Which artists are associated with the Baroque style?
Which artists are associated with the Baroque style?
Annibale Carracci and Caravaggio were the two Italian painters who helped usher in the Baroque and whose styles represent, respectively, the classicist and realist modes. The painter Artemisia Gentileschi was recognized in the 20th century for her technical skill and ambitious history paintings. Gian Lorenzo Bernini, whose accomplishments included the design of the colonnade fronting St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, was the greatest of the Baroque sculptor-architects. The orderly paintings of Nicolas Poussin and the restrained architecture of Jules Hardouin-Mansart reveal that the Baroque impulse in France was more subdued and classicist. In Spain, the painter Diego Velázquez used a sombre but powerful naturalistic approach that bore only some relation to the mainstream of Baroque painting. The style, meanwhile, made limited inroads to northern Europe, notably in what is now Belgium. That Spanish-ruled largely Roman Catholic region’s greatest master was the painter Peter Paul Rubens, whose tempestuous diagonal compositions and full-blooded figures are the epitome of Baroque painting. Art in the Netherlands, however, is more complex. Conditioned by the realist tastes of its middle-class patrons, such towering masters as Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Johannes Vermeer remained largely independent of the Baroque in important respects, but many art texts nonetheless equate them with the style. The Baroque did have a notable impact in England, however, particularly in the architecture of Sir Christopher Wren.
Find out more about Artemisia Gentileschi, the Baroque painter whose accomplishments came to be celebrated in the 20th century.
The Architecture: Louis Le Vau
The Palace of Versailles was executed in the French Baroque style by architect Louis Le Vau, a French Classical architect who worked for King Louis XIV. French Baroque architectural style is characterized by its large curved forms, twisted columns, high domes, and complicated shapes. In comparison to the Baroque architecture of the rest of Europe, it is commonly thought to be more restrained and characterized by its mixture of lavish details on symmetrical and orderly buildings.
Where does the term Baroque come from?
Where does the term Baroque come from?
The term Baroque probably derived from the Italian word barocco, which philosophers used during the Middle Ages to describe an obstacle in schematic logic. Subsequently, the word came to denote any contorted idea or involute process of thought. Another possible source is the Portuguese word barroco (Spanish barrueco), used to describe an imperfectly shaped pearl. In art criticism the word Baroque has come to describe anything irregular, bizarre, or otherwise departing from rules and proportions established during the Renaissance. Until the late 19th century the term always carried the implication of odd, exaggerated, and overdecorated. It was only with Heinrich Wölfflin’s pioneering study, Renaissance und Barock (1888), that the term was used as a stylistic designation rather than as a term of thinly veiled abuse and that a systematic formulation of the characteristics of Baroque style was achieved.
Read about historian Heinrich Wölfflin, who refashioned the word
from a thinly veiled term of abuse to the name of a distinctive style and period.
Three main tendencies of the era
Three broader cultural and intellectual tendencies had a profound impact on Baroque art as well as Baroque music. The first of these was the emergence of the Counter-Reformation and the expansion of its domain, both territorially and intellectually. By the last decades of the 16th century the refined, courtly style known as Mannerism had ceased to be an effective means of expression, and its inadequacy for religious art was being increasingly felt in artistic circles. To counter the inroads made by the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church after the Council of Trent (1545–63) adopted a propagandistic stance in which art was to serve as a means of extending and stimulating the public’s faith in the church. To this end the church adopted a conscious artistic program whose art products would make an overtly emotional and sensory appeal to the faithful. The Baroque style that evolved from this program was paradoxically both sensuous and spiritual; while a naturalistic treatment rendered the religious image more accessible to the average churchgoer, dramatic and illusory effects were used to stimulate piety and devotion and convey an impression of the splendour of the divine. Baroque church ceilings thus dissolved in painted scenes that presented vivid views of the infinite to the observer and directed the senses toward heavenly concerns.
The second tendency was the consolidation of absolute monarchies, accompanied by a simultaneous crystallization of a prominent and powerful middle class, which now came to play a role in art patronage. Baroque palaces were built on an expanded and monumental scale in order to display the power and grandeur of the centralized state, a phenomenon best displayed in the royal palace and gardens at Versailles. Yet at the same time the development of a picture market for the middle class and its taste for realism may be seen in the works of the brothers Le Nain and Georges de La Tour in France and in the varied schools of 17th-century Dutch painting. (For a detailed discussion of this phenomenon, see Rembrandt van Rijn.)
