This presentation covers artwork from the Baroque, Northern Renaissance, and Rococo periods. The Baroque has many characteristics in common with Hellenistic Greek. Works by Caravaggio, Velázquz, Van Eyck, Rembrandt, Holbein, and others are featured. Class notes and audio are available at http://dicknelsoncolor.com/2015/art-is-us-2015-week-5/

1. Baroque: The Appearance of Reality
Where have we seen this before?

2. Compare

3. Intimate relationship
Observed relationship
Plane vs. Recession
Linear vs. Painterly
Closed vs. Open Form
High Renaissance
Baroque

4. 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.
Caravaggio portrays Christ in his
Supper at Emmaus with real, not
idealized men.
He invites viewer participation
through intimate lighting, a
recessional, painterly
and open form composition.
We are at the table

5. Action in repose
gives way to…
THE ACT!

6. Classic
Idealized
Reason
Contemplative
Linear
Plane
Closed Form
Time Stopped
Hellenistic
Natural
Passion
Active
Painterly
Recession
Open Form
Time In Flux
HIGH RENAISSANCE & Baroque
Is to
as…
Is to
as…
Is to
as…
Is to
as…
Is to
as…
Is to
as…
Is to
as…
Is to
as…

7. Reason is to Passion as…
Complete the equations

9. Caravaggio: The Conversion of St. Paul
Find visual evidence of…
Compositional planes
Painterly interpretation
Open form
Light source

10. Velázquez 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.
Velázquez:
Spanish Baroque

11. Court painter : A portrait signature.

12. Northern Renaissance
Art for the eye and soul.
What tells us that
this is NOT Baroque?
Van Eyck: The Arnolfini Wedding

13. Morphological
&
IconographicInterpretations
How many different surfaces can we find?
How many symbolic images can we find?
What unifies this painting and the couple?

14. Compare

15. Henry VIII confronts us in a
compositional plane, i.e. his
body faces us squarely. He
rules!
The replication of each detail
in a total illumination presents
a linear painting approach.
No lost edges or areas left to
our imagination.

16. Rembrandt’s self-portrait
The glance; not the eye. (Painterly)
The breath; not the lips. (Painterly)
Forms appear and dissolve in light and
shadow, creating a “trap-door” lighting.
Details are suggested, providing only a
glimpse of any specific detailing.
His body turns away from us creating a
recessional plane which does not confront.

17. Renaissance’s sovereignty of line gives way to painterly sketching.
Note the recessional composition.
No one saw a working
mill worthy of notice
until Rembrandt draws
our attention to it as an
object of aesthetic
beauty.

18. Rembrandt’s
Night Watch
Group portraiture
with a new focus
and a lost reputation.

19. As relevant today as….

20. Self-portraits of an artist

21. Franz Hals
Expressive and candid portraiture
Dutch merchants
sustain their artists
with commissions

22. That fleeting moment with
a smile and fast brush.

23. VERMEER: A New Vision

24. A candid view of secular life
with the help of new optics.PlanePainterlyOpenForm

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

26. A VIEW OF
WOMAN IN
MYTH & LIFE
(Spare no flesh)

27. Where do we draw the line?
…and when it
comes to flesh…
François Boucher
The Rococo Period: Indulgence during the Age of Authority…

28. …but then we have Chardin. The common and ordinary. A commission?

29. The Rape of the Sabine Women
Pruning the divergent
branches of the 17th
& 18th Centuries.
Poussin
Plane or Recession?
Linear or Painterly?
Classic or Hellenistic
origins?
What might the title be
for this period of art?

30. From an Age of Authority to
an Age Of Reason.
Fragonard
Jacques Louis David
To be continued…