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(Encyclopaedia Britannica)
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Era in the history of the Western arts roughly coinciding with the 17th century.
Its earliest manifestations, which occurred in Italy, date from the latter
decades of the 16th century, while in some regions, notably Germany and colonial
South America, certain of its culminating achievements did not occur until the
18th century. The work that distinguishes the Baroque period is stylistically
complex, even contradictory. In general, however, the desire to evoke emotional
states by appealing to the senses, often in dramatic ways, underlies its
manifestations. Some of the qualities most frequently associated with the
Baroque are grandeur, sensuous richness, drama, vitality, movement, tension,
emotional exuberance, and a tendency to blur distinctions between the various
arts.
The term Baroque probably ultimately derived from the Italian word barocco,
which was a term used by philosophers during the Middle Ages to describe an
obstacle in schematic logic. Subsequently the word came to denote any contorted
idea or involuted process of thought. Another possible source is the Portuguese
word barroco (Spanish barrueco), used to describe an irregular or imperfectly
shaped pearl, and this usage still survives in the jeweler's term baroque pearl.
In art criticism the word Baroque came to be used to describe anything
irregular, bizarre, or otherwise departing from established rules and
proportions. This biased Neoclassical view of 17th-century art styles was held
with few modifications by critics from Johann Winckelmann to John Ruskin and
Jacob Burckhardt, and until the late 19th century the term always carried the
implication of odd, grotesque, exaggerated, and over decorated. It was only with
Heinrich Wölfflin's pioneer study Renaissance und Barock (1888) that Baroque was
used as a stylistic designation rather than as a term of thinly veiled abuse,
and a systematic formulation of the characteristics of Baroque style was
achieved.
Because the arts present such diversity within the Baroque period, their
unifying characteristics must be sought in relation to the era's broader
cultural and intellectual tendencies, of which three are most important for
their effecton the arts. The first of these was the emergence of the
Counter-Reformation and the expansion of its domain, both territorially and
intellectually. By the last decades of the 16th century the refined, courtly
style known as Mannerism had ceased to be an effective means of expression, and
its inadequacy for religious art was being increasingly felt in artistic
circles. To counter the inroads made by the Reformation, the Roman Catholic
Church after the Council of Trent (1545–63) adopted a propagandistic stance in
which art was to serve as a means of extending and stimulating the public's
faith in the church. To this end the church adopted a conscious artistic program
whose art products would make an overtly emotional and sensory appeal to the
faithful. The Baroque style that evolved from this program was paradoxically
both sensuous and spiritual; while a naturalistic treatment rendered the
religious image more accessible to the average churchgoer, dramatic and illusory
effects were used to stimulate his piety and devotion and convey to him an
impression of the splendour of the divine. Baroque church ceilings thus
dissolved in painted scenes that presented vivid views of the infinite to the
observer and directed him through his senses toward heavenly concerns.
The second tendency was the consolidation of absolute monarchies, accompanied by
a simultaneous crystallization of a prominent and powerful middle class, which
now came to play a role in art patronage. Baroque palaces were built on an
expanded and monumental scale in order to display the power and grandeur of the
centralized state, a phenomenon best displayed in the royal palace and gardens
at Versailles. Yet at the same time the development of a picture market for the
middle class and its taste for realism may be seen in the works of the brothers
Le Nain and Georges de La Tour in France and in the varied schools of
17th-century Dutch painting.
The third tendency was a new interest in nature and a general broadening of
mankind's intellectual horizons, spurred by developments in science and by
explorations of the globe. These simultaneously brought to man a new sense both
of his own insignificance (particularly abetted by the Copernican displacement
of the Earth from the centre of the universe) and of the unsuspected complexity
and infinitude of the natural world. The development of 17th-century landscape
painting, in which man is frequently portrayed as a minute figure in a vast
natural setting, is indicative of this changing awareness of the human
condition.
The arts present an unusual diversity in the Baroque period, chiefly because
currents of naturalism and classicism coexisted and intermingled with the
typical Baroque style. Indeed, Annibale Carracci and Caravaggio, the two Italian
painters who decisively broke with Mannerism in the 1690s and thus helped usher
in the Baroque style, painted, respectively, in classicistic and realist modes.
A specifically Baroque style of painting arose in Rome in the 1620s and
culminated in the monumental painted ceilings and other church decorations of
Pietro da Cortona, Guido Reni, Il Guercino, Domenichino, and countless lesser
artists. The greatest of the Baroque sculptor-architects was Gian Lorenzo
Bernini, who designed both the baldachin with spiral columns above the altar of
St. Peter's in Rome and the vast colonnade fronting that church. Baroque
architecture as developed by Bernini, Carlo Maderno, Francesco Borromini, and
Guarino Guarini emphasized massiveness and monumentality, movement, dramatic
spatial and lighting sequences, and a rich interior decoration using contrasting
surface textures, vivid colours, and luxurious materials to heighten the
structure's physical immediacy and evoke sensual delight.
Pronounced classicizing tendencies subdued the Baroque impulse in France, as is
evident in the serious, logical, orderly paintings of Nicolas Poussin and the
somewhat more sumptuous works of Charles Le Brun and the portraitists Hyacinthe
Rigaud and Nicolas de Largilliere. French architecture is even less recognizably
Baroque in its pronounced qualities of subtlety, elegance, and restraint.
Baroque tenets were enthusiastically adopted in staunchly Roman Catholic Spain,
however, particularly in architecture. The greatest of the Spanish builders,
José Benito Churriguera, shows most fully the Spanish interest in surface
textures and lush, albeit meaningless, detail. He attracted many followers, and
their adaptations of his style, labeled Churrigueresque, spread throughout
Spain's colonies in the Americas and elsewhere. Diego Velázquez and other
17th-century Spanish painters used a sombre but powerful naturalistic approach
that bore little direct relation to the mainstream of Baroque painting.
The Baroque made only limited inroads into northern Europe, notably in what is
now Belgium. That Spanish-ruled, largely Roman Catholic region's greatest master
was the painter Peter Paul Rubens, whose tempestuous diagonal compositions and
ample, full-blooded figures are the epitome of Baroque painting. The elegant
portraits of Anthony Van Dyck and the robust figurative works of Jacob Jordaens
emulated Rubens's example. Art in Holland was conditioned by the realist tastes
of its dominant middle-class patrons, and thus both the innumerable genre and
landscape painters of that country and such towering masters as Rembrandt and
Frans Hals remained independent of the Baroque style in important respects. The
Baroque did have a notable impact in England, however, particularly in the
churches and palaces designed, respectively, by Sir Christopher Wren and Sir
John Vanbrugh.
The last flowering of the Baroque was in largely Roman Catholic southern Germany
and Austria, where the native architects broke away from Italian building models
in the 1720s. In ornate churches, monasteries, and palaces designed by J.B.
Fischer von Erlach, J.L. von Hildebrandt, the Asam brothers, Balthasar Neumann,
and Dominikus Zimmermann, an extraordinarily rich but delicate style of stucco
decoration was used in combination with painted surfaces to evoke subtle
illusionistic effects.
