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17th century (1600-1699)
Baroque |
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Baroque |
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Rococo |
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Michelangelo da Caravaggio.
The Calling of Saint Matthew
1599-1600
Oil on canvas, 322 x 340 cm
Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome |
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Baroque and Rococo |
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Era in the history of the Western arts
roughly coinciding with the 17th century. Its earliest
manifestations, which occurred in Italy, date from the latter
decades of the 16th century, while in some regions, notably Germany
and colonial South America, certain of its culminating achievements
did not occur until the 18th century. The work that distinguishes
the Baroque period is stylistically complex, even contradictory. In
general, however, the desire to evoke emotional states by appealing
to the senses, often in dramatic ways, underlies its manifestations.
Some of the qualities most frequently associated with the Baroque
are grandeur, sensuous richness, drama, vitality, movement, tension,
emotional exuberance, and a tendency to blur distinctions between
the various arts.
The term Baroque probably
ultimately derived from the Italian word barocco, which was a term
used by philosophers 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 Neoclassical 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 over decorated. It was only with
Heinrich Wölfflin's pioneer study Renaissance und Barock (1888) that
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.
Because the arts present such
diversity within the Baroque period, their unifying characteristics
must be sought in relation to the era's broader cultural and
intellectual tendencies, of which three are most important for their
effecton the arts. 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 his piety and devotion and
convey to him 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 him through
his 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.
The third tendency was a new
interest in nature and a general broadening of mankind's
intellectual horizons, spurred by developments in science and by
explorations of the globe. These simultaneously brought to man a new
sense both of his own 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 man is frequently portrayed as a minute figure in a vast
natural setting, is indicative of this changing awareness of the
human condition.
The arts present an unusual
diversity in the Baroque period, chiefly because currents of
naturalism and classicism coexisted and intermingled with the
typical Baroque style. Indeed, Annibale Carracci and Caravaggio, the
two Italian painters who decisively broke with Mannerism in the
1690s and thus helped usher in the Baroque style, painted,
respectively, in classicistic and realist modes. A specifically
Baroque style of painting arose in Rome in the 1620s and culminated
in the monumental painted ceilings and other church decorations of
Pietro da Cortona, Guido Reni, Il Guercino, Domenichino, and
countless lesser artists. The greatest of the Baroque
sculptor-architects was Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who designed both the
baldachin with spiral columns above the altar of St. Peter's in Rome
and the vast colonnade fronting that church. Baroque architecture as
developed by Bernini, Carlo Maderno, Francesco Borromini, and
Guarino Guarini emphasized massiveness and monumentality, movement,
dramatic spatial and lighting sequences, and a rich interior
decoration using contrasting surface textures, vivid colours, and
luxurious materials to heighten the structure's physical immediacy
and evoke sensual delight.
Pronounced classicizing tendencies
subdued the Baroque impulse in France, as is evident in the serious,
logical, orderly paintings of Nicolas Poussin and the somewhat more
sumptuous works of Charles Le Brun and the portraitists Hyacinthe
Rigaud and Nicolas de Largilliere. French architecture is even less
recognizably Baroque in its pronounced qualities of subtlety,
elegance, and restraint. Baroque tenets were enthusiastically
adopted in staunchly Roman Catholic Spain, however, particularly in
architecture. The greatest of the Spanish builders, José Benito
Churriguera, shows most fully the Spanish interest in surface
textures and lush, albeit meaningless, detail. He attracted many
followers, and their adaptations of his style, labeled
Churrigueresque, spread throughout Spain's colonies in the Americas
and elsewhere. Diego Velázquez and other 17th-century Spanish
painters used a sombre but powerful naturalistic approach that bore
little direct relation to the mainstream of Baroque painting.
The Baroque made only limited
inroads into 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 ample, full-blooded figures are the epitome of
Baroque painting. The elegant portraits of Anthony Van Dyck and the
robust figurative works of Jacob Jordaens emulated Rubens's example.
Art in Holland was conditioned by the realist tastes of its dominant
middle-class patrons, and thus both the innumerable genre and
landscape painters of that country and such towering masters as
Rembrandt and Frans Hals remained independent of the Baroque style
in important respects. The Baroque did have a notable impact in
England, however, particularly in the churches and palaces designed,
respectively, by Sir Christopher Wren and Sir John Vanbrugh.
The last flowering of the Baroque
was in largely Roman Catholic southern Germany and Austria, where
the native architects broke away from Italian building models in the
1720s. In ornate churches, monasteries, and palaces designed by J.B.
Fischer von Erlach, J.L. von Hildebrandt, the Asam brothers,
Balthasar Neumann, and Dominikus Zimmermann, an extraordinarily rich
but delicate style of stucco decoration was used in combination with
painted surfaces to evoke subtle illusionistic effects.
One of the most dramatic turning
points in the history of music occurred at the beginning of the 17th
century, with Italy again leading the way. While the stile antico,
the universal polyphonic style of the 16th century, continued, it
was henceforth reserved for sacred music, while the stile moderno,
or nuove musiche—with its emphasis on solo voice, polarity of the
melody and the bass line, and interest in expressive
harmony—developed for secular usage. The expanded vocabulary allowed
for a clearer distinction between sacred and secular music as well
as between vocal and instrumental idioms, and national differences
became more pronounced. The Baroque period in music, as in other
arts, therefore, was one of stylistic diversity. The opera,
oratorio, and cantata were the most important new vocal forms, while
the sonata, concerto, and overture were created for instrumental
music. Claudio Monteverdi was the first great composer of the “new
music.” He was followed in Italy by Alessandro Scarlatti and
Giovanni Pergolesi. The instrumental tradition in Italy found its
great Baroque composers in Arcangelo Corelli, Antonio Vivaldi, and
Giuseppe Tartini. Jean-Baptiste Lully, a major composer of opera,
and Jean Philippe Rameau were the masters of Baroque music in
France. In England the total theatrical experience of the Stuart
masques was followed by the achievements in vocal music of the
German-born, Italian-trained George Frideric Handel, while his
countryman Johann Sebastian Bach developed Baroque sacred music in
Germany. Other notable German Baroque composers include Heinrich
Schütz, Dietrich Buxtehude, and Georg Philipp Telemann.
The literature that may
specifically be called Baroque may be seen most characteristically
in the writings of Giambattista Marino in Italy, Luis de Gongora in
Spain, and Martin Opitz in Germany. English Metaphysical poetry,
most notably much of John Donne's, is allied with Baroque
literature. The Baroque period ended in the 18th century with a
transition of its characteristic style into the lighter, less
dramatic, more overtly decorative Rococo style.
Encyclopaedia Britannica |
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Francisco de Zurbaran.
The Vision of St Peter
of Nolasco
1629
Oil on canvas, 179 x 223 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid
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Baroque and Rococo |
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Baroque
Baroque is a term loosely applied
to European art from the end of the 16th century to the early 18th
century, with the latter part of this period falling under the
alternative stylistic designation of Late Baroque. The painting of
the Baroque period is so varied that no single set of stylistic
criteria can be applied to it. This is partly because the painting
of Roman Catholic countries such as Italy or Spain differed both in
its intent and in its sources of patronage from that of Protestant
countries such as Holland or Britain, and it is partly because
currents of classicism and naturalism coexisted with and sometimes
even predominated over what is more narrowly defined as the High
Baroque style.
The Baroque style in Italy and
Spain had its origins in the lastdecades of the 16th century when
the refined, courtly, and idiosyncratic style of Mannerist painting
had ceased to be an effective means of artistic expression. Indeed,
Mannerism's inadequacy as a vehicle for religious art was being
increasingly felt in artistic circles as early as the middle of that
century. To counter the inroads made by the Reformation, the Roman
Catholic Church after the Council of Trent (1545–63) adopted an
overtly propagandistic stance in which painting and the other arts
were intended to serve as a means of extending and stimulating the
public's faith in the church and its doctrines. The church thus
adopted a conscious artistic program, the products of which would
make an overtly emotional and sensory appeal to the faithful. The
Baroque style of painting that evolved from this program was
paradoxically both sensuous and spiritual; while naturalistic
treatment rendered the painted religious image more readily
comprehensible to the average churchgoer, dramatic and illusory
effects were used to stimulate piety and devotion. This appeal to
the senses manifested itself in a style that above all emphasized
movement and emotion. The stable, pyramidal compositionsand the
clear, well-defined pictorial space that were characteristic of
Renaissance paintings gave way in the Baroque to complex
compositions surging along diagonal lines. The Baroque vision of the
world is basically dynamic and dramatic; throngs of figures
possessing a superabundant vitality energize the painted scene by
meansof their expressive gestures and movements. These figures are
depicted with the utmost vividness and richness through the use of
rich colours, dramatic effects of light and shade, and lavish use of
highlights. The ceilings of Baroque churches thus dissolved in
painted scenes that presented convincing views of the saints and
angels to the observer and directed him through his senses to
heavenly concerns.
Early and High Baroque in Italy
By the last decades of the 16th
century the Mannerist style had ceased to be an effective means of
expression. Indeed, in Florence a conscious reassessment of High
Renaissance painting had taken place as early as mid-century. This
tendency gathered momentum in the last decades of the century,
particularly with the Bolognese painters Lodovico Carracci and his
cousin Annibale. The Roman Catholic Church's reaction to the
Reformation, known as the Counter-Reformation, reaffirmed the old
medieval concept of art as the servant of the church, adding
specific demands for simplicity, intelligibility, realism, and an
emotional stimulus to piety. For the zealots of the
Counter-Reformation, works of art had value only as propaganda
material, the subject matter being all important;and in Rome there
was as a result a sharp decline in artistic quality. Under austere
Counter-Reformation popes such as Paul IV and Pius V, most official
patronage favoured the dry and prosaic; this late 16th-century style
is best called Counter-Reformation Realist. A similar process took
place in Florence, where a strong movement away from Mannerist
conventions is seen in the paintings of Ludovico Cigoli, and in
Milan, where the dominant artistic personalities were the painters
Giovanni Crespi (known as Il Cerano) and Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli,
known as Il Morazzone.
In contrast, late 16th-century
Venetian painting was as little influenced by the
Counter-Reformation as it had been by Mannerism; and the workshops
of Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, and Palma Giovane remained active
until the plague of 1629–30.
Michelangelo Merisi, better known
by the name of his birthplace, Caravaggio, a small town near Milan,
was active in Romeby about 1595. His earliest paintings are
conspicuous for the almost enamel-like brilliance of the colours,
the strong chiaroscuro called Tenebrism, and the extraordinary
virtuosity with which all the details are rendered. But this harsh
realism was replaced by a much more powerful mature style in his
paintings for San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome, begun in 1597, and Santa
Maria del Popolo, Rome, executed about 1601. His selection of
plebeian models for the most important characters in his religious
pictures caused great controversy, but the utter sincerity of the
figures and the intensity of dramatic feeling are characteristic of
the Baroque (see photograph). Although Caravaggio had no direct
pupils, “Caravaggism” was the dominant new force in Rome during the
first decade of the 17th century and subsequently had enormous
influence outside Italy.
Parallel with Caravaggio's was the
activity of Annibale Carracci in Rome. During Annibale's years in
Bologna, his brother and cousin had joined with him in pioneering a
synthesis of the traditionally opposed Renaissance conceptsof
disegno (“drawing”) and colore (“colour”). In 1595 Annibale took to
Rome his mature style, in which the plasticity of the central
Italian tradition is wedded to the Venetian colour tradition. The
decoration of the vault of the gallery in the Palazzo Farnese, Rome
(1597–1604), marks notonly the high point in Annibale's career but
also the beginning of the long series of Baroque ceiling
decorations. The third important painter active in Rome during the
first decade of the 17th century was the Low Countries' painter
Peter Paul Rubens, who became court painter to the duke of Mantua in
1600. He came under the influence of Raphael andTitian, as well as
that of Caravaggio, during a journey to Spain in 1603. The rich
colours and strong dramatic chiaroscuro of his altarpieces for Santa
Maria in Vallicella (New Church), Rome (1606–07), show how much he
contributed to the evolution of Italian Baroque painting.
Just as the first decade tended to
be dominated by the “Caravaggist” painters, the second decade in
Rome was the heyday of the Bolognese classicist painters headed by
Guido Reni, Domenichino, and Francesco Albani, all of whom had been
pupils of the Carracci. The crucial developments that brought the
High Baroque into being took place in the third decade.
The little church of Santa Bibiana
in Rome harbours three of the key works that ushered in the High
Baroque, all executedin 1624–26: Gian Lorenzo Bernini's facade and
the marble figure of Santa Bibiana herself, over the altar, and
Pietro da Cortona's series of frescoes of Bibiana's life, painted on
the side wall of the nave. The rich exuberance of the compositions
is a prelude to the gigantic “Allegory of Divine Providence and
Barberini Power,” which Pietro was to paint on the vault of the
Great Hall of the Palazzo Barberini, Rome (1633–39). Pietro
continued with this style of monumental painting for the remainder
of his career, and it became the model for the international grand
decorative style, which by the close of the 17th century was to be
found in Madrid, Paris,Vienna, and even London.
Despite the continued triumph of
High Baroque illusionism and theatricality in the hands of Bernini
and Pietro da Cortona from the 1630s, the forces of classicism, now
headed by the painter Andrea Sacchi and the Flemish-born sculptor
François Duquesnoy, gained the upper hand in the 1640s after the
death of Pope Urban VIII; and for the remainder of the century the
Baroque-versus-classicism controversy raged in the Academy in Rome.
Sacchi and the classicists, including the Frenchman Nicolas Poussin,
held that a scene must be depicted with a bare minimum of figures,
each with its own clearly defined role, and compared the composition
to that of a tragedy in literature. But Pietro and the Baroque camp
held that the right parallel was the epic poem in which subsidiary
episodes were added to give richness and variety to the whole, and
hence the decorative richness and profusion of their great fresco
cycles. The lyrical landscapes of the French painter Claude Lorrain
are among the finest expressions of High Baroque classicism; and
they exerted a continual influence throughout the 18th century,
particularly in Britain. Even in Rome itself, however, a number of
painters of importance succeeded in remaining more or less
