art history ch 23

painting in 17th century Italy

Painting in seventeenth-century Italy followed one of two principal paths: the ordered Classicism of the Carracci family or the dramatic naturalism of Caravaggio.

Jan Steen

-Another important genre painter is Jan Steen (1626-1679), whose larger brushstrokes contrast with the meticulous treatment of Ter Borch and reveal an artistic affinity with Frans Hals. Steen painted over 800 works but never achieved financial success. -Most of his scenes used everyday life to portray moral tales, illustrate proverbs and folk sayings, or make puns to amuse the spectator. -Since Steen traveled throughout the Netherlands all his life and was a tavern owner in Leiden during the 1670s, he had many sources of inspiration for the lively human dramas in his paintings.

classicism

-the seventeenth century also saw its own version of Classicism, a more moving and dramatic variant of Renaissance principles featuring idealization based on observation of the material world; balanced (though often asymmetrical) compositions; diagonal movement in space; rich, harmonious colors; and visual references to ancient Greece and Rome. -Many seventeenth-century artists sought lifelike depiction of their world in portraiture, genre paintings (scenes from everyday life), still life, and religious scenes enacted by ordinary people in ordinary settings. Intense emotional involvement, lifelike renderings, and Classical references may all exist in the same work.

Fig. 23-34 Judith Leyster SELF-PORTRAIT

In her lively self-portrait of 1635 (fig. 23-34), the artist has interrupted her work to lean back and look at viewers, as if they had just entered the room. ****watch closer look video***

Georges de La Tour

One of Caravaggio's most important followers in France, Georges de La Tour (1593-1652) received major royal and ducal commissions and became court painter to Louis XIII in 1639. La Tour may have traveled to Italy in 1614-1616, and in the 1620s he almost certainly visited the Netherlands, where Caravaggio's style was having an impact (see fig. 23-31). Like Caravaggio, La Tour filled the foreground of his compositions with imposing figures, but in place of Caravaggio's focus on descriptive detail, La Tour's work revels in the dramatic effects of lighting, usually from sources within the paintings themselves. Often, it seems, light is his real subject (see "Closer Look").

Fig. 23-50 Louis Le Vau and Jules Hardouin-Mansart GARDEN FAÇADE OF THE PALACE OF VERSAILLES

Hardouin-Mansart was responsible for the addition of the long lateral wings and the renovation of Le Vau's central block on the garden side to match these wings (fig. 23-50). The three-story façade has a lightly rusticated ground floor, a main floor lined with enormous arched windows separated by Ionic columns or pilasters, an attic level whose rectangular windows are also flanked by pilasters, and a flat, terraced roof. The overall design is a sensitive balance of horizontals and verticals relieved by a restrained overlay of regularly spaced projecting blocks with open, colonnaded porches.

Fig. 23-46 Pieter Claesz STILL LIFE WITH TAZZA

-In subtle, nearly monochromatic paintings such as still life with tazza (fig. 23-46), Claesz seems to give life to inanimate objects. He organizes dishes in diagonal positions to give a strong sense of space—here reinforced by the spiraling strip of lemon peel, foreshortened with the plate into the foreground and reaching toward the viewer's own space—and he renders the maximum contrast of textures within a subtle palette of yellows, browns, greens, and silvery whites. -The tilted silver tazza contrasts with the half-filled glass, which becomes a monumental presence and permits Claesz to display his skill with transparencies and reflections. Such paintings suggest the prosperity of Claesz's patrons. -The food might be simple, but a silver ornamental cup like this would have graced the tables of only the wealthy. The meticulously painted timepiece could suggest deeper meanings—it alludes to human technological achievement, but also to the inexorable passage of time and the fleeting nature of human life, thoughts also prompted by the interrupted breakfast, casually placed knife, and toppled tableware.