One of the most dramatic turning points in the history of music occurred at the
beginning of the 17th century, with Italy again leading the way. While the stile
antico, the universal polyphonic style of the 16th century, continued, it was
henceforth reserved for sacred music, while the stile moderno, or nuove musiche—with
its emphasis on solo voice, polarity of the melody and the bass line, and
interest in expressive harmony—developed for secular usage. The expanded
vocabulary allowed for a clearer distinction between sacred and secular music as
well as between vocal and instrumental idioms, and national differences became
more pronounced. The Baroque period in music, as in other arts, therefore, was
one of stylistic diversity. The opera, oratorio, and cantata were the most
important new vocal forms, while the sonata, concerto, and overture were created
for instrumental music. Claudio Monteverdi was the first great composer of the
“new music.” He was followed in Italy by Alessandro Scarlatti and Giovanni
Pergolesi. The instrumental tradition in Italy found its great Baroque composers
in Arcangelo Corelli, Antonio Vivaldi, and Giuseppe Tartini. Jean-Baptiste Lully,
a major composer of opera, and Jean Philippe Rameau were the masters of Baroque
music in France. In England the total theatrical experience of the Stuart
masques was followed by the achievements in vocal music of the German-born,
Italian-trained George Frideric Handel, while his countryman Johann Sebastian
Bach developed Baroque sacred music in Germany. Other notable German Baroque
composers include Heinrich Schütz, Dietrich Buxtehude, and Georg Philipp
Telemann.
The literature that may specifically be called Baroque may be seen most
characteristically in the writings of Giambattista Marino in Italy, Luis de
Gongora in Spain, and Martin Opitz in Germany. English Metaphysical poetry, most
notably much of John Donne's, is allied with Baroque literature. The Baroque
period ended in the 18th century with a transition of its characteristic style
into the lighter, less dramatic, more overtly decorative Rococo style.
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Bartolomeo Manfredi
The Guard Room
Oil on canvas, 169 x 239 cm
Gemaldegalerie, Dresden
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Baroque and Rococo
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Baroque
Baroque is a term loosely applied to European art from the end of
the 16th century to the early 18th century, with the latter part of
this period falling under the alternative stylistic designation of
Late Baroque. The painting of the Baroque period is so varied that
no single set of stylistic criteria can be applied to it. This is
partly because the painting of Roman Catholic countries such as
Italy or Spain differed both in its intent and in its sources of
patronage from that of Protestant countries such as Holland or
Britain, and it is partly because currents of classicism and
naturalism coexisted with and sometimes even predominated over what
is more narrowly defined as the High Baroque style.
The Baroque style in Italy and Spain had its origins in the
lastdecades of the 16th century when the refined, courtly, and
idiosyncratic style of Mannerist painting had ceased to be an
effective means of artistic expression. Indeed, Mannerism's
inadequacy as a vehicle for religious art was being increasingly
felt in artistic circles as early as the middle of that century. To
counter the inroads made by the Reformation, the Roman Catholic
Church after the Council of Trent (1545–63) adopted an overtly
propagandistic stance in which painting and the other arts were
intended to serve as a means of extending and stimulating the
public's faith in the church and its doctrines. The church thus
adopted a conscious artistic program, the products of which would
make an overtly emotional and sensory appeal to the faithful. The
Baroque style of painting that evolved from this program was
paradoxically both sensuous and spiritual; while naturalistic
treatment rendered the painted religious image more readily
comprehensible to the average churchgoer, dramatic and illusory
effects were used to stimulate piety and devotion. This appeal to
the senses manifested itself in a style that above all emphasized
movement and emotion. The stable, pyramidal compositionsand the
clear, well-defined pictorial space that were characteristic of
Renaissance paintings gave way in the Baroque to complex
compositions surging along diagonal lines. The Baroque vision of the
world is basically dynamic and dramatic; throngs of figures
possessing a superabundant vitality energize the painted scene by
meansof their expressive gestures and movements. These figures are
depicted with the utmost vividness and richness through the use of
rich colours, dramatic effects of light and shade, and lavish use of
highlights. The ceilings of Baroque churches thus dissolved in
painted scenes that presented convincing views of the saints and
angels to the observer and directed him through his senses to
heavenly concerns.
Early and High Baroque in Italy
By the last decades of the 16th century the Mannerist style had
ceased to be an effective means of expression. Indeed, in Florence a
conscious reassessment of High Renaissance painting had taken place
as early as mid-century. This tendency gathered momentum in the last
decades of the century, particularly with the Bolognese painters
Lodovico Carracci and his cousin Annibale. The Roman Catholic
Church's reaction to the Reformation, known as the
Counter-Reformation, reaffirmed the old medieval concept of art as
the servant of the church, adding specific demands for simplicity,
intelligibility, realism, and an emotional stimulus to piety. For
the zealots of the Counter-Reformation, works of art had value only
as propaganda material, the subject matter being all important;and
in Rome there was as a result a sharp decline in artistic quality.
Under austere Counter-Reformation popes such as Paul IV and Pius V,
most official patronage favoured the dry and prosaic; this late
16th-century style is best called Counter-Reformation Realist. A
similar process took place in Florence, where a strong movement away
from Mannerist conventions is seen in the paintings of Ludovico
Cigoli, and in Milan, where the dominant artistic personalities were
the painters Giovanni Crespi (known as Il Cerano) and Pier Francesco
Mazzucchelli, known as Il Morazzone.
In contrast, late 16th-century Venetian painting was as little
influenced by the Counter-Reformation as it had been by Mannerism;
and the workshops of Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, and Palma Giovane
remained active until the plague of 1629–30.
Michelangelo Merisi, better known by the name of his birthplace,
Caravaggio, a small town near Milan, was active in Romeby about
1595. His earliest paintings are conspicuous for the almost
enamel-like brilliance of the colours, the strong chiaroscuro called
Tenebrism, and the extraordinary virtuosity with which all the
details are rendered. But this harsh realism was replaced by a much
more powerful mature style in his paintings for San Luigi dei
Francesi, Rome, begun in 1597, and Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome,
executed about 1601. His selection of plebeian models for the most
important characters in his religious pictures caused great
controversy, but the utter sincerity of the figures and the
intensity of dramatic feeling are characteristic of the Baroque (see
photograph). Although Caravaggio had no direct pupils, “Caravaggism”
was the dominant new force in Rome during the first decade of the
17th century and subsequently had enormous influence outside Italy.
Parallel with Caravaggio's was the activity of Annibale Carracci in
Rome. During Annibale's years in Bologna, his brother and cousin had
joined with him in pioneering a synthesis of the traditionally
opposed Renaissance conceptsof disegno (“drawing”) and colore (“colour”).
In 1595 Annibale took to Rome his mature style, in which the
plasticity of the central Italian tradition is wedded to the
Venetian colour tradition. The decoration of the vault of the
gallery in the Palazzo Farnese, Rome (1597–1604), marks notonly the
high point in Annibale's career but also the beginning of the long
series of Baroque ceiling decorations. The third important painter
active in Rome during the first decade of the 17th century was the
Low Countries' painter Peter Paul Rubens, who became court painter
to the duke of Mantua in 1600. He came under the influence of
Raphael andTitian, as well as that of Caravaggio, during a journey
to Spain in 1603. The rich colours and strong dramatic chiaroscuro
of his altarpieces for Santa Maria in Vallicella (New Church), Rome
(1606–07), show how much he contributed to the evolution of Italian
Baroque painting.
Just as the first decade tended to be dominated by the “Caravaggist”
painters, the second decade in Rome was the heyday of the Bolognese
classicist painters headed by Guido Reni, Domenichino, and Francesco
Albani, all of whom had been pupils of the Carracci. The crucial
developments that brought the High Baroque into being took place in
the third decade.
