THE BAROQUE ERA c.1600–1700
HISTORY OF VISUAL ARTS
Definition: What is Baroque Art?
In fine art, the term Baroque (derived from the Portuguese 'barocco' meaning, 'irregular pearl or stone') describes a fairly complex idiom, originating in Rome, which flowered during the period c.1590-1720, and which embraced painting, and sculpture as well as architecture. After the idealism of the Renaissance (c.1400-1530), and the slightly 'forced' nature of Mannerism (c.1530-1600),Baroque art above all reflected the religious tensions of the age - notably the desire of the Catholic Church in Rome (as annunciated at the Council of Trent, 1545-63) to reassert itself in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. Many Catholic Emperors and monarchs across Europe had an important stake in the Catholic Church's success, hence a large number of architectural designs, paintings and sculptures were commissioned by the Royal Courts of Spain, France, and elsewhere, in order to glorify their own divine grandeur, and in the process
strengthen their political position. By comparison, Baroque art in Protestant areas like Holland had far less religious content, and instead was designed essentially to appeal to the growing aspirations and financial strength of the merchant and middle classes
Styles/Types of Baroque Art
In order to fulfill its propagandist role, Catholic-inspired Baroque art tended to be large-scale works of public art, such as monumental wall-paintings and huge frescoes for the ceilings and vaults of palaces and churches. Baroque painting illustrated key elements of Catholic dogma, either directly in Biblical works or indirectly in mythological or allegorical compositions. Along with this monumental, high-minded approach, painters typically portrayed a strong sense of movement, using swirling spirals and upward diagonals, and strong sumptuous colour schemes, in order to dazzle and surprise. New techniques of tenebrism and chiaroscuro (1) were
thick impasto. Baroque sculpture, typically larger-than-life size, is marked by a similar sense of dynamic movement, along with an active use of space.
Baroque architecture was designed to create spectacle and illusion. Thus the straight lines of the Renaissance were replaced with flowing curves, while domes/roofs were enlarged, and interiors carefully constructed to produce spectacular effects of light and shade. It was an emotional style, which, wherever possible, exploited the theatrical potential of the urban landscape - as illustrated by St Peter's Square (1656-67) in Rome, leading up to St Peter's Basilica. Its architect, Bernini, ringed the square with colonnades, to convey the impression to visitors that they are being embraced by the arms of the Catholic Church.
As is evident, although most of the architecture, painting and sculpture produced during the 17th century is known as Baroque, it is by no means a monolithic style. There are at least three different strands of Baroque, as follows:
(1) Religious Grandeur
A triumphant, extravagant, almost theatrical (and at times) melodramatic style of religious art, commissioned by the Catholic Counter Reformation and the courts of the absolute monarchies of Europe. This type of Baroque art is exemplified by the bold visionary sculpture and architecture of Bernini (1598-1680), and by the large-scale grandiose set-piece paintings of the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640).
(2) Greater Realism
A new more life-like or naturalist style of figurative composition. This new approach was championed by Michelangelo Merisi da Carravaggio (1571-1610), Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez (1599-1660) and Annibale Carracci (1560-1609). The boldness and physical presence of Caravaggio's figures, the life-like approach to religious painting adopted by Velazquez, and a new form of movement and exuberance pioneered by Annibale Carracci - all these elements were part of the new and dynamic style known as Baroque.
(3) Easel Art
Unlike the large-scale, public, religious works of Baroque artists in Catholic countries, Baroque art in Protestant Holland (often referred to as the Dutch Golden Age) was exemplified by a new
type of easel-art - a glossy form of genre-painting (2)- aimed at the prosperous bourgeois householder. This new Dutch Realist School of genre painting also led to enhanced realism in portrait art and landscape painting, flower pictures, animal compositions and, in particular, to new forms of still life painting(2), including vanitas religious works. Different towns and areas
had their own 'schools' or styles, such as Utrecht, Delft, Leiden, Amsterdam, Haarlem and Dordrecht..
In addition, to complicate matters further, Rome - the very centre of the movement - was also home to a "classical" style, as exemplified in the paintings of the history painter Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) and the Arcadian landscape artist Claude Lorrain (1600-82).
History of Baroque Art
Following the pronouncements made by the Council of Trent on how art might serve religion, together with the upsurge in confidence in the Roman Catholic Church, it became clear that a new style of art was necessary in order to support the Catholic Counter Reformation and fully convey the miracles and sufferings of the Saints to the congregation of Europe. This style had to be more forceful, more emotional and imbued with a greater realism. Strongly influenced by the views of the Jesuits (the Baroque is sometimes referred to as 'the Jesuit Style'), architecture, painting and sculpture were to work together to create a unified effect. The initial impetus came from the arrival in Rome during the 1590s of Annibale Carracci and Carravaggio (1571-1610). Their presence sparked a new interest in realism as well as antique forms, both of which were taken up and developed (in sculpture) by Alessandro Algardi (in sculpture) and Bernini (in sculpture and architecture). Peter Paul Rubens, who remained in Rome until 1608, was the only great Catholic painter in the Baroque idiom, although Rembrandt and other Dutch artists were influenced by both Caravaggism and Bernini. France had its own (more secular) relationship with the Baroque, which was closest in architecture, notably the Palace of Versailles. Spain and Portugal embraced it more enthusiastically, as did the Catholic areas of Germany, Austria, Hungary and the Spanish Netherlands. The culmination of the movement was the High Baroque (c.1625-75), while the apogee of the movement's grandiosity was marked by the
phenomenal quadratura known as Allegory of the Missionary Work of the Jesuits (1688-94, S. Ignazio, Rome), by the illusionist ceiling painter Andrea Pozzo (1642-1709).
The developments of Baroque art outside Italy are Flemish Baroque (c.1600-80), Dutch Baroque (c.1600-80) and Spanish Baroque (1600-1700).
Flemish Baroque Painting
The story of Baroque art in Flanders during the 17th century reflects the gradual decline of the country itself. Occupying the southern part of the Low Countries or Netherlands, it was ruled - along with the northern part of the Low Countries, known as Holland - by the unpopular Spanish Hapsburgs, who had taken over from the French Dukes of Burgundy. Its once powerful
commercial and cultural centres, such as Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp, were weakened by religious and political disputes between the Catholic Hapsburg authorities and Protestant Dutch merchants. Thus as Dutch Baroque art flourished as never before, Flemish Baroque depended on a handful of artists, mostly active in Antwerp During the 15th century - the early days of the Italian Renaissance - Flemish painters had exported the technique of oil painting to artists in Florence, Rome and Venice. Now, at the beginning of the 17th century, with the spread of Italian Caravaggism, Flemish painters combined their own tradition with the tenebrist tradition arriving from Italy. This development was exemplified by the Antwerp artist Rubens (1577-1640). Since the High Renaissance, Flemish painting had been in transition between Northern and Italian influences; it was Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) who made the first real attempt to digest, absorb and fuse the two schools, creating a new style, which was to have a powerful impact on all painting north of the Alps.
