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Baroque Art
The Baroque Period, pronounced "ba-roke," lasted from 1590 to 1720. The word is derived from the Portuguese barocco, which means "irregular or misshapen pearl of stone." Baroque art reflects the religious tensions of the time especially the desire of the Catholic church in Rome to reassert itself after the rise of Protestantism after the Protestant Reformation.
Baroque art in Rome and Italy has a highly religious content. In other countries, baroque art was designed to appeal to the growing desires of the middle class.
Watch the video Visual Vocab: Baroque (0:59) for a quick overview.
Italian Baroque
The birth of the Baroque movement came from the Catholic Church, centered in Rome, trying to inspire people to stay with the church. The goal was to create art that was inspired by the Bible in order to maintain or reinforce their faith. The church targeted the uneducated people who couldn't read, declaring that art should be used to explain the beliefs and doctrines of the faith to everyone, not just the educated.
Illustrated key elements of Catholic beliefs were either directly in Biblical works or indirectly in mythological or allegorical works. The religious art of this time was more direct, emotionally persuasive, and designed to fire the spiritual imagination and inspire the viewer to be more religious.
Large scale public works, such as monumental wall paintings, huge frescos for ceilings, and vaults on palaces and churches, were common.
Other Characteristics
Characteristics of Baroque art include:
- Images are direct, obvious and dramatic
- Draws the viewer in to participate in the scene
- Emotionally intense painting
- Depictions feel physically and psychologically realistic
- Extravagant settings and ornamentation
- Dramatic use of color
- Dramatic contrasts between light and dark, light and shadow
- Continuous overlapping of figures and elements
- Common themes such as grand visions, biblical conversions, martyrdom and death, intense light, intense psychological moments
Watch the following videos to learn more about this period:
The Ecstasy of St. Theresa by Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, 1652
Styles and Types
The following styles and types of art were common during the Baroque period:
Paintings
- Illusionist murals and ceiling paintings were some of the most popular types of Baroque painting. It became almost an absolute rule to paint these trompe l'oeil impressions during the 17th century in Italy. Painted on the walls and ceilings of churches and palaces these paintings told stories of the lives of saints, histories of dynasties, myths, and tales of heroes. The techniques used made the impression that the walls or ceilings no longer existed. Watch Optical Illusion: The Art of Deception (2:24) for more information on trompe l'oeil, or "fool the eye," paintings. DES login information.
- Fresco painting: Baroque art was the last period to associate grand painting with frescos.
- Landscape painting featured humans portrayed as tiny figures in a vast setting.
- Individual or group portraits increased due to the increased sponsorship of visual arts by the Catholic Church, the growing economical strength in Europe, and the increased use of portable art media like canvases.
Portrait of Pope Innocent X by Diego Velazquez, 1649 - Still Life paintings were popular in Spain, but less so in Italian paintings.
Still Life with Pottery and Jars by Spanish artist Francisco de Zubaran, 1630-35 - Tenebrism and chiaroscuro were refined and used widely. A key feature in Baroque painting was the use of strong light and deep intense shadows with emphasized highlights. The term tenebrism comes from the Italian tenbroso meaning "murky." It is also called dramatic illumination. It is a style of painting using very pronounced chiaroscuro. Darkness becomes the dominating feature of the image. There are violent contrasts between light and dark.
The Taking of Christ by Caravaggio, c. 1602
Also popular during this time were sculpture and architecture.
- Baroque sculpture was larger than life and marked by a sense of dynamic movement.
- Baroque architecture was designed to be spectacular and create illusions.
The architect Christopher Wren oversaw the building of part of Saint Paul's Cathedral and the Tower of St. Augustine Church in London during the rebuilding of the city after the Great Fire of London in 1666. It was declared complete in 1708, though work was still being done through the 1720s.
Three Different Strands
There were three main strands, or categories, of Baroque art: religious granduer, greater realism, and easel art.
Religious Grandeur is a triumphant, extravagant, and at times theatrical melodramatic style of religious art. Trompe l'oeil was often used.
Greater Realism is a life-like, naturalist style of figure composition. It provided an accurate description of life forms, perspective, and the details of light and color.
Easel Art includes any small to medium-sized painting that can be painted on an artist's easel. Unlike the religious works of Baroque artists in Catholic countries, art in Protestant Holland (often called the Dutch Golden Age) was exemplified by a new type of easel art aimed at the wealthy middle class.
- In Holland, Dutch Baroque painters banished Catholic Christian art. Instead, they expressed their contentment with enjoying the good things in life such as: fine houses, friendly and lively company, high quality clothing. They were wealthy middle class people who wanted pictures that reflected the contentment of their prosperity.
