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 The Baroque
Rational idealization of Passion and real people
Christian themes. Portray Christian themes.
The viewer is at this table
The scene takes place on stage
as one of the participants.
with the viewer in the audience.

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

Caravaggio portrays Christ in his
Supper of Emaus with real, not
idealized, men.
He invites viewer participation
through intimate lighting, a
recessional, painterly and open
form composition.
Trace the edges of this detail and
see where they disappear, leaving
the viewer to fill in the missing
visual information. This device
invites viewer participation. An
example of a painterly technique.
Can you find these visual
devices in this work?

Raphael The Deposition Caravaggio Entombment
From Idealization to Realization
High Renaissance Baroque
A Rebirth of Classic and Hellenistic Greek
interpretations imbued with Christian meaning.

Is this work by the
same artist consistent
with these same three
visual devices?
Ans: MOST CERTAINLY!
Have we seen this face
before?

Same model?

Recessional
Composition
Caravaggio

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

What characterizes this
painting as Baroque?
Capturing the casual and
fleeting moment in time
is partly the answer.
Velasquez Maids Of Honor

Northern Renaissance
Art for the eye and soul.
Van Eyck documents the Arnolfini
wedding with an eye for detailed
images, texture and symbolism.
Example: The single candle, faithful dog
and the light of God which unifies all.

Rembrandt
The Night Watch
This Dutch master
trades fame and
fortune for personal
integrity.
Trapdoor lighting is
introduced as his
signature means of
creating 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.
Optical sensations with the
Genre subject matter and portraits
aid of the camera obscura.
for the wealthy merchants.

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

Peter Paul Rubens
The Flemish painter whose
compositions dramatize
mythology with the aid of
his patron’s money and
often, her own image.

Church & State meld into one.

Portrait of his wife,
Helene Fourment.
His wife provides the
model for three views
of the female torso.
Stone-like linear modeling
of the past is replaced with
opulent and sensual fleshiness. The Thee Graces

Boucher Fragonard
The Rococo Period: Indulgence during the Age of Authority…

Chardin
With a few exceptions. Genre, or common everyday themes.

Plane
Linear
Classicism
Poussin The Rape of the Sabines
Pruning the divergent branches of the 17th & 18th Centuries.