Peter Paul Rubens
His style of Baroque painting was vigorous, confident, sensual, decorative, theatrical, energetically magnificent. It is not without significance that when the young Rubens - the
promising painter from Antwerp - arrived to study in Italy (where he remained for eight years) he devoted most attention to the Venetians, the most colourful and decorative Italian school. When he returned to his native city he opened a workshop where he was soon employing two hundred assistants, many of whom were outstanding painters, each with his own speciality: the painting
of animals, of fabrics, of still life, and so on. He himself specialized in the human body - notably female nudes - which he depicted with an abundance of rosy flesh, with broad, strong gestures a continuous play of curves each one drawing the eye to another, the sum of which determined the general scheme of the painting - as a lozenge, a circle, an S, and so on. These robust figures, who move as expansively as though they were on a stage, are the immediately recognizable feature of his art, an art which is joyous, robust, and almost unbelievably prolific.
After 1611, Rubens set foot on the first steps of the 'High Baroque', to become its chief representative in northern Europe. His religious art and other forms of history painting had already placed him at the head of the Catholic Baroque; he now achieved a consistency and comprehensiveness which have made his pictures known to all the world. A period of
incomparable fertility followed: with his delight in portraiture, he immortalized his relatives, his brother, his children, and four years after the death of his first wife, in 1626, he was painting the young and lovely Helene Fourmont, whom he married when he was 53. Her grace and youth endowed him with a new springtide, and he was never weary of recording her beauty. The time came when he could not, unaided, carry out all the commissions he received. They were a challenge to his powers of organization, for with all his overflowing vitality, he knew how to husband his energies and to exploit them to the full, and he had soon established a large workshop in which selected pupils and assistants carried out his ideas. At least two thousand pictures were produced in this way. All Flemish painting was influenced by this prodigious artistic patriarch. None of its practitioners, however, came near rivalling the master: some devoted themselves to one aspect of his work, others to another.
Anthony Van Dyck
Of all Rubens' pupils, none became so famous or so independent as Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641). In Antwerp, after Rubens had begun his diplomatic career, Van Dyck was the undisputed master, but the many religious paintings of this early period are not among his best; they are obviously influenced by Rubens, and also by Titian and the Bolognese school, boldly painted compositions in which the unbridled energy of Rubens is tempered by a fastidious elegance, which never deserted Van Dyck, and is best of all displayed in his portrait art, even though these works were produced with mechanical regularity.
Many of them are fluently painted, with a skilful and easy technique, in which white, black and grey are predominant, as though the master were fastidiously avoiding the garishness of colour. His sense of harmony led him toward a solution in which grey united all colours in itself. With Flemish thoroughness he painted lace collars, ruffs, chains and jewels, without the pedantic uniformity shown by so many of his contemporaries. The majority of his subjects were aristocrats, who, in their sumptuous garments and their dignified, and indeed often arrogant bearing, could only gain by the grace and refinement of Van Dyck's treatment. With fastidious refinement he shrinks from all that is not ornamental, or elegant, or beautiful, and in his Biblical scenes his shepherds and malefactors are dressed like gentlefolk and bear themselves
accordingly.
In 1630 Van Dyck was appointed court painter to the Princess of Orange, and also to the King of England, by whom in 1632 he was knighted; he had now reached the zenith of fame and
prosperity. Everyone wanted to be painted by Van Dyck, who was one of the first fashionable portrait-painters, able to give an appearance of refined elegance to subjects who lacked those qualities: for example, the courtly and handsome figure of Charles I, as he exists today in our imaginations, owes a great deal to Van Dyck. When portrayed by other painters, with more honesty and less skill, Charles becomes a very different, and less appealing, figure.
Flemish Genre Painting and Still Lifes
Antwerp was the main centre of Baroque art in Catholic Flanders. Here, in addition to Rubens, practised Adriaen Brouwer (1605-38), known for his genre-painting - especially his tavern scenes. Other Flemish Old Masters included David Teniers the Younger (1610-90), best known for his guardroom scenes; and Frans Snyders (1579-1657), the animalier and still life painter.
Dutch Golden Age of Painting
During the era of Baroque art, the United Provinces, of which Holland was one, occupied the northern part of the Low Countries. Less developed than Flanders, perhaps they had once been the poor relations of the Flemings, but in the seventeenth century the nation was rich, proud, and
expanding in influence. In fact it became one of the wealthiest nations in 17th century Europe. It was also addicted to painting: during the period 1600-80, more than 4 million paintings were produced in Holland - far more than the number produced by artists of the Flemish Baroque - and every sort of person indulged their own appreciation of fine art painting; artisans, merchants, burghers, sailors, shop-keepers - all knew, or prided themselves on knowing, something about it.
The sort of Baroque painting they admired and which they commissioned from their artists were however different from Italian paintings, different even from those of Rubens. The Dutch, being Protestants, had banished religious painting, which was almost the only kind known in Catholic countries. Once they had gained their independence, they expressed their contentment in the enjoyment of the good things of life: fine, solid houses, convivial company, clothes of high quality. They were, in short, bourgeois, and they wanted pictures that reflected the contentment of bourgeois prosperity: portraits, interiors, genre-paintings (scenes of everyday life) and affluent looking still lifes, painted on canvases of moderate size, to hang in ordinary houses.
This was the beginning of the Dutch Golden Age (c.1610-80), during which the Dutch School of Realism established itself as one of the greatest ever movements of oil painting in the history of art. Works by its leading members - such as Rembrandt and Vermeer - represent the summit of human creative achievement and command multi-million dollar prices at auction. The school also set standards in the categories of still life and genre painting, which have hardly been equalled, far less exceeded.
Dutch Baroque Portraiture
Frans Hals (1580-1666) was the first great exponent of portrait art of the Dutch Baroque school: the first to shake off the dominant Italian classical approach to portraiture, in favour of a more realistic style. A style in which his sharp eye for observation and lively power of expression could conjure up a suitably unique composition. Hals painted what his customers wanted, and in prosperous, bourgeois Holland, the new middle class patron wanted above all to see himself in oils. Portraiture was after all the photography of the day, except better, because a painter can flatter the sitter better than any camera. It was this genre that Hals mastered. In his brimming vitality, for all his poverty and debt, he could always console himself by painting the portrait of a
jolly fool - capturing the sitter not in the brilliance of a finished portrait, such as Rubens had taught people to expect, but by a new picturesque improvisation, owing its charm to its easy, loose, brushwork - a style appreciated above all by the 19th century Impressionists.
Rembrandt
Where Hals specialised in capturing the unique exterior of a subject, Rembrandt (1606-69) looked for the inner reality. To put it another way, while the Flemish Baroque painter Rubens personified the exuberant, theatrical, courtly side of Baroque art, Rembrandt represented its tormented, dramatic, introverted aspect. He was the heir to Caravaggio; and he made this inheritance the nucleus of an incomparable achievement. It was Rembrandt who gave a new spirituality to the realistic art of Holland. He kept the methods of realism, but gave them a hitherto unknown, translucent luminosity. Above all, he went below the surface of his human subjects and exposed some of their inner character and soul beneath.
One of his first great portrait masterpieces was actually a group portrait, a type which was especially characteristic of the country and the time. During the wars with Spain, many companies of volunteer soldiers had been formed - we should perhaps call them militia companies. After the Dutch victory their members had not gone their separate ways but
continued to meet; and each of these companies wanted a group portrait to show their members gathered together. Usually these canvases were of greater width than height, and showed the officers of the company grouped around a table or some other object that would serve as a pretext for a gathering of so many men. The lighting was depicted as natural, without any dramatic contrast, giving the same emphasis to each of the subjects.