independent of the two main camps. Sassoferrato (1609–85), for
example, painted in a deliberately archaizing manner, carefully
reproducing Raphaelesque formulas. The cryptically romantic
movement,centred on Pier Francesco Mola, Pietro Testa, and Salvator
Rosa, was more important and, together with the landscapes of
Gaspard Dughet, was to have considerable repercussions in the 18th
century. Claude Lorrain also adopted an independent stand, despite
the highly developed classicism of his poetic landscapes and
seascapes, both of which, but especially the latter, featured much
splendid architecture.
The first two-thirds of the 17th
century in Italy were dominated by the Roman Baroque, and few
painters elsewhere provided serious competition. Reni, who returned
to Bologna from Rome in 1614 and remained there until his death in
1642, remained the strongest artistic personality in that northern
city but steadily abandoned the strong plasticity of the Carracci
for a much looser style with a pale tonality. When Guercino, in
turn, left Rome in 1623, he returned to his native Cento, just north
of Bologna, and not until the death of Reni did he decide to settle
in Bologna. Guercino's early, fiery style slowly gave way to a much
more calm and classical outlook. Venetian painting took a new
direction with the rich colours and free brushwork of Domenico Fetti,
who had worked in Mantua before moving to Venice. In the hands of
Johann Liss (or Jan Lys) the groundwork was laid for the flowering
of the Venetian school of the 18th century. Venetian painting was
also enriched by the pale colours and flickering brushwork of
Francesco Maffei from Vicenza, whereas Bernardo Strozzi in 1630
carried to Venice the saturated colours and vigorous painterly
qualities of the Genoese school. Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione also
began his career in Genoa and, after a period in Rome, worked from
1648 as court painter in Mantua, where his brilliant free etchings
and brush drawings anticipated the Rococo. Naples, under its Spanish
viceroys, remained strongly influenced by the “Caravaggesque”
tradition, particularly in its best-known painter, a Spaniard, José
de Ribera, who settled there in 1616; the two most important native
painters of the period, Massimo Stanzione and Bernardo Cavallino,
both died in the disastrous plague of1654.
The most conspicuous aspect of the
last phase of the High Baroque in Italy is provided by the series of
great fresco cycles, which were executed in Rome during the last
decades of the 17th century. Pietro da Cortona's decoration of Santa
Maria in Vallicella (1647–55) is the link with the earlier phase of
the Baroque, and his decoration of the gallery of the Palazzo
Pamphili in Rome (1651–54) points theway to the decorations of
Giovanni Coli and Filippo Gherardi in the Palazzo Colonna (1675–78)
and to those of the vault ofthe gallery of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi
in Florence by Luca Giordano (1682). Bernini's dynamic and
theatrical schemes of decoration reached their climax in the nave
vault of the Gesù, Rome, painted in 1674–79 by Giovanni Battista
Gaulli (Baciccia) under the direct tutelage of Bernini.The fresco
bursts out of its frame and creates an overwhelming dramatic effect,
with painted figures flooding over the gilt stucco architectural
decoration of the ceiling into the space of the church. After this,
the “Allegory of the Missionary Work of the Jesuits,” painted by
Andrea Pozzo on the nave vault of San Ignazio, Rome (1691–94), seems
almost an anticlimax, despite its gigantic size and hypertrophic
illusionism. Concurrently, the Baroque-versus-classicism controversy
took on a new lease on life, with Gaulli heading the Baroque party
in opposition to Sacchi's pupil Carlo Maratta. By the last decades
of the century the Baroque was triumphant, and Maratta's Baroque
classicism appears almost to be a compromise between Pietro da
Cortona and Sacchi. Maratta's style, however, was to provide one of
the most important sources for the grand manner of the 18th century.
The essential characteristics of
Late Baroque painting can be identified first in the frescoes (1661)
of Mattia Preti at the Palazzo Pamphili, Valmontone (southeast of
Rome); but the transition between the High Baroque and the Late
Baroque was a continuous process and occurred at different dates
with different artists. At Valmontone the sense of dynamic structure
characteristic of the High Baroque frescoes of Pietro da Cortona
yields to a more decorative scheme in which the figures are
scattered across the ceiling, giving the painting an overall unity
without identifying any specific area as the focal point. Francesco
Cozza used this scheme in the Pamphili Library, Rome (1667–73), but
among the finest Late Baroque decorations of this type are ceilings
painted in Genoa by Gregorio de' Ferrari and Domenico Piola, while
Giordano took the style to Spain. The breakdown of any sense of
direction in the composition is paralleled by a loosening in the
design of individual figures; once again the unity is decorative
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Late Baroque and Rococo
Symptomatic of the changing status
of the papacy during the 17th century was the fact that the Thirty
Years' War was ended by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 without
papal representation in the negotiations. Concurrently, the
influence of Spain also declined. The commencement of the personal
rule of Louis XIV in 1661 marked the beginning of a new era in
French political power and artistic influence, and the French
Academy in Rome (founded 1666) rapidly became a major factor in the
evolution of Roman art. Late Baroque classicism, as represented in
Rome by Maratta, wasslowly transformed into a sweet and elegant
18th-century style by his pupil Benedetto Luti, while Francesco
Trevisani abandoned the dramatic lighting of his early paintings in
favour of a glossy Rococo classicism. In the early 18th century,
Neapolitan painting under Francesco Solimena developed from the
brilliant synthesis of Pietro da Cortona's grand manner and Venetian
colour that Giordano had evolved in the late 17th century. The
impact, also, of Preti is revealed by his predilection for brownish
shadows; but, compared to the pupils and followers of Maratta in
Rome, Solimena's style has a greater strength and vitality despite
the characteristic Late Baroque fragmentation of the composition. He
himself supplied large paintings to patrons all over Europe, and his
pupils occupied key positions in the mid-18th century. Francesco de
Mura took the style to Turin, where he was court painter; Corrado
Giaquinto, as court painter in Madrid, turned increasingly toward
the Rococo, and Sebastiano Conca worked in Rome, falling
increasingly victim to the academic classicism dominant there. Anton
Domenico Gabbiani practiced a particularly frigid classicism in
Florence, and it was mainly in Bologna and Venice that real attempts
were made to break away from the confines of Late Baroque
classicism.
Giuseppe Maria Crespi (called Lo
Spagnolo, “The Spaniard”) turned instead toward the early paintings
of Guercino and evolved a deeply sincere style, remarkable for its
immediacyand sensibility. In Bologna he had no real successors, but
in Venice his work provided one of the bases for the brilliant
flowering of Venetian painting in this period. While Giovanni
Battista Piazzetta looked toward Crespi for the basis of his
expressive Tenebrist style, Sebastiano Ricci took his cue from
Giordano. The brilliant lightness and vivacity of his frescoes in
the Palazzo Marucelli-Fenzi, Florence, mark the beginning of a great
tradition of Venetian decorative painting, a tradition that was to
be carried all over Europe by Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini,
Giambattista Pittoni, and, aboveall, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. The
vast majority of the finest decorations (e.g., frescoes) carried out
by the Venetian 18th-century painters were executed outside the
Veneto (the region of which Venice is the principal city), but the
opposite is true of the flourishing Venetian school of landscape,
vedute (“views”), and genre painters. Giovanni Antonio Canal, called
Canaletto, developed the views of Venice painted by Luca Carlevaris
into an industry almost entirely dependent upon foreign tourists;
and his nephew Bernardo Bellotto spent most of his career painting
views in central Europe. Francesco Guardi avoided the cool precision
of the vedute of Canaletto and Bellotto and instead evolved a much
lighter and more lyrical Rococo style with a strong sense of the
picturesque and, occasionally, the bizarre. In Rome a similar
contrast existed between the brilliant, precise vedute of Giovanni
Paolo Pannini and the strange, almost Romantic vedute in the form of
etchings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi.
Spain and Portugal
Two fundamental and ostensibly
opposed streams permeate Spanish painting and separate it from that
of the rest of Europe—ecstatic mysticism and sober rationalism.
These qualities are essentially Gothic in spirit, and the Iberian
Peninsula is remarkable for the tenacity with which Gothic ideas
were retained and for the relatively small influence of Renaissance
humanist ideas. The early 17th-century still lifes of Sánchez Cotán,
with their strong realism and harsh, mysterious lighting, illustrate
these contrasts admirably, whereas Luis Tristán abandoned the
Mannerist style of his master El Greco for a much more careful
realism. Francisco Pacheco, the teacher and father-in-law of
Velázquez, was a more important writer than painter, and his
writings laid down a theoretical basis for the Spanish approach to
spirituality through naturalism. The early works of José de Ribera
show a synthesis of Spanish realism and ideas drawn from both
Annibale Carracci and Caravaggio; the fierce darkness of these
paintings formed the basis of the Tenebrist style that dominated
Neapolitan painting during the first half of the 17th century.
Ribera himself, however, developed away from this style in his later
paintings and moved toward a softer and more even handling of light.
Francisco de Zurbarán was active mainly in Seville until his removal
to Madrid in 1658, and unlike Ribera he painted throughout his life
in the stark Spanish realist style. The massive solemnity of his
figures and simple, clear-cut compositions are wholly in sympathy
with the demands of the Counter-Reformation, and only in Madrid did
he come under substantial Italian influence.
Diego Velázquez was almost the
exact contemporary of Zurbarán, but, unlike Zurbarán, who spent
almost all his life in the company of monks in the provinces,
Velázquez' time from 1623 was spent in the Spanish court in Madrid.
His earlybodegones (scenes of daily life with strong elements of
still life in the composition) were painted in Seville and belong to
the Spanish realist tradition, but at court he saw the Titians
collected by Philip II and also Rubens' paintings. After he visited
Italy in 1629–31, there was greater freedom in the way he handled
paint, more interest in colour, and increased depth to his analyses
of character.
The early works of the Seville
painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo again follow the Spanish realist
tradition in their cool detachment, but in his late works his style
softened and sweetened into a sentimentality that proved immensely
popular. Alonso Cano formed his early painting style in Seville on
the simple monumentality of Zurbarán, but after he moved to Madrid
in 1638 his paintings took on a new elegance and gracefulness. (Cano
was also active as a sculptor and architect in Granada [1652–57]).
Antonio del Castillo and Juan de Valdés Leal were the most important
painters active in Andalusia after Murillo, and the works of both
reveal that liveliness of handling, with accents of strong local
colour, which replaced the sober realism popularin the first half of
the century.
Portugal was ruled by Spain until
1640, when John IV was proclaimed king. But economic conditions
hampered serious patronage of the arts until the reign of John V,
when the most distinguished painter was Francisco Vieira de Matos.
Unfortunately, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 destroyed much of the
best art collected in the Portuguese capital at that time. |
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Gianlorenzo
Bernini.
The Ecstasy of Saint Therese
1647-52
Marble, height 350 cm
Cappella Cornaro, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome |
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Low Countries
The Spanish Netherlands
The year 1566 saw the Netherlands
in open revolt against Philip II of Spain, and, inasmuch as this
revolt had a Protestant as well as a nationalist aspect, a wave of
iconoclasm swept across the area. By 1600 the area had become
divided into the Spanish-dominated, Catholic, southern
provinces—broadly modern Belgium—and the independent, predominantly
Calvinist United Provinces of the north—broadly the modern
Netherlands, or colloquially Holland; the boundary between the two
remained fluid, however. In the southern provinces throughout the
16th to 18th centuries Brussels, headed by viceroys, remained the
centre of court patronage, while Antwerp, with its great patrician
families, was the commercial centre.
Painting in the southern provinces
before 1610 was intensely conservative; the Mannerist conventions
were never accepted as fully as in the north. Instead, Italianate
ideas were joined with the late Gothic tradition.
Peter Paul Rubens arrived back in
Antwerp from Italy late in 1608. In the following year he was
appointed court painter to the archduke Albert and the archduchess
Isabella, with special permission to reside in Antwerp, to help
repair damage caused by the iconoclasm of 1566. The necessary
ingredients were present for a brilliant flowering of the Baroque
art that Rubens had evolved in Italy, and his studio became an
artistic centre not only for the Netherlands but for England, Spain,
and central Europe as well. The monumentality of Rubens' forms, with
their impulsive drawing, restless movement, and dramatic lighting,
provided the touchstone for the High Baroque in the Catholic areas
of northern Europe. By Rubens' death, Philip IV of Spain had
acquired more than 130 paintings by him. A diplomatic visit to
England (where he found so much favour with Charles I that the
latter knighted him) in 1630 had resulted in the commission to
decorate the ceiling of the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall, one of the
most monumental commissions of Rubens' last period.
Anthony Van Dyck, a pupil and
assistant of Rubens, was a much less forceful personality than his
master; and this is reflected in the quieter, more introspective
note characteristic of his paintings. His greater sympathy for the
sitter made him the most successful portrait painter of his time.
Between 1625/26 and 1632 he was active, mainly as a portrait
painter, in the entourage of Rubens, but the last years of his life
(1632–41) were spent in England as court painter to Charles I, from
whom he, too, received a knighthood. The elegant, relaxed,
aristocratic portrait style he introduced was outstandingly
successful and rendered obsolete the stiff portraits of Daniel
Mytens and the straightforward, unpretentious portraits of Cornelius
Johnson, two other painters of Low Countries origin active in
England at this time. Van Dyck's death coincided with the outbreak
of the Civil War in England; and the portraitists William Dobson and
Robert Walker, in the troubled years 1641–60 the only painters of
note active in England, reveal a considerable debt to him. Jacob
Jordaens also worked as an assistant in Rubens' workshop in Antwerp
and took it over after his death. His handling of the Rubensian
idiom moved increasingly away from the control of Rubens himself
towarda much more boisterous and vulgar style with an emphasis on
large genre scenes populated with rough plebeian types.
The remaining members of Rubens'
studio, such as Cornelis de Vos and Caspar de Crayer, were much
weaker artistic personalities, and one of the few painters of genius
relatively independent of Rubens was Adriaen Brouwer, who painted in
the tradition of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Best known for his
low-life pictures, Brouwer also painted very expressive landscapes;
his work is characterized by the sensitive use of a heavily loaded
brush. In comparison, David Teniers the Younger was a minor master,
and with him the influence of Dutch painting became increasingly
strong. The impact of Rubens' landscape style is felt in the
paintingsof Jan Wildens and Lucas van Uden, while in contrast Jan
Brueghel the Younger turned the making of copies and pastiches of
his father's works into something approaching an industry.
Still-life and animal painting reached new heights in the works of
Frans Snyders as a result of the influence of Rubens, and in a much
quieter vein Snyders' pupil Jan Fyt continued the tradition, which
was to last into the 18th century. Jan Davidsz de Heem was also
active in Holland, but he is important as one of the creators of the
elaborate, fully developed Baroque still life, and as such he had a
host of followers and imitators.
The United Provinces
Dutch painting of the 17th century
