Baroque Week 1

Judith Beheading Holofernes

http://www.artble.com/artists/caravaggio/more_information/style_and_technique

When I think of the Baroque period I think of Caravaggio’s paintings. He was known for his realism, intense chiaroscuro and emphasis on co-extensive space.I love the subtle color he uses an his attention to detail. His drapery is very beautiful and I also enjoy the way he shows action in his paintings and the way they tell a story.

Ann Sutherland Harris Reading

Seventeenth-Century Art & Architecture

• A period that encompassed the careers of many of the best-known artists of European history.
• Far more painting than sculpture was produced because the latter (controlled by the Spanish monarchy) is an expensive medium and fewer artists took it up.
• Gian Lorenzo Bernini was the trans-formative genius of this medium in the 17th century.

Six countries whose art and architecture that are usually taught in courses of Baroque art:

• Italy
• Flanders
• Spain
• France
• the Dutch Republic
• England

The Habsburg court of Emperor Rudolf II in Prague

• Attracted painters, engravers, and sculptors from Antwerp, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Basle, and Milan.
• Their sophisticated style became the final fling of Mannerism.
• Court moved to Vienna in 1620.

Italy

• In the 16^th century, Italy became a magnet for the artists from the Netherlands and France
• Italian artists were sought by courts in Spain, France and England.
• Carracci and Caravaggio began the stylistic revolution.
• The Counter-Reformation Church offered many opportunities for artists in Rome that the city became the most important center of artistic production in Europe.
• Rome remained the most important European city for ambitious artists until Paris gradually replaced it in the 19^th century.

Flanders (the Spanish Netherlands) and Spain

• Developments affected by Italian art.
• Artistic production in Flanders gradually declined after the deaths of Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck in the 1640s.

Dutch Republic and England

• The transformation of Paris into a modern city began around 1600.
• Printmakers and painters found a huge new market among the middle classes.
• The English continued to depend on imported talent.
• Patronage for any kind of painting was slow to develop until the end of the century.
• In the field of architecture, English artists emerge as rivals to their continental peers.
• Christopher Wren designed and built St. Paul’s Cathedral, the largest church erected in Western Europe in the 17^th century.

Caravaggio, Rubens and Poussin

There’s no simple relationship between artists’ personalities and the character of their art, but knowing something about artists’ lives and reading their own statements about their tastes and intentions can create empathy for work that may seem at first inaccessible.

• A slow examination of any visual image invariably yields deeper understanding.
• The contrast between Caravaggio’s violent temper and the profound religious sentiment that he could conjure up on canvas immediately engages specialists and the general public.
• Rubens and Poussin were serious students of the visual and intellectual culture of the Italian Renaissance and it’s ancient roots.
• Rubens was an extrovert involved in the major diplomatic and religious issues of his time.
• Poussin lived quietly in Rome working steadily except when taking a walk in the Borghese Gardens with friends.

Best known painters, sculptors, and architects working, who emerged and transformed the visual arts during the 17th century

• Bernini
• Borromini
• Caravaggio
• Claude
• Hals
• Poussin
• Rembrandt
• Rubens
• van Dyck
• Velazquez
• Vermeer
• Wren

• Florence, Antwerp, and Venice declined as centers of artistic significance
• Rome, Paris, Amsterdam expanded

Politics, Religion, and Art

• Spain ruled most of Italy south of Rome including Sicily
• Exercised de facto (denoting someone or something that is such in fact) control over Milan and the northern port of Genoa
• England and Scotland became one country under James I in 1603
• By mid century, most of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales were controlled by Parliament
• The religious wars between Protestants and Catholics from the 16th century continued into the 17th century.
• Henry VIII already declared himself head of the Church of England in 1534
• The southern Netherlands could no long serve as Spain’s “cash cow”
• One of Spain’s many reasons of steady economic decline after 1600
• Political propaganda created in Rome, was a rich source of artistic patronage
• Both Catholic and Protestant churches were major catalytic forces in the visual arts

The Economics of Art

• The enormous number of architecturally significant buildings, major sculptural monuments, and large-scale paintings produced in Western Europe in the 17th century are eloquent proof of the improved economic condition after 1600
• 18th century, British artists dominate artistic production in all media
• The money was there, but the taste and inclination weren’t
• Italy and Spain’s population declined in the 17th century
• Venice began to lose trade to Genoa and Naples
• Other sea routes were discovered and more ships carried more goods to Northern Europe
• Urban VIII drained the Church’s treasury to decorate II Gesu, the interior of St. Peter’s and his family’s properties and to fight the futile war of Castro, over a small town of his rivals, Farnese Family

Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Ges%C3%B9

• Famine struck early 1640s
• Papal treasury couldn’t afford sufficient grain to alleviate hunger
• Urban was hated by the Romans as a result
• The papacy and its court remained the most significant source of artistic patronage in Italy
• The artistic traditions of Florence, Bologna, Genoa, Milan, Venice and Naples were maintained throughout the century

Geography, Cosmology, and Astronomy

• Developments in navigation, cartography, an d astronomy in the 16th and 17th centuries revealed new worlds to Europeans
• Astronomical discoveries were found even more disturbing

Brave Voyagers:

• Vasco da Gama sailed around Africa to Calcutta in 1497
• Amerigo Vespucci reached Brazil in 1499
• Christopher Columbus reached America a few years earlier

• At the start of the 15th century all believed the world was a flat circle hovering in a crystal sphere
• By 1500 a few realized it was round

Johannes Kepler

• discovered the 3 laws of planetary motion, proving what Nicolaus Copernicus argued that the sun, not the earth is at the center of the planetary system
• Worked out of to calculate the time it takes each planet to make its journey around the sun
• Believed in astrology

Curiosity about new worlds and the desire to record, map, and explain their fauna, flora, and inhabitants meant a ready market for books describing travelers’ experiences.

• Artists and botanists traveled and brought back drawings of new plants and animals from Asia, Africa, and South America

Image source: http://caribbean-beat.com/issue-96/maria-merian-caterpillar-lover#axzz3PTkaFhk7