Baroque Art in Europe

Europe in the 17th Century

Baroque: The Ornate Age

• Baroque Art (1600-1750) succeeded inmarrying the advance techniques andgrand scale of the Renaissance to theemotion, intensity and drama ofMannerism.

• Baroque art was the most ornate andsumptuous in the history of art.

• While the term Baroque is often usednegatively to mean over done andostentatious, the 17th century not onlyproduced such artistic geniuses asRembrandt and Velasquez, but expandedthe role of art into everyday life.

• Artists now called Baroque came from allover Europe to Rome to study themasterpieces of Classical antiquity and theHigh Renaissance then returned home tointerpret what they had learned in theirown unique way.

Baroque: The Style• Baroque styles varied widely, ranging from Italian realism to French

flamboyance.

• However, the common element throughout Baroque art was the

sensitivity to and the absolute mastery of Light in order to achieve

maximum impact.

• The Baroque era began in Rome around 1600 with Catholic popes financing

magnificent cathedrals to display the triumph of their faith over the

Protestant Reformation.

• From there., it traveled to France where absolute monarchs ruled by divine

right and spent amounts comparable to the pharaohs of Egypt to glorify

themselves.

• In Catholic countries, like Flanders, religious art flourished, while in

the Protestant lands of northern Europe, religious imagery was

forbidden.

• As a result art tended to be still life, portraits, landscapes and scenes from

everyday life.

• Louis XIV

• Rigaud

• 1701

• Oil on canvas

• C. 9’X7’

• Louvre

The Baroque in Italy

Painting and Architecture

Caravaggio

Gentileschi

Bernini

Boromini

Baroque Art in Italy• Artists in Rome pioneered the Baroque

style before it spread to the rest ofEurope.

• Art academies had been established inRome to train artists in the varioustechniques developed during theRenaissance.

• Artists could expertly represent thehuman body from any angle, portray themost complex perspective andrealistically reproduce almost anything.

• Italian Baroque art differs fromRenaissance art with its emphasis onemotion rather than rationality, ondynamic rather than staticcompositions.

• The most striking difference betweenItalian Baroque and Renaissancepainting was the use of light to dramatizea composition.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

Caravaggio 1571-1610

• He was the first great

representative of the

Baroque style.

• Within his lifetime,

Caravaggio was

considered enigmatic,

fascinating, a rebel, and

dangerous.

• He burst upon the Rome

art scene in 1600, and

thereafter never lacked

for commissions or

patrons, yet handled his

success atrociously.

• An early published notice on him, dating

from 1604 and describing his lifestyle

some three years previously, tells how:

• "after a fortnight's work he will swagger

about for a month or two with a sword at

his side and a servant following him, from

one ball-court to the next, ever ready to

engage in a fight or an argument, so that it

is most awkward to get along with him.”

• In 1606 he killed a young man in a brawl

and fled from Rome with a price on his

head.

• In Malta in 1608 he was involved in

another brawl, and yet another in Naples

in 1609, possibly a deliberate attempt on

his life by unidentified enemies.

• By the next year, after a career of little

more than a decade, he was dead.

• Huge new churches and palaces were being built

in Rome in the decades of the late 16th and early

17th centuries, and paintings were needed to fill

them.

• The Counter-Reformation Church searched for

authentic religious art with which to counter the

threat of Protestantism, and for this task the

artificial conventions of Mannerism, which had

ruled art for almost a century, no longer seemed

adequate.

• Caravaggio's novelty was a radical naturalism

which combined close physical observation with

a dramatic, even theatrical, approach to

chiaroscuro, the use of light and shadow. In

Caravaggio's hands this new style was the vehicle

for authentic and moving spirituality.

• Famous and extremely influential while he lived,

Caravaggio was almost entirely forgotten in the

centuries after his death, and it was only in the

20th century that his importance to the

development of Western art was rediscovered.Chalk portrait of Caravaggio

by Ottavio Leoni,

• Boy with a Basket of

Fruit

• c. 1593

• Oil on canvas

• 70 x 67cm

• Galleria Borghese

Rome

• The Fortune Teller, 1596-97, Oil on canvas

• 99 x 131cm, Louvre, Paris

• The Cardsharps, c. 1594, Oil on canvas

• 94 131 cm, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth

• Judith Beheading Holofernes, c. 1598, Oil on canvas

• 58 x 78 inches, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome

• Narcissus

• 1598-99

• Oil on canvas

• 110 x 92 cm

• Galleria Nazionale d'Arte

Antica, Rome

• The Calling of Saint Matthew, 1599-1600, Oil on canvas

• C. 10 x 11 feet, Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome

• The Martyrdom of St

Matthew

• 1599-1600

• Oil on canvas

• 323 x 343 cm

• Contarelli Chapel

• San Luigi dei Francesi

Rome

• St. John the Baptist

(Youth with Ram)