shares roots with that of the Spanish Netherlands. Holland, however,
was independent, rapidly prospering, and almost entirely Protestant.
In the last decades of the 16th century the great port of Haarlem
was the most active artistic centre, and the remarkable flowering of
Mannerist painting there, as exemplified by Cornelis van Haarlem and
Hendrik Goltzius, is without a parallel south of the border. In the
later pictures of Abraham Bloemaert, Mannerism gave way to the much
more straightforward realist style characteristic of the earliest
phase of Dutch 17th-century painting. The influence of the figure
paintings of Adam Elsheimer on this generation of artists was
considerable; his particularly Italianate style, with sharply
delineated forms painted in rich, deep colours and with a pronounced
element of fantasy, is reflected by the early paintings of Leonard
Bramer and, even more importantly, Pieter Lastman, the master of
Rembrandt. Elsheimer's poetic little landscapes were also extremely
important for the group of Dutch artists active in Rome about1620.
This group was headed by Cornelis van Poelenburgh and Bartolomeus
Breenbergh, and back home it provided an additional source of
Italian influence. The most striking influence of Italy was
provided, however, by the Dutch followers of Caravaggio, who had
seized eagerly upon the harsh dramatic lighting and coarse plebeian
types they had seen in his paintings during their stays in Italy and
brought the style to the north to form the so-called Utrecht school.
Gerrit van Honthorst, Hendrik Terbrugghen, and Dirck van Baburen
were leading champions of this style, but after 1628Honthorst turned
away in the direction of Van Dyck.
Frans Hals was born in Antwerp, but
almost all of his life was spent in Haarlem, where he evolved his
characteristic bravura style of portraiture. The stiff solemnity of
earlier Dutch portraits gave way to the capture of fleeting changes
of expression and superb textural effects, though Hals
neversucceeded in attaining the degree of psychological penetration
characteristic of the portraits painted by Rembrandt.
The early works of Rembrandt van
Rijn, painted in Leiden (1625–31), show a progressive lessening of
the influence of Lastman, and Rembrandt, together with his associate
Jan Lievens, evolved an increasingly Baroque style, with strong
contrasts of light and shade derived from the “Caravaggists.” After
he moved to Amsterdam in 1631, thesetendencies developed to an
opulent and highly Baroque climax in the late 1630s. Following the
death of his first wife, Saskia, in 1642, difficult times and the
changing tastes of art collectors culminated in his bankruptcy in
1656. In his later works the dramatic Baroque panache gives way to a
deep introspection and sympathy for his subjects, and his series
ofabout 60 self-portraits reveals this process in intimate detail.
Parallel to his development as a painter is that of his style as an
etcher; Rembrandt is considered by many to be the greatest etcher of
all time (see printmaking: Printmaking in the 17th century: European
etching: The Netherlands). During the years of his financial
success, Rembrandt had thelargest and most successful painting and
printmaking studio in Holland.
The increasing use at this time of
portable easel paintings asdomestic ornaments, many of them made for
sale by dealers rather than on commission by the consumer, is
related to theextraordinary range of subjects in which Dutch
painters specialized. Nevertheless, certain basic changes in style
andtaste occurred during the course of the 17th century, and,
although many painters long persisted in outdated styles, the same
fundamental changes can be traced in the various specialities. The
earliest phase of simple realism held sway until the early 1620s;
and the characteristic bright local colours, lack of spatial unity,
sudden transition between different planes, and tendency toward high
viewpoints are tobe found in the genre paintings of Willem
Buytewech, flower pieces of Jacob II de Gheyn and Roelant Savery,
and marine paintings of Hendrick Cronelisz Vroom and Adam Willaerts.
This gave way to a much more limited palette in the early 1620s
when, by reducing the strength and range of the colours, an
atmospheric unity was obtained. In landscapes and marine paintings
the horizon tended to drop, and a continuous and coherent recession
into depth was attained, particularly in the paintings of Esaias van
de Velde, Jan van Goyen, Hercules Seghers, and Jan Porcellis. The
same change is seen in still lifes by Pieter Claesz and Willem
Claesz Heda, in which the colours are almost monochrome. Atmospheric
unity having been mastered, the change to the heroic classical phase
of the middle of the 17th century was gradual, but there was a
tendency toward ever-increasingly dramatic Baroque contrasts, be
they the leaden skies or great oaks of Jacob van Ruisdael, the vast
panoramas of Philips de Koninck, the luminous pastures of Aelbert
Cuyp, or the heavy gray seas of Simon de Vlieger. The
monumentalityof these scenes is paralleled by the rich splendour of
the stilllifes of Jan Davidsz de Heem, Abraham van Beyeren, and
Willem Kalff and the classical calm and simplicity of the scenes by
Johannes Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch painted in Delft. In the
landscapes of Meindert Hobbema, Claes Berchem, and Adam Pijnacker
the majesty of Jacob van Ruisdael's landscapes gives way to a much
lighter, more picturesque style. Similarly, the vigorous social
realism of Adriaen van Ostade yields to a much lighter and more
frivolous treatment in the paintings of his younger brother Isack
and Jan Steen and the elegant hunting scenes of PhilipsWouwerman.
With the French invasion of 1672
and the subsequent Dutch economic collapse, the demand for paintings
dropped heavily, and in the last decades of the 17th century many
Dutch painters either stopped painting or, like the van de Veldes
Willem I and Willem II, left the country to work in England or
Germany. Late 17th- and 18th-century taste tended toward the almost
enamel-like brilliancy and intricatedetail of the still lifes by
Rachel Ruysch and Jan van Huysum;the same slightly dated flavour is
characteristic of the marine paintings of Ludolf Backhuysen and of
the hard figuresubjects of Willem van Mieris and Adriaan van der
Werff.
France
French-speaking painters continued
the Mannerist conventions even later than did those at Haarlem, and
at Nancy (capital of the independent duchy of Lorraine before 1633
and again from 1697 to 1766) a group of artists around Jacques
Bellange and Jacques Callot was responsible for the last great
flowering of the Mannerist style in Europe. By comparison, painting
in Paris during the first decades of the 17th century was relatively
insignificant, with the exception of that of Claude Vignon, who
exchanged his Mannerist training for a style based on Elsheimer and
to a lesser extent Lastman, and who in the 1620s revealed a
remarkable knowledge of the earliest paintings of Rembrandt. The
returnof Simon Vouet to Paris, however, marked the arrival of the
Baroque in France. The earliest paintings from his stay in Rome are
strikingly vigorous essays in the “Caravaggesque” style, but by 1620
he was painting in an eclectic, classicizing style based on the
early Baroque painters active there, including Giovanni Lanfranco
and Guido Reni. This style he brought back to France, enjoying until
his death an immense success in Paris as a decorator and painter of
large-scale altarpieces; even the return of Nicolas Poussin failed
to shake his position. Poussin's activity in Paris is of relatively
little importance compared with the remainder of his career in Rome,
but the large number of works commissioned by French patrons then
and subsequently was an important factor in the formation of
theFrench predilection for classicism.
The influence of the highly Baroque
paintings depicting the life of Marie de Médicis that Rubens had
executed for the Luxembourg Palace in Paris was small. But Philippe
de Campaigne evolved a grave and sober Baroque style that had its
roots in the paintings of Rubens and Van Dyck rather than in Italy.
Clear lighting and cool colours with an austere naturalism provided
an alternative to the intellectual and archaeological classicism of
Poussin. Georges de La Tour, a painter who had affinities with the
Dutch “Caravaggists” of Utrecht, was active in Lorraine; but
although he exploited the Caravaggist system of lighting, his
figures became increasingly detached and simplified, leading to an
uncomfortable hardness. The paintings of the Le Nain
brothers—Antoine, Louis, and Mathieu—again look to Dutch painting
for their inspiration. Eustache Le Sueur began painting under the
influence of Vouet, but after Poussin's brief return to Paris
(1640–42) he turned to a much more rigorous classical style
influenced by Raphael's tapestry designs, whereas Sébastien Bourdon
was capable of paintingin almost any current style on request.
In the reorganization of the
Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1648, Charles Le Brun was
appointed director and given the position of virtual dictator of the
arts in France. An imaginative painter and designer, Le Brun was
also a brilliant organizer, and the creation of the Louis XIV style,
as exemplified by the Palace of Versailles, was above all due to
him. The particular Baroque style that emerged was based on the
Roman High Baroque but was purged of all theatricality and
illusionism and modified to conform to the classical canons of
French taste; this compromise solution struck the keynote for the
frescoes of Le Brun and Pierre Mignard. The more full-blooded
Baroque style of Pierre Pugetreceived little official recognition,
and his attempts to obtainmajor commissions at Versailles were
thwarted, probably because of his difficult nature. During the last
decades of thecentury, the full Baroque style took on a new lease on
life, and the decorative paintings of Charles de La Fosse and
Antoine Coypel clearly reveal the influence of Rubens. Even more
Baroque are formal portraits by Hyacinthe Rigaud and Nicolas de
Largillière, in which the strong contrapposto (twisting of the
figure so that one half is in opposition to the other), rich
settings, and floating masses of drapery reflect the pomp and
swagger of this era—which, significantly, cameto be known as the
Grande Époque.
The great formal portraits of
Largillière and Rigaud are entirely Baroque in their approach, but
in the late informal portraits of these masters a new atmosphere
prevails. This atmosphere goes by the name of Rococo. The turn of
the century marks the victory of Rubens' influence over the severe
classicism of Poussin. The evolution of the Rococo style of
decoration has been traced from its emergence at the beginning of
the 18th century, and it must be emphasized that the Rococo is
fundamentally a decorative style. It made relatively little impact
on religious painting in France, and painters such as Pierre
Subleyras continued to work in a Baroque idiom until the arrival of
Neoclassicism in the second half of the century. It took the genius
of Antoine Watteau to put together all the ideas current in Paris
and to create the new style of painting. Rubens (in particular his
oil sketches), the brush drawings and etchings of Castiglione, the
naturalism of the Dutch painters, and the fantasy of the French
artist Claude Gillot all provided important source material for
early Rococo painting. The delicate sketchlike technique and elegant
figures of Watteau's wistful fantasies, called fetes galantes ,
provided the models for the paintings of Jean-Baptiste Pater and
Nicolas Lancret, both of whom conveyed a delicately veiled
eroticism. Eroticism was more explicit in the sensuous nudes, both
mythological and pastoral, of François Boucher. Another painter with
whom amorous dalliance is a hallmark was Jean-Honoré Fragonard, in
whose soft landscapes flirtation and even seduction are conducted
with gallantry. Such paintings formed an intimate part of the
decoration of Rococo interiors, and more than any earlier secular
paintings they were intended as a kind of two-dimensional furniture.
The furniture role also applies to
the paintings of dead game and live dogs by François Desportes and
Jean-Baptiste Oudry. But in thestill lifes and tranquil scenes of
domestic life painted by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin there is a
sobriety of colour and composition (although great richness in the
handling), an often relatively homely subject matter, and a concern
to order the mind rather than dazzle the eye (see photograph). Some
of Chardin's subjects—the labours of the servant class, the care of
children—were shared by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, who was, however, more
interested in narrative and sentiment. Unlike Dutch painters of
lower-class life, Greuze endowed his peasants with the sensibility
of their social superiors. The edifying moral sympathy he intended
to inculcate was, however, often subverted by a sly erotic interest
he could not resist giving expression to.
Despite his great success, Greuze
was judged to have failed in his attempt at painting heroic
narrative from ancient history. But then it is true that the
“higher” class of painting was generally less successfully practiced
in France than were the “lower” genres in the 18th century. The
mythologies and altarpieces of the Coypel family, Jean-François de
Troy, or Jean-Marc Nattier may have been underestimated, but their
names are not as familiar as thoseof still-life and genre painters
such as Watteau or Chardin or even those of such accomplished
painters of capricious ruin pieces or of landscapes and seascapes as
Hubert Robert and Claude-Joseph Vernet.
The middle decades of the 18th
century saw more accomplished portrait painters flourishing in
France than perhaps ever before in any country. Yet it is the
informal, the convivial, and the intimate that are associated with
the portraiture of Jacques-André-Joseph Aved, François-Hubert
Drouais, Louis Tocqué, Louis-Michel Van Loo, or Étienne Aubry. The
heroic was seldom attempted and never achieved.
Britain
The 17th century
English painting during the 17th
century had been dominated by a series of foreign-born
practitioners, mostly portraitists (e.g., Rubens and Van Dyck), even
before the Civil War. Sir Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey Kneller
continued this trend after the Restoration. The vast majority of the
painting executed by native artists remained thoroughly provincial.
Lely beganhis activity in England during the Civil War, probably in
1641,but his portraits of the members of the court of Charles II set
the pattern for English portraiture of the second half of the 17th
century. British patrons in the 18th century sometimes collected
paintings on religious or mythical themes by foreign artists, but at
home they rarely commissioned anything other than portraits,
landscapes, and marine paintings, although there was in the early
18th century a vogue for grand allegorical decorations in
aristocratic houses. The Protestant church, however, did little to
encourage painting. In fact, the preponderance of portraits isthe
most distinctive characteristic of old British collections. Gerard
Soest, Jacob Huysmans, and Willem Wissing were also active in
England as portrait painters close in style to Lely, whereas Jan
Siberechts and Robert Streeter painted “portraits” of English
country houses. The most distinguished painters to settle in England
during this period were the van de Veldes, from whom the tradition
of British marine painting descends, headed by Peter Monamy and
Samuel Scott.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688 was
followed by a brief flowering of decorative painting under Sir James
Thornhill, which was the closest that Britain ever approached to the
developed Baroque style of the Continent. This process was in part
due to the influx, following the end of the War of the Spanish
Succession, of Italian painters, including the Venetians Giovanni
Antonio Pellegrini and Jacopo Amigoni, and French ones, such as
Charles de La Fosse. The German-born Kneller succeeded Lely as court
portrait painter, but, although his portraits often have a certain
liveliness, his rather heavy use of studio assistants resulted in a
tendency to monotony.
Britain
The 18th century
Thornhill's son-in-law William
Hogarth was, despite his chauvinism and virulently anti-French
sentiments, heavily influenced by the continental Rococo style.
Early in his career he succeeded in breaking away from the
straitjacket of portraiture, and his moralizing paintings are superb
evocations of life in the England of George I and George II. His
rich, creamy paint handling and brilliant characterizationof
textures have a freshness and vitality unequaled in the work of any
of his contemporaries. He invented a new form of secular narrative
painting that imparts a moral. These paintings were often
tragicomedies, although dependent upon no texts, and Hogarth's
series of such works were always intended to be engraved for a large
public as well as seen in a private picture gallery (just as plays
were intended to be performed as well as read).
Despite Hogarth's considerable
knowledge of and borrowings from continental old masters, he
remained in the last analysis English through and through. This,