Fig. 23-23 WEST FAÇADE, CATHEDRAL OF ST. JAMES, SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, SPAIN

-Renewed interest in pilgrimages to the shrines of saints in the seventeenth century brought an influx of pilgrims, and consequently financial security, to the city and the Church. The cathedral chapter ordered an elaborate façade to be added to the twelfth-century pilgrimage church (fig. 23-23). -A south tower was built in 1667-1680 and then later copied as the north tower. -The last man to serve as architect and director of works at the cathedral, Fernando de Casas y Nóvoas (active 1711-1749), tied the disparate elements—towers, portal, stairs—together at the west end in a grand design focused on a veritable wall of glass, popularly called "The Mirror." His design culminates in a free-standing gable soaring above the roof, visually linking the towers and framing a statue of St. James. -The extreme simplicity of the cloister walls and the archbishop's palace at each side of the portal heightens the dazzling effect of this enormous expanse of windows, glittering, jewel-like, in their intricately carved granite frame.

The Spanish Golden Age

-What had seemed an endless flow of gold and silver from the Americas to Spain diminished, as precious-metal production in Bolivia and Mexico lessened. -Agriculture, industry, and trade at home also suffered. As the Spanish kings tried to defend the Roman Catholic Church and their empire on all fronts, they squandered their resources and finally went bankrupt in 1692. -Nevertheless, despite the decline of the Habsburgs' Spanish empire, seventeenth-century writers and artists produced some of the greatest Spanish literature and art, and the century is often called

Hendrick ter Brugghen

-spent time in Rome, perhaps between 1608 and 1614, where he must have seen Caravaggio's works and became an enthusiastic follower. -On his return home, in 1616, Ter Brugghen entered the Utrecht painters' guild, introducing Caravaggio's style into the Netherlands in paintings such as st. sebastian tended by st. irene (fig. 23-31), and becoming the best known of the Utrecht "Caravaggisti."

Fig. 23-38 Rembrandt van Rijn THREE CROSSES (FOURTH STATE)

-the Virgin Mary and St. John share the light flooding down from heaven. By the fourth state (fig. 23-38), Rembrandt has completely reworked and reinterpreted the theme. As in the first state, the shattered hill of Golgotha dominates the foreground, but now the scene is considerably darker, and some of the people in the first state, including even Mary and Jesus's friends, have almost disappeared. -The horseman holding the lance now faces Jesus. The composition has become more compact, the individual elements are simplified, and the emotions are intensified. An oval of light below the base of the cross draws viewers' attention to the figure of Jesus, and the people around him are trapped in mute confrontation. The first state is a rendering of a narrative moment, bustling with detail; the fourth state reduces the event to its mysterious essence.

Christopher Wren

After Jones's death, English architecture was dominated by Christopher Wren (1632-1723) who began his professional career in 1659 as a professor of astronomy. For Wren, architecture was a sideline until 1665, when he traveled to France to further his education. While there, he met with French architects and with Bernini, who was in Paris to consult on designs for the Louvre. Wren returned to England with architecture books, engravings, and a greatly increased admiration for French Classical Baroque design. In 1669, he was made surveyor-general, the position once held by Jones, and in 1673, he was knighted.

Bernini's david (fig. 23-4),

made for a nephew of Pope Paul V in 1623, introduced a new type of three-dimensional composition that intrudes forcefully into the viewer's space. The young hero bends at the waist and twists far to one side, ready to launch the lethal rock at Goliath.

Fig. 23-37 Rembrandt van Rijn THREE CROSSES (FIRST STATE)

Rembrandt's deep speculations on the meaning of the life of Christ evolve in a series of prints of the three crosses that comes down to us in five states, or stages, of the creative and printing process, in this case created entirely with the drypoint technique. (Only the first and fourth states are reproduced here.) Rembrandt sought to capture the moment described in the Gospels when, during the Crucifixion, darkness covered the Earth and Jesus cried out, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." In the first state (fig. 23-37), the centurion kneels in front of the cross while other people run.