Rembrandt's portrait - highly controversial at the time - is actually entitled The Company of
Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch but is more commonly known as The Night Watch (1642), because of the dark background from which its figures emerge, partially or wholly
illuminated by patches of light. But it is not a night scene: the darkness is a technique of caravaggism known as tenebrism, involving the contrast of dark shadow with areas of strong light - a technique which had not been seen before in group portraiture. Contrary to convention, the militia officers do not all have the same importance but are presented in strictly hierarchical
order. The captain of the company and his lieutenant are seen in strong light in the centre with the others around them, only their heads emerging from the shadow. Such an approach signified the beginning of an interest in the use of light to observe a single figure, or sometimes only a face. To see how conventional Dutch painters approached this type of group portraiture, see
Company of Captain Reinier Reael (Meagre Company) (1637) by Frans Hals.
Caravaggesque methods are also evident in Rembrandt's single portraits, in which the shadows can be even darker and invade almost the entire canvas. The light falls from one side of the subject, illuminates the face, dramatizes every wrinkle. Sometimes it also strikes a secondary subject - a book, a table, or other object. The rest is an area of darkness whose purpose is to throw into relief those parts that are minutely scrutinized. One of the best examples is Bathsheba (1654), along with many of Rembrandt's self portraits.
Dutch Baroque Genre Painting
To cater for the rising demand among the bourgeoisie for easel art, notably genre painting, a number of artistic movements sprang up in towns like Haarlem, Delft, Leiden, Utrecht,
Dordrecht and Amsterdam. The Haarlem school was represented by Adriaen van Ostade
(1610-85) (lowlife peasant scenes), and the Catholic Jan Steen (1626-79) (moralising tavern scenes); while Leonard Bramer (1596-1667), Pieter de Hooch (1629-83) and the incomparable Jan Vermeer (1632-75), represented the Delft school. Utrecht had Hendrik Terbrugghen (1588-1629), and Gerrit van Honthorst (1590-1656), both strongly influenced by Caravaggio, while the Leiden school's most famous member was Rembrandt's first pupil Gerrit Dou (1613-75), known for his small, colourful, polished works. The Dordrecht school was represented by the "interiors" painter Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-78) and Nicolaes Maes (1634-93), noted for his kitch genre-paintings and chiaroscuro effect; while the Amsterdam school consisted of Rembrandt, his pupils Govaert Flinck (1615-60), Ferdinand Bol (1616-80), and the talented Carel Fabritius (1622-54) who perished in a gunpowder explosion, as well as Gerard Terborch (1617-81), and Gabriel Metsu (1629-67), noted for his intimate small-scale genre works.
Special mention should be made of Jan Vermeer of Delft, who in his only self-portrait, if it is really anything of the kind, symbolically turns his back on the observer, as if to remain
completely concealed within his world. Only from his portraits of elegant women do we realize how little is known of him - the poverty-stricken father of eleven children - who hardly ever left his native city, where he ate his heart out in longing for the aristocratic life; who languished in obscurity for centuries before being acclaimed as one of the all time greats.
Dutch Baroque Still Life Painting
It was in the Baroque period too that a type of picture was developed that was to remain successful up to our own time - the 'still life painting', a picture offering an arrangement of flowers, of more or less inanimate objects of one kind or another, generally painted in the studio, that is to say indoors. Of course paintings of this kind had certainly been made earlier, but now they constituted a true genre, with practitioners in every country and in every school of painting. Again the innovator who had founded this kind of painting was Caravaggio, who indeed began his artistic career in this type of work. Not unnaturally, however, the genre reached its highest development in the Netherlands, where there was already a precursor, if not a tradition, of realistic, domestic, straightforward painting carefully attentive to the detail of everyday life, which had been produced there from as early as the fifteenth century.
The tradition of still life art was developed by a number of exceptional painters who included: Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606-84) a member of Utrecht school; Willem Kalf (1619-93) the Amsterdam painter of pronkstilleven/vanitas paintings; and Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750) the Amsterdam flower painter, arguably the greatest still life artist of the Late Baroque.
Dutch Baroque Landscape Painting
Coinciding with the classical Arcadian landscapes of Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, working in Rome, the Dutch school began to produce great examples of Baroque landscape painting, of which the finest works were created by Jacob van Ruisdael (c.1628-82) and his pupil Meindert Hobbema (1638-1703); other top artists included Philips de Koninck (1619-88) who
specialized in large-size panoramic views; and Aelbert Cuyp (1620-91) noted for his soft light and impastoed highlights. Other Baroque landscape painters included: Hendrik Avercamp (1585-1634) who excelled at winter scenes; Cornelis van Poelenberg (1586-1667) who painted
Italianate scenes; the naturalist pioneer Esaias van de Velde (1591-1630) and his pupil Jan van Goyen (1596-1656) who produced repetitive views of the Nijmegen River, Dordrecht, sand dunes, and ships; and Salomon van Ruysdael (1600-70) famous for his typical Dutch views and riverscapes.
Dutch Baroque realist painters who specialised in other genres included the Haarlem-based architectural painter Pieter Jansz Saenredam (1597-1665), the peerless animal painter Paulus Potter (1625-54), and marine artist Willem van de Velde (1633-1707) from Leiden.
The Golden Age of Spanish Painting
As in the Netherlands, the 17th century era of Baroque art was the Golden Age of Spanish
painting. Freed of most Italian elements, and sponsored by an uncompromising Catholic Church
- strongly supported by devout Hapsburg Emperors - Spanish Baroque artists adopted a severe and noble style which combined line and colour as well as the graphic and the pictorial, and involved such an acute sense of observation that no other age or style has been able to equal it in truthfulness. It was the Spanish school, in concert with masters of the Dutch Baroque in Holland, that effectively guided European painting along the path of naturalistic realism.
Like Flemish and Dutch artists Spanish Baroque painters - especially Ribera - were also strongly influenced by Caravaggio's use of light, and employed copious tenebrism and chiaroscuro, though not for the sake of a theatrical aestheticism, but rather to create a more urgent sense of drama. Among their ranks they included several masters of genre painting, of portraiture, of religious scenes, for example Murillo, and they included such outstanding interpreters of the asceticism and spirituality of Spanish culture as Zurbaran. And of course there was the incomparable Velazquez.
In terms of subject, religious art continued to predominate, but Catholic Hapsburg patronage also financed numerous royal portraits, as well as paintings of historical events and genre scenes. The
main schools of Baroque painting in Spain were those of Madrid and Seville, the former enjoying the patronage of the court. Other schools operated in Valencia and Toledo.
Early Spanish Baroque
An early representative of the new Spanish realism was the Catalan Francisco Ribalta (1555-1628), who trained in Toledo, and worked in Madrid and Valencia. Noted for his bold, loose brushwork, he emphasized the sculptural modeling of his forms by contrasting light and shade. Zurbaran was among the artists who was influenced by him.
Ribera
Based in far-flung Naples, Jusepe Ribera (1591-1652) was the first major Spanish painter to adopt the new naturalist style. He became noted for highly realistic modeling, notably the flesh tints of his saints, as well as a strong preference for dramatic themes, as illustrated in his St
Andrew (1630-32, Prado, Madrid), and his Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew (1630, Prado).
