|
Baroque was born in Italy, and later adopted in France, Germany, Netherlands, and Spain. The word "baroque" was first applied to the art of period from the late 1500s to the late 1700s, by critics in the late nineteen century. Baroque covers a wide range of styles and artists.
With technical brilliance, the baroque artist achieved a remarkable harmony wherein painting, sculpture, and architecture were brought together in new spatial relationships, both real and illusionary, often with spectacular visual effects.
Baroque art is the painting and sculpture associated with the Baroque cultural movement, a movement often identified with Absolutism and the Counter Reformation; the existence of important Baroque art and architecture in non-absolutist and Protestant states, however, undercuts this linking.
Baroque that was primarily associated with the religious tensions within Western Christianity: division on Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.
Exploring Art Style
The origins of the word baroque are not clear. It may have been derived from the Portuguese barocco or the Spanish barueco, indicating an irregularly shaped pearl. The word itself does not accurately define or even approximate to the meaning of the style to which it refers.
However, by the end of the 18th century the term "baroque", carrying associations with the grotesque, had entered the vocabulary of art criticism as a label for a style of 17th-century art that many later critics regularly dismissed as too bizarre or strange to merit serious study.
Writers such as the 19th-century Swiss cultural historian Jakob Burckhardt considered this style the decadent end of the Renaissance; his student Heinrich Wölfflin, in Principles of Art History (1915; translated 1932), first pointed out the fundamental differences between the art of the 16th and 17th centuries, stating that "baroque is neither a rise nor a decline from classic, but a totally different art".
Painting
The Council of Trent (1545-63), in which the Roman Catholic Church answered many questions of internal reform raised by both Protestants and by those who had remained inside the Catholic Church, addressed the representational arts by demanding that paintings and sculptures in church contexts should speak to the illiterate rather than to the well-informed.
Due to this Baroque art tends to focus on Saints, the Virgin Mary, and other well known Bible stories. This turn toward a populist conception of the function of ecclesiastical art is seen by many art historians as driving the innovations of Caravaggio and the Carracci brothers, all of whom were working (and competing for commissions) in Rome around 1600.
However, although religious painting, history painting, allegories, and portraits were still considered the noblest subjects, landscapes, still life, and genre scenes were also very common.
Sculpture
The most important sculptor of the Baroque period was undoubtedly Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), who approached Michelangelo in his multiple skills.
Bernini sculpted, worked as an architect, painted, wrote plays, and staged spectacles. In the late 20th century Bernini was most valued for his sculpture, both for his virtuosity in carving marble and his ability to create figures that combine the physical and the spiritual. He was also a fine portraitist in high demand among the powerful for bust-length likenesses.
Various Shades of Baroque Art
No doubts – as a viewer you would get engaged in art both physically and emotionally.
The baroque style is characterized by an emphasis on unity among the arts.
Baroque that use revolutionary technique of dramatic, selective illumination of figures out of deep shadow - a hallmark of Baroque painting. Contrary to the traditional idealized interpretation of religious subjects, Baroque artists like Caravaggio presented realistically models from the streets.
Artists from Flemish countries emphasized realism of every day’s life. It has been seen in works of Rembrandt and Vermeer. The new Baroque style is a dynamic art which reflects the growth of absolutist monarchies and is suitable to manifest power. It is also known as "the style of absolutism".
Baroque is a style in which painters, sculptors, and architects looked through emotion, movement and variety in their works. Baroque preferences higher volumes, exaggerates decorations, adds colossal sculptures, huge furniture etc.
Feeling & sense of change, energy, and anxiety are dominant impressions in art style. Strong contrasts of light and shadow often add to dramatic effects.
In architecture, there was a special attention given to animation and magnificence achieved through scale, the dramatic use of light and shadow.
Renaissance art v/s Baroque art
Baroque art is characterized by great drama, rich deep color, and intense light and dark shadows. As opposed to Renaissance art, which usually showed the moment before an event took place, Baroque artists chose the most dramatic point, the moment when the action was occurring: Michelangelo, working in the High Renaissance, shows his David composed and still before he battles Goliath; Bernini's baroque David is caught in the act of hurling the stone at the giant. Baroque art was meant to evoke emotion and passion instead of the calm rationality that had been prized during the Renaissance.