however, was not the case with all the next generation of painters;
and the Scottish-born Allan Ramsay studied in Rome and Naples in
1736–38 before settling in London in 1739. Until the return of
Joshua Reynolds from Italy in 1752, Ramsay held undisputed sway as
the most successful portrait painter in London; and to him must be
given the credit for the initial marriage of the Italian “grand
style” to English portraiture. Ramsay visited Italy again in
1755–57, and on his return his portraits took on a new delicacy and
elegance and a silvery tonality. Reynolds possessed great ambitions
and a more profound acquaintance with the old masters than any of
his contemporaries. His colouring and handling can be compared with
Rembrandt, Rubens, and Veronese, and his poses are indebted to the
sculpture of antiquity and to Michelangelo. The Discourses that he
delivered to the Royal Academy (founded in 1768 with Reynolds as its
first president) are the most impressive statement in English of the
central ideas of European art theory from the time of Leon Battista
Alberti's treatise. Reynolds' own painting gained a genuine heroic
power and elevated grace from his frustrated ambition to be a
history painter, although for that very reason he occasionally
tumbled into bathos.
The third major British painter of
the period to study in Italy was a Welshman, Richard Wilson, who
worked there from 1750 to about 1757 before settling in London. His
landscape style was formed on Claude, Gaspard Dughet, and Cuyp; but
the clear golden lighting of his Italian landscapes carries the
conviction of an artist saturated with the Mediterranean tradition.
A cooler clarity and classical simplicity pervade his northern
landscapes; and, despite the uneven quality of his work, Wilson was
the first British painter to lift the pure landscape above mere
decorative painting and topography.
Thomas Gainsborough was in every
way the antithesis to Reynolds. Trained entirely in England, he had
no wish to visit Italy. Instead of the “grand style,” his tastes in
portraiture lay in the delicate flickering brushwork and evanescent
qualities of the Rococo. He preferred landscape painting to
portraiture, and the strong Dutch influence in his earliest works
later gave way to spontaneous landscapes composed from models.
In the 1760s Francis Cotes was the
most important fashionable London portrait painter after Reynolds
and Gainsborough, a position succeeded to by George Romney, who, on
returning to London from Italy in 1775, took over Cotes's studio.
Romney's portraits deteriorated sadly in quality during the 1780s
when the young Sir Thomas Lawrence began to make his mark.
Throughout the 18th century,
portraiture remained the most important genre of British painting,
despite the efforts of Reynolds and Gainsborough in their “fancy
pictures.” Even the taste for large-scale scenes illustrating
Shakespeare and other themes—which were commissioned toward the end
of the century from James Barry, James Northcote, and Edward Penny,
among others—never spread far beyond a few patrons. Sporting and
animal painting, however, took on an entirely new dimension in the
work of George Stubbs. Joseph Wright of Derby was active outside
London and, apart from his romantic portraits, is important for his
series of paintings of scientific and industrial subjects with
strong light effects. Johann Zoffany was born in Germany but moved
to Britain about 1761 and became a founder-member of the Royal
Academy, specializing in elaborate group portraits and theatrical
scenes.
During the second half of the 18th
century the evolution of British oil painting was to a great extent
paralleled by the extraordinary flowering in watercolours. The early
topographical drawings of Paul Sandby gave way to the delicate
linear drawings of Francis Towne, with their patches of colour
resembling maps, and, at the close of the century, to the
atmospheric unity of the landscapes of John Robert Cozens.
Colonial Americas
North America
Painting in the Dutch and English
colonies of North America reflected generally the portrait styles of
the mother countries, though with a note of provinciality. In the
late 17thand early 18th centuries the Dutch colony of New
Amsterdam(New York) had painters whose names today are forgotten.
Their work lives on, however, and is signified by names such as the
Master of the De Peyster Boy. Gustavus Hesselius, Swedish born, was
painting in Maryland, and Jeremiah Theus, a Swiss, was at work in
South Carolina. Peter Pelham and John Smibert arrived from England
and in the second quarter of the 18th century were painting
portraits in Boston, Mass. These two self-taught itinerant artists
were succeeded by John Wollaston and Joseph Blackburn. Robert Feke,
a native American painter, realized his forms more solidly and with
greater originality than his predecessors had. Another native
American, John Singleton Copley, worked in Boston until 1774, when
he went to live permanently in England, and was responsible for the
finest painting produced in the American colonies. Benjamin West,
another important native figure in the history of American painting,
was born in Pennsylvania but settled in London in 1763, where he
became the second president of the Royal Academy. Although domiciled
in London, he helped to mold the styles of two generations of
American painters.
Colonial Americas
Central and South America
Baroque painting in Central and
South America is basically an extension of that of Spain and
Portugal, and even the bestrarely rises to the general standard of
the European schools. Important paintings and sculptures tended to
be imported from Europe, and Zurbarán was particularly active in
producing works for export, while local productions were more or
less heavily influenced by the Indian traditions.
Central Europe
In central Europe the Mannerist
tradition remained dominant until the Thirty Years' War (1618–48),
particularly in Bohemiaand Bavaria, where Italian influence was
perhaps strongest.
The Rubensian Baroque became
dominant after mid-century, and here the lead was taken by Silesia
and Bohemia. MichaelWillmann, originally from Königsberg (modern
Kaliningrad) on the southeastern Baltic coast, developed a highly
charged, emotional Baroque style, based on Rubens, at Lubiąż (modern
Dorf Leubus, northwest of Wrocław) from 1661 to 1700 and at Prague
after 1700. In Karel Škréta Šotnovoský, Bohemia possessed a painter
of European stature; his sombre portraits and religious scenes are
filled with a deeply serious mystical fervour. The frescoes by
Johann Michael Rottmayr in the castle of Vranov in Moravia (1695)
and in Breslau (now Wrocław; 1704–06) constitute a prelude to the
great development of Baroque painting in the Habsburg domains. There
the vigorous and extremely colourful frescoes are closely integrated
with the
architecture. The vast majority of
the best central European Baroque painting outside portraiture is
monumental in scale, and the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk (“total
work of art”)—where painting, sculpture, and architecture are
combined together into a single, unified, and harmonious ensemble—is
of overwhelming importance.
Painting in Austria flourished, and
Franz Anton Maulbertsch is arguably the greatest painter of the 18th
century in central Europe. The vast majority of his brilliant fresco
cycles are located in relatively inaccessible areas of Bohemia,
Moravia,and northern Hungary. But the mystical intensity of his
religious scenes and the joyous abandon of his secular subjects form
a triumphant closing chapter to 18th-century central European
painting. Maulbertsch's last frescoes at Strahov, Prague (1794),
reveal, nevertheless, the impact of the Neoclassicism that descended
in the last decades on all Austrian painters, including Troger's
pupil Martin Knoller. But Austrian monumental painting remained
fully Baroque in the hands of Daniel Gran, Paul Troger, and
Bartholomäus Altomonte; and it was not until the latter part of the
century that the Rococo made its impact.
During the first four decades of
the 18th century, Bohemian Baroque painting developed almost
independently of Vienna, where the Habsburg rulers of Bohemia had
their capital. The impetuous work of Jan Petr Brandl and the
powerful realism of the portraitist Jan Kupecký, who worked in Rome,
Venice, Vienna, and Nürnberg, always remained Bohemian in spirit.
The frescoes of Wenzel Lorenz Reiner, however, show more Italian
influence. One of the few important Baroque frescoes of the second
half of the centuryis that by Jan Lucaš Kracker in St. Nicholas,
Malá Strana (“Lesser Quarter”), Prague. The influence of Bohemian
Baroque painting is frequently underestimated. Apart from Vienna and
the surrounding area, it was dominant in Silesia and strong later in
the century in Franconia.
After the death of Cosmas Damian
Asam in 1739, Johann Baptist Zimmermann became the most important
fresco painter in the Munich area; his lyrical handling of pale
colours is typical of the Rococo period. Christian Wink continued to
paint in the same style until the close of the century. In Georg
Desmarées the court at Munich gained a painter in whose Rococo
portraits there is more than a hint of decadence.
The centre of south German painting
had by the late 1730s shifted from Munich to Augsburg in Swabia,
where Johann Georg Bermüller became the director of the Academy in
1730; but his frescoes, as well as those of Franz Joseph Spiegler
and Gottfried Bernhard Goetz, are perhaps more representative of the
Late Baroque than the Rococo. The frescoes of Matthäus Günther, who
became director of the Augsburg Academy in 1762, show a steady
evolution from his early Baroque compositions, through the much
lighter asymmetrical Rococo compositions, to the strongly sculptural
quality of his late works, which reveal the onset of Neoclassicism.
In Franconia and the middle
Rhineland the most important painters were Johann Zick and Carlo
Carlone. Zick's frescoes at Würzburg (1749) had not been entirely
successful, and in 1750 he was supplanted by Tiepolo; but at
Bruchsal he produced one of the most brilliant series of Rococo
frescoes in Germany (now destroyed). His son Januarius began
painting in the Rococo style but under the influence of Anton
Raphael Mengs produced some late frescoes that were strongly
classical.
The French tastes of Frederick I of
Prussia at Berlin led him in 1710 to summon Antoine Pesne to court,
where Pesne continued for the remainder of his life to paint in an
entirely French Rococo style. The homely intimacy of the paintings
ofDaniel Chodowiecki, however, have a sensitivity and refinement
more comparable to Chardin's.
Saxony under Augustus III produced
few painters of real importance except Mengs, who rapidly turned
from the Rococo to the Neoclassicism propounded by the influential
art historian and classical archaeologist Johann Winckelmann.
Poland
King Władysław IV Vasa (reigned
1632–48) assembled an important collection of Italian and Flemish
Baroque paintings, but these promising developments were cut short
by the destruction of the Swedish Wars in the middle of the 17th
century. Under John III Sobieski (reigned 1674–96), a cultivated
man, there was a considerable revival, and, although two of the
painters active in Poland—Claude Callot and Michelangelo
Palloni—were foreign-born and foreign-trained, native talent
flowered with the work of Jerzy Eleuter Szymonowicz-Siemiginowski
and Jan Tretko. In 1697 the crowns of Poland and Saxony were united
under Augustus II, and he and his son Augustus III ruled over
Polanduntil 1763. During this period, Polish painting formed part of
the Saxon tradition, but during the reign of the last king of
Poland, Stanisław II August Poniatowski (reigned 1764–95), Warsaw
quickly became a centre of European importance. Although inclined to
Neoclassicism in architecture, Stanisław's taste in painting was
more conservative. Accordingly it is the late Rococo portraits of
Marcello Bacciarelli that are particularly important. A nephew and
pupil of Canaletto, Bernardo Bellotto, settled in Warsaw in 1767 and
executed for Stanisław the great series of 26 viewsof the city that
were intended to hang in the Royal Castle.
Peter Cannon-Brookes
Russia
The Baroque in Russia was imported
from western Europe and outside court circles made little impact.
Indeed the traditional production of icons for the Orthodox church
by artists of the Novgorod and Moscow schools continued throughout
the Baroque period. Nevertheless the foundation of St. Petersburg
(1703) by Peter I the Great marked the beginning of the substitution
of Western influence for Byzantine, an important change. During
Peter's reign foreign painters began to go to Russia in increasing
numbers; conversely, groups of young Russians were sent to Italy,
France, Holland, and England to study painting. Western influence
determined the character of Russian painting for more than two
centuries.
The art of Peter's age shows almost
no trace of Byzantine influence. Only in iconography did the old
style persist for some time. Early in the 18th century, religious
painting began to give way to secular painting, and the church
prohibition of sculpture became ineffective. Dmitry Levitsky stands
out as the only important Russian painter of the 18th century to
work in the Western style.
Further westernizing occurred under
the empress Elizabeth (reigned 1741–62), who had French tastes. A
great number of vast and luxurious Rococo-style palaces were built,
and painting was primarily concerned with their interior
decoration—ceilings and walls. The work was carried on chiefly by
Italians and Frenchmen.
In 1757 the Academy of Fine Arts
was founded in St. Petersburg, and foreign artists—mostly
French—were invited to direct the new school. These trained some
remarkable native portraitists, such as Ivan Argunov, Anton Losenko,
and Fyodor Rokotov. Their works reflected the ceremonial character
of Elizabeth's tastes and showed little evidence of native Russian
sensibility.
Arthur Voyce
Scandinavia
In the 17th century, Scandinavian
painting derived from traditions of the Low Countries and northern
Germany. The works of art carried off as loot from Prague by Swedish
soldiers during the Thirty Years' War might conceivably
havebroadened the outlook of Swedes at home, but the best of them
were taken to Rome by Queen Christina when she abdicated in 1654. A
generation later, under the influence of the fashionable Venetian
woman pastelist Rosalba Carriera, a school of Rococo portraitists
flourished in Scandinavia. One such portraitist was Carl Gustav
Pilo, who, though trained in Stockholm, executed many frankly
Venetian portraits during his years as court painter in Copenhagen.
Another was Lorentz Pasch the Younger, who trained under Pilo in
Copenhagen, although he subsequently worked mainly in Sweden. Other
painters of Swedish origin were Alexander Roslin, who worked
throughout Europe, and Georg Desmarées, who settled in Bavaria. The
Scandinavian Rococo has a distinctive flavour that is also
detectable in the work of two important miniaturists of the period,
Niclas Lafrensen and Cornelius Höyer. At the close of the century
the paintings of Jens Juel in Denmark bridge the transition from
Rococo to Neoclassicism. |
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Baroque Architecture |
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With its roots in Italy, in the late
16th and early 17th century, a style evolved out of Mannerism that
expressed new ideas about the world, nature, and human
relationships. New concepts of the role of an in relation to civil
and ecclesiastical power emerged, as well as a changed attitude
towards the private individual's enjoyment of beauty.
During the l7th century, the Catholic Church, by now fully recovered
from the schism of the Reformation and more confident of its power
following the meetings of the Council of Trent (1545-1563), began to
exploit art as a means of disseminating new doctrines. In much the
same way, the great European monarchies entrusted artists with the
task of creating suitably magnificent and persuasive images of their
grandeur.
The Baroque was a highly theatrical
style that relied on illusion, rhetoric, and extravagance for its
effects. Over the years, these characteristics have provoked
differing reactions: they were rejected during the Neoclassical era.
but have been praised in modern times. The basic elements of the
style remained fairly consistent during the course of the 17th
century and the first half of the 18th century. Though much altered,
they were still utilized in a way that can be termed Late Baroque.
The essential characteristics of the Baroque architectural style
were the transformation of natural shapes; the alteration of
classical proportions; methods of shrinking or expanding space; and
illusionism. These combined to increase the emotional charge of
works of art and create effects of surprise and wonder that were far
beyond common experience. Artists strove for an unbroken continuity
between internal and external spaces, between painted and
architectural space, as well as between artifice and nature. This
sometimes led to the use of natural elements, such as water and
light, as well as the combination of techniques and effects from
different types of art, making the onlooker play the dual role of
spectator and actor.