• c. 1600

• Oil on canvas

• 129 x 94 cm

• Musei Capitolini,

Rome

• David

• 1600

• Oil on canvas,

• 110 x 91 cm

• The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, 1601-02, Oil on canvas

• 107 x 146 cm, Sanssouci, Potsdam

• Supper at Emmaus, 1601-02, Oil on canvas

• 139 x 195 cm, National Gallery, London

• Conversion of St Paul

• 1601

• The painting records the

moment when Saul of Tarsus,

on his way to Damascus to

annihilate the Christian

community there, is struck

blind by a brilliant light and

hears the voice of Christ

saying, "Saul, Saul, why

persecutest thou me?...And

they that were with me saw

indeed the light, and were

afraid, but they heard not the

voice..." (Acts 22:6-11).

• The Crucifixion of

Saint Peter

• 1600

• Oil on canvas

• 230 x 175 cm

• Cerasi Chapel

• Santa Maria del Popolo

• Rome

• This painting was

commissioned at the

same time as the

Conversion of St. Paul,

by Cardinal Cerasi.

• Entombment

• 1603-04

• Oil on canvas

• c. 10x7 feet

• Vatican Museum

• One of many paintingsconfiscated from Romanchurches and taken toParis during Napoleon'soccupation of Italy in1798.

• It was one of the fewpaintings returned to Italyin 1815.

• Madonna di Loreto

• 1603-05

• Oil on canvas

• 260 x 150 cm

• S. Agostino, Rome

• Caravaggio often used

everyday people as

models for his paintings.

• Death of the Virgin

• 1606

• Oil on canvas

• 369 245 cm

• Louvre, Paris

• Flagellation

• c. 1607

• Oil on canvas

• 390 x 260 cm

• Museo Nazionale di

Capodimonte

• Naples

• Beheading of Saint John the Baptist

• 1608, Oil on canvas, 361 x 520 cm, Saint John Museum, La Valletta

• The Raising of Lazarus

• 1608-09

• Oil on canvas

• 380 x 275 cm

• Museo Nazionale, Messina

• Some critics claimed that

Caravaggio used an actual

corpse as a model for the

figure of Lazarus.

• Burial of St Lucy

• 1608

• Oil on canvas

• 408 x 300cm

• Bellamo Museum,

Syracuse

• Salome with the Head of the Baptist

• c. 1609, Oil on canvas, 116 x 140 cm, Palazzo Real, Madrid

• David

• 1609-10

• Oil on canvas

• 125 x 101 cm

• Galleria Borghese

• Rome

David 1600 David 1610

• Caravaggio’s fame scarcely survived his death.

• His innovations inspired the Baroque, but the Baroque took the drama of his chiaroscuro

without the psychological realism.

• He directly influenced the style of his companion Orazio Gentileschi, and his daughter

Artemisia Gentileschi, and, at a distance, the Frenchmen Georges de La Tour and Simon

Vouet, and the Spaniard Giuseppe Ribera.

• Yet within a few decades his works were being ascribed to less scandalous artists, or simply

overlooked.

• Caravaggio never established a workshop and thus had no school to spread his techniques.

• Nor did he ever set out his underlying philosophical approach to art, the psychological

realism which can only be deduced from his surviving work.

• Thus his reputation was doubly vulnerable to the critical demolition-jobs done by two of his

earliest biographers, one, a rival painter with a personal vendetta, and the other an

influential 17th century critic, who had not known him but was under the influence of the

French artist, Poussin, who had not known him either but hated his work.

• In the 1920s art critic Roberto Longhi brought Caravaggio's name once more to public

attention, asserting that, “Ribera, Vermeer, La Tour and Rembrandt could never have

existed without him. And the art of Delacroix, Courbet and Manet would have been utterly

different.”

• The influential critic Bernard Berenson agreed: “With the exception of Michaelangelo, no

other Italian painter exercised so great an influence.”

The Gentlesechi Family

Orazio Gentileschi

and his daughter Artemisia Gentileschi,

Orazio Gentileschi

• 1563 - 1639

• Italian Baroque

painter

• one of more

important painters

influenced by

Caravaggio

• He was the father of

the painter Artemisia

Gentileschi.

