Gianlorenzo Bernini “Saint Teresa in Ecstasy” 1647-1652 I am discussing the Baroque and its contextual relationship to several events of the time. By about 1600 the intellectual and artistic achievements of the renaissance had taken a new turn. The chief agent for change was the Roman Catholic Church who after the initial shock of the success of Protestantism and the reformation responded with a movement called the Counter Reformation. The goals of this movement are stated officially at the Council of Trent which met sporadically from 1545 to 1563. Among other things the Council of Trent called upon artists to remind Catholics of the power and splendor of their religion by commissioning a massive quantity of works of art dedicated to underlining the chief principals of Counter Reformation teachings. New emphasis was placed on clarity and directness and because of the churches resurgence there came also a new emphasis on material splendor and glory. It is for this reason that the Roman Catholic Church, the largest patron of the arts encouraged art’s ability to appeal to the emotions because they really begin to see this as one of the primary tools to influence public opinion with this is where you really start to see the theatricality the dramatic use of light, and the heightened emotionalism along with a new sense of realism begin to take a prominent role in the art of this period. This is where the Baroque period begins one of the things that occurs here is that there is an attempt to convey the intensity of extreme emotional states,
Andrea Sansovino “ Madonna and Child with St Anne” 1512 this is in sharp contrast to the calm balance and order that was emphasized during the Renaissance.
Gianlorenzo Bernini “Saint Teresa in Ecstasy” 1647-1652 In the ecstasy of saint Teresa Bernini depicts the Spanish mystic saint Teresa in the throes of ecstasy brought on by a vision that she describes in which she is visited by an angel. we can see that there are a number of devices that begin to appear in order to address this the extreme turbulence of Teresa’s garments reveal her emotional frenzy the folds are cut at an exaggerated depth to increase the contrast between light and dark, this is further increased by light brought in from a concealed source and filtered through yellow glass which also serves to reinforce the symbolic light represented by the metal rays. Standing in front of the piece the experience is theatrical and you become aware of viewing it almost as a performance rather than a static image.
Michelangelo Merisi or Caravaggio “The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew” 1599-1600 Caravaggio, in contrast to Bernini in his depiction of religious scenes refused to accept either the traditionally idealized versions of earlier artists or the Counter Reformation demands for magnificent display. Furthermore instead of placing figures in an elaborate setting in accordance with Counter Reformation principles, Caravaggio surrounded them with shadows, a device that emphasizes the drama of the scene and the poverty of the participants. Despite this you can see in this image many of the devices that would become hallmarks of Baroque art. In the “Martyrdom of Saint Matthew” Caravaggio uses his own experience of suffering to portray with painful realism the murder of one of the apostles. In this you can see the extreme manipulation of light for dramatic effect that he was so famous for, the emphasis on solidity of form that brings a level of believability to the scene, the extreme foreshortening that attempts to break the picture plane and involve the viewer, and the same kind of implied exaggerated energy and movement that we saw in Bernini’s sculpture. Caravaggio himself, despite leading a turbulent and often violent life that largely alienated him from both his patrons and contemporaries was a tremendous influence in his own lifetime and on further generations both for the physical qualities of his paintings and for the extreme emotional impact that he was able to achieve with them and you can see this even in the Baroque period in artist as far ranging as Velasquez in Spain and Rembrandt in Holland.
The reaction in France to this new art was a bit different they generally preferred elegance to display and restraint to emotion also rather than the religious art mandated by the counter reformation the power and influence of art in France tends to extol the glories of the monarchy. Louis XIV understood just as the Catholics did the influence that art had on public opinion for this reason he very carefully controlled how his image was perceived because of this he was surrounded by many court painters most of whom never achieved more than respectable mediocrity the exception to this is Rigaud, whose image here epitomizes Baroque grandeur and theatricality while eschewing the emotional honesty inspired by Caravaggio and his followers.
Lois XIV’s most lasting artistic endeavor was the palace of Versailles, built a few miles outside of Paris as a new center for the court. Louis XIV was a very astute politician and was well aware of the fact that the aristocratic courtiers that surrounded him were likely to turn on him at the smallest sign of weakness or hesitation on his part. By constructing at Versailles he gave himself a center from which he could consciously act out the role of Grand Monarch Louis conveyed the image of himself as supreme ruler and thereby retained his control over the aristocracy.
Strong religious emotion had always been a characteristic of Spanish Catholicism, and the new possibilities that the Baroque era brought were foreshadowed by El Greco. El Greco which means the Greek in Spanish was undoubtedly the greatest painter working in Spain at the end of the sixteenth century. While his work was unpopular in his own time he would become an enormous influence on the succeeding generation of Spanish artists. The almost hallucinatory brightness of his colors is likely derived from Italian Mannerist painting as are the elongated forms however his use of light is purely for dramatic effect and his asymmetrical composition is incomparably more fierce and disturbing than his Mannerist precursors.