Gianlorenzo Bernini, detail of
the Fountain of the Four Rivers, Piazza Navona, Rome, 1648-51.
The four rivers - the Danube, Nile,
Ganges, and Rio de la Plata - represented the then-known world and
hinted a! the Church's global influence.
PIAZZA NAVONA
Built to the express wishes of Pope
Innocent X Pamphili, the Piazza Navona in Rome is typical of the
Baroque idea of urban space. It transformed the area in front of the
Pamphili family palace and the church of Sant'Agnese in Agone into a
suitable setting for public entertainment. Indeed, the large open
space is contained within the outlines of the ancient Roman
racetrack, the Hippodrome of Domitian. The central focus was the
Fountain of the Four Rivers (1648-51) by Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598—
1680), which probably echoes the temporary structure erected as part
of the celebrations of Innocent's election. It exemplifies the
synthesis of nature and art, with water gushing from a hollow rock,
on which sit personifications of the four continents and the
greatest rivers then known. From this base soars the obelisk, symbol
of man's aspiration towards the infinite, surmounted by the emblem
of the Pamphili family. Two smaller fountains in the piazza, also by
Bernini, and the facade of the church of Sant' Agnese (1653—57) by
Francesco Borromini (1599-1677) provide a balance to the central
fountain. The church's high dome and twin bell towers, along with
the vertical axis of Bernini's fountain, contrast with the piazza's
horizontal planes.