Rembrandt and Durer similarities

-In his enthusiasm for printmaking as an important art form with its own aesthetic qualities, Rembrandt was remarkably like Albrecht Dürer (see figs. 22-7, 22-8). Beginning in 1627, he focused on etching, which uses acid to inscribe a design on metal plates. About a decade later, he began to experiment with making additions to his compositions in the drypoint technique, in which the artist uses a sharp needle to scratch shallow lines in a plate. - Because etching and drypoint allow the artist to work directly on the plate, the style of the finished print can have the relatively free and spontaneous character of a drawing (see "Etching and Drypoint"). - In these works Rembrandt alone took charge of the creative process, from the preparation of the plate to its inking and printing, and he constantly experimented with the technique, with methods of inking, and with papers for printing. Rembrandt's prints were widely collected and attracted high prices even in his lifetime.

Jusepe de Ribera

-was born in Seville but studied in Rome and settled in Spanish-ruled Naples; in Italy, he was known as "Lo Spagnoletto" ("the Little Spaniard"). -He combined the Classical and Caravaggesque styles he had learned in Rome to create a new Neapolitan—and eventually Spanish—style. Ribera became the link extending from Caravaggio in Italy to the Spanish masters Zurbarán and Velázquez. -During this period, the Church—aiming to draw people back to Catholicism—commissioned portrayals of heroic martyrs who had endured shocking torments as witness to their faith. -During this period, the Church—aiming to draw people back to Catholicism—commissioned portrayals of heroic martyrs who had endured shocking torments as witness to their faith.

How is the Baroque style established in 17th century Rome?

-17th century Italy remained a divided land in spite of a common history, language, and geography. The Kingdom of Naples and Sicily was Spanish; the Papal States crossed the center; Venice maintained its independence as a republic; and the north remained divided among small principalities. - Churchmen and their families remained powerful patrons of the arts, especially as they sought to use art in revitalizing the Roman Catholic Church. -The Council of Trent (concluded 1563) had set guidelines for church art that went against the arcane, worldly, and often lascivious trends exploited by Mannerism. -The clergy's call for clarity, simplicity, chaste subject matter, and the ability to rouse a very Catholic piety in the face of Protestant revolt found a response in the fresh approaches to subject matter and style offered by a new generation of artists. -In the sixteenth century, the decoration of new churches had been relatively austere, but seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Catholic taste favored opulent and spectacular visual effects to heighten the emotional involvement of worshipers.

Judith Leyster

-A cleaning uncovered her distinctive signature, the monogram "JL" with a star, which refers to her surname, meaning "pole star." Leyster's work clearly shows her exposure to the Utrecht painters who had enthusiastically adopted the principal features of Caravaggio's style. -Since Leyster signed in 1631 as a witness at the baptism of one of Hals's children, it is assumed they were close; she may also have worked in his shop. -She entered Haarlem's Guild of St. Luke in 1633, which allowed her to take pupils into her studio, and her competitive relationship with Frans Hals around that time is made clear by the complaint she lodged against him in 1635 for luring away one of her apprentices. Leyster is known primarily for informal scenes of daily life, which often carry an underlying moralistic theme.

Fig. 23-8 Annibale Carracci CEILING OF GALLERY, PALAZZO FARNESE

-Annibale was hired by Cardinal Odoardo Farnese to decorate the principal rooms of his family's immense Roman palace. In the long galleria (gallery), the artist was requested to paint scenes of love based on Ovid's Metamorphoses (fig. 23-8) to celebrate the wedding of Duke Ranuccio Farnese of Parma to the niece of the pope. -Undoubtedly, Annibale and Agostino, who assisted him, felt both inspiration and competition from the important collection of antique sculpture exhibited throughout the palace. -The primary image, set in the center of the vault, is The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne, a joyous procession celebrating the wine god Bacchus's love for Ariadne, whom he rescued after her lover, Theseus, abandoned her on the island of Naxos. -Annibale combines the great northern Italian tradition of ceiling painting—seen in the work of Mantegna and Correggio (see fig. 20-40, fig. 21-24)—with his study of central Italian Renaissance painters and the Classical heritage of Rome. -He organized his complex theme by using illusionistic devices to create multiple levels of reality. Painted imitations of gold-framed easel paintings called quadri riportati ("transported paintings") appear to rest on the actual cornice of the vault and overlap painted bronze medallions that are flanked, in turn, by realistically colored ignudi, dramatically lit from below.

entrance to St. Peter's (see fig. 23-2).

