BAROQUE ART

The Baroque is a period of artistic style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to
produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, architecture, literature, dance, theatre,
and music. The style began around 1600 in Rome and Italy, and spread to most of Europe.
The popularity and success of the Baroque style was encouraged by the Catholic Church, which had decided at
the time of the Council of Trent, in response to the Protestant Reformation, that the arts should communicate
religious themes with direct and emotional involvement.The aristocracy viewed the dramatic style of Baroque
art and architecture as a means of impressing visitors by projecting triumph, power, and control. Baroque palaces
are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases, and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence.
However, "baroque" has a resonance and application that extend beyond a simple reduction to either a style or
period.
DEVELOPMENT
The Baroque originated around 1600, several decades after the Council of Trent (1545–63), by which the Roman
Catholic Church answered many questions of internal reform and formulated policy on the representational arts
by demanding that paintings and sculptures in church contexts should speak to the illiterate rather than to the
well-informed.The appeal of Baroque style turned consciously from the witty, intellectual qualities of 16th-
century Mannerist art to a visceral appeal aimed at the senses. It employed an iconography that was direct,
simple, obvious, and theatrical. Germinal ideas of the Baroque can also be found in the work of Michelangelo.
Some general parallels in music make the expression "Baroque music" useful: there are contrasting phrase
lengths, harmony and counterpoint have ousted polyphony, and orchestral colour makes a stronger appearance.
Even more generalised parallels perceived by some experts in philosophy, prose style and poetry, are harder to
pinpoint.

BAROQUE ARCHITECTURE
Total Work of Art: To a greater extent than in previous eras, the
art of the baroque was characterized by the interplay of individual
genres. The unified appearance of royal residences and churches,
in particular, laid claim to the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk [total work
of art], a term that did not actually become popular until the nine-
teenth century.
Strapwork: Decorative motif and
surface ornament of particular im-
portance in the eighteenth century
that consisted of symmetrically ar-
ranged, curved straplike bands,
rather than forms from nature, such
as tendrils. These were sometimes
adorned with figurative motifs, es-
pecially on stucco ceilings and walls.
Stucco: Malleable, fast hardening
mixture of plaster, lime, sand and
water used to decorate interior
spaces, but also as raw material for
sculptures and reliefs. Colored,
painted with marble veins, and ac-
cented with lumps of stone, it be-
came the ideal imitation marble.
Johann Balthasar Neumann’s residence of the prince bishops in Wurzburg is among the few large-scale
projects of the baroque that was completely realized according to a consistent plan. The Zwinger Palace in
Dresden, by contrast, originally an orangery, is only a modest portion of a new palace complex for Prince
Elector August the Strong. Absolutist building projects, apparently, were often more expensive than planned.
CHARACTERISTICS OF BAROQUE ART
ALLEGORYAND APOTHEOSIS:
Figures in baroque paintings and sculptures that fly or plunge, are enthroned or
recline lasciviously, do not represent real human beings. They are allegorical,
abstract ideas and images illustrated in the form of persons.This was not an
invention of the baroque period: genius figures were already known in antiquity.
In the Middle Ages, these were virtues and vices and the seven liberal arts. But
baroque, multi-figured compositions on ceilings and walls were the first to unite
saints, mytholigical figures and sensual pleasures, and to make them emotionally
accessible to observers.