The little church of Santa Bibiana in Rome harbours three of the key
works that ushered in the High Baroque, all executedin 1624–26: Gian
Lorenzo Bernini's facade and the marble figure of Santa Bibiana
herself, over the altar, and Pietro da Cortona's series of frescoes
of Bibiana's life, painted on the side wall of the nave. The rich
exuberance of the compositions is a prelude to the gigantic
“Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power,” which Pietro
was to paint on the vault of the Great Hall of the Palazzo Barberini,
Rome (1633–39). Pietro continued with this style of monumental
painting for the remainder of his career, and it became the model
for the international grand decorative style, which by the close of
the 17th century was to be found in Madrid, Paris,Vienna, and even
London.
Despite the continued triumph of High Baroque illusionism and
theatricality in the hands of Bernini and Pietro da Cortona from the
1630s, the forces of classicism, now headed by the painter Andrea
Sacchi and the Flemish-born sculptor François Duquesnoy, gained the
upper hand in the 1640s after the death of Pope Urban VIII; and for
the remainder of the century the Baroque-versus-classicism
controversy raged in the Academy in Rome. Sacchi and the
classicists, including the Frenchman Nicolas Poussin, held that a
scene must be depicted with a bare minimum of figures, each with its
own clearly defined role, and compared the composition to that of a
tragedy in literature. But Pietro and the Baroque camp held that the
right parallel was the epic poem in which subsidiary episodes were
added to give richness and variety to the whole, and hence the
decorative richness and profusion of their great fresco cycles. The
lyrical landscapes of the French painter Claude Lorrain are among
the finest expressions of High Baroque classicism; and they exerted
a continual influence throughout the 18th century, particularly in
Britain. Even in Rome itself, however, a number of painters of
importance succeeded in remaining more or less independent of the
two main camps. Sassoferrato (1609–85), for example, painted in a
deliberately archaizing manner, carefully reproducing Raphaelesque
formulas. The cryptically romantic movement,centred on Pier
Francesco Mola, Pietro Testa, and Salvator Rosa, was more important
and, together with the landscapes of Gaspard Dughet, was to have
considerable repercussions in the 18th century. Claude Lorrain also
adopted an independent stand, despite the highly developed
classicism of his poetic landscapes and seascapes, both of which,
but especially the latter, featured much splendid architecture.
The first two-thirds of the 17th century in Italy were dominated by
the Roman Baroque, and few painters elsewhere provided serious
competition. Reni, who returned to Bologna from Rome in 1614 and
remained there until his death in 1642, remained the strongest
artistic personality in that northern city but steadily abandoned
the strong plasticity of the Carracci for a much looser style with a
pale tonality. When Guercino, in turn, left Rome in 1623, he
returned to his native Cento, just north of Bologna, and not until
the death of Reni did he decide to settle in Bologna. Guercino's
early, fiery style slowly gave way to a much more calm and classical
outlook. Venetian painting took a new direction with the rich
colours and free brushwork of Domenico Fetti, who had worked in
Mantua before moving to Venice. In the hands of Johann Liss (or Jan
Lys) the groundwork was laid for the flowering of the Venetian
school of the 18th century. Venetian painting was also enriched by
the pale colours and flickering brushwork of Francesco Maffei from
Vicenza, whereas Bernardo Strozzi in 1630 carried to Venice the
saturated colours and vigorous painterly qualities of the Genoese
school. Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione also began his career in
Genoa and, after a period in Rome, worked from 1648 as court painter
in Mantua, where his brilliant free etchings and brush drawings
anticipated the Rococo. Naples, under its Spanish viceroys, remained
strongly influenced by the “Caravaggesque” tradition, particularly
in its best-known painter, a Spaniard, José de Ribera, who settled
there in 1616; the two most important native painters of the period,
Massimo Stanzione and Bernardo Cavallino, both died in the
disastrous plague of1654.
The most conspicuous aspect of the last phase of the High Baroque in
Italy is provided by the series of great fresco cycles, which were
executed in Rome during the last decades of the 17th century. Pietro
da Cortona's decoration of Santa Maria in Vallicella (1647–55) is
the link with the earlier phase of the Baroque, and his decoration
of the gallery of the Palazzo Pamphili in Rome (1651–54) points
theway to the decorations of Giovanni Coli and Filippo Gherardi in
the Palazzo Colonna (1675–78) and to those of the vault ofthe
gallery of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in Florence by Luca Giordano
(1682). Bernini's dynamic and theatrical schemes of decoration
reached their climax in the nave vault of the Gesù, Rome, painted in
1674–79 by Giovanni Battista Gaulli (Baciccia) under the direct
tutelage of Bernini.The fresco bursts out of its frame and creates
an overwhelming dramatic effect, with painted figures flooding over
the gilt stucco architectural decoration of the ceiling into the
space of the church. After this, the “Allegory of the Missionary
Work of the Jesuits,” painted by Andrea Pozzo on the nave vault of
San Ignazio, Rome (1691–94), seems almost an anticlimax, despite its
gigantic size and hypertrophic illusionism. Concurrently, the
Baroque-versus-classicism controversy took on a new lease on life,
with Gaulli heading the Baroque party in opposition to Sacchi's
pupil Carlo Maratta. By the last decades of the century the Baroque
was triumphant, and Maratta's Baroque classicism appears almost to
be a compromise between Pietro da Cortona and Sacchi. Maratta's
style, however, was to provide one of the most important sources for
the grand manner of the 18th century.
The essential characteristics of Late Baroque painting can be
identified first in the frescoes (1661) of Mattia Preti at the
Palazzo Pamphili, Valmontone (southeast of Rome); but the transition
between the High Baroque and the Late Baroque was a continuous
process and occurred at different dates with different artists. At
Valmontone the sense of dynamic structure characteristic of the High
Baroque frescoes of Pietro da Cortona yields to a more decorative
scheme in which the figures are scattered across the ceiling, giving
the painting an overall unity without identifying any specific area
as the focal point. Francesco Cozza used this scheme in the Pamphili
Library, Rome (1667–73), but among the finest Late Baroque
decorations of this type are ceilings painted in Genoa by Gregorio
de' Ferrari and Domenico Piola, while Giordano took the style to
Spain. The breakdown of any sense of direction in the composition is
paralleled by a loosening in the design of individual figures; once
again the unity is decorative rather than structural.
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Philippe de Champaigne
Triple Portrait of Richelieu
c. 1640
Oil on canvas, 58 x 72 cm
National Gallery, London
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Late Baroque and Rococo
Symptomatic of the changing status of the papacy during the 17th
century was the fact that the Thirty Years' War was ended by the
Peace of Westphalia in 1648 without papal representation in the
negotiations. Concurrently, the influence of Spain also declined.
The commencement of the personal rule of Louis XIV in 1661 marked
the beginning of a new era in French political power and artistic
influence, and the French Academy in Rome (founded 1666) rapidly
became a major factor in the evolution of Roman art. Late Baroque
classicism, as represented in Rome by Maratta, wasslowly transformed
into a sweet and elegant 18th-century style by his pupil Benedetto
Luti, while Francesco Trevisani abandoned the dramatic lighting of
his early paintings in favour of a glossy Rococo classicism. In the
early 18th century, Neapolitan painting under Francesco Solimena
developed from the brilliant synthesis of Pietro da Cortona's grand
manner and Venetian colour that Giordano had evolved in the late
17th century. The impact, also, of Preti is revealed by his
predilection for brownish shadows; but, compared to the pupils and
followers of Maratta in Rome, Solimena's style has a greater
strength and vitality despite the characteristic Late Baroque
fragmentation of the composition. He himself supplied large
paintings to patrons all over Europe, and his pupils occupied key
positions in the mid-18th century. Francesco de Mura took the style
to Turin, where he was court painter; Corrado Giaquinto, as court
painter in Madrid, turned increasingly toward the Rococo, and
Sebastiano Conca worked in Rome, falling increasingly victim to the
academic classicism dominant there. Anton Domenico Gabbiani
practiced a particularly frigid classicism in Florence, and it was
mainly in Bologna and Venice that real attempts were made to break
away from the confines of Late Baroque classicism.
