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IRREGULAR PEARLS: BAROQUE in ITALY!
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! Wlfflin Principles!
Renaissance ! !Baroque!
Linear ! ! !Painterly!
Plane ! ! !Recession!
Closed form ! !Open form!
Multiplicity ! !Unity!
Absolute clarity ! !Relative clarity!
See pages 28-29 of Minor!
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Common tendencies within Baroque art!
!! Evoke emotional states by appealing to the senses!
!! Sense of spectacle, self-awareness; visual objects require a
viewer!
!!Emphasis on persuasion and rhetoric not found in
Renaissance!
!! Related to Counter-Reformation and the resurgence of
Catholicism.!
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Reformation/Counter-Reformation!
1517: Martin Luther protests the sale of indulgences by the
Catholic church by nailing his 95 Theses to the door of a church in
Wittenburg, Germany!
! Branches of Protestantism form and spread throughout Northern
Europe!
1545-1563: The Catholic church responds with the Council of
Trent!
! Sale of indulgences banned!
! Decision to uphold worship of religious images!
! Increase of papal authority and power!
1560-1648: Period known as the Counter-Reformation!
! Resurgent spirituality; personal relationship to Christ;
mysticism; missionary work; cater to lay public!
! Rome turned into a showcase for the triumph of
Catholicism!
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Giacomo della Porta, faade of Il Ges, Rome, 1575-84!
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Giovanni Battista Gaulli, Triumph of the Name of Jesus,
1672-1679, Il Ges, Rome!
Vernon Hyde Minor:!
As films today are projected onto fabric screens, so were the
miraculous images of the Baroque projected onto the stone and
plaster vaults of a church. The ceiling is Gods realm, and Baroque
fresco painters created a complete heavenly environment in the
upper reaches of the church. The worshipper is impelled to look
upward upon entering and while proceeding through the church. !
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Giovanni Battista Gaulli, Triumph of the Holy Name of Jesus and
the Fall of the Damned,
1672-1679, Il Ges, Rome!
Vernon Hyde Minor:!
Baciccio [Gaulli]employs the visual concetto of quadro
riportato, but then violates the very role of the frame by having
the damned spill out of the pictorial space and into (simulated)
shadow. The act of trespass, of transgressing the very rules the
artist has set up for himself, conveys the power of the Name of
Jesus - and of the Baroque. !
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St. Peters, Rome*!
Nave and faade: Carlo Maderno, 1607-26!
Colonnade, piazza: Gianlorenzo Bernini, 1657!
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Bernini, Baldacchino, 1624-33, St. Peters*!
Bernini, Throne of St. Peter, 1665!
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Bernini, Ecstasy of St. Teresa, 1645-52, Cornaro Chapel altar,
Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome!
The pain was so great that I screamed aloud; but simultaneously
I felt such infinite sweetness that I wished the pain to last
eternally. It was not bodily but psychical pain, although it
affected to a certain extent also the body. It was the sweetest
caressing by the soul of God.!
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Francesco Borromini, Faade of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane,
Rome, 1665-67!
Pietro Bellori (1613-96): Borromini is a complete ignoramus, the
corrupter of architecture, the shame of our century!
A contemporary: nothing comparable in terms of artistic merit,
imagination, excellence, and singularity can be found in any part
of the world.!
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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Sick Bacchus, 1593-94!
Ottavo Leoni, Portrait of Caravaggio, 17th century, !
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Caravaggio, The Calling of St. Matthew, 1599-1600, San Luigi dei
Francesci, Rome*!
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Caravaggio, Martyrdom of St. Matthew, 1599-1600, San Luigi dei
Francesci, Rome!
Helen Langdon: !
The painting has all the suggestive atmosphere of the first
record of his entanglement in a fight in the Roman streets in 1597
Caravaggios friend described how he saw a shrieking figurebut he
could not see him well because it was night and the fugitive passed
as a shadow.!
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Caravaggio, Entombment, chapel of Pietro Vittrice, Santa Maria
in Vallicella, Rome, 1603!
Masaccio, Holy Trinity, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Italy,
ca. 1428, fresco.!
