Baroque art

The word baroque is often claimed to derive from the Portuguese word barocco, meaning irregular or rough, and used specifically to describe pearls of distorted shape. Baroque architecture, sculpture, and painting of a dramatic nature were powerful tools in the hands of religious and secular absolutism, and flourished in the service of the Catholic Church and of Catholic monarchies. While saintly miracles were prominent in medieval and Renaissance art, Baroque art was more structured toward the martyrdom of saints. The visual settings for divine-right monarchy in palaces, decorations, and festivals and in costumes, furniture, and carriages were conceived in the same climactic pattern. The Baroque artists were particularly focused on natural forms, spaces, colors, lights, and the relationship between the observer and the literary or portrait subject in order to produce a strong, if muted, emotional experience. The uniting aspect of the most disparate phases of Baroque in European countries is a common pattern of experience shared at all social levels by Catholic and Protestant alike.

The Seventeenth Century in Italy

Baroque stemmed from the Mannerism movement toward the end of the sixteenth century. The foundation had already been laid by the late architecture of Michelangelo, Saint Peter's and Gesú being prime examples.

Painting

The Council of Trent (1545-63), in which the Roman Catholic Church answered many questions of internal reform raised by both Protestants and by those who had remained inside the Catholic Church, addressed the representational arts by demanding that paintings and sculptures in church contexts should speak to the illiterate rather than to the well-informed.

Nativity by Josefa de Óbidos, 1669, National Museum of Ancient Art, Lisbon

Due to this Baroque art tends to focus on Saints, the Virgin Mary, and other well known Bible stories. This turn toward a populist conception of the function of ecclesiastical art is seen by many art historians as driving the innovations of Caravaggio and the Carracci brothers, all of whom were working (and competing for commissions) in Rome around 1600.

However, religious painting, history painting, allegories, and portraits were still considered the most noble subjects. Landscapes, still life, and genre scenes were also very common.

Baroque art is characterized by great drama, rich deep color, and intense light and dark shadows. As opposed to Renaissance 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 the High Renaissance, shows his David composed and still before he battles Goliath; Bernini's baroque David 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.

Dutch

• Rembrandt
• Frans Hals
• Ruisdael
• Johannes Vermeer
• Jan Steen

Flemish

• Peter Paul Rubens
• Anthony van Dyck
• Jacob Jordaens
• Jan Brueghel the Elder
• Frans Snyders
• David Teniers the Younger

French

• Jean de Beaugrand (1584-1640)
• Georges de La Tour (1590-1652)
• Nicolas Poussin (c. 1594-1665)
• Claude Lorrain (1600-1682)
• Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659-1743)

Italian

• Caravaggio (1571-1610)
• Guercino
• Annibale Carracci (1560-1609)
• Orazio Gentileschi (1563-1639)
• Artemisia Gentileschi (1592-1652/53)
• Agostino Carracci
• Ludovico Carracci

Portuguese

• Josefa de Óbidos (1630-1684)

Spanish

• Francisco Ribalta (1565 - 1628)
• José de Ribera, Lo Spagnoletto (1591 - 1652)
• Francisco Zurbarán (1598 - 1664)
• Diego Velázquez (1599 - 1660)
• Alonso Cano (1601 - 1667)
• Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617 - 1682)
• Juan de Valdés Leal (1622 - 1690)

Sculpture

The most important sculptor of the Baroque period was undoubtedly Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), who approached Michelangelo in his multiple skills. Bernini sculpted, worked as an architect, painted, wrote plays, and staged spectacles. In the late 20th century Bernini was most valued for his sculpture, both for his virtuosity in carving marble and his ability to create figures that combine the physical and the spiritual. He was also a fine portraitist in high demand among the powerful for bust-length likenesses.

Baroque sculptors and architects

• Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680)
• Francesco Borromini (1599-1667)
• Claude Perrault (1613-1688), French

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