Giuseppe Maria Crespi (called Lo Spagnolo, “The Spaniard”) turned
instead toward the early paintings of Guercino and evolved a deeply
sincere style, remarkable for its immediacyand sensibility. In
Bologna he had no real successors, but in Venice his work provided
one of the bases for the brilliant flowering of Venetian painting in
this period. While Giovanni Battista Piazzetta looked toward Crespi
for the basis of his expressive Tenebrist style, Sebastiano Ricci
took his cue from Giordano. The brilliant lightness and vivacity of
his frescoes in the Palazzo Marucelli-Fenzi, Florence, mark the
beginning of a great tradition of Venetian decorative painting, a
tradition that was to be carried all over Europe by Giovanni Antonio
Pellegrini, Giambattista Pittoni, and, aboveall, Giovanni Battista
Tiepolo. The vast majority of the finest decorations (e.g.,
frescoes) carried out by the Venetian 18th-century painters were
executed outside the Veneto (the region of which Venice is the
principal city), but the opposite is true of the flourishing
Venetian school of landscape, vedute (“views”), and genre painters.
Giovanni Antonio Canal, called Canaletto, developed the views of
Venice painted by Luca Carlevaris into an industry almost entirely
dependent upon foreign tourists; and his nephew Bernardo Bellotto
spent most of his career painting views in central Europe. Francesco
Guardi avoided the cool precision of the vedute of Canaletto and
Bellotto and instead evolved a much lighter and more lyrical Rococo
style with a strong sense of the picturesque and, occasionally, the
bizarre. In Rome a similar contrast existed between the brilliant,
precise vedute of Giovanni Paolo Pannini and the strange, almost
Romantic vedute in the form of etchings by Giovanni Battista
Piranesi.
Spain and Portugal
Two fundamental and ostensibly opposed streams permeate Spanish
painting and separate it from that of the rest of Europe—ecstatic
mysticism and sober rationalism. These qualities are essentially
Gothic in spirit, and the Iberian Peninsula is remarkable for the
tenacity with which Gothic ideas were retained and for the
relatively small influence of Renaissance humanist ideas. The early
17th-century still lifes of Sánchez Cotán, with their strong realism
and harsh, mysterious lighting, illustrate these contrasts
admirably, whereas Luis Tristán abandoned the Mannerist style of his
master El Greco for a much more careful realism. Francisco Pacheco,
the teacher and father-in-law of Velázquez, was a more important
writer than painter, and his writings laid down a theoretical basis
for the Spanish approach to spirituality through naturalism. The
early works of José de Ribera show a synthesis of Spanish realism
and ideas drawn from both Annibale Carracci and Caravaggio; the
fierce darkness of these paintings formed the basis of the Tenebrist
style that dominated Neapolitan painting during the first half of
the 17th century. Ribera himself, however, developed away from this
style in his later paintings and moved toward a softer and more even
handling of light. Francisco de Zurbarán was active mainly in
Seville until his removal to Madrid in 1658, and unlike Ribera he
painted throughout his life in the stark Spanish realist style. The
massive solemnity of his figures and simple, clear-cut compositions
are wholly in sympathy with the demands of the Counter-Reformation,
and only in Madrid did he come under substantial Italian influence.
Diego Velázquez was almost the exact contemporary of Zurbarán, but,
unlike Zurbarán, who spent almost all his life in the company of
monks in the provinces, Velázquez' time from 1623 was spent in the
Spanish court in Madrid. His earlybodegones (scenes of daily life
with strong elements of still life in the composition) were painted
in Seville and belong to the Spanish realist tradition, but at court
he saw the Titians collected by Philip II and also Rubens'
paintings. After he visited Italy in 1629–31, there was greater
freedom in the way he handled paint, more interest in colour, and
increased depth to his analyses of character.
The early works of the Seville painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
again follow the Spanish realist tradition in their cool detachment,
but in his late works his style softened and sweetened into a
sentimentality that proved immensely popular. Alonso Cano formed his
early painting style in Seville on the simple monumentality of
Zurbarán, but after he moved to Madrid in 1638 his paintings took on
a new elegance and gracefulness. (Cano was also active as a sculptor
and architect in Granada [1652–57]). Antonio del Castillo and Juan
de Valdés Leal were the most important painters active in Andalusia
after Murillo, and the works of both reveal that liveliness of
handling, with accents of strong local colour, which replaced the
sober realism popularin the first half of the century.
Portugal was ruled by Spain until 1640, when John IV was proclaimed
king. But economic conditions hampered serious patronage of the arts
until the reign of John V, when the most distinguished painter was
Francisco Vieira de Matos. Unfortunately, the Lisbon earthquake of
1755 destroyed much of the best art collected in the Portuguese
capital at that time.
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Peter Paul Rubens
The Rape of the Lecippidae
1618 |
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Low Countries
The Spanish Netherlands
The year 1566 saw the Netherlands in open revolt against Philip II
of Spain, and, inasmuch as this revolt had a Protestant as well as a
nationalist aspect, a wave of iconoclasm swept across the area. By
1600 the area had become divided into the Spanish-dominated,
Catholic, southern provinces—broadly modern Belgium—and the
independent, predominantly Calvinist United Provinces of the
north—broadly the modern Netherlands, or colloquially Holland; the
boundary between the two remained fluid, however. In the southern
provinces throughout the 16th to 18th centuries Brussels, headed by
viceroys, remained the centre of court patronage, while Antwerp,
with its great patrician families, was the commercial centre.
Painting in the southern provinces before 1610 was intensely
conservative; the Mannerist conventions were never accepted as fully
as in the north. Instead, Italianate ideas were joined with the late
Gothic tradition.
Peter Paul Rubens arrived back in Antwerp from Italy late in 1608.
In the following year he was appointed court painter to the archduke
Albert and the archduchess Isabella, with special permission to
reside in Antwerp, to help repair damage caused by the iconoclasm of
1566. The necessary ingredients were present for a brilliant
flowering of the Baroque art that Rubens had evolved in Italy, and
his studio became an artistic centre not only for the Netherlands
but for England, Spain, and central Europe as well. The
monumentality of Rubens' forms, with their impulsive drawing,
restless movement, and dramatic lighting, provided the touchstone
for the High Baroque in the Catholic areas of northern Europe. By
Rubens' death, Philip IV of Spain had acquired more than 130
paintings by him. A diplomatic visit to England (where he found so
much favour with Charles I that the latter knighted him) in 1630 had
resulted in the commission to decorate the ceiling of the Banqueting
Hall in Whitehall, one of the most monumental commissions of Rubens'
last period.
Anthony Van Dyck, a pupil and assistant of Rubens, was a much less
forceful personality than his master; and this is reflected in the
quieter, more introspective note characteristic of his paintings.
His greater sympathy for the sitter made him the most successful
portrait painter of his time. Between 1625/26 and 1632 he was
active, mainly as a portrait painter, in the entourage of Rubens,
but the last years of his life (1632–41) were spent in England as
court painter to Charles I, from whom he, too, received a
knighthood. The elegant, relaxed, aristocratic portrait style he
introduced was outstandingly successful and rendered obsolete the
stiff portraits of Daniel Mytens and the straightforward,
unpretentious portraits of Cornelius Johnson, two other painters of
Low Countries origin active in England at this time. Van Dyck's
death coincided with the outbreak of the Civil War in England; and
the portraitists William Dobson and Robert Walker, in the troubled
years 1641–60 the only painters of note active in England, reveal a
considerable debt to him. Jacob Jordaens also worked as an assistant
in Rubens' workshop in Antwerp and took it over after his death. His
handling of the Rubensian idiom moved increasingly away from the
control of Rubens himself towarda much more boisterous and vulgar
style with an emphasis on large genre scenes populated with rough
plebeian types.