Ribera's style progressed from an early emphasis on caravaggism, through a period of experiment with a silvery light, to a mature stage marked by warm, golden tones. One of his most beautiful paintings is The Holy Family with St Catherine (1648, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
El Greco
In Seville, painting evolved rapidly from Renaissance classicism to the naturalism of the Baroque, as exemplified in works by Francisco Pacheco (1564-1644), Juan de las Roelas (1560-1625), and Francisco de Herrera the Elder (1595-1656). In Toledo, at the turn of the century, the dominant influence was El Greco (1541-1614). His closest follower was the eminent painter Luis Tristan (1585-1624), who stressed the Tenebrist aspects of El Greco's work. Other Toledan painters included Pedro Orrente (1570-1645), a follower of Ribalta, Fray
Juan Bautista Maino (1578-1649), who became the drawing master of Philip IV, and Fray Juan Sanchez-Cotan (1560-1627).
The summit of Baroque painting in Spain was attained in the person of Diego Velazquez (1599-1660). For Velazquez the manner of Caravaggio was only a starting-point. In his paintings light is manipulated to reconstruct an 'optical realism' by means of the effects of different tonalities: in other words, the reproduction of reality which is not faithful to the hairs of a beard or the texture of a fabric in the manner sought by the painters of the Renaissance, but to what the eye actually sees, the general impression we receive when looking at something. In Velazquez's paintings light is used as painters of two centuries earlier had used perspective, to make space tangible. Areas of light and shadow are alternated to create the illusion of a place in which the figures are not painted but actually 'are'. These figures are painted with broad, supple strokes of the brush to delineate them clearly without entering upon realistic detail. It was the same technique that was to be used in the nineteenth century by the French Impressionists - a similarity that is not
fortuitous: Velazquez too seemed indifferent to the content of what he was painting, to the great religious themes, for example, which had such importance for his contemporaries. Instead, his whole attention was concentrated on painting, on his craft.
Noted for his drawing from life, even his earliest works are characterized by their dense impasto, restrained colour, usually ochres and browns, and their simple natural composition. Old Woman
Frying Eggs (1618, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh), Christ in the House of Mary and Martha (1620, National Gallery, London), and The Supper at Emmaus (1620, Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York), all belong to his early period, as do a number of portraits, mostly executed in a limited Tenebrist manner, without conceding exaggerated importance to contrasts between dark and light.
In 1623, Velazquez became official portraitist to Philip IV and the higher nobility. Between 1623 and 1629 he completed a number of works with grey backgrounds, revealing his liberation from the Tenebrist formula. The Triumph of Bacchus (Los Borrachos, The Topers) (1629, Prado) dates from this period. In 1632, he produced Christ on the Cross (1632, Prado) a work of particular serenity and simplicity.
As his art improved even further, he revealed greater precision of outline, along with an even more subtle blending of tones and colour. One of his great masterpieces at this time is The
Buen Retiro, Madrid. During the next few years Velazquez focused largely on portrait art - see his Philip IV on Horseback (1634-35, Prado) and Prince Baltasar Carlos on Horseback (1635-36, Prado) - and subject paintings such as The Dwarf Francisco Lezcano ("El Nino de Vallecas") (1643-45, Prado). He also executed several religious works including the magnificent
Coronation of the Virgin (1645, Prado). On a trip to Italy, in 1649, he painted his masterpiece Portrait of Innocent X (1650, Galleria Doria-Pamphilj, Rome), while during his final period
(1651-1660), he painted Venus at her Mirror (The Rokeby Venus) (1649-51, National Gallery, London) and Las Meninas or The Family of Philip IV (1656-57, Prado).
If we briefly compare Velazquez' Rokeby Venus with similar paintings of the High Renaissance, we see how much the artistic perception of reality had changed in the course of century. In the "Rokeby Venus" Beauty nonchalantly turns her back upon the observer, while Cupid holds up a mirror before her. The mirror was already a familiar trick, often used in Roman Baroque villas and palaces to give an impression of spaciousness. Its ambiguous lighting and refraction increase the picturesque effect of the device. Instead of the marble calm of (say) Giorgione's classic
Sleeping Venus (c.1510), or Titian's Venus of Urbino (1538), the Rokeby Venus presents us with
a charming, but entirely human and un-divine, study of the nude. To this extent Velasquez was the child of his period, the Baroque
Not surprisingly, Velazquez proved a difficult act to follow. Aside from followers like Juan de
Pareja (1610-70), Francisco de Palacios (1617-76), and Juan Bautista Martinez del Mazo
(1615-67), the painters of the Madrid school opted for the easier Rubens-style Baroque.
Zurbaran
Francisco de Zurbaran (1598-1664), an amalgam of Estremaduran asceticism and Andalusian
elegance, employed a naturalism and extreme chiaroscuro that made him the most restrained and purest of the artists of the Spanish Baroque. During his 20s and 30s he painted a series of
compositions for several of the monastic orders such as the Mercedarians and the Jeronymites, as exemplified by The House of Nazareth (1630, Museum of Art, Cleveland). In the process he became a master-drawer of solitary figures, including saints with their eyes raised to heaven. No
doubt his art must have benefited enormously from his personal piety and religious devotion, as perhaps illustrated by Saint Luke as a Painter before Christ on the Cross (1660, Prado) for which perhaps he himself was the model.
Murillo
Within the Seville school, Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1618-1682) represents the height of elegance and delicacy, and, it must be said, the greatest surrender to popular sentiment. Heavily influenced initially by Old Masters such as Ribera and Zurbaran, he later borrowed from Van Dyck, Rubens and Raphael. He developed his own light and filmy style - the estilo vaporiso - featuring soft contours, delicately toned colours, and a golden-to-silver veil of light: a style which inspired a host of imitators and followers. As well as religious works he specialized in genre-painting of street urchins and beggars, as exemplified by The Young Beggar (1645, Louvre Museum, Paris), and Boys Eating Grapes and Melon (1645-46, Alte Pinakothek, Munich). Another important early work is Angels' Kitchen (1646, Louvre, Paris). From 1660, when he co-founded the Seville Academy of Fine Art, he was active as a teacher. An example of his late work is The Immaculate Conception (1678, Prado).
Juan de Valdes Leal
After the death of Murillo, the foremost painter in Seville was Juan de Valdes Leal (1622-1690). Although, like Murillo, he was largely a religious painter, Valdes Leal was more dramatic, more theatrical, more macabre, and more excitable: his works show a vivid sense of movement and brilliant colouring. In many ways he was a forerunner of Romanticism. His most famous works are the two allegories of death in the Hospital de la Caridad, in Seville - In the
Twinkling of An Eye (1671), and The End of Worldly Glory (1672). Other major works include Assumption of the Virgin (1659, National Gallery of Art, Washington) and Christ Bearing the Cross (1660, Hispanic Society, New York). In his final years, Valdes Leal completed numerous
cycles of paintings for churches, monasteries, and philanthropic institutions - including a series of scenes illustrating the life of St. Ignatius (1674-1676), for the Jesuits.
