HUM Test 1

Questions?

1) Baroque is known for use of drama, theatre and emotion. Using three examples of cultural objects, discuss how your choices support this statement. 2) Rococo thinkers rebelled against Louis XIV by embracing decadent social behavior and sexual subject matter. Use three examples of cultural objects to discuss this new social outlook. 3) Neoclassicism illustrated moral stories and exemplary virtues. Using three examples of cultural objects, discuss how your choices reflect the attitude of this time.

Hall of Mirrors

As the sun would appear above the horizon, the Sun King would rise from his bed. Once dressed, he would push open his elaborately carved bedroom door. It opened into the Hall of Mirrors (15-31) , which would reflect bright sunlight around Louis XIV as he progressed down the hall with his courtiers by his side.The hall extends the entire width of the central wing's second floor, and the windows provide a fine view of the marvelous gardens. In daytime, the seventeen grand mirrors reflect the light of the large windows across from them, making the hall bright without any artificial lights. Besides mirrors, the walls are covered with marble of many colors, and the ceiling tells of the magnificent accomplishments of the king. As beautiful and elaborate as it is today, compared to Louis's time it is rather bare. It was once filled with gold-and-silver chairs and trees JULES HARDOUIN-MANSART, Hall of Mirrors, Palace of Versailles, France, 1680. 15/31 covered with jewels. This and other halls were open to the public to impress visitors with the majesty of Louis XIV. Versailles was the center of many festivals that took place in this hall: comedies, balls, music, fireworks, and suppers by torchlight. The mirrors would reflect and mag-nify the magnificence of the great fêtes or parties, some lasting for days.

Lully, Ballet de la Nuit

Ballet de la Nuit was divided into four parts providing detailed elements of the landscape of the night. Composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully, it was an extravagant court spectacle featuring forty-five entrees, three ballets within a ballet over the course of twelve hours. The plot included mythological goddesses such as Venus and Diana, werewolves, demonic creatures and witches who celebrated a black Sabbath in the horrors of the night. Shepherds, gypsies, thieves, lamplighters, beggars and crippled are among the "realistic" characters of the play. King Louis XIV appears with the coming of the day as the sun god Apollo, one of his many personifications as the rising sun, emphasizing the power of the monarchy and its closeness to the divine

Caravaggio, The Conversion of St. Paul

Baroque he topples the figure of the saint directly toward the viewer, his head almost touching the bottom edge of the canvas. The dramatic action of the scene seems to be frozen by a flash of light—the horse's hoof is shown in midair. Saul was a Roman citizen who delighted in persecut-ing the early Christians. On the road to Damascus—a city in Syria where he was headed to continue his persecutions—he experienced a vision. In his own words: "Suddenly there shown from heaven a great light all about me, and I fell to the ground." Then Saul heard the voice of Jesus asking, "Why do you persecute me?" and directing him to go to Damascus. Blinded by his experience, Saul had to be led into the city, where he met a devout Christian and was converted and baptized. He took the name of Paul and became the greatest leader, writer, and theologian of the early Christian church.Here we see a mystical moment portrayed with high realism. Saul has just hit the hard ground and lies as if in a trance, listening to the voice of Jesus. The New Testament account states that although they saw the light, the men who accompanied Saul could not hear this miraculous voice. True to the story, Caravaggio pictures a horse and servant drawing back in surprise, unsure of what is going on. Miraculous light is a perfect sub- ject for Caravaggio, who, as we saw in The Supper at Emmaus , had been using the power of light symbolically in his paintings to indicate supernatural happenings. Caravaggio's use of chiaroscuro , the dramatic contrast of light and dark, would influence many artists and would be copied throughout Europe.

Bernini, David

Bernini was only twenty-five or so when he sculpted David (15-9), one of his masterpieces. Just as the con-trast between Tintoretto's Last Supper and Leonardo's can be used to illustrate the differences between of textures in stone (flesh, drapery, leaves, and hair), as well as incredibly minute work like the taut rope of the sling. The differences between the two Davids are reminiscent of the contrast between calm and balanced Classical sculpture, such as the Doryphoros (12-17), and the writhing motion typical of later Hellenistic sculp-ture like the Laocoön (12-21).

