 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Baroque painting" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(February 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
.jpg)
Baroque painting is thepainting associated with theBaroquecultural movement. The movement is often identified withAbsolutism, theCounter Reformation and Catholic Revival,[1][2] but the existence of important Baroque art andarchitecture in non-absolutist andProtestant states throughout Western Europe underscores its widespread popularity.[3]
Baroque painting encompasses a great range of styles, as most important and major painting during the period beginning around 1600 and continuing throughout the 17th century, and into the early 18th century is identified today asBaroque painting. In its most typical manifestations, Baroque art is characterized by great drama, rich, deep colour, and intense light and dark shadows, but theclassicism of French Baroque painters likePoussin and Dutchgenre painters such asVermeer are also covered by the term, at least in English.[4] As opposed toRenaissance 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 theHigh Renaissance, shows hisDavid composed and still before he battlesGoliath;Bernini's BaroqueDavid 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.
Among the greatest painters of theBaroque period areVelázquez,Caravaggio,[5]Rembrandt,[6]Rubens,[7]Poussin,[8] andVermeer.[9] Caravaggio is an heir of thehumanist painting of theHigh Renaissance. Hisrealistic approach to the human figure, painted directly from life and dramatically spotlit against a dark background, shocked his contemporaries and opened a new chapter in the history of painting. Baroque painting often dramatizes scenes usingchiaroscuro light effects; this can be seen in works by Rembrandt, Vermeer,Le Nain andLa Tour.The Flemish painterAnthony van Dyck developed a graceful but imposing portrait style that was very influential, especially in England.
The prosperity of 17th century Holland led to an enormous production of art by large numbers of painters who were mostly highly specialized and painted onlygenre scenes,landscapes,still lifes,portraits orhistory paintings. Technical standards were very high, andDutch Golden Age painting established a new repertoire of subjects that was very influential until the arrival ofModernism.
TheCouncil of Trent (1545–1563), in which theRoman Catholic Church answered many questions of internal reform raised by bothProtestants and by those who had remained inside the Catholic Church,addressed the representational arts in a short and somewhat oblique passage in its decrees. This was subsequently interpreted and expounded by a number of clerical authors likeMolanus, who demanded thatpaintings andsculptures in church contexts should depict their subjects clearly and powerfully, and with decorum, without the stylistic airs ofMannerism.This return toward apopulist conception of the function of ecclesiastical art is seen by manyart historians as driving the innovations ofCaravaggio and theCarracci brothers, all of whom were working (and competing for commissions) in Rome around 1600, although unlike the Carracci, Caravaggio persistently was criticised for lack of decorum in his work.However, althoughreligious painting,history painting,allegories, andportraits were still considered the most noble subjects,landscape,still life, and genre scenes were also becoming more common in Catholic countries, and were the main genres in Protestant ones.
The term "Baroque" was initially used with a derogatory meaning, to underline the excesses of its emphasis. Others derive it from the mnemonic term "Baroco" denoting, in logicalScholastica, a supposedly laboured form ofsyllogism.[10]In particular, the term was used to describe its eccentric redundancy and noisy abundance of details, which sharply contrasted the clear and sober rationality of the Renaissance. It was first rehabilitated by theSwiss-bornart historian,Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945) in hisRenaissance und Barock (1888); Wölfflin identified the Baroque as "movement imported into mass", an art antithetic toRenaissance art. He did not make the distinctions betweenMannerism and Baroque that modern writers do, and he ignored the later phase, the academic Baroque that lasted into the 18th century. Writers in French and English did not begin to treat Baroque as a respectable study until Wölfflin's influence had made German scholarship pre-eminent.
Led byItalian Baroque painting, Mediterranean countries, slowly followed by most of theHoly Roman Empire in Germany andCentral Europe, generally adopted a full-blooded Baroque approach.
A rather different art developed out of northern realist traditions in 17th centuryDutch Golden Age painting, which had very little religious art, and littlehistory painting, instead playing a crucial part in developing secular genres such asstill life,genre paintings of everyday scenes, andlandscape painting. While the Baroque nature of Rembrandt's art is clear, the label is less used forVermeer and many other Dutch artists. Most Dutch art lacks the idealization and love of splendour typical of much Baroque work, including the neighbouringFlemish Baroque painting which shared a part in Dutch trends, while also continuing to produce the traditional categories in a more clearly Baroque style.
In France a dignified and graceful classicism gave a distinctive flavour to Baroque painting, where the later 17th century is also regarded as a golden age for painting. Two of the most important artists,Nicolas Poussin andClaude Lorrain, remained based in Rome, where their work, almost all ineasel paintings, was much appreciated by Italian as well as French patrons.
.jpg)
![José de Ribera, Martyrdom of St Philip, 1639, Prado, Madrid[11]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aJos%25C3%25A9_de_Ribera_054.jpg)
_van_het_Amsterdamse_lakenbereidersgilde_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)