During the 17th century, the Spanish Baroque in Madrid was driven by Velazquez and by the versatile sculptor, painter and architect Alonso Cano (1601-67) - nicknamed "the Spanish
Michelangelo". ( also the sculptor Juan Martines Montanes (1568-1649)) Other interesting exponents of the Baroque idiom in Madrid include: the monumentalist Fray Juan Ricci (1600-1681), son of a Bolognese painter who came to Spain to work on the decoration of the Escorial, and Antonio Pereda (1608-1678), creator of several elegant religious paintings and allegorical compositions. Of a higher quality is the work of the portraitist Juan Carreno de Miranda (1614-1685), official painter to Charles II, who succeeded Philip IV. His pupil Mateo Cerezo (1626-1666), was a particularly talented colourist, as was Jose Antolinez (1635-1675).
llusionist Architectural Murals and Ceiling Paintings
It is appropriate to begin an account of Baroque painting with its favourite genre and
characteristic function: the illusionist decoration of the walls of an interior. Obviously the idea of using a wall to display a painted scene was as old as art; what was new, or almost new, was the use made of this technique by Baroque artists. On the walls, and more especially on the ceilings, of churches and palaces they painted vast, busy scenes, which tend to produce upon the spectator the impression that the walls or ceiling no longer exist, or at least that they open out in an
exciting way. This, too was not essentially new: such experiments had been made during the Renaissance, by Mantegna. In the Baroque period, however, it became almost an absolute rule, combining as it did all the aesthetic features of the time: grandeur, theatricality, movement, the representation of infinity, and in addition a technical skill that appears almost superhuman. It showed that tendency to combine various forms of art for a unified effect which was the most distinctive characteristic of the age
Such illusionist paintings varied greatly in the stories they told - lives of saints, histories of dynasties, myths, or tales of heroes - but they were consistent in the components they deployed: architectural glories standing out against the sky; soaring angels and saints; figures in swift motion, their garments billowing out in the wind; all depicted with bold foreshortening - the perspective effect of looking upwards from below or conversely downwards from above, which makes the figures appear shorter. Such was the vitality of the genre that it continued not only throughout the seventeenth century but well into the eighteenth, invading the limits of time generally considered to demarcate the succeeding Rococo movement.
Baroque painters who specialized in such murals and ceiling paintings included: the forerunner
Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), the Bolognese Baroque artist noted for his frescoes in the
Farnese Gallery in Rome, and his followers Guido Reni (1575-1642), Guercino (1591-1666), and in particular Domenichino (1581-1641) whose elaborate classical compositions were to influence Nicolas Poussin. Thereafter, we have Parma-born Giovanni Lanfranco (1582-1647), influenced by the frescoes of Correggio; Bernini (1598-1680), more famous as architect and sculptor; Pietro da Cortona (1596-1669) who decorated the Palazzo Barberini in Rome and the Medici Pitti Palace in Florence, as well as numerous other churches and palces; Andrea Sacchi (1599-1661), who exemplified High Baroque Classicism, and his pupil Carlo Maratta (1625-1713). Andrea Pozzo (1642-1709) was another of the great exponents of the Baroque style of illusionist ceiling decoration, noted for his huge ceiling fresco in S. Ignazio, Rome. The last of the line was the Venetian Late Baroque painter Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770), whose fresco decoration of the state dining room (Kaiseraal) and the ceiling of the Grand Staircase (Trepenhaus) in the Wurzburg Residenz of the Prince Bishop Karl Philipp von Greiffenklau, was the greatest and most imaginative masterpiece of his career. The focal point was the soaring fresco of Apollo Bringing the Bride (1750-1) in the centre of the Trepenhaus, a work which brings to a majestic conclusion the Italian tradition of fresco painting initiated by Giotto (1270-1337) four hundred years earlier.
Light: The Key Feature of Baroque Painting
Naturally, painting was not confined to the walls of buildings. There was also, and indeed especially, a tradition of painting on canvas, and as with architecture the characteristics of the various national schools differed widely. They had one concern in common, however: the study of light and its effects. In spite of the great divergences between the work of various artists in the Baroque period - divergences so great that many critics are not prepared to designate their work by a single common adjective - the thematic use of light and shade in constructing any
significant work was, to a greater or lesser degree, common to them all, to the extent of being the key feature and unifying pictorial motif of the age.
Caravaggio (1573-1610)
The impulse towards adoption of this idiom came from Italy, indeed from a single Italian artist, Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio from the name of the small town where he was born. Although his work has been more attacked by some critics than appreciated, there is no doubt that he marked the beginning of a new epoch. At the time of Caravaggio, fine art painting had fully attained the objectives that it had been set two centuries before - namely, the perfect representation of nature in all its manifestations. A new line of investigation was required, one congenial to the age; and this Caravaggio supplied. His paintings showed sturdy peasants, innkeepers, and gamblers; and though they might sometimes be dressed as saints, apostles, and fathers of the Church they represented reality in its most crude and harsh aspect. This was in itself a break with Renaissance art, with its aristocratic figures and idealized surroundings. The most important aspect of Baroque painting was not however what was represented but how it was represented. The painting was not lit uniformly but in patches; details struck by bright, intense light alternated with areas of dark shadow. If in the final analysis a Renaissance painting was coloured drawing with overall lighting, a canvas by Caravaggio was a leopard's skin of strong light and deep, intense shadow, in which the highlights are symbolic; that is, they
indicated the important elements of the composition. It was a dramatic, violent, tormented style of painting, eminently suited to an age of strong aesthetic contrasts, as the Baroque period was.
Caravaggism
Caravaggio's temperament seems to have had closer affinities with the Spanish rather than the Italian character, and Naples, which had close connections with Spain at this period, was the centre of Caravaggism influence; the early paintings of Velasquez (1599-1660) show it, as do those of other seventeenth-century Spanish masters such as Ribera (1591-1652) and Zurbaran (1598-1664). But his influence extended much farther than Spain, though it is there that the master's manner was most closely followed. In Holland, Gerard van Honthorst (1592-1656)
seems to have transmitted something of Caravaggio's dramatic use of chiaroscuro to his great countryman, Rembrandt; while in France the somewhat mysterious master, Georges de la Tour (1593-1652), was a skilful, but apparently isolated, exponent of 'Tenebrism', as this use of deep shadows cast from a single source of light, to give unity to a composition, is called. Adam
Elsheimer (1578-1610) was another influential representative of this tendency; while it is
perhaps just worth mentioning in this connection the name of the one English tenerbrist, Joseph
Wright of Derby (1734-97). Of Caravaggio's Italian followers, the most prominent were Mattia Preti (1613-1669) and Domenico Fetti (1589-1624); while Salvator Rosa (1615-1673), also a
Neapolitan, has affinities with him in his taste for savagery and low-life scenes, of bandits fighting and carousing among wild and rocky scenery. Salvator is particularly of interest for his importance in the development of romantic landscape; the eighteenth-century Genoese,
Magnasco (1667-1749) has something in common with him. Venetian Baroque Painting
Apart from Caravaggio, there were few if any 17th century painters in Italy to rank with the great names of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Indeed, by the seventeenth century the golden age of Italian painting was largely over, except for a brief mini-resurgence in Venice, where there had been no painting of interest during the previous century. In the space of 25 years, Venice produced Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770), his son, Giandomenico (1727-1804),
Antonio Canaletto (1697-1768), Pietro Longhi (1701-85), Francesco Guardi (1712-93) and Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78). All of these, except the last, spent their working lives in
Venice, although Canaletto visited England in 1746. The elder Tiepolo we have already seen; Longhi, and to a lesser extent, the younger Tiepolo, portrayed the daily life of Venice, the former in small canvases, the latter in drawings; while Canaletto and Guardi painted outdoor scenes on the canals and piazza. Piranesi, though born in Venice, came to Rome in 1738. No paintings by him are known, and his fame rests entirely on his etchings of architecture and ruins. Others, notably Giovanni Pannini (1691-1765) and Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734), both of the previous generation, had painted ruined buildings, and there is no doubt that they influenced Piranesi; but their ruin-pieces, painted quite without feeling, are little better than superior furniture pictures. Piranesi's vision, of gigantic, decaying Roman ruins, and fantastic prison interiors, has a powerful, almost sinister, and sometimes almost mad, intensity.