Piazza Navona, Rome. The
Fountain of Neptune can be seen in the foreground.
THE PLACE ROYALE
The Place Royale (now the Place des
Vosges) was laid out in 1604 in the then aristocratic quarter of
Paris on land owned by the Crown. Its understated elegance is a
product of both its proportions — it is a true square — and the
uniformity of the facades that conceal the individual houses.
Variety is provided by materials: white stone for the architectural
framework, red brick for the walls, and grey slate for the roofs.
Only the roofs and chimneys demarcate the individual buildings,
which have shops at ground level, family residences above, and
attics for servants. In the centre of the north and south sides, the
Pavilion du Roi and the Pavilion de la Reine face each other,
providing the square with a central axis: in the middle stands a
statue of Louis XIII.

Place des Vosges. detail of one
of the houses.

Daumont, Place Royale, Paris
(now the Place des Vosges), 18th-century print.
ST PETER'S SQUARE
Bernini's project for St Peter's
Square was submitted in its definitive form in 1657 and was
vigorously supported by Pope Alexander VII Chigi. The colonnaded
piazza, linked to the basilica's facade by a small square, is
enhanced by the obelisk erected by Domenico Fontana for Sixtus V, as
well as two fountains sited at the focal points of the oval space.
Bernini's proposal made the most of the grandeur of the great
colonnaded semicircles, which are four columns deep, underlining the
symbolic power of the square - they are
stretched out towards the city and the world beyond like the arms of
the Church. The variety of visual effects and perspectives balances
the relationship between the horizontal space of the piazza and
Michelangelo's dome on the basilica itself. A planned third section
of colonnade was to have closed the square, but this was never
built. Instead, the opening of the great boulevard leading from the
church in the 1940s has compromised the sense of enclosure that
Bernini sought.