Watteau, Pilgrimage to Cythera

Curving S shapes and the theme of love reign in both. Each show a variety of actions. The differences, however, illustrate a distinction between the Baroque and the Rococo. Because it is set in the midst of a large landscape, the Return seems much more peaceful than the Garden of Love. The characters are distant, rather than pushed close to the viewer. The lighting is soft and gentle. Watteau's picture is therefore not nearly as intensely energetic as Rubens's. Although Rubens made many paintings on a grand scale, most Rococo pictures are more modest. One of Watteau's larg-est works, the Return from Cythera is a bit more than six feet long; many of Rubens's are twice that.In Watteau's painting, a group of lovers are about to leave Aphrodite's isle of Cythera, a mythical island where love never dies and one never grows old. We can see that the lovers find it difficult to leave this idyllic island; many look back sadly. Every figure is paired in a couple, some almost swooning in rapture. As in many of Watteau's pic-tures, a classical sculpture of a bust of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, keeps a watchful eye over lovers, pro-tecting them. Cupid, her son, has left his arrows at its base, because they are unnecessary here. He tugs at one woman's dress, trying to get her attention and tell her that it is time to leave. Swarms of cupids tumbling in the air surround the gondolas at the right, preparing to lead them back to the real world beyond the hazy blue mountains.

Bis Poles

Honor the dead and ease transition to afterlife. Cannibal Culture 1) Cut down tree; decapitation 2) Bank removed, skinning body 3) Sap drained; bloodletting

Jefferson, Monticello

Jefferson had the chance to design his own dream house. The home took more than thirty years to complete to his satisfaction. Set on top of a mountain (unlike other Southern plantation manors of the period), Monticello reveals an eighteenth-century taste for combining classical architectural elements, like columns, domes, and simple geometric shapes, with a natural, roman-tic setting. As a classical scholar, Jefferson was particularly fond of Roman poets, who described the delights of country life in a villa, and Jefferson wrote about the view from his home: Where has nature spread so rich a mantel under the eye? mountains, forests, rocks, rivers. With what majesty do we there ride above the storms! How sublime to look down into the house of nature, to see her clouds, hail, snow, rain, thunder, all fabricated at our feet! and the glori-ous sun, when rising as if out of a distant water, just gilding the tops of the mountains, and giving life to all nature! Stripped of excess ornament and convey-ing a sense of purity, Monticello is harmonious and calm. Its beauty can be appreciated at first glance; carefully designed in human scale, the building does not overwhelm or awe the visitor. Monticello looks like what it is: a building meant to encourage a mood of speculation and intellectual pursuits, as well as gracious family living. The simple, empty room under the dome is particularly lovely, like a material representation of the human intellect, or Jefferson's extraordinary mind (10-38) .But Jefferson's pursuit of ideal beauty and idyllic lifestyle had a darker side. Both the money and labor he used to create his dream house and the life he lived there were produced by slave labor. (Of course, this was also true of the Greek and Roman civilizations that he admired, although their slavery was not based on race.) Jefferson's Monticello reflects the ideals of individualism and respect for private property embraced by the found-ing fathers of the United States.The powerful expression of ideals in architecture can influence building for decades, even centuries, to come. Monticello—itself a reflection of the endurance of clas-sical Greek and Roman architectural ideals—had a pro-found and powerful effect on American architecture. Saint Peter's has also influenced countless buildings through-out the Western world.

David, Oath of the Horatii

Neo-classical - Linear David's painting tells a moral story and seeks to teach proper. It is based on a legend about the early years of the Roman Republic, when the Romans were about to go to war with the Albans. On the eve of battle, it was decided that the outcome would be determined by single combat in three individual contests. The three brothers of the Horatii family swore to defend the Roman state against three brothers of another family, one of whom was engaged to their sister. David chose to depict the moment when the father calls on his sons to swear to sacrifice their lives, if necessary, for the good of the coun-try. Two brothers would die; so would their sister's fiancé. Thus the virtues David emphasized were patriotism, self-sacrifice, and fidelity to a higher purpose.The Oath of the Horatii shows David's mastery of com-position. The geometry of the design is clear: The space is divided by three arches, in front of which are arranged three distinct figure groupings—the sons, the father, and the women. Silhouetted against the simple, darkened background, three arms reaching toward three swords catch the light. David sets up a powerful rhythm of legs, arms, and swords by repeating each form with slight varia-tions. The outlines of the male figures are rigid and strong, in contrast to the soft, melting outlines of the females.

