art history 2009 class 5 lecture

The High Renaissance The Baroque Reason vs. Passion The Climax vs. Anti-Climax

Da Vinci The Last Supper Caravaggio Supper at Emaus

The High Renaissance

Rational idealization ofChristian themes.

The Baroque

Passion and real peoplePortray Christian themes.

The scene takes place on stagewith the viewer in the audience.

The viewer is at this table as one of the participants.

The Baroque Period: Intimate, passionate, and natural visual reality.

Caravaggio portrays Christ in hisSupper of Emaus with real, notidealized, men.

He invites viewer participation through intimate lighting, arecessional, painterly and openform composition.

Trace the edges of this detail andsee where they disappear, leavingthe viewer to fill in the missingvisual information. This deviceinvites viewer participation. Anexample of a painterly technique. Can you find these visual

devices in this work?

Raphael The DepositionHigh Renaissance

Caravaggio Entombment BaroqueFrom Idealization to Realization

A Rebirth of Classic and Hellenistic Greek interpretations imbued with Christian meaning.

Is this work by thesame artist consistentwith these same threevisual devices?

Ans: MOST CERTAINLY!

Have we seen this facebefore?

Same model?

RecessionalComposition

Caravaggio

Velasquez provides further evidence of a trend that focuses on a world as we see it. Idealizedmythology gives way to a Bacchus who is not idealized or glorified. It is painterly with acomposition which is recessional and arranged in open form.

Velasquez Maids Of Honor

What characterizes thispainting as Baroque?

Capturing the casual andfleeting moment in timeis partly the answer.

Northern Renaissance Art for the eye and soul.

Van Eyck documents the Arnolfiniwedding with an eye for detailedimages, texture and symbolism.

Example: The single candle, faithful dog and the light of God which unifies all.

RembrandtThe Night Watch

This Dutch mastertrades fame andfortune for personalintegrity.

Trapdoor lighting isintroduced as hissignature means ofcreating visual focus.

Recessional Open form Painterly Time in flux

Rembrandt: We see the artist through his own eyes.

Rather than paint the eye, he paints the glance.

The mouth and nose become a breath.

His brush plays hide and seek with the viewer.

Frans Hals: Patronage or not. Another Dutch Treat

Vermeer: The ordinary made monumental. Genre subject matter and portraits for the wealthy merchants.

Optical sensations with theaid of the camera obscura.

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Open form and recessional compositions include the viewer.Painterly techniques make us believe we see what is merelysuggested. Optical illusions of light and surfaces are a feastfor the eyes and our aesthetic senses.

Peter Paul Rubens

The Flemish painter whose compositions dramatize mythology with the aid ofhis patron’s money and often, her own image.

Church & State meld into one.

The Thee Graces

His wife provides themodel for three viewsof the female torso.

Stone-like linear modelingof the past is replaced withopulent and sensual fleshiness.

Portrait of his wife,Helene Fourment.

The Rococo Period: Indulgence during the Age of Authority…

Boucher Fragonard

ChardinWith a few exceptions. Genre, or common everyday themes.

Poussin The Rape of the Sabines

Pruning the divergent branches of the 17th & 18th Centuries.

PlaneLinearClassicism