The Baroque

The Baroque Introduction

Definition

Historical background

Baroque characteristics

Roots of Baroque style

Italian Baroque

Introduction

The Baroque developed in the 17th century in Italy, Spain and France. The greater centres in Italy were Rome and, generally Sicily .

The word baroque means “irregular pearl”. This name represents its eccentric and amazing aspetcs. This art was identified like “bad taste”, today this word has lost the negative connotation. The baroque aimed to astonish and to persuade.

Definition

Historical background The 17th century was characterized by the development of art, science, literature and music. In this period Galileo Galilei realized scientific discoveries in astronomic field with the invention of telescope. The popularity of the Baroque was encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church to react against the Protestant Reformation. The Church had decided that Art should communicate religious theme in direct and emotional involvement. The two monarchies in Europe were France and Spain.

Baroque characteristics

Theatricality and dinacism of space

Use of illusionist effect

Magnificence of the pictorial, sculptural and architectural shape

Their use to obtain a great scenographic effect

Roots of Baroque style

Baroque has its origins with the painters Carracci and Caravaggio who rejected the artificial art of Manierism, to return to the northern Italian painters of the nature Renaissance.

Italian Baroque Baroque starts with two great painters: Carracci an Caravaggio Carracci had a classical style and used monumental shape. Caravaggio had a realistic style. The centre of baroque was Rome with Bernini, the Carracci family and Borromini.

Painting

Caravaggio: Michelangelo Merisi by Caravaggio was an Italian artist active in Rome , Naples , Malta , and Sicily between

1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and

emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque school of painting

Carracci’ s family: The Carracci were three cousins; brothers Annibale and Agostino, and Ludovico .They came from a middle class family and dedicated themselves to the style of painting being practiced in the urban environment that in the years of their youth was dominated by artists of the lat Mannerist tradition.

Ludovico, the eldest, assumed the role of theorist and imposed the redirection towards the study of the real. This direct approach to the subject depicted was the first step towards making it more natural. The Carracci rejected the artificiality of Mannerist , championing a return to nature coupled with the study of the great northern Italian painters of the Renaissance , especially Correggio, Titian , and Veronese

Guido Reni: He was born in Bologna into a family of musicians, Guido Reni was the son of Daniele Reni and Ginevra de’ Pozzi. When he was nine years old, he was apprenticed under the Bolognese studio of Denis Calvaert . Soon after, he was joined in that studio by Albani and Domenichino . When Reni was about twenty years old, the three Calvaert pupils migrated to the rising rival studio, named Accademia degli Incamminati , led by Lodovico Carracci . Like many other Bolognese painters, Reni's painting was thematic and eclectic in style. Reni was later influenced by the novel naturalism of the Carracci’ s family.

Reni evolved a style that tempered Baroque exuberance and complexity with classical restraint. Shows his preference for gracefully posed figures that mirror antique ideals. In the later part of his career, Reni employed lighter tones, softer colours, and extremely free brushwork.

Sculpture

GIANLORENZO BERNINI

Gianlorenzo Bernini was born in Naples in 1598. He trained at the workshop of his father Pietro Bernini, a famous sculptor of the time. The artist's early works are carried out in collaboration with his father. There are three works by certain date that are in the first stage of Gianlorenzo: as the Goat Amalthea completed in 1615 that refers to Hellenism. Around 1618 the artist was strongly attracted by the study of emotional expressions and reflections; result of this study are the San Lorenzo on the grill, the San Sebastian, the Cherub bitten by a fish and the Damned Soul and Blessed Soul. Blessed with the soul, the artist represents the face of a young girl in ecstasy as the Damned Soul, probably his portrait, evidently refers to the Head of Medusa by Caravaggio. The sculptural group representing Anchises, Aeneas and his son Ascanius, opens a series of important works of bourgeois Gallery: David, the Rape of Proserpine, Apollo and Daphne. Contemporary works of Villa Borghese is the Bust of Camilla Barbadori portraits of Carlo Antonio dal Pozzo, Paul V, Gregory XV and De Montoya Fox dated to 1621-1622. In 1623 Pope Urban VIII commissioned him ilBaldacchino of St. Peter, who performed from 1624 to 1633. Between 1628 and 1647 created more in St. Peter's Tomb of Urban VIII, simultaneously executed busts of Scipione Borghese and Costanza Piccolomini Bonarelli. Also for Urban VIII executed the Fountain of Four Rivers in Piazza di Spagna and the Fontana del Tritone in Piazza Barberini in Rome. In 1644 he made for Pope Innocent X Pamphili the Fountain of Four Rivers at Piazza Navona in Rome and ended shortly after its completion including the Ecstasy of St. Teresa in the Cornaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria. The entire chapel was built according to specific devices spectacular: from the dead side balconies of the Cornaro family watch the scene that takes place on the altar of Ecstasy. Other works are executed after the Memorial to Sister Mary Ray, the truth of the Borghese Gallery, and yet the portrait busts of Pope Innocent X in the Galleria Doria Pamphili and the bust of Francesco I d'Este Este of Modena in the Museum. During the pontificate of Alexander VII Chigi, the zone system Bernini in St. Peter's apse. Among the huge opening with pilasters pretends clouds, rays and angels, the center will put the Dove of the Holy Spirit, while on the front of the chair is supported by the four great Fathers of the Church. In 1665 he went to France where he executed a bust of Louis XIV. Back in Italy built the monument in the center of Piazza della Minerva, and below the chapel of Forgiveness in the Cathedral of Siena with the sculptures of St. Jerome and the Magdalene. In 1667 Pope Alexander VII Chigi success Clement IX Rospigliosi who entrusted him with the arrangement of the bridge in front of Castel Sant'Angelo. For the bridge Bernini executed two of the ten angels that provided for the balustrades were deemed too good to be exposed to weather and then placed in the church of Sant'Andrea delle Frate. In 1669 he became Pope Clement X Altieri under the pontificate of which opened the Scala Regia to piedidella which placed the statue of Constantine. The artist's work ends under Pope Innocent XI Odescalchi and his last sculpture is the Savior who is on the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia. Gianlorenzo Bernini died in 1680.