Boucher, Le Chinois Gallant

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Haydn, Symphony no. 94

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Hobbes, Leviathan

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Locke, Essay on Human Understanding

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Locke, The Second Treatise of Government

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Moliere, Tartuffe

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Rousseau, The Social Contract

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LITERATURE Teresa of Avila, Visions

Saint Theresa of Avila was a sixteenth-century Spanish nun and mystic who lived about the time that El Greco was painting in Spain. Through her widely cir-culated writings, she became an important saint of the Counter-Reformation. Many of these writings describe her personal, mystic visions. For this chapel, Bernini illus-trated a spectacular vision of a visit from an angel, about which Saint Theresa wrote: In his hands I saw a great golden spear and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart . . . again and again and left me utterly con-sumed by the great love of God. The pain was so acute that I groaned aloud several times; yet the pain was so sweet that no one would wish to have it go away. Bernini mixes realism and illusion here just as he mixes media. He shows Saint Theresa's spiritual passion as physical: Her head lolls to one side in rapture, her body falls back limp, her bare foot escapes from beneath her voluminous habit. Even her clothing writhes in excite-ment. The intensity of this realism rivets our attention, but Bernini is also a great master of light and illusion. By flooding his statue in a stream of "heavenly" light from above (through a hidden window of yellow stained glass), he sets the statue of saint and angel off in a special space—a miraculous, visionary dream world.

Fragonard, The Swing

The mood of this picture is light and playful; love is a game, courtship an art. We see a tastefully dressed young woman swinging above her would-be lover, who is hiding in the bushes. The young man has paid an elderly bishop (seen in the shadows) to bring his beloved to this spot and swing her higher and higher so he can peek up her skirt. The young lady is well aware of her admirer's trick and plays along with it, going so far as to kick off one of her shoes. Even the statues of cupid partake of the intrigue; one holds his fingers to his lips as if to say, "Sssh! It's a secret."

ART Bernini, Ecstasy of St. Teresa

The type of work for which Bernini became most famous was not the sculpting of individual statues, however powerful, but the creation of total artistic envi-ronments. The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa (15-10,15-11), which combines sculpture with architecture and painting, was designed for a chapel in the small Roman church of Santa Maria della Vittoria. The materials include white marble, colored marble, gilded bronze, stucco, fresco, and stained glass. Here, the effect of the whole is far greater than the sum of the parts. The ceiling of the cha-pel is decorated with a fresco of angels frolicking on bil-lowing clouds. To the sides, statues of the Cornaro family members observe the scene from boxes, as if at the opera. At center stage is Bernini's marble statue of Saint Theresa in ecstasy

Vivaldi, The Four Seasons

There is some debate as to whether the four concertos were written to accompany four sonnets or vice versa.[1] Though it is not known who wrote these sonnets, there is a theory that Vivaldi wrote them himself, given that each sonnet is broken down into three sections, neatly corresponding to a movement in the concerto. Whoever wrote the sonnets, The Four Seasons may be classified as program music, instrumental music that intends to evoke something extra-musical [2] and an art form which Vivaldi was determined to prove sophisticated enough to be taken seriously.[3] In addition to these sonnets, Vivaldi provided instructions such as "The barking dog" (in the second movement of "Spring"), "Languor caused by the heat" (in the first movement of "Summer"), and "the drunkards have fallen asleep" (in the second movement of "Autumn"). The Four Seasons is used in the 1981 film The Four Seasons along with other Vivaldi concertos for flute.

Rigaud, Louis XIV

the sixty-three-year-old Louis is surrounded by sumptu-ous fabrics and classically inspired architecture. As was characteristic of almost everything associated with Louis XIV, his portrait is gigantic and larger than life, more than nine feet tall. It looms over the viewer and is meant to impress one with its absolute power. The pride with which he reveals his slim legs may seem silly to us today, but simply reflects a change in cultural values: men of this period were as interested in fashion and vain about their personal appearance as women. The large, jeweled sword hilt seen just above his stockings reminds us that he was a man of immense power.