- They painted portraits, interiors, still lifes, genre paintings, or scenes of everyday life on moderately sized canvases to hang in ordinary houses.
- The three types of easel art that were popular at the time included:
- Genre painting: Enhanced realism in history painting, portrait art and landscape paintings, flower pictures, and animal compositions
- Still life painting: Translated from the Dutch word Stilleven which was used to describe paintings previously called "fruit or flower pieces," it was typically comprised of an arrangement of objects (commonly flowers or kitchen utensils) laid out on a table
- Vanitas painting: A Protestant inspired word that describes a specific type of still life painting. It is from the Latin word for "empty." These paintings try to show the worthless nature of all earthly goods and pursuits. A vanitas painting usually contains objects that symbolize:
- Wealth and power like gold, jewelry or purses
- Earthly pleasures such as luxurious fabrics, pipes, wine, glasses, dice, playing cards
- Secular knowledge like books inkpots and pens, maps, telescopes
- The inevitability of death or passage of time such as skulls, hourglasses, watches, burning candle, butterflies, flowers, fruit.
This landscape painting is Landscape with a Rainbow by Peter Paul Rubens, 1632-35.
This Dutch portrait is Jester with a Lute by Frans Hals, 1623-24.
This vanitas painting is Allegory of Vanity by Antonio de Pereda, 1632-36.
Artist Spotlight: Pozzo
Andrea Pozzo (1642 - 1709) was an Italian Jesuit painter and architect. He is considered one of the greatest illusionistic mural painters of the 17th century. He specialized in quadratura and di sotto in su or "viewed from below." He used these techniques to create the illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat ceiling above the viewer.
His use of these techniques came about due to a response to the artistic needs of the Catholic Church's Jesuit Order. They built new churches and needed decorative interiors. Because of this, he began to develop the trompe l'oeil techniques that he is so famous for such as fake gilding (painting that looks like real gold), marbled columns, bronze colored statues, fake domes on a flat ceiling, and amazing foreshortened figures in very bright and colorful frescoes. He was also one of the best Baroque architects and designed several churches and altars, but they were not nearly as spectacular as his paintings. His work is considered a high point in Baroque painting.
See some of Pozzo's work below:
Self-Portrait by Andrea Pozzo, completed before 1790
Triumph of St. Ignatius, a ceiling fresco by Andrea Pozzo. Pozzo painted much of the interior of the Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola (Sant'ignazio di Layola) in Rome between 1685 and 1694.
The altar of the Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola (Sant'ignazio di Layola) in Rome. These frescos were painted by Pozzo between 1685 and 1694.
The trompe l'oeil dome, painted by Andrea Pozzo in 1703, in the Jesuit Church (Jesuitenkirche) in Vienna, Austria
Artist Spotlight: Caravaggio
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571 - 1610) was the son of an architect or decorator and he showed an early talent as an artist. At the age of 13, he became an apprentice to the painter Simone Peterzano who was a former pupil of the famous painter, Titian. Caravaggio's style of painting was quite revolutionary for the time period. Whether the subject was a religious story or a portrait, he showed outstanding innovation as a close observer of people and everyday objects. His figures were as beautiful or as ugly as an average person you would see on the streets in their town.
Circa 1621 portrait of Caravaggio by Ottavio Leoni
Caravaggio used extreme contrasts in lighting. His treatment of light and shadow revitalized Italian painting during the Baroque by improving the three-dimensional quality of the figures. Artists were able to control the focus of their paintings and increase the dramatic effects of them using the techniques developed and perfected by Caravaggio. His examples led to naturalistic depiction of objects, life sized figures, lighting from outside the picture, and the use of tenebrism and chiaroscuro. His mastery of tenebrism and chiaroscuro was so popular with 17th-century art collectors and other painters that it started a European wide trend of Caravaggism, which inspired other artists. This created a radical change in the relationship between painters and the world.
Although a well-known artistic genius, Caravaggio was a villainous and violent man with a criminal record that included assault, as well as murder. After he killed a man, he fled to Rome where he lived out the rest of his life as a fugitive. He died at the age of 38 while on his way back to Rome to receive a pardon for his crimes. Even so, no other Italian painter exercised such a great influence on European painting and subsequently modern painting as Caravaggio.
Watch the video Biography: Caravaggio (3:51) to learn more.