Architecture

Maderno Rome, the cradle of a Baroque artist born:

Carlo Maderno was born in Ticino in 1556 and his artistic education was entrusted to his uncle Domenico Fontana, architect and sculptor. When his uncle was called to Rome for the construction of the church of St. Louis of France, Charles followed him and worked as a plasterer. Following the prestige and fame achieved, Charles obtained the Roman citizenship and settled down permanently in the city, creating a sort of brothers with the family business. Illustrious patrons: The Cardinal Girolamo Rusticucci was commissioned in 1592 at Fontana the rebuilding of the church of Santa Susanna at the Baths of Diocletian. A year later he was accused of embezzlement by Sixtus V and took refuge in Naples, the direction of the work passed to Maderno. In 1603 he built the inner lining of the nave and the façade, considered his first self-made and the first example of Baroque architecture. From 1598 to 1613 was in the service instead of Hasdrubal Mattei, for whom he wrote the only building he designed and made. In the same year he worked on the rebuilding of the Church of the Society of St. John of the Florentines, who had also offered accommodation. In 1602 the Aldobrandini family called him to replace Giacomo della Porta in the building of Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati, and, satisfied by the artist commissioned a palace in Rome: thus what was then the Palazzo Doria Pamphili. The "factory" of St. Peter In 1604 Pope Paul V had approved the demolition of the ancient Roman basilica, indicendo a competition for the completion of the basilica. The project that emerged victorious was to Maderno The facade of the basilica: a case architecture The design of Maderno tried to reconcile the dictates of the Counter great solemnity and magnificence, and the modern needs of a large basilica in plan and longitudinal Latin cross with the original plant Michelangelo: but this was not possible when, at the request of Pope Paul V The façade was enlarged and equipped with two side towers that covered much of the dome and upset the proportions calculated by Michelangelo. The realization of this project required the continuation of the work until 1626. Indeed, the present facade of the Basilica of San Pietro is too large compared to the original design by Maderno, which were two bell towers ever built for structural problems. His mature work After the completion of the facade of St. Peter's, Maderno is often responsible for work on the Papal commission for the papal Castel Gandolfo and realize it will be called to direct the construction of the basilica of Sant'Andrea della Valle from 1608 to 1627. To this church Maderno designed and built the second tallest dome in Rome after St. Peter, the decoration of which also involved Borromini, Although the project is lacking in character and truly innovative strength, Sant'Andrea della Valle is considered one of the most accomplished and admirable examples of that architecture dense plastic and emotional strain that will be called the Roman Baroque. The last years of his life are characterized by intense activity in civil architecture: designing the Palazzo Mattei, Palazzo Chigi-Odescalchi, the Palazzo Barberini and Qurinale, which will direct the site to death. The latest effort: the Palazzo Barberini, an anthology of the Baroque While the wings were made in 1629, Maderno died leaving the direction of Bernini's works. This will bring significant changes to the original plan, especially in the front courtyard and the abolition of the originally planned by the Ticino. The distinctive Baroque dynamism of Maderno and his taste for the scenarios "effect" is almost theatrical yet still widely visible on the ground floor, where the large atrium winds decreasing in width until it flows into a large elliptical room, the true heart of the building .

BORROMINI

Borromini was born in Bissone on Lake Lugano in 1599. Age he moved to Milan to study "the art of building". Come to Rome and worked with Carlo Maderno Maderno's death was Gianlorenzo Bernini.Alla help of Gianlorenzo Bernini's Baldacchino in the construction of St. Peter. Finding himself now in contrast to Bernini, began his own business with the project for the church and cloister of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane said the San Carlino. The cloister has a rectangular plan with angolismussati to accommodate pairs of columns, so that the rectangle is transformed into the octagon with curved sides. The pattern of alternation between concave and convex surfaces that seem to expand and contract, is repeated within the church that has made an elliptical recesses and protrusions. The dome is decorated with a pattern of crosses, octagons and hexagons that form a complex pattern. In the same year he performed the works of modernization and the Palazzo Spada Palazzo Falconieri. In 1637 began the construction of the Oratory of the Convent of the Filipinos but only ended 1649, using this structure for alternating convex and concave surfaces which project outside the dynamic tensions of the Interior. Between 1642 and 1660, Borromini built the church of St. Ivo alla Sapienza. The interior has a central plant consists of two intersecting equilateral triangles, and three apses and three niches which alternate, creating a ground floor plan that had never been used before. The same compositional balance can be found outside, in the cupola that covers the dome and lantern. In 1646 he received from Pope Innocent X Pamphili the task of transforming the church of San Giovanni in Laterano. Borromini reconciled the need for conservation of the ancient basilica, with the problems of static character who had come to create, incorporating pairs of columns within large pillars. In 1657 Innocent X decided to relieve the architect from his duties for the disagreements were born to the construction of the church of St. Agnes No Piazza Navona. From this moment, began years of crisis that did not end even with the creation of the College of Propaganda Fide. Borromini in Rome in 1667 committed suicide