Plan of St Peter's basilica and
piazzas, Vatican City.

View of St Peter's Square,
Vatican City.
BORROMINI
Francesco Castelli, known as
Borromini (1599-1677), learned his craft working at Milan Cathedral
as a pupil of Francesco Maria Richino (1584-1658), the greatest
Milanese exponent of Baroque. From at least 1619 onwards, Borromini
worked for Maderno and Bernini in Rome, until he received
commissions for the convent and church of San Carlo alle Quattro
Fontane (1635-41) and the Falconieri and Spada palaces there. The
most memorable of his many buildings in Rome include the Chiesa
nuova and Oratory for the Congregation of San Filippo Neri and the
churches of Sant'Agnese and Sant'lvo alla Sapienza. Borromini, who
eventually took his own life, was one of the most original and
inventive exponents of Baroque architecture, which he imbued with
soaring upward movement and powerful chiaroscuro effects. He was
also one of the finest of a succession of artists, architects, and
sculptors, who, from the Middle Ages well into the 18th century,
moved from the valleys and foothills of the Lombard Alps into the
mainstream of Italian and European art.
The Urban Space
The consolidation of great nation
states in which power was centralized, the emergence of capital
cities as seats of government and symbols of power, and a growth in
population and traffic (both pedestrian and wheeled) all contributed
to an urgent need to redefine the city. Baroque planning imposed an
ordered structure based on a web of wide, straight thoroughfares,
which linked a series of focal points, such as gateways, churches,
and palaces. To give the townscape a more orderly appearance,
continuous streets were created and the facades of important
buildings were integrated wherever possible to form a harmonious
urban fabric. Rome led in this process of urban transformation, and
Sixtus V, pope from 1585 to 1590, entrusted the task to the
architect Domenico Fontana (1543-1607). The project entailed the
construction of straight roads directly linking the seven main
basilicas of Rome, several of which were situated in the outskirts
of the city. Its practical purpose was to revive depopulated
districts outside Rome's historic nucleus, and to enliven the
holiest of cities. During the course of the century, other building
works contributed to the creation of the modern image of Rome: Pope
Innocent X (1644-55) commissioned Gianlorenzo Bernini anci Francesco
Borromini, to design the Piazza Navona, and Alexander VII (1655—67)
commissioned St Peter's Square by Bernini, the Piazza di Santa Maria
della Pace by Pietro da Cortona (1596-1669), and the Piazza del
Popolo by Carlo Rainaldi (1611-91). As the century progressed, Paris
also assumed a more symmetrical appearance. The French capital began
to change into a modern city during the reign of Henry IV
(1589-1610), who built the Place Royale. This was innovative in its
regular geometric shape formed by residential buildings of uniform
appearance - such squares were conceived as a setting for a
centrally placed statue of the sovereign. Built between 1604 and
1612 in the Marais district of Paris, the Place des Vosges, as it is
now called, was the first example of this new urban feature, and was
followed by the Place Dauphine on the He de la Cite. Under the
Regent Marie de Medicis (1610-17), the interest of the French Court
shifted to the construction of imposing buildings, such as the
Palais du Luxembourg. Following the accession of Louis XIII
(1617-43), work was resumed on altering and enlarging the Palais du
Louvre, but it was only under Louis XIV (1661— 1715), when the
monarchy felt fully secure, that Paris was transformed into a great
capital city. Louis XIV made his chief minister Colbert directly
responsible for urban planning, and he oversaw such projects as the
creation of the circular Place des Victoires, designed by Jules
Hardouin-Mansart (1646-1708), and the polygonal Place Vendome. The
old city walls were demolished and replaced by concentric rings of
boulevards, with avenues and streets radiating out towards the
surrounding countryside. Andre Le Notre (1613-1700) laid out the
Tuileries gardens and the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, and created the
landscape and gardens of the great Palace at Versailles. The Italian
city of Turin, capital to the dukes of Savoy from 1563 onwards,
underwent similar changes in urban planning; it was transformed by
architects such as Ascanio Vitozzi (1539-1615), who created the
Piazza Castello and the Via Nuova, and Carlo di Castellamonte
(1560-1641), who expanded the city following the grid system used in
the original Roman castrum. In 1638, he planned the Piazza Reale,
now Piazza San Carlo, which was inspired by the Place Royale in
Paris, though here closed by two churches with facades by the later
Baroque architect Filippo Juvarra (1678-1736).

Blaeu, Piazza Reale, Turin,
engraving. Library of the Royal Palace, Turin.
The great square is notable for the symmetry of the palaces and
Juvarra's churches.

Aerial view of St Peters,
Vatican City. The Vatican buiidings, parts of which were altered
after Bernini's time,
typify Roman Baroque architecture and urban planning.

Frencesco Borromini
San Carlo Alle Quattro Fontane
1638-1641
Rome, Italy

Schematic plan (based on
that by the modern scholar Giedion) for the prospective
reorganization of Rome under Pope Sixtus V (1585-90). The aim was to
create wide, straight thoroughfares which linked the most important
churches. In this drawing, a solid line denotes work actually
carried out.

Aerial view of the Piazza del
Popoio, Rome.
On the far side of the square are the churches of Santa Maria di
Montesanto (1662-75) and Santa Maria dei Miracoli (1675-81), by
Rainaldi, Bernini, and Carlo Fontana. In the foreground is the Porta
del Popoio;
the facade facing the square was designed by Bernini (c. 1665).
THE MANSARTS
Francois Mansart (1598-1666) was
appointed architect to Louis XIII of France in 1636. He was one of
the creators of the style classique, which developed from the
cultural renaissance in 16th-century France and replaced the
Mannerist style with a more purely classical and distinctively
French version of the European Baroque. His great-nephew and pupil
Jules Hardouin-Mansart became royal architect in 1675 and built the
Palace of Versailles around an earlier building by Louis Le Vau, as
well as the dome of the Invalides in Paris (1680-1707). His designs
for city squares made him an influential town planner in his day.
The Mansarts gave their name to the high, steeply pitched "mansard"
roof.

Perelle, Place Dauphine,
engraving.
The sguare was planned during the reign of Henry IV as part of a
scheme to rationalize Paris. |
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The Church
By the mid-16th century, enthusiasm
for the centralized plan as the ideal form for liturgical buildings
was waning. After the Council of Trent, Counter-Reformation
tendencies within the Catholic Church began to advocate a return to
the basilica type. The Gesu (1568-71), the mother-church of the
Roman Jesuits, designed by Jacopo Vignola (1507-73), combined both
longitudinal and centralized schemes, while its monumental dome
served both as a visual climax and as an allusion to the symbolic
journey of the soul towards God, which begins below in the nave.
Elsewhere, Vignola varied the centralized type, providing the church
of Sant'Anna dei Palafrenieri (c.1570) with an oval rather than
circular ground plan, a device that remained popular through the
17th century. Baroque church architecture tends to stress either the
longitudinal axis, formed by the pathway from the entrance to the
altar, or the vertical axis formed by the altar and the dome, with
increasingly daring effects. This was the case at St Peter's when,
in 1607, Carlo Maderno (1556-1629) added a nave and aisles to
Michelangelo's centrally planned church.
Borromini was later to create
dramatic tensions in his interior spaces by drastic variations of
scale, while the Turinese engineer and architect Guarino Guarini
(1624-83) rejected the idea of a dome as an enclosing bubble by
accentuating certain sections left open to reveal a complicated play
of light.
Domes also became important features in the urban landscape. In
designing the church of Santa Maria della Salute (1631-48) in
Venice, Baldassare Longhena (1598-1682) recognized the group of
domes of St Mark's as a model for developing a new emphasis on
exterior spaces. At the Roman church of Sant'Ivo alia Sapienza
(1642-62), Borromini gave an overall unity to the scheme by
mirroring the ground plan in the outline of the base of the cupola;
as the dome rises, it transforms into a perfect circle, while the
decorative motifs suggest a continual acceleration of the upward
movement of its structure.