See some of Caravaggio's work below:
Saint Catherine of Alexandria by Caravaggio, c. 1598
The Lute Player by Caravaggio, c. 1596
The Crucifixion of Peter by Caravaggio, 1601
Artist Spotlight: Vermeer
Dutch artist Jan Vermeer, also known as Johannes Vermeer, (1632 - 1675) was the son of a silk weaver and art dealer. Vermeer specialized in genre painting and informal portrait art, which consisted of one or two figures in a domestic interior. He was the leader of the Dutch Realist Artists during the Baroque period. His early works were larger in scale and brighter than the works later in his career.
As time went on, his paintings became smaller and consisted of cool colors that were dominated by yellow, blues, and grays. He worked very slowly when he painted and took great care in what he did. Vermeer frequently painted with very expensive pigments, giving his paintings a very rich look. He liberally used the color ultramarine in his paintings. This color was created using the very expensive pigment called lapis lazuli. The best example of this is in the turban of the girl in his most famous painting The Girl with a Pearl Earring.
Girl with a Pearl Earring by Jan Vermeer, 1665
Vermeer is especially renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work, which took on a pearly surface. He was highly influenced by the artist Caravaggio. He was able to do this by using a method called pointillé, which is a technique that used layers of granular paint to give a transparent effect. He died at the age of 43, leaving a rather small body of work due to his slow painting pace. However, his paintings are among the most valuable in the history of art.
Watch the video Johannes Vermeer (4:37) to see a montage of his work.
See some of Vermeer's works below:
This supposed self-portrait of Vermeer is from the background of his piece, The Procuress from 1656. See full version of The Procuress here.
The Milkmaid by Vermeer, c. 1660
View of Delft by Vermeer, c. 1660-1661. Delft is a city in the Netherlands.
Artist Spotlight: Rembrandt
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606 - 1669), better known as simply as Rembrandt, was a Dutch painter and etcher. He came from a large family where he was the ninth child. His father was a miller and saw to it that Rembrandt received an excellent education. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art and the most important in Dutch history. His life was beset with problems and he was considered to have a multiple personality disorder. His obsessive compulsion with collecting rare works and objects of art also led to him losing his home.
His mental health issues played out in the considerable inequality of his portraits. Some were dark and dreary while others were light and airy. Caravaggio influenced his dark painting and style. Rembrandt's used layers of glazes with broad thick brushstrokes in his paintings that gave his scenes extra depth and a masterful treatment of chiaroscuro. He would depict his figures with moods and inner feelings by accentuating their physical features and facial expressions.
Rembrandt constantly made little oil sketches of heads, many just for practice because very few corresponded to his finished portraits. He had many studies for figures, figure compositions and landscapes that looked like they were drawn quickly with very coarse tools. He used big brushes, a reed pen, a soft wood stick, and his finger in creating these sketches.
It took several years for Rembrandt to develop his style. As a young man, his paintings were rather ugly and showed his struggle with his representation of things. But as the years passed, he began to show markedly improved mastery of his subjects. He opened his own art studio when he was 19 and at 21 he was teaching others how to paints. In fact, there are many paintings attributed to Rembrandt that were actually done by his students.
In the 1600's, the camera had not been invented yet so people relied on portraits of themselves and their families. Rembrandt had a reputation as a great portrait artist. He painted numerous self-portraits and portraits of his family. In fact, some 300 paintings, 300 prints (etchings), and almost 2,000 drawings remain of his work. These works include landscape painting and biblical Christian art, as well as his portraits and etchings. Perhaps his most famous painting is The Night Watch, 1642. This was one of the largest paintings he ever painted (14 feet long by 12 feet tall)and fellow artists criticized the techniques he used for it. But it remains one of the most popular of his artworks.
Etching for Rembrandt was at first a main source of recreation for him but, later in life when he was having problems with money, it became a crucial source for his income. Rembrandt was an eccentric and interesting character and, when he died, his fellow artists in Amsterdam probably didn't even realize it. But his many pupils knew that he was gone and they tried very hard to imitate his pictorial style and his personal emotion in their paintings. Works by Rembrandt can be seen in the best art museums all over the world including the Rijksmuseum, which was his home in Amsterdam.
Watch the following videos to learn more:
- Biography: Rembrandt (3:08)
- Rembrandt in Leyden: Youth, Apprenticeship, and the Beginnings of a Mature Style (6:13). DES login information.
- The Night Watch (9:45)
See some of Rembrandt's work below:
Self-Portrait by Rembrandt, 1640
The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburgh is this piece's official title but it is mostly known as The Night Watch, 1642
The Syndics of the Amsterdam Drapers' Guild is this piece's official title but it is mostly known as the Sampling Officials, 1662.
The Artist in his Studio by Rembrandt, c. 1626-28