Classicism
Before leaving Italy, we should note the existence of a separate trend in European painting, usually called the "classical" tradition. A hangover, if you like, from the Renaissance, classicism was the opposite of Romanticism, being a style of art in which adherence to accepted aesthetic ideals takes precedence over individuality of expression. In simple terms, it was a restrained, harmonious style that believed in primacy of design (disegno), rather than (say) colour or expressionism. It was closely associated with "academic art", the style taught in most of the European academies of fine arts. During the Baroque era of the 17th century, the classical tradition was personified by the French artist Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), who spent most of his career in Rome, where his patrons included Cardinal Francesco Barberini (1597-1669), and the cardinal's secretary Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657). Poussin is probably best known for his mythological history painting, although he was also an important pioneer of classical arcadian landscape painting - a genre dominated by another French painter based in Rome, Claude
Lorrain (1600-82), who instigated the "Claudean" style. Netherlandish Baroque Painting
In Flanders and Holland, painting had developed flourishing local schools that so far from being backwaters were well in the van of artistic exploration. Flemish painters had created - or at least greatly enhanced - two types of picture concerned with the faithful representation of domestic life and everyday reality: genre painting and still life. Neither had any equivalent in Italy - where there was indeed no demand for such pictures. It was the Flemish painters who had exported the technique of oil painting, formerly unknown to the artists of the early Italian Renaissance. Now they were quick to fuse their own tradition with that arriving from Italy - a marriage which was to produce works among the greatest achievements in the history of art. This development had different results in Flanders and the Netherlands, and in each case was associated with the two profoundly different people: namely Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and Rembrandt (1606-1669).
By the late 1570s, Rome was no longer the centre of the world. The Italians were wearing Spanish costumes, and the heart of the Counter-Reformation was in Spain. The Escorial was being built as the new citadel of the Faith, and the palaces of Toledo were being turned into monasteries and convents. Beauty was giving way to holiness. In the spring of 1577, the resident Mannerist El Greco (1541-1614) found in the Spanish city of Toledo the familiar shapes of his Cretan home, the buildings of the Mohammedan East, all in the urgent and emphatic Spanish form. He spent two years in painting his first great work, the altarpiece for San Domingo el
Antiguo. The passionate and often extravagant spirit of the Baroque had now possessed him. His
wooden panels and modest canvases were forgotten; he now painted pictures of enormous dimensions.
Among El Greco's important paintings of the following period was the representation of the miracle which was said to have occurred during the burial of Count Orgaz, when St Augustine and St Stephen appeared and discharged the duties of the clergy, In grey and yellow, black and white, the colours of the stormy sky, El Greco has painted the miracle in an unearthly light, not as a supernatural, but rather as a supremely natural event, to which the whole Spanish people, its priests, its nobles, and its faithful, bear witness by their presence on the solid floor of the church. Some have called El Greco's pictures ascetic, ecstatic, cruel, nerveless and colourless.
Nevertheless, a portrait - like that of the Grand Inquisitor is painted with the strongest colouring; it is only in El Greco's saints that we find deliberate distortion and an unearthly radiance. When he paints ordinary human beings, like his daughter, it is as though they were reflected in a mirror. The final development of El Greco's art places him, in spite of his peculiarities, in the heart of the Baroque period, as he abandons Renaissance laws of composition and colour and moves toward the international art of the Baroque period.
Other important members of the Spanish Baroque school included: Jusepe (Jose) de Ribera (1591-1652), the Naples-based Spanish caravaggesque artist, noted for his realist paintings on religious and mythological subjects; the devout Francisco de Zurbaran (1598-1664), noted for his intense religious pictures, still-lifes, and mastery of tenebrism; Diego Velazquez (1599-1660), official painter to the Spanish court in Madrid who combined realism with the Baroque emphasis on light and illusionism; and the sentimental Seville painter Bartolome Esteban
Murillo (1618-1682) whose religious works and genre paintings were influenced by both
Zurbaran and Caravaggio.
Baroque Architecture
It was characteristic of Baroque architecture that, though examples are to be found almost throughout Europe and Latin America, they differ notably from one country to another. How is it, then, that they are all designated by a single term? Partly for convenience, in order to summarize the art of a whole period with a single word, but mainly on account of their common aesthetic origin.
In the second half of the nineteenth century the Swiss critic Heinrich Wolfflin and his followers gave the word a more objective meaning. Still referring to the religious art of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, they defined as Baroque those works in which certain specific
characteristics were to be seen: the use of movement, whether actual (a curving wall, a fountain with jets of water forever changing shape) or implied (a figure portrayed as making a vigorous action or effort); the attempt to represent or suggest infinity (an avenue which stretched to the horizon, a fresco giving the illusion of a boundless sky, a trick of mirrors which altered
perspectives and made them unrecognizable); the importance given to light and its effects in the conception of a work of art and in the final impact it created; the taste for theatrical, grandiose, scenographic effects; and the tendency to disregard the boundaries between the various forms of art and to mix together architecture, painting, sculpture, and so on.
In architecture two types of building most occupied the attention of the age: the church and the palace. In their different versions they respectively included cathedrals, parish churches, and monastic buildings, and town and country mansions, and above all royal palaces, these last being especially typical of the period. In addition to such individual buildings, Baroque architecture was also characterized by what is now known as town planning: the arrangement of cities according to predetermined schemes, and the creation of great parks and gardens around residences of importance.
A building can be conceived of in many different ways: as an assemblage of superimposed storeys (the present attitude); as a box defined by walls of regular shape (as Renaissance architects understood it); or as a skeletal structure, that is, one formed - according to the Gothic conception - by the various structures needed to sustain it. Baroque architects understood it as a single mass to be shaped according to a number of requirements. A verbal description of Renaissance forms might be accompanied by the drawing of imaginary straight lines in the air with an imaginary pencil; but a man describing the Baroque is more apt to mime the shaping out of an imaginary mass of soft plastic or clay. In short, for Baroque architects a building was to some extent a kind of large sculpture.