The third tendency was a new interest in nature and a general broadening of human intellectual horizons, spurred by developments in science and by explorations of the globe. These simultaneously produced a new sense both of human insignificance (particularly abetted by the Copernican displacement of the Earth from the centre of the universe) and of the unsuspected complexity and infinitude of the natural world. The development of 17th-century landscape painting, in which humans are frequently portrayed as minute figures in a vast natural setting, is indicative of this changing awareness of the human condition.
Early Baroque architecture was largely contained to Rome, later spreading to more Italian cities before making its way across other European nations. Some of the earliest completed works in the Baroque period were the Church of Gesu, in 1584, and the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica, designed in 1612. As the style took hold, it wasn’t just churches that were crafted in the aesthetic, but secular buildings too. One of the most famous examples of this—commissioned by Louis XIV of France—is the Palace of Versailles.
“The Baroque style overlapped with Neoclassicism in the 18th century, which largely replaced [Baroque architecture] by the end of the century,” Foster says of the style’s end. “Its disappearance partly had to do with religious associations made with the Baroque style as well as identification of it with monarchy and absolutism.”
The origin of the term
The term Baroque probably ultimately derived from the Italian word barocco, which philosophers used during the Middle Ages to describe an obstacle in schematic logic. Subsequently the word came to denote any contorted idea or involuted process of thought. Another possible source is the Portuguese word barroco (Spanish barrueco), used to describe an irregular or imperfectly shaped pearl, and this usage still survives in the jeweler’s term baroque pearl.
In art criticism the word Baroque came to be used to describe anything irregular, bizarre, or otherwise departing from established rules and proportions. This biased view of 17th-century art styles was held with few modifications by critics from Johann Winckelmann to John Ruskin and Jacob Burckhardt, and until the late 19th century the term always carried the implication of odd, grotesque, exaggerated, and overdecorated. It was only with Heinrich Wölfflin’s pioneer study Renaissance und Barock (1888) that the term Baroque was used as a stylistic designation rather than as a term of thinly veiled abuse, and a systematic formulation of the characteristics of Baroque style was achieved.
High Baroque (1625–1675)
Pope Urban VIII, who occupied the Papacy from 1623 to 1644, became the most influential patron of the Baroque style. After the death of Carlo Maderno in 1629, Urban named the architect and sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini as the chief Papal architect. Bernini created not only Baroque buildings, but also Baroque interiors, squares and fountains, transforming the center of Rome into an enormous theater. Bernini rebuilt the Church of Santa Bibiana and the Church of San Sebastiano al Palatino on the Palatine Hill into Baroque landmarks, planned the Fontana del Tritone in the Piazza Barberini, and created the soaring baldacchino as the centerpiece of St Peter's Basilica.[15]
The High Baroque spread gradually across Italy, beyond Rome. The period saw the construction of Santa Maria della Salute by Baldassare Longhena in Venice (1630–31). Churches were not the only buildings to use the Baroque style. One of the finest monuments of the early Baroque is the Barberini Palace (1626–1629), the residence of the family of Urban VIII, begun by Carlo Maderno, and completed and decorated by Bernini and Francesco Borromini. The outside of the Pope's family residence, was relatively restrained, but the interiors, and especially the immense fresco on the ceiling of the salon, the Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power painted by Pietro da Cortona, are considered masterpieces of Baroque art and decoration.[16] Curving façades and the illusion of movement were a speciality of Francesco Borromini, most notably in San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (1634–1646), one of the landmarks of the high Baroque.[17] Another important monument of the period was the Church of Santi Luca e Martina in Rome by Pietro da Cortona (1635–50), in the form of a Greek cross with an elegant dome. After the death or Urban VIII and the brief reign of his successor, the Papacy of Pope Alexander VII from 1666 until 1667 saw more construction of Baroque churches, squares and fountains in Rome by Carlo Rainaldi, Bernini and Carlo Fontana.[18]
King Louis XIII had sent the architect Jacques Lemercier to Rome between 1607 and 1614 to study the new style. On his return to France, he designed the Pavillon de l’Horloge of the Louvre Palace (beginning 1626), and, more importantly, the Sorbonne Chapel, the first church dome in Paris. It was designed in 1626, and construction began in 1635.[19] The next important French Baroque project was a much larger dome for the church of Val-de-Grâce begun in 1645 by Lemercier and François Mansart, and finished in 1715. A third Baroque dome was soon added for the Collège des Quatre-Nations (now the Institut de France).[20]
