Baroque painting

New version of Baroque but divided into sections and with images.

1. BAROQUE PAINTING
Revision

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

6. 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

8. 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

10. 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

11. Van Dick
Jordaens

12. 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

14. 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

15. Hals
Vermeer

16. 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

17. Poussin
La Tour
Le Nain

18. 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

20. 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)

21. 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)

22. 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

27. 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

29. 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

30. 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

31. Watteau
Fragonard
Chardin

32. 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

33. Hogart
Gainsborough

34. 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

35. Tiepolo
Canaletto