Ground-Plans
This conception had a vital effect on the ground-plan - the outlines of the building as seen from above - that came to be adopted. It led to the rejection of the simple, elementary, analytical plans which were deliberately preferred by Renaissance architects. Their place was taken by complex, rich, dynamic designs, more appropriate to constructions which were no longer thought of as 'built', or created by the union of various parts each with its own autonomy, but rather as hollowed out, shaped from a compact mass by a series of demarcations of contour. The ground-plans common to the architecture of the Renaissance were the square, the circle, and the Greek cross - a cross, that is, with equal arms. Those typical of Baroque architecture were the ellipse or the oval, or far more complex schemes derived from complicated geometrical figures. Francesco Castelli (1599-1667), better known by the name he adopted for himself, Borromini, designed a church with a ground-plan in the shape of a bee, in honour of the patron who commissioned it, whose family coat-of-arms featured bees; and another with walls that were throughout alternately convex and concave. One French architect went so far as to put forward ground-plans for a series of churches forming the letters which composed the name of his king, LOUIS LE GRAND, as the Sun-King Louis XIV liked to be called.
Baroque Architecture's Undulating Motif
Besides their complex ground-plans, the resultant curving walls were, therefore, the other outstanding characteristic of Baroque buildings. Not only did they accord with the conception of
a building as a single entity, but they also introduced another constant of the Baroque, the idea of movement, into architecture, by its very nature the most static of all the arts. And indeed, once discovered, the undulating motif was not confined to walls. The idea of giving movement to an architectural element in the form of more or less regular curves and counter-curves became a dominant motif of all Baroque art. Interiors were made to curve, from the Church of S. Andrea
al Quirinale by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, one of the main creators and exponents of Roman
Baroque, to that of S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane or S. Ivo alla Sapienza by Borromini, his closest rival. So too were facades, as in almost all Borromini's work, in Bernini's plans for the Palais du Louvre in Paris, and typically in the work of Italian, Austrian, and German architects. Even columns were designed to undulate. Those of Bernini's great baldacchino in the centre of St Peter's in Rome were only the first of a host of spiral columns to be placed in Baroque
churches. The Italian architect Guarino Guarini actually evolved, and put to use in some of his buildings, an 'Undulating order', in the form of a complete system of bases, columns, and entablatures distinguished by continuous curves.
Even excepting such extremes, during the Baroque period the taste for curves was nonetheless marked, and found further expression in the frequent use of devices including volutes, scrolls, and above all, 'ears' - architectural and ornamental elements in the form of a ribbon curling round at the ends, which were used to form a harmonious join between two points at different levels. This device was adopted primarily as a feature of church facades, where they were used so regularly as to be now perhaps the readiest way of identifying a Baroque exterior. In spite of their bizarre shape their function was not purely decorative, but principally a strengthening, functional one.
Vaults, Arches, Buttresses
The churches of the period were almost always built with vaulted ceilings. A vault is in effect, however, a collection of arches; and since arches tend to exert an outward pressure on their supporting walls, in any vaulted building a counterthrust to this pressure is needed. The element supplying this counterthrust is the buttress, an especially typical feature in the architecture of the Middle Ages, when the difficulty was first confronted. To introduce the buttress into a Baroque construction it had to have a form compatible with that of the other members, and to avoid
reference to the barbaric, 'gothic' architecture of the past. This was a problem of some
importance in an age enamoured of formal consistency - and it was solved by the use of scrolls. The greatest English architect of the age, Sir Christopher Wren, unable for other reasons to use the convenient scrolls for St Paul's Cathedral, yet having somehow to provide buttresses, made the bold decision to raise the walls of the outer aisles to the height of those of the nave so that they might act as screens, with the sole purpose of concealing the incompatible buttresses.
The Baroque Concept of Building Design: Architectural Sculpture
Another, and decisive, consequence of the conception of a building as a single mass to be articulated was that a construction was no longer seen as the sum of individual parts - facade, ground-plan, internal walls, dome, apse, and so on - each one of which might be considered separately. As a result the traditional rules which determined the planning of these parts became less important or was completely disregarded. For example, for the architects of the Renaissance the facade of a church or a palace had been a rectangle, or a series of rectangles each of which had corresponded to a storey of the building. For Baroque architects the facade was merely that part of the building that faced outwards, one element of a single entity. The division into storeys was generally retained, but almost always the central part of the facade was organised with reference more to what was above and below it than to what stood on either side: in other words, it was given a vertical emphasis and thrust which was in strong contrast to the practice of
horizontal division by storeys. Furthermore, in the facade the elements - columns, pilasters, cornices, or pediments - projecting from the wall surface, related in various ways to the centre, which thus came to dominate the sides. Although at first sight such a facade might seem to be divided horizontally, more careful consideration reveals that it is organized vertically, in slices, as it were. In the centre is the more massive, more important section, and the sides, as the eye recedes froth it, appear less weighty. The final effect is that of a building which has been shaped according to sculptural concepts, rather than put together according to the traditional view of architecture.
A Baroque building is complex, surprising, dynamic: for its characteristic features to be fully comprehended, however, or for them to stand out prominently, it needs to catch the light in a
particular way. It was this requirement that led Baroque sculptors to achieve a number of innovations.
Architectural Manipulation of Light
It is not the light that falls on a particular point in a given building that varies, but the effect the light produces in striking one surface by contrast with another. It is obvious that the texture of a brick wall is not the same as that of a similar wall of smooth marble or of rough-hewn stone. This fact was exploited by Baroque architects for both the exteriors and the interiors of their buildings. Renaissance constructions, like many modern ones, were based on simple, elementary proportions and relationships; and their significance rested in the observer's appreciation of the harmony that united the various parts of the whole. These proportions were perceptible by looking at the fabric alone: all that was required of the light was to make them clearly visible. The ideal effect, sought in almost all the buildings of that period, was that produced by a
monochrome, uniform lighting. In place of the appreciation of logic that such an effect implied, Baroque substituted the pursuit of the unexpected, of 'effect', as it would be called in the theatre. And as in the theatre, this is achieved more easily by deployment of light if the light itself is concentrated in one area while others remain in darkness or in shadow - a lesson mastered above all by Caravaggio in Baroque painting.
How can this effect be achieved in architecture? There are various possibilities: by the
juxtaposition of strong projections and overhangs with abrupt, deep recesses; or by breaking up the surface, making it unsmooth in some way - to return, for example, to the example used earlier, by altering a marble-clad or plaster-covered wall to one of large, rough stones. Such requirements of lighting dictated a use in particular for architectonic decoration, the small-scale elements, often carved, which give a effect of movement to the surfaces of a building. It was in the Baroque period above all that such decoration ran riot. In buildings of the Renaissance it had been confined to specific areas, carefully detached from the structural forms. Now, parading the exuberance and fantasy which were its distinguishing characteristic, it invaded every angle, swarmed over every feature, especially corners and points where two surfaces met, where it had the function of concealing the join so that the surfaces of the building appeared to continue uninterrupted.
Undulating Order of Architecture
To the five traditional orders of architecture - Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and
Composite, each of which had particular forms and proportions for its supporting members, the
columns and pilasters, and for the vertical linking members, or entablature - was added the 'Undulating' order. Another new and popular variant was the 'Colossal order', with columns running up through two or three storeys. The details, too, of the traditional orders became enriched, complicated, modified: entablatures had stronger overhangs and more pronounced re-entrants, and details throughout sometimes attained an almost capricious appearance. Borromini, for instance, in using the Corinthian order, took its most characteristic feature, the curls, or volutes, which sprout from among the acanthus leaves at the tort of the capital, and inverted them.