Artist: Pierre Le Gros the Younger,

“Religion Over-throwing Heresy
abd Hatred”, 1695-1698. Marble,II
Gesu, Rome, altar with the grave of
St. Ignatius: the representatin of
religion wih cross and putto is
clear, whereas heresy is more
fascinating. Heresy is old age is the
last stage of human life, just as
heresy is the last stage of perver-
sion. She is ugly, because she has
lost faith and truth. Lacking virtue,
she is nearly naked. Unkempt hair
and snakes symbolize heresy’s
ruinous ideas.
“The Ecstasy of St.
Theresa “ by
GIOVANNILORENZO BERNINI
Caravaggio, Conversion of St. Paul, 1601,
Oil on canvas, Santa Maria del Popolo,
Rome.
Artist:Giovanni Battista
Tiepolo, “Apotheosis of
the Pisani Family”, 1761-
1762. Fresco, Vill Pisani,
Stra. A special aspect of
the allegory is the
apotheosis. Accompanied
by properly arranged,
allegorical “personnel,”
even mortals can
apotheosize.
Movement and rest:
Representation of movement, but also release and rest through the use of
light,diagonal composition, and gesture was highly important in the ba-
roque.
GIOVANNI LORENZO BERNINI set up the colonnaded St. Peter’s Square
in Rome like a stage with optical illusions. For The Ecstasy of St. Theresa, he
transformed the entire Cornaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria into a
theater with an audience of benefactor’s busts in the box seats. So that
Theresa can yeild to her ecstasy as chastely as possible under the gaze of
her audience, however, the much too opulent, massive fabric of her habit
takes on a passionately stirring life of its own as the expression of her inner
excitement.Truth also reveals an essential characteristic of baroque sculp-
ture: it operates on a grand scale, the movement is directed outward, the
contour of the work is no longer closed. With movement came a heightened
interplay of light and shadow.
Light and shadow:
In baroque painting. light was not only used for modelling of volume but in
the main to heighten the expression of painting.CARAVAGGIO’S new han-
dling of light, space, and figures. In The Calling of St. Matthew, Jesus is
almost a peripheral character, practically concealed by Caravaggio’s later ad-
dition of Peter. Whatever the unprepossessing man with the tired, outstretched
arm may have said, people would have expected the call to descipleship to be
more forceful and godlike since, according to the Bible, Matthew obeyed it
immediately. Caravggio taught that this was not required.
The next divine calling came posthumously and concerned Paul of Tarsus.
The appearance of the Light, also illuminating his horse’s belly, threw the
zealous persecturor of Christians from his steed. His enlightnment takes place
as he lies on the ground in an unholy mess of horses’ hooves and men’s legs.
This, too, was not considered a suitable pose for the devotional image.
Importent other Baroque Painters:REMBRANDT,DIEGO
VELAZQUEZ,PETER PAUL RUBENS,JAN VERMEER etc..
ROCOCO
Rococo or "Late Baroque", is an early to late 18th-century French artistic movement and style, affecting many aspects of the
arts including painting, sculpture, architecture, interior design, decoration, literature, music, and theatre. It developed in the
early 18th century in Paris, France as a reaction against the grandeur, symmetry, and strict regulations of the previous
Baroque architectural style, especially of the Palace of Versailles until it was redone. Rococo artists and architects used a
more jocular, florid, and graceful approach to the Baroque. Their style was ornate and used light colours, asymmetrical
designs, curves, and gold. Unlike the political Baroque, the Rococo had playful and witty themes. The interior decoration of
Rococo rooms was designed as a total work of art with elegant and ornate furniture, small sculptures, ornamental mirrors, and
tapestry complementing architecture, reliefs, and wall paintings.

Rocaille: Asymmetrical, shell-shaped, decorative motif of the rococo [rocaille, a

style that may well be the source of the term, rococo].

Painting: The colors become brighter, and rather than being weighted down by
baroque pathos, rococo painting dances with graceful buoyancy, for the most
part full of musicality.
Eroticism and Sensual Pleasure: The rococo countered baroque heaviness and
exuberance with lightness, delicacy and grace. Contemporary taste found par-
ticular expression in galant themes that showed worldly, tangible sensuousness
unmitigated by mythological content. Poetry paired with frivolity made painters
like Watteau, Boucher or Fragonard into delineators of contemporary manners
and creators of cliche.

Sculpture: German sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt looked at his own physi-
ognomy under extreme conditions to create mask-like, grimacing character heads
based on his observations. His portrait busts of Maria Theresia brought him to
prominence. With shocking radicality, he ignored classical ideals of beauty, stated
his rejection of sanctioned “fraudulent art,” and decided in favor of grueling
artistic self-discovery and autonomy.