Guarino Guarini, San Lorenzo
Turin, cupola on octagonal base, 1668.

Francesco Borromini, San Carlo
alle Quattro Fontane, Rome,
view of the interior 1638-67.

Guarino Guarini, San Lorenzo,
Turin, interior of dome.
Guarini also designed the dome of the Chapel of the Holy Shroud in
St John's Cathedral, Turin.

Gianlorenzo Bernini,
facade of Sant'Andrea ai Quirinale,
Rome, 1658-71.
BAROQUE CHURCH FACADES
In Baroque architecture in general
and in ecclesiastical buildings in particular, the facade was
extremely important, acting as the element of mediation between
internal and external spaces.
In Rome, this idea can be traced back to the late 16th-century
church of the Gesu. the facade of which was designed by Giacomo
della Porta (1533-1602). It is bi-partite. with a strong central
axis, emphasized by the double tympanum and portal. During the 17th
century, church facades became increasingly important in urban
areas. Pietro da Cortona's Santa Maria delta Pace (1656-57) has an
emphatically projecting portico, while the movement in the convex
upper section is countered by the flanking walls that curve back to
form a fan-shaped space. Bernini reinterpreted Cortona's ideas in
Sant'Andrea al Quirinale (1658-61), where the interior and exterior
are linked by the exetlra, or colonnade, while the convex pronaos,
or projecting porch, invites the passer-by in. These features are
repeated inside the church, marking the boundary between the oval
space for the congregation and the main altar. Alternating concave
and convex walls were also used by Francesco Borromini for San
Carlino alle Quattro Fontane (1667). His facade is like a theatre
curtain revealing playful, illusionistic scenery, and provides a
taste of what was to come in the 18th century. The many churches
built after the Sack of Rome in 1527 and through the High Baroque
period lend harmony to Rome's townscape.

Giacomo della Porta, facade of
the Gesu. Rome, 1568-71.
Gianlorenzo Bernini
(b Naples, 7 Dec 1598; d Rome, 28 Nov 1680).
Sculptor, architect, draughtsman
and painter, son of Pietro Bernini. He is considered the most
outstanding sculptor of the 17th century and a formative influence
on the development of the Italian Baroque style. His astonishing
abilities as a marble carver were combined with an inventive genius
of the highest order. From the mid-1620s the support of successive
popes made his the controlling influence on most aspects of artistic
production in Rome. Although his independent works of sculpture,
both statues and portrait busts, are among the most brilliant
manifestations of their kind in Western art, his genius found its
highest expression in projects in which he combined sculpture,
painting and architecture with scenographic daring and deep
religious conviction to express more fervently than any other artist
the spiritual vision of the Catholic Counter-Reformation Church.
The Palazzo

Gianlorenzo Bernini, design for
the new facade of the Louvre, first proposal, 1664-65. Musee du
Louvre, Paris.
The most important aristocratic
residence to be built in Rome during the first half of the 17th
century was the Palazzo Barberini, designed during the reign of Pope
Urban VIII. In 1626, the project was entrusted to Carlo Maderno and
it was completed after his death by Bernini, assisted by Borromini
(1630-32). Its H-plan was inspired by the traditional layout of
country villas; the courtyard, flanked by two short projecting
wings, introduces the central block, which has an open loggia and
entranceway placed on an axis with an oval space that leads out to
the garden. Despite being innovative, the design "was not imitated
for some time in Rome. On the contrary, great emphasis was laid on
the facades of city buildings, as occurs at the Palazzo di
Montecitorio, designed by Bernini for the Pamphili family (1650-55).
Its long facade is in five sections, with a projecting central
portion and slanting lateral wings; the pilaster bases and window
cornices look as if they have been hewn out of rock. The entablature
of the portal was originally supported by pairs of telamonic figures
(later removed by Carlo Fontana), a motif that was to be widely used
in High Baroque architecture in Austria and Central Europe,
especially by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach (1656-1723). An
even more influential design was Bernini's facade for the Palazzo
Chigi in the Piazza Santi Apostoli. The central projecting section
of the front elevation has pilasters on high bases and is framed by
two lateral wings; it is emphasized by a large projecting cornice
and balustrade. This design is echoed in Vienna in the Liechtenstein
Palace, on which Domenico Martinelli (1650-1718) started work in
1692; the city palace of Prince Eugene of Savoy, 1696; and the
Schonborn-Batthyany Palace, both by Fischer von Erlach. The plan of
the Barberini palace was exported to France when Bernini was
summoned to Paris in 1665 to submit designs for the enlargement of
the Louvre.
His first proposal comprised two grand salons, one above the other,
giving their shape to the central oval from which, on the exterior,
two concave wings project. This scheme, derived in spirit from
Borromini, was not approved. In his next design, Bernini envisaged a
massive block with slightly protruding corner-stones set on a base
hewn to resemble a reef emerging from the sea, in complete contrast
to the austere lines of the building itself. Work began on this
project in 1665, immediately after Bernini's return to Rome, but
soon came to a stop. A commission formed by Charles Le Brun
(1619-90), Louis Le Vau (1612-70), and Claude Perrault (1613-1688)
successfully argued for the adoption of classicism as the canonical
French artistic style, in preference to copying Italian taste. As a
result, a colonnade was added to the eastern facade of the palace in
homage to the architecture of classical antiquity. Unlike the
Italian palazzo, the French hotel particulier was connected to the
street by a half-open courtyard, or cour d'honneur. The living
quarters, or corps de logis, were set further back. As the century
progressed, the hotel generally became a U-shape around the
courtyard, cut off from its urban environment as in Jean Androuet Du
Cerceau's Hotel de Sully (1624-29) in the Marais district of Paris.
The courtyard of the Hotel Lambert (1640-44), built by Louis Le Vau
on the He Saint-Louis for Nicolas Lambert, was surrounded by a
continuous Doric entablature, giving a sense of continuity to the
space, reinforced by the gently curved concave corners at both
''ends" of the facade.

Plan of the Palazzo Barberlnl,
Rome.

Louis Le Vau, Chateau
Vaux-le-Vicomte, 1657-61.
The chateau, with its garden by Le Notre,
was built for Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV's chief minister.
CARLO MADERNO
Carlo Maderno (1556-1629) was a transitional artist who bridged the
styles of Mannerism and Baroque in Rome. A nephew and pupil of
Domenico Fontana, he designed the facade of Santa Susanna
(1595-1603). He was appointed by Pope Paul V as architect to St
Peter's and designed its facade and nave, adopting a basilical plan
contrary to Michelangelo's intentions.

Gianlorenzo Bernini, facade of
Palazzo di Montecitorio. Rome, 1650-55.

Jutes Hardouin-Mansart and
Charles Le Brun,
Hall of Mirrors, Palace of Versailles, 1678-84.
The immensely long mirrored gallery was intended to rival the Louvre
gallery In size and magnificence, which entailed
changing Le Vau's earlier plan.
THE ROYAL PALACE OF VERSAILLES
Versailles is the key expression of
17th-century absolutism and epitomizes the ethos and taste of Louis
XIV's reign. It was adopted as a model by other monarchs throughout
Continental Europe until the end of the 18th century. Work began at
Versailles in 1661, building around the nucleus of a hunting lodge
constructed by Louis XIII in 1624. Louis Le Vau was responsible for
the project and designed the central section of the new palace, the
two wings forming the courtyard, and the garden facade. When the
king decided to move the royal court and government to Versailles in
1677, Jules Hardouin-Mansart was commissioned to enlarge the palace,
adding the vast entrance courtyard and two immense wings north and
south of the central block. From the outset, the palace was
envisaged as the fulcrum of an urban system set in a landscape that
appeared to stretch to infinity. Andre Le Notre, in charge of the
king's parks and gardens after 1662 and the inventor of the "French
garden", drew on the Italian tradition of symmetry for his network
of axial pathways. Designed to appear endless, they are punctuated
by unexpected pavilions, clipped trees, and open spaces. In this
way, Le Notre increased the sense of space and scale, emphasized by
steps, terraces, large expanses of reflecting water, and spectacular
fountains. The palaces interior decoration, under the charge of
Charles Le Brun, represents the peak of virtuosity in French Baroque
art, especially Hardouin-Mansart's Hall of Mirrors (1678-84).

Louis Le Vau, Palace of
Versailles, garden facade, 1661-90.
Le Vau designed many of the buildings at Versailles, which Louis XIV
visualized as a symbol of his reign,
almost more of a king s city than Paris itself.
THE CHURCH OF THE INVALIDES
Jules Hardouin-Mansart was
commissioned by Louis XIV to build a new chapel (1680-1706) among
the existing buildings of the Hotel des Invalides military hospital
and home for war veterans (1670-76). It is constructed on the main
axis of Les Invalides, with an oval sanctuary added to a central
plan. It is topped by a dome inspired by Michelangelo's cupola of St
Peter's in Rome, although this French version is considerably
taller. The windows of the lower drum, separated by pairs of
columns, illuminate the interior, while also supporting the first
masonry ceiling. The windows of the second drum light the space
between the first dome and a second one. visible through the wide
central aperture of the spheroidal vault beneath it. A third,
lead-covered dome forms the outer shell and is topped by a lantern
ending in a pinnacle inspired by the Gothic tradition. Mansart's
plans also included two quarter-circle wings, adapted from Bernini's
designs for St Peter's Square, but these were never built.
Construction of Les Invalides coincided with almost the entire
period of Louis XIV's military campaigns (1667—1714) through which
he sought to dominate Europe.

Hotel des Invalides, Paris, plan of the whole complex, 1670-1706.
Created as a home for war veterans, the building had to express
the ideas of grandeur and sovereignty that inspired Louis XIV's
military campaigns.

Jules Hardouin-Mansart, Church
of the Invalides, Paris, 1680-1706.
The French architect interpreted the themes of the Baroque church
with
a majestic classicism. |
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