The remaining members of Rubens' studio, such as Cornelis de Vos and
Caspar de Crayer, were much weaker artistic personalities, and one
of the few painters of genius relatively independent of Rubens was
Adriaen Brouwer, who painted in the tradition of Pieter Bruegel the
Elder. Best known for his low-life pictures, Brouwer also painted
very expressive landscapes; his work is characterized by the
sensitive use of a heavily loaded brush. In comparison, David
Teniers the Younger was a minor master, and with him the influence
of Dutch painting became increasingly strong. The impact of Rubens'
landscape style is felt in the paintingsof Jan Wildens and Lucas van
Uden, while in contrast Jan Brueghel the Younger turned the making
of copies and pastiches of his father's works into something
approaching an industry. Still-life and animal painting reached new
heights in the works of Frans Snyders as a result of the influence
of Rubens, and in a much quieter vein Snyders' pupil Jan Fyt
continued the tradition, which was to last into the 18th century.
Jan Davidsz de Heem was also active in Holland, but he is important
as one of the creators of the elaborate, fully developed Baroque
still life, and as such he had a host of followers and imitators.
The United Provinces
Dutch painting of the 17th century shares roots with that of the
Spanish Netherlands. Holland, however, was independent, rapidly
prospering, and almost entirely Protestant. In the last decades of
the 16th century the great port of Haarlem was the most active
artistic centre, and the remarkable flowering of Mannerist painting
there, as exemplified by Cornelis van Haarlem and Hendrik Goltzius,
is without a parallel south of the border. In the later pictures of
Abraham Bloemaert, Mannerism gave way to the much more
straightforward realist style characteristic of the earliest phase
of Dutch 17th-century painting. The influence of the figure
paintings of Adam Elsheimer on this generation of artists was
considerable; his particularly Italianate style, with sharply
delineated forms painted in rich, deep colours and with a pronounced
element of fantasy, is reflected by the early paintings of Leonard
Bramer and, even more importantly, Pieter Lastman, the master of
Rembrandt. Elsheimer's poetic little landscapes were also extremely
important for the group of Dutch artists active in Rome about1620.
This group was headed by Cornelis van Poelenburgh and Bartolomeus
Breenbergh, and back home it provided an additional source of
Italian influence. The most striking influence of Italy was
provided, however, by the Dutch followers of Caravaggio, who had
seized eagerly upon the harsh dramatic lighting and coarse plebeian
types they had seen in his paintings during their stays in Italy and
brought the style to the north to form the so-called Utrecht school.
Gerrit van Honthorst, Hendrik Terbrugghen, and Dirck van Baburen
were leading champions of this style, but after 1628Honthorst turned
away in the direction of Van Dyck.
Frans Hals was born in Antwerp, but almost all of his life was spent
in Haarlem, where he evolved his characteristic bravura style of
portraiture. The stiff solemnity of earlier Dutch portraits gave way
to the capture of fleeting changes of expression and superb textural
effects, though Hals neversucceeded in attaining the degree of
psychological penetration characteristic of the portraits painted by
Rembrandt.
The early works of Rembrandt van Rijn, painted in Leiden (1625–31),
show a progressive lessening of the influence of Lastman, and
Rembrandt, together with his associate Jan Lievens, evolved an
increasingly Baroque style, with strong contrasts of light and shade
derived from the “Caravaggists.” After he moved to Amsterdam in
1631, thesetendencies developed to an opulent and highly Baroque
climax in the late 1630s. Following the death of his first wife,
Saskia, in 1642, difficult times and the changing tastes of art
collectors culminated in his bankruptcy in 1656. In his later works
the dramatic Baroque panache gives way to a deep introspection and
sympathy for his subjects, and his series ofabout 60 self-portraits
reveals this process in intimate detail. Parallel to his development
as a painter is that of his style as an etcher; Rembrandt is
considered by many to be the greatest etcher of all time (see
printmaking: Printmaking in the 17th century: European etching: The
Netherlands). During the years of his financial success, Rembrandt
had thelargest and most successful painting and printmaking studio
in Holland.
The increasing use at this time of portable easel paintings
asdomestic ornaments, many of them made for sale by dealers rather
than on commission by the consumer, is related to theextraordinary
range of subjects in which Dutch painters specialized. Nevertheless,
certain basic changes in style andtaste occurred during the course
of the 17th century, and, although many painters long persisted in
outdated styles, the same fundamental changes can be traced in the
various specialities. The earliest phase of simple realism held sway
until the early 1620s; and the characteristic bright local colours,
lack of spatial unity, sudden transition between different planes,
and tendency toward high viewpoints are tobe found in the genre
paintings of Willem Buytewech, flower pieces of Jacob II de Gheyn
and Roelant Savery, and marine paintings of Hendrick Cronelisz Vroom
and Adam Willaerts. This gave way to a much more limited palette in
the early 1620s when, by reducing the strength and range of the
colours, an atmospheric unity was obtained. In landscapes and marine
paintings the horizon tended to drop, and a continuous and coherent
recession into depth was attained, particularly in the paintings of
Esaias van de Velde, Jan van Goyen, Hercules Seghers, and Jan
Porcellis. The same change is seen in still lifes by Pieter Claesz
and Willem Claesz Heda, in which the colours are almost monochrome.
Atmospheric unity having been mastered, the change to the heroic
classical phase of the middle of the 17th century was gradual, but
there was a tendency toward ever-increasingly dramatic Baroque
contrasts, be they the leaden skies or great oaks of Jacob van
Ruisdael, the vast panoramas of Philips de Koninck, the luminous
pastures of Aelbert Cuyp, or the heavy gray seas of Simon de Vlieger.
The monumentalityof these scenes is paralleled by the rich splendour
of the stilllifes of Jan Davidsz de Heem, Abraham van Beyeren, and
Willem Kalff and the classical calm and simplicity of the scenes by
Johannes Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch painted in Delft. In the
landscapes of Meindert Hobbema, Claes Berchem, and Adam Pijnacker
the majesty of Jacob van Ruisdael's landscapes gives way to a much
lighter, more picturesque style. Similarly, the vigorous social
realism of Adriaen van Ostade yields to a much lighter and more
frivolous treatment in the paintings of his younger brother Isack
and Jan Steen and the elegant hunting scenes of PhilipsWouwerman.
With the French invasion of 1672 and the subsequent Dutch economic
collapse, the demand for paintings dropped heavily, and in the last
decades of the 17th century many Dutch painters either stopped
painting or, like the van de Veldes Willem I and Willem II, left the
country to work in England or Germany. Late 17th- and 18th-century
taste tended toward the almost enamel-like brilliancy and
intricatedetail of the still lifes by Rachel Ruysch and Jan van
Huysum;the same slightly dated flavour is characteristic of the
marine paintings of Ludolf Backhuysen and of the hard figuresubjects
of Willem van Mieris and Adriaan van der Werff.
