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Baroque Art in Europe

Europe in the 17th Century

Baroque: The Ornate Age

• Baroque Art (1600-1750) succeeded in marrying the advance techniques and grand scale of the Renaissance to the emotion, intensity and drama of Mannerism.

• Baroque art was the most ornate and sumptuous in the history of art.

• While the term Baroque is often used negatively to mean over done and ostentatious, the 17th century not only produced such artistic geniuses as Rembrandt and Velasquez, but expanded the role of art into everyday life.

• Artists now called Baroque came from all over Europe to Rome to study the masterpieces of Classical antiquity and the High Renaissance then returned home to interpret what they had learned in their own 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 of Europe.

• Art academies had been established in Rome to train artists in the various techniques developed during the Renaissance.

• Artists could expertly represent the human body from any angle, portray the most complex perspective and realistically reproduce almost anything.

• Italian Baroque art differs from Renaissance art with its emphasis on emotion rather than rationality, on dynamic rather than static compositions.

• The most striking difference between Italian Baroque and Renaissance painting was the use of light to dramatize a 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 paintings confiscated from Roman churches and taken to Paris during Napoleon's occupation of Italy in 1798.

• It was one of the few paintings returned to Italy in 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