Baroque painters
Italian Painters:
Michelangelo Merisi-Caravaggio
Annibale Carracci
Agostino Carracci
Guido Reni
Pietro da Cotona
Baciaccia
Artemisia Gentilesci
French Painters and Miniatursts:
Claude Lorrain
Nicolas Poussin
Georges de La Tour
Antoine Le Nain
Hyacinthe Rigaud
Jean Clonet
Spanish Painters:
Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez
Francisco de Zurbaran
Sanchez Cotan
Jusepe de Ribera
German Painters:
Georg Flegel
Hans Holbein the Younger
Flemish Painters:
Sir Anthony Van Dyck
Peter Paul Rubens
Jan Brueghel
Clara Peeters
Dutch Painters:
Rembrandt van Rijn
Gerard Ter Borch
Jan Vermeer
Frans Hals
Judith Leyster
Aelbert Cuyp
Jacob van Ruisdael
Meindert Hobbema
Jan Steen
Wilhelm Kalf
Anna Maria Sibylla Merian
Rachel Ruysch
English Painters and Miniaturists:
Jeremiah Meyer
Nicolas Hilliards
Isaac Oliver
Samuel Cooper
Richard Cosway
Oziris Humphrey
John Smart
Baroque sculptors and architects
Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680)
Francesco Borromini (1599-1667)
Claude Perrault (1613-1688), French
Art Works By Baroque Artist
• Aelbert Cuyp (Dutch, 1620-1691), Dordrecht: Sunrise, c. 1650, , oil on canvas, 40 1/8 x 63 3/8 inches (102 x 161 cm), Frick Collection, NY.
• André-Charles Boulle (French, 1642-1732), Wardrobe (alternatively known as an Armoire), Paris, around 1700, made of oak and pine, with ebony, tortoiseshell, inlaid (marquetry) with brass and tin veneering, pewter, horn, and gilded bronze (ormolu), 102 x 58 x 25 inches (260 x 148 x 64 cm), Louvre.
• Annibale Carracci (Italian, 1560-1609), The Virgin Appearing to St. Luke and St. Catherine, 1592, oil on canvas, 4.01 x 2.26 m, Louvre.
• Anthony Van Dyck, Andromeda Chained to the Rock, 1637-38, oil on canvas, 84 3/4 x 52 inches (215.3 x 132.1 cm), Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
• Anthony Van Dyck, Frans Snyders and Margareta Snyders, a pair of portraits, each: c. 1620, oil on canvas, c. 55 x 40 inches (135 x 100 cm), Frick Collection, NY.
• Artemisia Gentileschi (Italian, 1593-1651/53), Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes, c. 1625, oil on canvas, 1.8 x 1.4 m (72 1/2 x 55 3/4 inches, Detroit Institute of Art, MI.
• Artemisia Gentileschi (Italian, 1593-1651/53), Judith Beheading Holofernes, 1620, oil on canvas, 78 3/8 x 64 inches (199 x 162.5 cm)
• Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (Spanish, 1618-1682), The Young Beggar, c. 1650, oil on canvas, 1.34 x 1.00 m, Louvre.
• Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) (Italian, Lombard, 1571/73-1610), The Musicians, c. 1595, oil on canvas, 36 1/4 x 46 5/8 inches (92.1 x 118.4 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. (On the Met's page, you can enlarge any detail.)
• Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), The Crucifixion of St. Andrew, 1607, oil on canvas, 202.5 x 152.7 cm, Cleveland Museum of Art.
• Caravaggio, Medusa, oil on a circular convex leather shield, diameter 55.5 cm, Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
• Charles Lebrun (French, 1619-1690), Expressions of the Spirit's Passions: Anger, c. 1663, head three-quarters to the right, black pencil, (25 cm wide), Louvre.
• Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée) (French, 1600/5?-1682), Pastoral Landscape, 1638, oil on canvas, 38 1/4 x 51 1/4 inches, Minneapolis Institute of Arts. See landscape.
• Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée), Sunrise, possibly 1646-47, oil on canvas, 40 1/2 x 52 3/4 inches (102.9 x 134 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.
• Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée), The Ford, possibly 1636, oil on canvas, 29 1/4 x 39 3/4 inches (74.3 x 101 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.
• Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée), View of La Crescenza, 1648-50, oil on canvas, 15 1/4 x 22 7/8 inches (38.7 x 58.1 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.
• Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée), View of Tivoli at Sunset, 1644, oil on canvas, 39 1/2 x 53 1/2 inches (100 x 136 cm), Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA.
• Copy after Nicolas Poussin, Adoration of the Golden Calf, 16th - 17th century, oil on canvas, 38 x 52 inches (96.5 x 132 cm), Legion of Honor, San Francisco.
• Diego Velázquez (Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez) (Spanish, 1599-1660), Juan de Pareja (c. 1610-1670), 1650, oil on canvas, 32 x 27 1/2 inches (81.3 x 69.9 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. (On the Met's page, you can enlarge any detail.)
• Diego Velázquez, King Philip IV of Spain (1605-65), 1644, oil on canvas, 51 1/8 x 39 1/8 inches (129.8 x 99.4 cm), Frick Collection, NY.
• Diego Velázquez, The Family of Philip IV, or "The Maids of Honor (Las Meninas)", c. 1656, oil on canvas, (318 x 276 cm), Prado Museum, Madrid.
• Diego Velázquez, The Luncheon (Three Men at a Table), c. 1617/18, oil on canvas, 43 x 40 inches (108.5 x 102 cm), Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
• Francisco de Zurbarán (Spanish, 1598-1664), The Young Virgin, c. 1632-33, oil on canvas, 46 x 37 inches (116.8 x 94 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.
• Francois Girardon (French, 1628-1715), Model for the Equestrian Statue of Louis XIV, bronze, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
• Frans Hals (Dutch, c. 1581-1666), Young Man and Woman in an Inn ("Yonker Ramp and His Sweetheart"), 1623, oil on canvas, 41 1/2 x 31 1/4 inches (105.4 x 79.4 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.
• Georges De La Tour (French, 1593-1652), Magdalen with the Smoking Flame, c. 1640, oil on canvas, 46 x 36 1/8 inches (116.8 x 91.8 cm), Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
• Georges de La Tour (French, 1593-1652), The Fortune Teller, probably 1630s, oil on canvas, 40 1/8 x 48 5/8 inches (101.9 x 123.5 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. (On the Met's page, you can enlarge any detail.)
• Gerrit van Honthorst (Dutch, 1590-1656), The Denial of St. Peter, about 1620-1625, oil on canvas, 43 1/2 x 57 inches, Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
• Gianlorenzo Bernini (Italian, 1598-1680), Boy with a Dragon, Rome, 1614-1620, marble, 22 x 20 x 16 inches (55.7 x 52 x 41.5 cm), J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, CA.
• Gianlorenzo Bernini, Dove of the Holy Spirit, c. 1660.
• Gianlorenzo Bernini, Trevi Fountain (Fontana di Trevi) 1629-1762, Rome.
• Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Italian, 1696-1770), Maecenas Presenting the Liberal Arts to Emperor Augustus, c. 1745, oil on canvas, 27 x 35 inches (69.5 x 89 cm), Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
• Giuseppe Mazzuoli (Italian, c.1644-1725), The Death of Adonis, 1709, marble, height 193 cm, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
• Guido Reni (Italian, Bologna, 1575-1642), Portrait of Cardinal Roberto Ubaldino (1581-1635), Papal Legate to Bologna, before 1625, oil on canvas, 77 1/2 x 58 3/4 inches (196.9 x 149.2 cm), Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
• In the manner of Diego Velázquez, Dona Mariana of Austria, Queen of Spain, 1649, oil on canvas, 27 3/8 x 22 inches, Legion of Honor, San Francisco.
• Jacob Isaacksz van Ruisdael (Dutch, 1628/291682), Landscape with a Footbridge, 1652, oil on canvas, 38 3/4 x 62 5/8 inches (98.4 x 159.1 cm), Frick Collection, NY.