Velazquez is very different in spirit he spent much of his career as the court painter to Philip IV where he spent most of his career painting the lives of the lives of the King and his court as well as ordinary people rather than religious subjects. Las Meninas is his masterpiece here he represents himself in his studio standing before a large canvas on which he may be painting this painting or perhaps the portrait of the king and queen whose reflections appear in the mirror on the far wall the young princess Margarita appears in the foreground with her two maids in waiting and her favorite dwarfs, and a large dog in the middle ground are a woman and man and in the background a man in the doorway, all of these people have been identified but for our purposes we don’t need to name them here, what is noteworthy is how Velazquez has extended the pictorial depth of his composition in both directions. The open doorway and its staircase lead your eye beyond the artists studio, and the mirror device and the outward glances of several of the viewers incorporate the viewers space into the picture as well. On the wall above the doorway two faint images of paintings are visible they are copies of two Rubens paintings. Velazquez pictorially summarizes the different kinds of images in their different levels of reality he portrays the reality of the canvas image, of mirror image, of optical image, and of the two imaged paintings. Also this image with its juxtaposition of mirrored spaces, real spaces, and pictures within pictures appears itself to have been taken from a large mirror reflecting the whole scene. How does he achieve this instead of putting lights abruptly beside darks as Caravaggio had done Velazquez allowed a great number of intermediate grays to come between the two extremes. His matching of tonal gradations approaches the effects that would later be discovered in the photography age.
The religious element in Spanish art, in many circles, grew in importance with the counter-reformation. The austere, ascetic, and severe work of Francisco de Zurbarán exemplified this thread in Spanish art, The mysticism of Zurbarán's work - influenced by Saint Theresa of Avila - became a hallmark of Spanish art in later generations. Influenced by Caravaggio and the Italian masters, Zurbarán devoted himself to an artistic expression of religion and faith. His paintings of St. Francis of Assisi, the immaculate conception, and the crucifixion of Christ reflected a third facet of Spanish culture in the seventeenth century, against the backdrop of religious war across Europe. Zurbarán broke from Velázquez's sharp realist interpretation of art and looked, to some extent, to the emotive content of El Greco and the earlier mannerist painters for inspiration and technique, though Zurbarán respected and maintained the lighting and physical nuance of Velázquez.
Rembrant Van Rijn “Self Portrait” 1629 One of the most moving achievements of the seventeenth century are Rembrandts self portraits. Utilizing Caravaggio’s theatrical light along with Velazquez’s much more subtle range of values Rembrandt comes up with something that almost seems fugitive in its depiction of light across a surface an effect that resembles much more closely the way we actually see. Rembrandt from an early age began to explore the nature of what it means to be human and nowhere is this more evident than in his self portraits every aspect of his life is unflinchingly depicted in these images from the awkwardness of adolescence.
Rembrant Van Rijn “Self Portrait” 1634 to the arrogance of youth
Rembrant Van Rijn “Self Portrait” 1640 here he is at the height of his fame exuding a cool confidence.
1660 his art falls out of favor and he slowly becomes disillusioned.
1661 and with this disillusionment gone are the precise details that he used to show off his skill with.
1669 and finally just prior to his death he depicts himself with a kind of resigned weariness.
Jacob Van Ruisdael “View of Haarlem with Bleaching Grounds” 1665 In Holland and for the most part in the northern countries which were largely protestant we see a different approach and although many of the physical characteristics typical of Baroque art still exist the intention behind the images is fundamentally different. In part this is because the protestants were iconoclasts and with the reformation the church was to a large extent stripped of it’s imagery with this the arts in the north lose their largest patron combine this with a growing merchant class and you begin to see an increasing secularization of art this is partially part of the protestant viewpoint rather than a reaction against it but also because the concerns of the major patrons are different the interests of the wealthy merchant class center not on the church, the outward symbols of faith and clerical pageantry but rather on the home and family, business and social organizations and the community. It is for this reason that in the Netherlands what you begin to see rather than the grand religious images of the south are still lives, portraits, and landscapes such as Van Ruisdael’s. and while these things aren’t unheard of in the southern countries they constitute a rather minor portion of the art created while in the Netherlands and much of England as well these genres represent the vast majority of artwork. This image while still adhering to the conventions of Baroque art, the manipulation of light for dramatic effect, the solidity of forms and the exaggerated realism and clarity, and the dynamic movement of the clouds and lines of the land itself, very much represents that middle and upper class viewpoint it is much more about a practical relationship to the landscape than it is about a spiritual analogy. This is because in Holland much of the rich farmland that created this wealthy merchant class was reclaimed from the water through a system of dykes much as it still is today so given this the Dutch perspective was one of dominion over the land and what Van Ruisdael shows us here is not only the expression of the grandeur of that accomplishment but also the dominion of heaven over the earth and by the extension of divine providence the dominion of man over the environment which is why you get the low horizon line that would become almost synonymous with Dutch landscape, and while this image does contain spiritual overtones it is important to note that it is essentially secular this gives us a glimpse of the direction of the art that would come after this despite the success of the art of the Counter-Reformation there is a fundamental change is patronage on the horizon religious subjects would never again dominate art as they did rather art becomes increasingly more secular and artists become increasingly more autonomous.
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