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France
French-speaking painters continued the Mannerist conventions even
later than did those at Haarlem, and at Nancy (capital of the
independent duchy of Lorraine before 1633 and again from 1697 to
1766) a group of artists around Jacques Bellange and Jacques Callot
was responsible for the last great flowering of the Mannerist style
in Europe. By comparison, painting in Paris during the first decades
of the 17th century was relatively insignificant, with the exception
of that of Claude Vignon, who exchanged his Mannerist training for a
style based on Elsheimer and to a lesser extent Lastman, and who in
the 1620s revealed a remarkable knowledge of the earliest paintings
of Rembrandt. The returnof Simon Vouet to Paris, however, marked the
arrival of the Baroque in France. The earliest paintings from his
stay in Rome are strikingly vigorous essays in the “Caravaggesque”
style, but by 1620 he was painting in an eclectic, classicizing
style based on the early Baroque painters active there, including
Giovanni Lanfranco and Guido Reni. This style he brought back to
France, enjoying until his death an immense success in Paris as a
decorator and painter of large-scale altarpieces; even the return of
Nicolas Poussin failed to shake his position. Poussin's activity in
Paris is of relatively little importance compared with the remainder
of his career in Rome, but the large number of works commissioned by
French patrons then and subsequently was an important factor in the
formation of theFrench predilection for classicism.
The influence of the highly Baroque paintings depicting the life of
Marie de Médicis that Rubens had executed for the Luxembourg Palace
in Paris was small. But Philippe de Campaigne evolved a grave and
sober Baroque style that had its roots in the paintings of Rubens
and Van Dyck rather than in Italy. Clear lighting and cool colours
with an austere naturalism provided an alternative to the
intellectual and archaeological classicism of Poussin. Georges de La
Tour, a painter who had affinities with the Dutch “Caravaggists” of
Utrecht, was active in Lorraine; but although he exploited the
Caravaggist system of lighting, his figures became increasingly
detached and simplified, leading to an uncomfortable hardness. The
paintings of the Le Nain brothers—Antoine, Louis, and Mathieu—again
look to Dutch painting for their inspiration. Eustache Le Sueur
began painting under the influence of Vouet, but after Poussin's
brief return to Paris (1640–42) he turned to a much more rigorous
classical style influenced by Raphael's tapestry designs, whereas
Sébastien Bourdon was capable of paintingin almost any current style
on request.
In the reorganization of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture in
1648, Charles Le Brun was appointed director and given the position
of virtual dictator of the arts in France. An imaginative painter
and designer, Le Brun was also a brilliant organizer, and the
creation of the Louis XIV style, as exemplified by the Palace of
Versailles, was above all due to him. The particular Baroque style
that emerged was based on the Roman High Baroque but was purged of
all theatricality and illusionism and modified to conform to the
classical canons of French taste; this compromise solution struck
the keynote for the frescoes of Le Brun and Pierre Mignard. The more
full-blooded Baroque style of Pierre Pugetreceived little official
recognition, and his attempts to obtainmajor commissions at
Versailles were thwarted, probably because of his difficult nature.
During the last decades of thecentury, the full Baroque style took
on a new lease on life, and the decorative paintings of Charles de
La Fosse and Antoine Coypel clearly reveal the influence of Rubens.
Even more Baroque are formal portraits by Hyacinthe Rigaud and
Nicolas de Largillière, in which the strong contrapposto (twisting
of the figure so that one half is in opposition to the other), rich
settings, and floating masses of drapery reflect the pomp and
swagger of this era—which, significantly, cameto be known as the
Grande Époque.
The great formal portraits of Largillière and Rigaud are entirely
Baroque in their approach, but in the late informal portraits of
these masters a new atmosphere prevails. This atmosphere goes by the
name of Rococo. The turn of the century marks the victory of Rubens'
influence over the severe classicism of Poussin. The evolution of
the Rococo style of decoration has been traced from its emergence at
the beginning of the 18th century, and it must be emphasized that the
Rococo is fundamentally a decorative style. It made relatively
little impact on religious painting in France, and painters such as
Pierre Subleyras continued to work in a Baroque idiom until the
arrival of Neoclassicism in the second half of the century. It took
the genius of Antoine Watteau to put together all the ideas current
in Paris and to create the new style of painting. Rubens (in
particular his oil sketches), the brush drawings and etchings of
Castiglione, the naturalism of the Dutch painters, and the fantasy
of the French artist Claude Gillot all provided important source
material for early Rococo painting. The delicate sketchlike
technique and elegant figures of Watteau's wistful fantasies, called
fetes galantes , provided the models for the paintings of Jean-Baptiste
Pater and Nicolas Lancret, both of whom conveyed a delicately veiled
eroticism. Eroticism was more explicit in the sensuous nudes, both
mythological and pastoral, of François Boucher. Another painter with
whom amorous dalliance is a hallmark was Jean-Honoré Fragonard, in
whose soft landscapes flirtation and even seduction are conducted
with gallantry. Such paintings formed an intimate part of the
decoration of Rococo interiors, and more than any earlier secular
paintings they were intended as a kind of two-dimensional furniture.
The furniture role also applies to the paintings of dead game and
live dogs by François Desportes and Jean-Baptiste Oudry. But in
thestill lifes and tranquil scenes of domestic life painted by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon
Chardin there is a sobriety of colour and composition (although
great richness in the handling), an often relatively homely subject
matter, and a concern to order the mind rather than dazzle the eye
(see photograph). Some of Chardin's subjects—the labours of the
servant class, the care of children—were shared by Jean-Baptiste
Greuze, who was, however, more interested in narrative and
sentiment. Unlike Dutch painters of lower-class life, Greuze endowed
his peasants with the sensibility of their social superiors. The
edifying moral sympathy he intended to inculcate was, however, often
subverted by a sly erotic interest he could not resist giving
expression to.
Despite his great success, Greuze was judged to have failed in his
attempt at painting heroic narrative from ancient history. But then
it is true that the “higher” class of painting was generally less
successfully practiced in France than were the “lower” genres in the
18th century. The mythologies and altarpieces of the Coypel family,
Jean-François de Troy, or Jean-Marc Nattier may have been
underestimated, but their names are not as familiar as thoseof
still-life and genre painters such as Watteau or Chardin or even
those of such accomplished painters of capricious ruin pieces or of
landscapes and seascapes as Hubert Robert and Claude-Joseph Vernet.
The middle decades of the 18th century saw more accomplished
portrait painters flourishing in France than perhaps ever before in
any country. Yet it is the informal, the convivial, and the intimate
that are associated with the portraiture of Jacques-André-Joseph
Aved, François-Hubert Drouais, Louis Tocqué, Louis-Michel Van Loo,
or Étienne Aubry. The heroic was seldom attempted and never
achieved.
Britain
The 17th century
English painting during the 17th century had been dominated by a
series of foreign-born practitioners, mostly portraitists (e.g.,
Rubens and Van Dyck), even before the Civil War. Sir Peter Lely and
Sir Godfrey Kneller continued this trend after the Restoration. The
vast majority of the painting executed by native artists remained
thoroughly provincial. Lely beganhis activity in England during the
Civil War, probably in 1641,but his portraits of the members of the
court of Charles II set the pattern for English portraiture of the
second half of the 17th century. British patrons in the 18th century
sometimes collected paintings on religious or mythical themes by
foreign artists, but at home they rarely commissioned anything other
than portraits, landscapes, and marine paintings, although there was
in the early 18th century a vogue for grand allegorical decorations
in aristocratic houses. The Protestant church, however, did little
to encourage painting. In fact, the preponderance of portraits isthe
most distinctive characteristic of old British collections. Gerard
Soest, Jacob Huysmans, and Willem Wissing were also active in
England as portrait painters close in style to Lely, whereas Jan
Siberechts and Robert Streeter painted “portraits” of English
country houses. The most distinguished painters to settle in England
during this period were the van de Veldes, from whom the tradition
of British marine painting descends, headed by Peter Monamy and
Samuel Scott.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688 was followed by a brief flowering of
decorative painting under Sir James Thornhill, which was the closest
that Britain ever approached to the developed Baroque style of the
Continent. This process was in part due to the influx, following the
end of the War of the Spanish Succession, of Italian painters,
including the Venetians Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini and Jacopo
Amigoni, and French ones, such as Charles de La Fosse. The
German-born Kneller succeeded Lely as court portrait painter, but,
although his portraits often have a certain liveliness, his rather
heavy use of studio assistants resulted in a tendency to monotony.