In 1661, following the death of Cardinal Mazarin, the young Louis XIV took direct charge of the government. The arts were put under the direction of his Controller-General of Finances, Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Charles Le Brun, director of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, was named Superintendent of Buildings of the King, in charge of all royal architectural projects. The Académie royale d'architecture was founded in 1671, with the mission of making Paris, not Rome, the artistic and architectural model for the world.[21]
The first architectural project of Louis XIV was a proposed reconstruction of the façade of the east wing of the Louvre Palace. Bernini, then Europe's most famous architect, was summoned to Paris to submit a design. Beginning in 1664, Bernini proposed several Baroque variants, but in the end the King selected a design by a French architect, Charles Perrault, in a more classical variant of Baroque. This gradually became the Louis XIV style. Louis was soon engaged in an even larger project, the construction of the new Palace of Versailles. The architects chosen were Louis Le Vau and Jules Hardouin-Mansart, and the façades of the new palace were constructed around the earlier Marble Court between 1668 and 1678. The Baroque grandeur of Versailles, particularly the façade facing the garden and the Hall of Mirrors by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, became models for other palaces across Europe.[22]
The Art and Artists of Versailles
The Gardens: Andre Le Notre
The landscape design at the Palace of Versailles is one of the most extravagant in history. Headed by Andre Le Notre, the gardens at Versailles cover nearly 2,000 acres of land and were executed in the French formal garden style, or jardin a la francaise. This style is characterized by its meticulously manicured lawns, parterres of flowers, numerous fountains, and sculptures.
A common feature of sculpture and decoration at Versailles is the use of classical mythology as allegory . The Bassin de Latone was designed by Le Notre and sculpted by Gaspard and Balthazar Marsy between 1668–1670. This fountain depicts scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, chosen as allegories to revolts during the king’s reign. The Bassin d’Apollon is another fountain that depicts the sun god driving his chariot to light the sky. The Grotte de Thetys is a freestanding structure with an interior decorated in elaborate shell-work to represent the myth of Apollo.
The Grande Canal is a notable feature of the gardens, with an impressive length of 1,500 x 62 meters. King Louis XIV ordered the construction of “little Venice ” on the Grand Canal, which housed yachts, gondolas, and gondoliers received from Venice. It also served a functional purpose by gathering the water that drained from the fountains and redistributing it to the gardens by horse-powered pump.
The Grande Commande is a series of 24 statues that were commissioned by Louis XIV to decorate the gardens. The statues illustrate the classic quaternities (sets of 4) at the time of the Four Humors, the Four Parts of the Day, the Four Parts of the World, The Four Forms of Poetry, the Four Elements, and the Four Seasons. Four additional sculptures depict abductions from classical mythology.
Vancouver138 W 8th Avenue,Vancouver, BC, V5Y 1N2
MontrealSuite 606,460 Ste-Catherine O,Montreal, QC, H3B 1A7
French Architecture in the Baroque Period: Versailles
The Palace of Versailles was built during King Louis XIV’s reign and contains 700 rooms, extensive gardens, and lavish decoration.
Identify the most impressive features of Versailles and those artistically responsible
The Palace of Versailles is an opulent palace built by Louis XIV that contains 700 rooms, extensive gardens, and lavish decoration. Initially a small hunting lodge built by his father, Louis XIV transformed Versailles with four intensive building campaigns over his reign. The formal aesthetic of the palace was meant to glorify France and show the power and greatness of the self-proclaimed Sun King, Louis XIV. The architect for the palace was Louis Le Vau, the interior decorator was Charles Le Brun, and the landscape designer was Andre Le Notre. These three artists had worked together previously on the private Chateau Vaux le Vicomte for the king’s minister of finance before he was imprisoned. In 1682, Versailles was transformed into the official residence of the king, and such notable features of the palace as the Hall of Mirrors and the Grande Canal were built.
Major Baroque architects and works, by country
with: America and American Baroque is too big to be contained in a single section. Expand by country (or region, at least).. You can help by
Table of Contents Ask the Chatbot a Question
