19

The Baroque Style

in Western Europe
Religion, Politics, and Science
Baroque Style
Architecture
Italy
France
• society and culture
• The French Academy (Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture)
• Louis XIV extended his notion of the monarch’s absolute
• power to the arts. In 1648 his minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert
• founded the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture with a
• view to manipulating imagery for political advantage. The philosophy
• and organization of the Academy were as hierarchical
• as Louis’ state. Artists were trained according to the principle
• that tradition and convention had to be studied and understood.
• Art students drew from plaster casts and copied the
• old masters. They were steeped in the history of art and of
• their own culture.
• Another issue of philosophical importance to the Academy
• was the role of nature in the concept of the “ideal.” Artists,
• if properly trained, should be able to produce the ideal in
• their work. The representation of emotion through physiognomy,
• expression, and gesture was also discussed at length by
• Charles Le Brun, who headed the Academy for twenty years.
• All such considerations were subjected to a system of rules,
• derived partly from Platonic and Renaissance theory and partly
• from the French interest in the creation of an aesthetic order.
• The subject matter of art was also organized according to a
• hierarchy. At the top were the Christian Sacraments, followed
• by history painting. In these two categories, the philosophy of
• the Academy supported the religious and political hierarchy
• imposed by Louis XIV. Next in line were portraiture, genre,
• landscape
• (with or without animals), and, lowest on the scale,
• still life.
• Despite the Academic emphasis on systems and rules, artistic
• “quarrels” were prevalent. High Renaissance arguments over
• the merits of line and color (disegno and colorito) continued in the
• Baroque period, now exemplified by Poussin and Rubens. The
• Rubénistes championed color, while the Poussinistes preferred
• line. A parallel quarrel between the “Ancients” and “Moderns”
• arose: this concerned the question of which group was the best
• authority for artists to follow. The Ancients were more traditional
• and tended to be allied with the proponents of disegno and
• Poussin. Line was considered rational, controlled, and Apollonian.
• Color, which was allied with Rubens and the Moderns, was
• emotional, exuberant, and related to Dionysiac expression.
England
Sculpture:
Italian Baroque Painting
 baroque s t y l e i n w e s t e r n e u r o p e
society and culture
Women as Artists from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century
Giovanni Battista Gaulli
 Baroque Painting
in Northern Europe
Flanders
Holland: Rembrandt van Rijn
• technique
• Etching
• Etching, like engraving, is an intaglio method of producing
• multiple images from a metal (usually copper) plate. In
• etching, the artist covers the plate with a resinous acidresistant
• substance (the etching ground). A pointed metal
• instrument, or stylus, is then used to scratch through the
• ground and create an image on the plate. When the plate is
• dipped in acid or some other corrosive chemical, the acid
• eats away the exposed metal. In so doing, it creates grooves
• where the ground was scratched through by the stylus. The
• ground is then wiped off, the plate is inked, and impressions
• are taken, just as in engraving. The result, however, is different.
• Whereas in engraving the artist pushes the burin to cut
• into the metal surface, the etching stylus moves more easily
• through the ground, allowing for more delicate marks and
• greater freedom of action. The result is a more convincing
• sense of spontaneity in the image and a blurred, atmospheric
• quality (see, for example, the sleeves in fig. 19.26).
• Rembrandt also used the intaglio drypoint method, in
• which the image is scratched directly onto the plate. “Dry”
• signifies that acid is not used. The incisions on the plate make
• metal grooves with raised edges, called the burr. When the
• drypoint plate is inked, the burr collects the ink and produces
• a soft, rich quality in the darker areas of the image.
• In both etching and drypoint, the burin can be used for
• emphasis.
• It is possible to combine the two techniques in
• one image, as Rembrandt did. It is also possible to make
• alterations to an etched or engraved plate and then produce
• additional prints. One can see the artist’s changes by studying
• in order the different states, or subsequent versions,
• of the same image.
Judith Leyster
Jacob van Ruisdael
c.1628-1682
Maria van Oosterwyck
 Mughal Art and the Baroque

• The sixteenth-century age of exploration hadl ed to colonization, missionary

activity, and trade with the Americas and the Far East. In
• Holland, many Chinese and Japanese objects were imported through the Dutch
East India Company. Although by and large any real understanding of these distant
regions on the part of Europeans was minimal, Eastern motifs began to influence
furniture design, and a general taste for the exotic emerged in Europe. These
cultural exchanges were most meaningful in contacts with Mughal painters
• of seventeenth-century India. Rembrandt copied Mughal miniatures, and Rubens
drew figures from the Mughal court. The Mughal school of painting in India was
known in Europe largely through the enlightened patronage of three emperors:
Akbar (1555–1603),
• Jahangir (1603–27), and Shah Jehan (1627–66). Descended from Genghis Khan,
Akbar’s Persian grandfather founded the Mughal dynasty in India. Akbar himself
endorsed the progressive notion that the divine status of a ruler depended on just
and fair dministration. His desire for political unity inspired him to collect
European art.
Spanish Baroque Painting
Francesco de Zurbaran
19.36 Francesco de Zurbaran, Saint Serapion, 1628. Oil on canvas,
47. × 40 . in. (120.7 × 103.5 cm). Wadsworth Atheneum, artford, Connecticut.
French Baroque Painting:
Nicolas Poussin