Baroque period ( history & style) duskyrose 29

The Baroque period was the time when arts_ painting, music, architecture, and literature_ greatly flourished. It covered the period between 1600-1750. cc

This structure was built around the ivory and wooden chair, once to be believed to be the original chair used by St. Peter .The throne was designed with stained – glass, gilded bronze statues of four Doctors of the Church (St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Athanasius, and St. John Chrysostom), stucco, and marble.

Used to be an old open space at the east of the basilica. Bernini transformed this open spaced into an “impressive approach” to the church.

Pluto and Proserpina (162 – 22), David (1623), Depicted narrative moments in emotive action

Ecstasy of St. Teresa (1647 – 1652), Bernini showed the dramatic encounter between St. Teresa and the angel.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio leading painter during the period. He

practiced the revolutionary style which showed realistic and close- up figures with dramatic play of light and shade (chiaroscuro).

Works were the: The Calling of St. Matthew (1599- 1600) based on the gospel; The Taking of Christ (1602); The Rising of Lazarus (1609), a depiction of the physical process of resurrection.

Commenced in the year 1750.

Marked by a change in art. World art borrowed the classic style from Greece and Rome and worked with simple but elegant balance, proportion and discipline.

Highlights of the PeriodAmerican Declaration of Independence (1776)

Fall of Bastille (1789) Execution of Louis XVIIthe publication of the “Lyrical Ballads” of Wordsworth

Coleridge (1789)

Neoclassical designers work in simple forms and colors, avoiding all unnecessary complications.

Sculpture was probably the most expressive Neoclassical artistic medium. Art in the Neoclassical period celebrated the masterpiece Cupid and Psyche (1787 -1793) by Antonio Canova. The sculpture displays the greatness and idealization of the period.

•Jacques- Louis David’s work The Oath of the Horatii (1748- 1785)The painting represents a scene from the early history of ancient Rome, in which the three brothers vow to represent the opposing party. The use of classical elements in art at this time formed style called NEOCLASSICISM.

Well- known painters during the Period

Jean August Dominique Ingres who painted Antiochus and Stratonice (1843).

Nicolas Poussin who painted The death of Germanicus (1627).

•Took place during the mid- 19th century.

Highlights of the Period•The proclamation of Napoleon as Emperor (1804).•The invention of the first working steam engine (1814).•French Revolution (1848) which overthrew Louis Philippe, King of France•The recognition of Beethoven for his composition, symphony 9.

In visual arts, the popularity of the members of the French Romantic school was also recognized. This includes:

Theodore Gericault (French, 1791- 1824).

Eugene Delacroix (French, 1798).Henry Fuseli (Swiss- English, 1741- 1825).

Francisco Goya (Spanish, 1746- 1828).

Romanticism was a movement that emphasized imagination and emotion over reason and order.

The Romantic Style in fine arts and literature stressed passion, imagination and intuition, rather than logic than reason. There is expressiveness of emotions and free, spontaneous action in art and literature.

Another great artist of the Romantic style is Theodore Gericault (1791-1824) who contributed greatly to the development of Romanticism in French paintings. He also used political and social injustices as his themes, with a play in the human psychology of his subject. This was the best seen in his work, Mad Woman with a Mania of Envy (1822-23), as well as in his 1819 masterpiece, The Raft of the Medusa.

The Romantic theme and style also focus on nature in relation to humanity- man’s ‘’longing to return nature’’ and his or her insignificance to its vastness. This can be seen in his many works of the landscape artists during the period. Among these artists are Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) of the Germany and the English painters, John Constable (1774-1851) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851).

•In his Moonrise over the Sea (1830-35), Friedrich merged the human form with the mod of nature. He painted the vast and barren scene as an echo of the mod of the two figures in silhouettes, both clad in medieval dress. The Dress of the figures Evoke a longing for past era.