The arches connecting one column or one pilaster to the next became no longer restricted, as in the Renaissance, to a semi-circle but were often elliptical or oval. Above all they took the form, unique to the Baroque, of a double curve - describing a curve, that is, not only when seen from in front but also when seen from above. Sometimes arches were interrupted in form, with sections of straight lines inserted into the curve. This characteristic feature was also used in pediments the decorative element above a door, a window or a whole building. The canonical shape of a
pediment, which is to say that fixed by classical norms, had been either triangular or semi-circular. In the Baroque period, however, they were sometimes open - as though they had been split or interrupted at the top - or combining curved and straight lines; or fantastic, as for example in Guarino Guarini's plan for Palazzo Carignano, where they appeared around doors and windows like draperies rolled back.
Windows too were often far removed from classical forms: to the rectangular or square shapes sometimes with rounded tops, which were typical of the Renaissance were added shapes including ovals or squares topped by a segment of a circle, or rectangles beneath little oval windows.
Other details, on entablatures, doors, and keystones of arches and at corners - everywhere - included volutes; stucco figures; huge, complex, and majestic scrolls; and any number of
fantastic and grotesque shapes. One form of decoration not characteristic so much as striking was the use of the tower. Sometimes a single one, sometimes pairs of them; but always complex and highly decorated, were erected on the facade, and sometimes on the dome, of churches; and in some countries, in particular Austria, Germany, and Spain, this arrangement was used often enough to become in effect the norm.
These, briefly then, were the most obvious and frequently used motifs of Baroque architecture. It must be remembered however that each individual work created its own balance between its various features; and also that each country developed these components in different ways; and an understanding of these regional and national differences is essential to a proper understanding of the Baroque as a whole.
Italian Baroque Architecture
Italy, the cradle of Baroque, produced in addition to a proportionate number of good professional architects a quartet who rate as excellent: Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Borromini, Pietro da
Cortona, and Guarino Guarini. The work of each was unmistakably Baroque, but each of them
had, as it were, a different accent. Bernini and to a lesser extent, Pietro da Cortona, represented the courtly Baroque, majestic, and exuberant but never outrageously so, which was successful principally in the Italian peninsula. This style possessed, at their most typical, all the features of Baroque described above, and conveyed an air of grandeur and dignity that rendered it a classic of its kind.
Bernini and St Peter's Basilica
The history of St Peter's is in itself a history of the transition from Renaissance to Baroque. Soon after the death of Michelangelo, designer of St Peter's dome, Carlo Maderna (1556-1629) built a nave which is not altogether a happy feature of the plan, considered as a whole, for every attempt to expand one arm of the central space, as planned by Michelangelo, into a nave, was bound to degrade the miraculous achievement to a mere intersection of nave and transepts. Behind the facade, over 320 feet in width and 150 feet in height, the dome was concealed up to half the height of the drum. It is true that the eight columns of the entrance, the giant order of pilasters, the massive entablature, and the attic, are as Michelangelo intended. High Renaissance
forms are combined with the exuberance of the Baroque, in a premonition of the coming style. In 1667 Alexander VII set Bernini the great and difficult task of giving the Church of St Peter its urban setting. He added a tower to Maderna's facade, but it collapsed and lay about in fragments. No one dared again to subject the foundations to the weight of fresh building. The stumps of the towers were left, rising to the level of the cornice of the attics, unduly widening the facade and destroying the balance of the structure. But now, as before, the church was to be given a portico. Bernini, in the most ingenious manner, took the opportunity of transforming the disadvantageous widening of Maderna's facade into an improvement. To increase the actual height of the facade was technically impossible, but Bernini, in the true spirit of the Baroque, produced an impression of height by ingeniously misleading the eye. The open space before the church rose in a slight gradient, and this was crossed by pathways which approached it obliquely, not meeting the facade at right angles, but enclosing an acute angle. This obliquity escapes the casual glance, which unconsciously transfers the smaller distance between the ends of the pathways to their starting-point, so that the facade seems narrower and, owing to the upward slope, also higher than it is in reality. In front of this forecourt, by which the eye is doubly deceived, Bernini now levelled an open space which he enclosed with open colonnades, thereby enhancing the effect of
Michelangelo's dome, which had been diminished by the addition of the nave. Bernini
completed his Baroque illusion by enclosing, with his arcades, an oval courtyard, which appears larger than it is in reality. The eye, expecting to see a circle, transfers the obvious width of the oval to the depth, which is not so great. The colonnades, in their simplicity, play their part by directing the attention to the facade. - But even as this facade was begun under an unlucky star, so Bernini's plan has not been fully realized. He wanted to place a third portico, as a terminal structure between the two semicircles. Owing to its omission - probably on account of the death of Alexander VII - the gap which now exists between the colonnades forms part of a typical Italian rondo, still further enhancing the overwhelming majesty of the whole, and especially the effect of the dome.
Borromini's designs were quite different, arguably more restless and extravagant. They include extremely complex ground-plans and masonry, and the deliberate contradiction of traditional detail - in the inversion of the volutes, for instance, or in entablatures that denied their traditional function by no longer resting on capitals but on a continuation above them.
A characteristic example of Italian Baroque design by Borromini is the little church of S. Carlo
alle Quattro Fontane. Significantly, the plan of this tiny church is built up of oval forms. The
centrally planned church, either circular or Greek cross, was used by early and High Renaissance architects to express their ideal of perfect lucidity and order. The oval, producing a precisely opposite effect, that of confusion and uncertainty, and above all, of movement, was in the same way a favourite motive with Baroque architects. The effect of the interior is one of complete plastic unity; the building might have been carved out of one block of stone, for there is no sense of its having been constructed out of separate elements. The same applies to the facade, built up of an elaborate and subtle combination of convex and concave forms, which again have no constructive purpose.
Many of Borromini's ideas were adopted by Guarini, with the addition of a mathematical and technical factor which was of great importance in itself - but even more because of its influence on Baroque architects outside Italy, especially in Germany.
French Baroque Architecture
Personal variations apart, Italian Baroque could be said to correspond almost completely to the norms described. The same cannot be said of France, which nevertheless produced during the Baroque period a succession of excellent architects, even more numerous than in Italy: Salomon
de Brosse, Francois Mansart, Louis Le Vau, Jacques Lemercier, and, greatest of them all, Jules Hardouin Mansart. But in France personality was less significant in its effects then the
'school' to which architects could be said to belong. The attempt of the French court to introduce Italian Baroque into France, by summoning Bernini in 1665 to Paris and commissioning him to design the reconstruction of the royal palace - the Louvre - was doomed from the outset. As a critic rightly observed, there was in question a radical difference of temperament. To the French, Italian exuberance verged on the indecorous, if not wilfulness and bad taste. Rather than as artists, French architects considered themselves professional men, dedicated to the service and the glorification of their king. At the court of the Roi Soleil a Baroque style was developed which was more restrained than the Italian: ground-plans were less complex, and facades more severe, with greater respect for the details and proportions of the traditional architectural orders, and violent effects and flagrant caprices were eschewed. The textbook example and greatest
