in Protestant lands like England and
Holland
Italian Baroque
 Artists could
 represent the human body from any angle
 portray the most complex perspective
 Realistically reproduce almost any appearance
 The change from the Renaissance to Baroque was
through the emphasis on emotion and dynamism
rather than rationality and stasis
 Three artists: Caravaggio, Bernini, and Borromini
Caravaggio
 He took realism to new lengths, painting bodies in a thoroughly “down and
dirty” style as opposed to pale, Mannerist phantoms
 He secularized religious art, making saints and miracles seem like ordinary
people and everyday events
 Advocated “direct painting” from nature – often from the steamy slums
 Many said he was the first artist intentionally seeking to shock and
offend…and if he tried to, he certainly succeeded
 Contemporaries called him an “evil genius” and the “anti-Christ of painting”
 Caravaggio was also a rebel, arrested multiple times and hung around the
dregs of society…
 And I apologize to the guys for saying this but…
 …he once stabbed a man in the groin over a tennis wager
 Ouch.
 Anyway, let’s take a look at some of his paintings, which showed his
opposition to tradition
Caravaggio: “The Calling of St. Michael”
Carvaggio: “Supper at Emmaus”
Caravaggio: “The Conversion of St. Paul”
Caravaggio
 “The Calling of St. Michael” is a vision of Matthew, the
apostle-to-be, sitting in a dark pub, surrounding by dandies
(not the Yankee Doodle kind) counting money, when
Christ orders him “Follow me.”
 “Supper at Emmaus” showed the moment the apostles
realized their table companion was the resurrected Christ
as an encounter in a wine shop
 “The Conversion of St. Paul” demonstrates Caravaggio’s
ability to see a traditional subject in a unique, unusual way
through hard focus and blinding spotlight and the use of
St. Paul being flat on his back with a horse (rear-end first)
over him
 Usually St. Paul’s story of conversion is seen through Saul
being converted by a voice from heaven with Christ on the
heavenly throne surrounded by throngs of angels
Caravaggio
 Caravaggio uses perspective to bring the viewer into the action
and chiaroscuro engages the emotions while intensifying the
scene’s impact through dramatic light and dark contrasts
 Because he favored shadowy backgrounds, his style was called
“il tenebroso” (which stands for in a “dark manner”)
 To Poussin (known for his peaceful scenes), he was a betrayer of
the art of painting
 To the police, he was a fugitive wanted for murder
 However, to major artists like Rubens, Velazquez, and
Rembrandt, he was a daring innovator who taught them how to
make religious paintings seem both hyper-real and
overwhelmingly immediate
Bernini (1598-1680)
 Gianlorenzo Bernini was an architect, painter,
playwright, composer, and theater designer…
 …oh, and he may have been the sculptor of the era
 Bernini created his version of “David” at age 25
“David” by Bernini
“David” by Bernini
 Bernini captured the moment of maximum torque, as he
wound up to hurl the stone
 David bit his lips from the strain, conveying the power
about to be unleashed, causing observers in front of the
sculpture to almost want to duck
 This is an example of Baroque art involving the viewer in its
motion and emotion by threatening to burst its physical
confines
 Bernini’s best known work though was likely “The Ecstasy
of St. Theresa”
“The Ecstasy of St. Theresa” by Bernini
“The Ecstasy of St. Theresa” by Bernini
 This was Bernini’s masterpiece and the culmination of the Baroque style and
St. Peter’s Cathedral was an entire chapel designed as a stage set to show it
off, including painted balconies on the walls filled with “spectators”
sculpted in relief
 St. Theresa reportedly saw visions and heard voices, believing herself to
have been pierced by an angel’s dart infusing her with divine love
 “The pain was so great that I screamed aloud; but at the same time I felt
such infinite sweetness that I wished the pain to last forever.”
 Afraid to say anything…
 The marble itself is the saint swooning on a cloud, an expression of ecstasy
and exhaustion on her face
 Bernini’s goal was to relive Christ’s passion through the sculpture to give
worshippers an intense religious experience
 The saint and angel appear to be floating on swirling clouds, which golden
rays of light pour down from a vault of heaven painted on the ceiling
 Textures made the white marble “flesh” seem to quiver with life
 The feathery wings and frothy clouds are equally convincing
 “The whole altarpiece throbs with emotion, drama, and passion.”
 (I couldn’t leave that quote out)
Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641)
 Van Dyck was the court painter of Charles I
 He was handsome, vain, and fabulously gifted
 Van Dyck dressed flamboyantly, carried a sword, and adopted the
sunflower as his personal symbol
 His portraits established an intimate and psychologically
penetrating style that influenced 3 generations of portrait painters
 He was able to turn royalty into real human beings
 Van Dyck posed aristocrats and royals in settings of Classical
columns and shimmering curtains to convey their refinement and
status
 Still, his ease of composition and sense of arrested movement
(making it look as if the subjects were pausing rather than posing)
lent humanity to an otherwise stilted scene
 Subjects loved van Dyck because he was able to flatter his subjects,
making them look like slim models of perfection rather than the
plain look many of them had
 By making the ratio of head to body 1 to 7 (instead of the common 1 to 6)
he was able to elongate and slenderize his subject’s figure
“Charles I at the Hunt”
Dutch Baroque
 This is a significant difference from earlier slides because this is
Protestant country
 Religious art was forbidden in the democratic country’s severe,
whitewashed churches and the usual sources of patronage (the
church, royal court, and nobility) were gone
 The result was a democratizing of art in subject matter and
ownership
 Still Life
 Extraordinary realism in portraying domestic objects
 Considered inferior in other parts of the world
 Landscape
 Treated nature realistically, often set against towering clouds
 “Big Sky” paintings
 Done by Ruisdael, he emphasized great open stretches of sky, water,
and fields and used dramatic contrasts of light and shadow and
threatening clouds to infuse his work
 A Fleeting Expression
 Frans Hals was the “Master of the Moment”, etching a moment in time
and bringing the subject to life through laughing or some other emotion
“Still Life” by Heda
“Windmill at Wijk-bij-Duurstede” by Ruisdael
“The Jolly Toper” by Hals