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Britain
The 18th century
Thornhill's son-in-law William Hogarth was, despite his chauvinism
and virulently anti-French sentiments, heavily influenced by the
continental Rococo style. Early in his career he succeeded in
breaking away from the straitjacket of portraiture, and his
moralizing paintings are superb evocations of life in the England of
George I and George II. His rich, creamy paint handling and
brilliant characterizationof textures have a freshness and vitality
unequaled in the work of any of his contemporaries. He invented a
new form of secular narrative painting that imparts a moral. These
paintings were often tragicomedies, although dependent upon no
texts, and Hogarth's series of such works were always intended to be
engraved for a large public as well as seen in a private picture
gallery (just as plays were intended to be performed as well as
read).
Despite Hogarth's considerable knowledge of and borrowings from
continental old masters, he remained in the last analysis English
through and through. This, however, was not the case with all the
next generation of painters; and the Scottish-born Allan Ramsay
studied in Rome and Naples in 1736–38 before settling in London in
1739. Until the return of Joshua Reynolds from Italy in 1752, Ramsay
held undisputed sway as the most successful portrait painter in
London; and to him must be given the credit for the initial marriage
of the Italian “grand style” to English portraiture. Ramsay visited
Italy again in 1755–57, and on his return his portraits took on a
new delicacy and elegance and a silvery tonality. Reynolds possessed
great ambitions and a more profound acquaintance with the old
masters than any of his contemporaries. His colouring and handling
can be compared with Rembrandt, Rubens, and Veronese, and his poses
are indebted to the sculpture of antiquity and to Michelangelo. The
Discourses that he delivered to the Royal Academy (founded in 1768
with Reynolds as its first president) are the most impressive
statement in English of the central ideas of European art theory
from the time of Leon Battista Alberti's treatise. Reynolds' own
painting gained a genuine heroic power and elevated grace from his
frustrated ambition to be a history painter, although for that very
reason he occasionally tumbled into bathos.
The third major British painter of the period to study in Italy was
a Welshman, Richard Wilson, who worked there from 1750 to about 1757
before settling in London. His landscape style was formed on Claude,
Gaspard Dughet, and Cuyp; but the clear golden lighting of his
Italian landscapes carries the conviction of an artist saturated
with the Mediterranean tradition. A cooler clarity and classical
simplicity pervade his northern landscapes; and, despite the uneven
quality of his work, Wilson was the first British painter to lift
the pure landscape above mere decorative painting and topography.
Thomas Gainsborough was in every way the antithesis to Reynolds.
Trained entirely in England, he had no wish to visit Italy. Instead
of the “grand style,” his tastes in portraiture lay in the delicate
flickering brushwork and evanescent qualities of the Rococo. He
preferred landscape painting to portraiture, and the strong Dutch
influence in his earliest works later gave way to spontaneous
landscapes composed from models.
In the 1760s Francis Cotes was the most important fashionable London
portrait painter after Reynolds and Gainsborough, a position
succeeded to by George Romney, who, on returning to London from
Italy in 1775, took over Cotes's studio. Romney's portraits
deteriorated sadly in quality during the 1780s when the young Sir
Thomas Lawrence began to make his mark.
Throughout the 18th century, portraiture remained the most important
genre of British painting, despite the efforts of Reynolds and
Gainsborough in their “fancy pictures.” Even the taste for
large-scale scenes illustrating Shakespeare and other themes—which
were commissioned toward the end of the century from James Barry,
James Northcote, and Edward Penny, among others—never spread far
beyond a few patrons. Sporting and animal painting, however, took on
an entirely new dimension in the work of George Stubbs. Joseph
Wright of Derby was active outside London and, apart from his
romantic portraits, is important for his series of paintings of
scientific and industrial subjects with strong light effects. Johann
Zoffany was born in Germany but moved to Britain about 1761 and
became a founder-member of the Royal Academy, specializing in
elaborate group portraits and theatrical scenes.
During the second half of the 18th century the evolution of British
oil painting was to a great extent paralleled by the extraordinary
flowering in watercolours. The early topographical drawings of Paul
Sandby gave way to the delicate linear drawings of Francis Towne,
with their patches of colour resembling maps, and, at the close of
the century, to the atmospheric unity of the landscapes of John
Robert Cozens.
Colonial Americas
North America
Painting in the Dutch and English colonies of North America
reflected generally the portrait styles of the mother countries,
though with a note of provinciality. In the late 17thand early 18th
centuries the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam(New York) had painters
whose names today are forgotten. Their work lives on, however, and
is signified by names such as the Master of the De Peyster Boy.
Gustavus Hesselius, Swedish born, was painting in Maryland, and
Jeremiah Theus, a Swiss, was at work in South Carolina. Peter Pelham
and John Smibert arrived from England and in the second quarter of
the 18th century were painting portraits in Boston, Mass. These two
self-taught itinerant artists were succeeded by John Wollaston and
Joseph Blackburn. Robert Feke, a native American painter, realized
his forms more solidly and with greater originality than his
predecessors had. Another native American, John Singleton Copley,
worked in Boston until 1774, when he went to live permanently in
England, and was responsible for the finest painting produced in the
American colonies. Benjamin West, another important native figure in
the history of American painting, was born in Pennsylvania but
settled in London in 1763, where he became the second president of
the Royal Academy. Although domiciled in London, he helped to mold
the styles of two generations of American painters.
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Colonial Americas
Central and South America
Baroque painting in Central and South America is basically an extension of that
of Spain and Portugal, and even the bestrarely rises to the general standard of
the European schools. Important paintings and sculptures tended to be imported
from Europe, and Zurbarán was particularly active in producing works for export,
while local productions were more or less heavily influenced by the Indian
traditions.
Central Europe
In central Europe the Mannerist tradition remained dominant until the Thirty
Years' War (1618–48), particularly in Bohemiaand Bavaria, where Italian
influence was perhaps strongest.
The Rubensian Baroque became dominant after mid-century, and here the lead was
taken by Silesia and Bohemia. MichaelWillmann, originally from Königsberg
(modern Kaliningrad) on the southeastern Baltic coast, developed a highly
charged, emotional Baroque style, based on Rubens, at Lubiąż (modern Dorf Leubus,
northwest of Wrocław) from 1661 to 1700 and at Prague after 1700. In Karel
Škréta Šotnovoský, Bohemia possessed a painter of European stature; his sombre
portraits and religious scenes are filled with a deeply serious mystical fervour.
The frescoes by Johann Michael Rottmayr in the castle of Vranov in Moravia
(1695) and in Breslau (now Wrocław; 1704–06) constitute a prelude to the great
development of Baroque painting in the Habsburg domains. There the vigorous and
extremely colourful frescoes are closely integrated with the architecture. The
vast majority of the best central European Baroque painting outside portraiture
is monumental in scale, and the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of
art”)—where painting, sculpture, and architecture are combined together into a
single, unified, and harmonious ensemble—is of overwhelming importance.
