Baroque painting

BAROQUE PAINTING

Revision

Painting• Subjects: religious and profane (mythological,

allegorical, historical or portraits)• Composition: complicated; taste for big

groups, with different centres of attention. Portraits are just essential

• Lines: dynamic and complicate. Diagonal is the most used or combinations of horizontal and vertical

• Colour: rich, with great effects due to the use of oil and contrast depending on the areas

• Strange elements: secondary plans, mirrors

Painting• Kinds of depiction:

– Religious: martyrdoms, sufferance and blood– Mythological: generally developed with

contemporary characters– Allegorical: virtues and sins portrayed as

humans– Portraits: royal, bourgeois (doelen), beggars,

handicapped– Customs: every day’s life– Historical: bear witness of historical events– Landscapes: never quiet sceneries– Still-life: food and vegetables, flowers, animals– Vanities or vanitas: remainders of the

egalitarian role of death

Painting: Italy

• Caravaggio– Very naturalist– Theologically incorrect– Enormous contrasts of light– Difficult compositions– Known as the creator of tenebrism– Works: Supper at Emmaus, the Death of

the Virgin, Saint Mathew’s Conversion

Painting: Italy

• Carracci– He received Caravaggio’s influence– Naturalism– Perfect and idealised world– His works are completely different from

those of Caravaggio– Works: Cerasi Chapel

Painting: Flanders

• Rubens– He was a complete artist– Gifted with organization and a sense for

realism and idealism– He enjoyed harmony’s enviable balance

of opposites– Romantic but rooted in classical tradition– Works: The Three Graces, The Garden of

Love, Catalina of Medici’s Portrait

Painting: Flanders

• Van Dyck– He was Rubens’ s student– In his works there in a languid melancholic

mood– Portraits of the aristocracy– Works: Charles I

• Jordaens– Specialized in genre and banquet scenes– Strong contrasts of light and shade– Realistic images– Works: The King Drinks

Van Dick

Jordaens

Painting: Netherlands• Rembrant

– Thunderous use of light and shade– Dramatic figures filling the picture surface– Fluid and vigorous brushwork– He substituted the exact imitation of form

by the suggestion of it: painting looked to be unfinished

– Limited palette but able to depict colours– He worked in complex layers– Great care to the physical qualities of the

medium– Works: The Night’s Ronda, Saskia having

a Bath, The Jew Bridegroom, The Philosopher

Painting: Netherlands

• Hals– He brought life to groups– Portraits as a snapshot– Unconventional work for his moment– Quick depictions with a few touches of light– Works: The Gipsy Girl

• Vermeer– Domestic interiors– Serene sense of compositional balance and

spatial order– Mundane, domestic or recreational activities– He used the camera obscura to exaggerate

perspective– Works: Girl with the Pearl Earring, View of Delft,

the Procuress, The Geographer

Hals

Vermeer

Painting: France

• Poussin– Founder of the classical school– Myths, essential subject and sensuality– Works: Et in Arcadia Ego

• La Tour– Preocupation with the realistic rendering of light– Effects of chiaroscuro and diffusion of artificial

illumination– Works: Marie Magdalene

• Le Nain– Common life, peasants and poor people– Grave presences, not comic or gallant, neither

picaresque or satirical– Works: Peasant’s Family

Poussin

La Tour

Le Nain

Painting: Spain

• Zurbarán – He was a portrait painter– Main subjects: religious (saints,

monastic orders’ members)– Austere, harsh, hard edged style– Still-lives– Works: Paintings of the Guadalupe

Monastery, Sainte Casilde, Still-life with lemons

Painting: Spain• Velázquez

– He painted any kind of subjects– He was Court Painter and travelled to Italy to

buy art works and he knew classical masters’ works

– Portraits: include royal family and nobility, some of them equestrian, but also normal people of the court or even beggars (Olivares, Juan de Pareja, Esopo, Meninas)

– Religious paintings are treated as common subjects, with great importance given to daily life objects (Christ in Martha and Mary’s house)

Painting: Spain

– Mythological work appear normally in a secondary plan or represented by normal people (Spinners, Drunks)

– Historical scenes (Breda’s Surrender)– Nudes (Venus of the mirror)– Landscapes (Villa Medicci)– Genre scenes: same importance given

to the tools or to people (Old Woman Cooking Eggs, Sevilla’s Water-Seller)

Painting: Spain

– Characteristics:• Great detail when wanted• Aerial perspective• Pre-Impressioniss (few matter and

impression of unfinished work)• Special conception of the space (no divisions

of it)• Resource to very baroque elements such as

mirrors that create an illusionist space• Richness of colours

Painting: Spain

• Murillo– His work is not strong but his images are

convincing– Realism but a bit idealistic– He is reputed as children painter, works in

which beggars and poor children are depicted– He created a model of Immaculate, moved by

the wind and with a lot of putti– Works: Children Eating Fruit, Two Women at a

Window, the Holy Family of the Bird, Immaculate

Rococo Painting

• Instead of portraying the moral depression of the time, they protrait high society and gallant festivals

• Beautiful sensuality is masterly depicted through the colour

• Conversations, rural pleasures, character as the Italian and French Commendians indicates the spirit of this art

• Slim images, in unaffected pose, in rural sceneries and painted with the finest colours

Rococo Painting

• France– Wateau

• He depicted mankind as the most interesting natural element: affinity toward them

• Elegant characters in vibrant colours• Works: Embarkation to Citera, Gilles

– Fragonard• Rapid an spontaneous painter• He depicted the sense of human folly• Works: The Swing

– Chardin• Master of the still life• Paintings in brown colours with mids, but loyal to

reallity

Watteau

Fragonard

Chardin

Rococo Painting

• England– Hogart

• Caricature in his morality paintings• Fluent and vigorous brushwork• Works: Shrimp Girl

– Gainsborough• Artist of the landscape and the portrait• Ability to regard all creatures with sympathy• Works: Landscape with Gypsies, Sunset

Hogart

Gainsborough

Rococo Painting• Italy

– Tiepolo• Master of the decorative painting• He used the fresco• Works: Wurzburg Palace, Allegory of the

Spanish Monarchy

– Canaletto• Townscapes painter (vedute)• He apparently painted directly from nature• He used the camera obscura• Works: Architectural Capriccio, The

Bucintoro Returning to the Molo on Ascension Day

Tiepolo

Canaletto