• Lutenist

• c 1626.

• Oil on canvas

Artemisia Gentileschi• Artemisia Gentileschi (1593 -1652), was one of the first women artists to

achieve recognition in the male-dominated world of post-Renaissance art.

• In an era when female artists were limited to portrait painting, she was the firstwoman to paint major historical and religious scenes.

• Born in Rome in 1593, she received her early training from her father, but afterart academies rejected her, she continued study under a friend of her father,Agostino Tassi.

• In 1612, her father brought suit against Tassi for raping Artemisia.

• There followed a highly publicized seven-month trial.

• The trauma of the rape and trial had an enormous impact on Artemisia'spainting.

• Her graphic depictions were cathartic and symbolic attempts to deal with thephysical and psychic pain.

• The heroines of her art, especially Judith, are powerful women exactingrevenge on such male evildoers as the Assyrian general Holofernes.

• Her style was heavily influenced by dramatic realism and the markedchiaroscuro of Caravaggio.

• Susanna and the Elders(1610) was one of the firstworks of the young 17-year-old Artemisia.

• The painting depicts thebiblical story of Susanna, avirtuous young wife sexuallyharassed by the elders of hercommunity.

• Rather than showing Susannaas coyly or flirtatious (asmany male artists had paintedthe scene), Artemisia takesthe female perspective andportrays Susanna asvulnerable, frightened, andrepulsed by their demands,while the men loom large,leering, menacing, andconspiratorial in herdirection.

• Judith Beheading

Holofernes

• 1611-12

• Oil on canvas

• 158.8 x 125.5 cm

• Museo Nazionale di

Capodimonte, Naples

• Judith Beheading

Holofernes

• 1612-21

• Oil on canvas

• 199 x 162 cm

• Galleria degli Uffizi

• Florence

• Judith and her

Maidservant

• 1612-1613

• Oil on canvas

• 114 x 93.5 cm

• Galleria Palatina

(Palazzo Pitti),

Florence

• Self-Portrait as the Allegory

of Painting

• 1630s

• Oil on canvas,

• 96.5 x 73.7 cm

• Royal Collection, Windsor

• Judith and Her

Maidservant

• ca. 1625

• Detroit Institute of Arts

• After her death, she drifted into

obscurity, her works often attributed

to her father or other artists.

• Art historian and expert on

Artemisia, Mary D. Garrard notes

that Artemisia "has suffered a

scholarly neglect that is unthinkable

for an artist of her calibre."

• Renewed and overdue interest in

Artemisia in recent years has

recognized her as a talented

seventeenth-century painter and one

of the world's greatest female artists.

The Carracci Family

The Other Italian Baroque Painters

Agostino Carracci

Annibale Carracci

Ludovico Carracci

Carracci vs Caravaggio

• Unlike Caravaggio, theCarracci were more interestedin typically Florentine lineardraftsmanship, as exemplifiedby Raphael.

• Their style also derived fromVenetian painters with theiruse of glimmering colors andmistier edges.

• The family workshop inBologna was called upon topaint numerous frescos, whichthey completed with technicalmastery not seen since Michelangelo.

• Caravaggio on the other handnever painted in fresco.

Venus and Anchises, fresco detail

Galleria of the Palazzo Farnese, Rome

Annibale Carracci, 1597-1603

Palazzo Farnese• Based on the prolific and masterful

frescoes by the Carracci in Bologna,

Annibale was recommended by the

Duke of Parma, Ranuccio Farnese, to

his brother, the Cardinal Odoardo

Farnese, who wished to decorate the

piano nobile of the cavernous Roman

Palazzo Farnese in Rome

• In November-December of 1595,

Annibale and Agostino traveled to

Rome to begin decorating the

Camerino with stories of Hercules,

appropriate since the room housed

the famous Greco-Roman antique

sculpture of the super muscular

Farnese Hercules.

Legacy of the CarracciItalian Baroque Ceiling Painting

• PIETRO DA CORTONA, Glorification of the Papacy of Urban VIII

• Palazzo Barberini, 1633-3

• Giovanni Battista Gaulli

• Triumph of the Holy Name of Jesus

• 1672-85

• Church of Il Gesu, Rome

• Jesuit Church in Rome

• Gaulli’s work is the most extreme

example of over the top, super

illusionistic Baroque ceiling

painting.

• Detail of the Damned from

the Triumph of the Holy

Name of Jesus

• Note the twisting, contorted,

foreshortened figures.