Painting in Austria flourished, and Franz Anton Maulbertsch is arguably the
greatest painter of the 18th century in central Europe. The vast majority of his
brilliant fresco cycles are located in relatively inaccessible areas of Bohemia,
Moravia,and northern Hungary. But the mystical intensity of his religious scenes
and the joyous abandon of his secular subjects form a triumphant closing chapter
to 18th-century central European painting. Maulbertsch's last frescoes at
Strahov, Prague (1794), reveal, nevertheless, the impact of the Neoclassicism
that descended in the last decades on all Austrian painters, including Troger's
pupil Martin Knoller. But Austrian monumental painting remained fully Baroque in
the hands of Daniel Gran, Paul Troger, and Bartholomäus Altomonte; and it was not
until the latter part of the century that the Rococo made its impact.
During the first four decades of the 18th century, Bohemian Baroque painting
developed almost independently of Vienna, where the Habsburg rulers of Bohemia
had their capital. The impetuous work of Jan Petr Brandl and the powerful
realism of the portraitist Jan Kupecký, who worked in Rome, Venice, Vienna, and
Nürnberg, always remained Bohemian in spirit. The frescoes of Wenzel Lorenz
Reiner, however, show more Italian influence. One of the few important Baroque
frescoes of the second half of the centuryis that by Jan Lucaš Kracker in St.
Nicholas, Malá Strana (“Lesser Quarter”), Prague. The influence of Bohemian
Baroque painting is frequently underestimated. Apart from Vienna and the
surrounding area, it was dominant in Silesia and strong later in the century in
Franconia.
After the death of Cosmas Damian Asam in 1739, Johann Baptist Zimmermann became
the most important fresco painter in the Munich area; his lyrical handling of
pale colours is typical of the Rococo period. Christian Wink continued to paint
in the same style until the close of the century. In Georg Desmarées the court
at Munich gained a painter in whose Rococo portraits there is more than a hint
of decadence.
The centre of south German painting had by the late 1730s shifted from Munich to
Augsburg in Swabia, where Johann Georg Bermüller became the director of the
Academy in 1730; but his frescoes, as well as those of Franz Joseph Spiegler and
Gottfried Bernhard Goetz, are perhaps more representative of the Late Baroque
than the Rococo. The frescoes of Matthäus Günther, who became director of the
Augsburg Academy in 1762, show a steady evolution from his early Baroque
compositions, through the much lighter asymmetrical Rococo compositions, to the
strongly sculptural quality of his late works, which reveal the onset of
Neoclassicism.
In Franconia and the middle Rhineland the most important painters were Johann
Zick and Carlo Carlone. Zick's frescoes at Würzburg (1749) had not been entirely
successful, and in 1750 he was supplanted by Tiepolo; but at Bruchsal he
produced one of the most brilliant series of Rococo frescoes in Germany (now
destroyed). His son Januarius began painting in the Rococo style but under the
influence of Anton Raphael Mengs produced some late frescoes that were strongly
classical.
The French tastes of Frederick I of Prussia at Berlin led him in 1710 to summon
Antoine Pesne to court, where Pesne continued for the remainder of his life to
paint in an entirely French Rococo style. The homely intimacy of the paintings
ofDaniel Chodowiecki, however, have a sensitivity and refinement more comparable
to Chardin's.
Saxony under Augustus III produced few painters of real importance except Mengs,
who rapidly turned from the Rococo to the Neoclassicism propounded by the
influential art historian and classical archaeologist Johann Winckelmann.
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Poland
King Władysław IV Vasa (reigned 1632–48) assembled an important collection of
Italian and Flemish Baroque paintings, but these promising developments were cut
short by the destruction of the Swedish Wars in the middle of the 17th century.
Under John III Sobieski (reigned 1674–96), a cultivated man, there was a
considerable revival, and, although two of the painters active in Poland—Claude
Callot and Michelangelo Palloni—were foreign-born and foreign-trained, native
talent flowered with the work of Jerzy Eleuter Szymonowicz-Siemiginowski and Jan
Tretko. In 1697 the crowns of Poland and Saxony were united under Augustus II,
and he and his son Augustus III ruled over Polanduntil 1763. During this period,
Polish painting formed part of the Saxon tradition, but during the reign of the
last king of Poland, Stanisław II August Poniatowski (reigned 1764–95), Warsaw
quickly became a centre of European importance. Although inclined to
Neoclassicism in architecture, Stanisław's taste in painting was more
conservative. Accordingly it is the late Rococo portraits of Marcello
Bacciarelli that are particularly important. A nephew and pupil of Canaletto,
Bernardo Bellotto, settled in Warsaw in 1767 and executed for Stanisław the
great series of 26 viewsof the city that were intended to hang in the Royal
Castle.
Peter Cannon-Brookes
Russia
The Baroque in Russia was imported from western Europe and outside court circles
made little impact. Indeed the traditional production of icons for the Orthodox
church by artists of the Novgorod and Moscow schools continued throughout the
Baroque period. Nevertheless the foundation of St. Petersburg (1703) by Peter I
the Great marked the beginning of the substitution of Western influence for
Byzantine, an important change. During Peter's reign foreign painters began to
go to Russia in increasing numbers; conversely, groups of young Russians were
sent to Italy, France, Holland, and England to study painting. Western influence
determined the character of Russian painting for more than two centuries.
The art of Peter's age shows almost no trace of Byzantine influence. Only in
iconography did the old style persist for some time. Early in the 18th century,
religious painting began to give way to secular painting, and the church
prohibition of sculpture became ineffective. Dmitry Levitsky stands out as the
only important Russian painter of the 18th century to work in the Western style.
Further westernizing occurred under the empress Elizabeth (reigned 1741–62), who
had French tastes. A great number of vast and luxurious Rococo-style palaces
were built, and painting was primarily concerned with their interior
decoration—ceilings and walls. The work was carried on chiefly by Italians and
Frenchmen.
In 1757 the Academy of Fine Arts was founded in St. Petersburg, and foreign
artists—mostly French—were invited to direct the new school. These trained some
remarkable native portraitists, such as Ivan Argunov, Anton Losenko, and Fyodor
Rokotov. Their works reflected the ceremonial character of Elizabeth's tastes
and showed little evidence of native Russian sensibility.
Arthur Voyce
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Scandinavia
In the 17th century, Scandinavian painting derived from traditions of the Low
Countries and northern Germany. The works of art carried off as loot from Prague
by Swedish soldiers during the Thirty Years' War might conceivably havebroadened
the outlook of Swedes at home, but the best of them were taken to Rome by Queen
Christina when she abdicated in 1654. A generation later, under the influence of
the fashionable Venetian woman pastelist Rosalba Carriera, a school of Rococo
portraitists flourished in Scandinavia. One such portraitist was Carl Gustav
Pilo, who, though trained in Stockholm, executed many frankly Venetian portraits
during his years as court painter in Copenhagen. Another was Lorentz Pasch the
Younger, who trained under Pilo in Copenhagen, although he subsequently worked
mainly in Sweden. Other painters of Swedish origin were Alexander Roslin, who
worked throughout Europe, and Georg Desmarées, who settled in Bavaria. The
Scandinavian Rococo has a distinctive flavour that is also detectable in the work
of two important miniaturists of the period, Niclas Lafrensen and Cornelius
Höyer. At the close of the century the paintings of Jens Juel in Denmark bridge
the transition from Rococo to Neoclassicism.
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Carel Fabritius
View of the City of Delft
1652
Oil on canvas, 15,4 x 31,6 cm
National Gallery, London
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