• Jacob Isaacksz van Ruisdael, The Marsh, 1660s, oil on canvas, 28 1/2 x 39 inches (72.5 x 99 cm), Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
• Jacob Jordaens (Flemish, 1593-1678), The Bean King, c. 1638, oil on canvas (transferred from old canvas), 62 x 83 inches (160 x 213 cm), Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
• Jan (or Johannes) Vermeer (Dutch, Delft, 1632-1675), Young Woman with a Water Jug, c. 1660-67, oil on canvas, 18 x 16 inches (45.7 x 40.6 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.
• Jan (or Johannes) Vermeer, The Glass of Wine, c. 1661/62, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.
• José (Jusepe) de Ribera (Spanish, 1591-1652), The Club-Footed Boy, 1642, oil on canvas, 1.64 x 0.93 m, Louvre.
• José (Jusepe) de Ribera, The Holy Family with Saints Anne and Catherine of Alexandria, 1648, oil on canvas, 82 1/2 x 60 3/4 inches (209.6 x 154.3 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.
• Louis Le Nain (French, c. 1593-1648), The Dairymaid's Family, 1640s, oil on canvas, 20 x 2e3 inches (51 x 59 cm), Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
• Luisa Roldán (Spanish, 1650-1704), sculptor; Luis Antonio de los Arcos, polychromer, gilder, St. Ginés de la Jara, about 1692, polychromed wood (pine and cedar) with glass eyes, height 69 1/4 inches (176 cm), J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, CA.
• Nicolas Poussin (French, 1593/94-1665), Parnassus, oil on canvas, 145 x 197 cm, Prado Museum, Madrid.
• Nicolas Poussin, Landscape with Polyphemus, oil on canvas, 149 x 197.5 cm, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
• Nicolas Poussin, The Abduction of the Sabine Women, probably 1633-34, oil on canvas, 60 7/8 x 82 5/8 inches (154.6 x 209.9 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.
• Nicolas Poussin, The Death of Germanicus, 1627, oil on canvas, 58 x 77 3/8 inches, Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
• Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577-1640), The Alliance of Earth and Water (The River Scheldt and Antwerp), c. 1618, oil on canvas, 87 1/2 x 71 inches (222.5 x 180.5 cm), Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
• Peter Paul Rubens, Bacchus, 1638/40, oil on canvas (transferred from panel), 75 x 63 1/2 inches (191 x 161.3 cm), Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
• Peter Paul Rubens, Isabella Brant, c. 1620, oil on wood, Cleveland Museum of Art.
• Pierre Puget (French, 1620-1694), Milo of Crotona Devoured by a Lion,1670-1682, marble, 106 x 55 x 35 inches (270 x 140 x 98 cm), Louvre.
• Pietro da Cortona (Italian, 1596-1669), Christ on the Cross with the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Saint John, about 1661, pen and brown ink, with gray-brown wash, heightened with white body color over black chalk, 15 7/8 x 10 7/16 inches (40.3 x 26.5 cm), J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, CA.
• Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, Self-Portrait, 1658, oil on canvas, 52 5/8 x 40 7/8 inches (133.7 x 103.8 cm), Frick Collection, NY.
• Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (Dutch, Amsterdam, 1606-1669), The Raising of Lazarus, c. 1630, oil on panel, 37 7/8 x 32 inches (96.2 x 81.3 cm), Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
• Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Aristotle with a Bust of Homer, 1653, oil on canvas, 56 1/2 x 53 3/4 inches (143.5 x 136.5 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.
• Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Flora, c. 1635, oil on canvas, 49 x 40 inches (125 x 101 cm), Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
• Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Nicolaes Ruts, 1631, oil on panel, 46 x 34 3/8 inches (116.8 x 87.3 cm), Frick Collection, NY.
• Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Nude Woman with a Snake, about 1637, red chalk heightened with white body color, 9 11/16 x 5 7/16 inches (24.7 x 13.7 cm), J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, CA.
• Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, The Return of the Prodigal Son, c. 1668/69, oil on canvas, 103 x 81 inches (262 x 205 cm), Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
|