Gianlorenzo Bernini

Italian Baroque Sculpture

Bernini

• 1598- 1680

• Greatest sculptor of the Baroque period

• Also an architect, painter, playwright,

composer and theater designer.

• More than any other artist, with his

public fountains, religious art, and

designs for St Peter’s, he left his mark

on the city of Rome

• Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius

• 1618-19

• Marble

• height: c. 95 inches

• Galleria Borghese, Rome.

• Apollo and Daphne

• 1622-25

• Marble

• height c. 100 inches

• Galleria Borghese

• Rome

• David

• 1623-24

• Marble

• height 170 cm

• Galleria Borghese,

Rome

Renaissance David Baroque David

Bernini at the Vatican

• The Baldachin

• 1624

• Bronze, partly gilt

• St. Peter’s Basilica

• Vatican

• A focal point of the

church’s interior, is the

canopy and altar beneath

the central dome,

marking the burial place

of St. Peter.

• It is over 100 feet high

• The Throne of Saint Peter

• 1657-66

• Marble, bronze, white and golden

stucco

• St. Peter’s, The Vatican

• Wooden chair

• The crowning achievement of

Bernini's design for the

decoration of St. Peter's can be

found in his later work Cathedra

Petri (Chair of St. Peter) located

in the apse of the basilica.

• This large reliquary was designed

to house the original of St.

Peter's.

• Above the chair is what is

commonly known as the

Glory.

• This is a combination of stucco

putti and angels surrounding a

stained glass window that is

the actual light source for the

apse.

• The window and dove act as

the light and word of God and

the Holy Spirit.

• Bernini diffused the light by

using colored glass and

reduced the harsh glare he so

detested.

• The Ecstasy of Saint Therese

• 1647-52

• Marble, stucco, gilt bronze

• Cappella Cornaro

• Santa Maria della Vittoria

Rome

St Peter’s Square and Colonnade

• Outside Saint Peter’s Basilica Bernini designed and enormous piazza andsurrounded it with two curving covered colonnades supported by rows of fourcolumns abreast.

• Bernini intended the two arcades to be like the Church’s maternal armswelcoming pilgrims to Saint Peter’s.

• Bernini

• Tritone Fountain

• Rome

• Fountain of the Four Rivers

• The Ganges

• 1648-51

• Piazza Navona

Borromini

Dynamic Architecture

1599-1667

Francesco Borromini• What Caravaggio did for painting

Borromini did for architecture.

• Just as Caravaggio’s figures seem toleap out at the viewer, Borromini’sundulating walls also to come life withdramatic light and shadow.

• He was a rebellious, emotionallydisturbed genius who died by suicide.

• He first worked as a stone cutter forBernini, who became his arch rival.

• His buildings often displayed an oddjuxtaposition of shapes.

• Convex surfaces beside concavesurface made his walls seem to ripple.

• Even though his buildings seem to bea random mix of shapes and surfaces,they are unified and cohesive,

San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, 1638-41

• Borromini

• Façade of San Carlo alle

Quartro Fontane

• Rome

• Borromini’s trademark

was alternating convex

and concave surfaces to

create the illusion of

movement.

• FRANCESCO BORROMINI

• Plan of San Carlo alle Quattro

Fontane

• Rome, Italy

• 1638–1641.

• Not exactly a basilica plan.

• Painting of the cupola

on the Church of St

Agnes designed by

Borromini in Rome

Dome interior, San Carlo dalle Quatrro Fontane

Piazza Navona

• Original site of a stadiumbuilt by the EmperorDomitian in 86 CE.

• The ruins of the stadiumhad been used in theMiddle Ages for festivalsand as a marketplace.

• The family of PopeInnocent X, the Pamphilis,had a palace facing thepiazza.

• The piazza became acenter of urban renewal in1652 when Pope InnocentX and the Pamphillisdecided to rebuild theirpalace and the Church ofSaint Agnese who wasmartyred here.

• Both Bernini and Borominiworked on the piazza.

• Four Rivers Fountain by Bernini

• Piazza Navona, Rome

Façade of Sant Agnese in Agone by Borromini

very Baroque, why?

• Works referenced:

• Janson, History of Art, Abrams 2001

• Marilyn Stockstad’s Art History: Second Edition (Volumes one and two)

• Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Timeline of Art History.” Available onlineat http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/splash.htm

• Strickland, Carol. The Annotated Mona Lisa. 1992

• “The Web Gallery of Art.” Available online at http://www.wga.hu

• http://www.artchive.com/artchive/E/el_greco.html