-At approximately the same time that he was at work on the Chair of Peter, Bernini designed and supervised the building of a colonnade to form a huge double piazza in front of the entrance to St. Peter's (see fig. 23-2). -The open space that he had to work with was irregular, and an Egyptian obelisk and a fountain previously installed by Sixtus V had to be incorporated into the overall plan. Bernini's remarkable design frames the oval piazza with two enormous curved porticos, or covered walkways, supported by Tuscan columns. -These curved porticos are connected to two straight porticos, which lead up a slight incline to the two ends of the church façade. Bernini characterized his design as the "motherly arms of the Church" reaching out to the world. -He had intended to build a third section of the colonnade closing the side of the piazza facing the church, so that only after pilgrims had crossed the Tiber River bridge and made their way through narrow streets would they encounter the enormous open space before the imposing church. -This element of surprise would have made the basilica and its setting an even more awe-inspiring vision. The approach today—along the grand avenue of the Via della Conciliazione running from the Tiber to the Basilica—was conceived by Mussolini in 1936 as part of his master plan to transform Rome into a grand fascist capital.

genre scenes

-Continuing a long Netherlandish tradition, seventeenth-century genre paintings—generally made for private patrons and depicting scenes of contemporary daily life—were often laden with symbolic references, although their meaning is not always clear to us now. -A clean house might indicate a virtuous housewife and mother, while a messy household suggested laziness and the sin of sloth. Ladies dressing in front of mirrors certainly could be succumbing to vanity, and drinking parties led to overindulgence and lust.

Fig. 23-18 Francisco de Zurbarán ST. SERAPION

-Francisco de Zurbarán (represents another martyrdom, in this case already accomplished, in his 1628 painting of st. serapion (fig. 23-18). -Little is known of Zurbarán's early years before 1625, but he came under the influence of the Caravaggesque taste prevalent in Seville, the major city in southwestern Spain, while his interest in abstract design has been traced to the heritage of Islamic art in Spain. -Zurbarán primarily worked for the monastic orders. In this painting, he portrays the martyrdom of Serapion, a member of the thirteenth-century Mercedarians, a Spanish order founded to rescue the -Christian prisoners of the Moors. Following the vows of his order, Serapion sacrificed himself in exchange for Christian captives. The dead man's pallor, his rough hands, and the coarse ropes contrast with the off-white of his creased habit, its folds arranged in a pattern of highlights and varying depths of shadow. -The only colors are the red and gold of the insignia. This timelessly immobile composition is like a tragic still life, a study of fabric and flesh become inanimate.

Fig. 23-5 Gianlorenzo Bernini CORNARO CHAPEL, CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA DELLA VITTORIA, ROME

-From 1642 until 1652, Bernini worked on the decoration of the funerary chapel of the Venetian cardinal Federigo Cornaro (fig. 23-5) in the Roman church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, designed by Carlo Maderno earlier in the century. -The Cornaro family chapel was dedicated to the Spanish saint Teresa of Ávila, canonized only 20 years earlier. Bernini designed it as a rich and theatrical setting for the portrayal of a central event in Teresa's life. He covered the walls with multicolored marble panels and crowned them with a projecting cornice supported by marble pilasters. -Kneeling against what appear to be balconies on both sides of the chapel are marble portrait sculptures of Federigo, his deceased father (a Venetian doge), and six cardinals of the Cornaro family. The figures are informally posed and naturalistically portrayed. -Two read from their prayer books, others exclaim at the miracle taking place in the light-infused realm above the altar, and one leans out from his seat, apparently to look at someone entering the chapel—perhaps the viewer, whose space these figures share. -Bernini's intent was not to produce a spectacle for its own sake, but to capture a critical, dramatic moment at its emotional and sensual height, and by doing so guide viewers to identify totally with the event—and perhaps be transformed in the process.

Fig. 23-15 Giovanni Battista Gaulli THE TRIUMPH OF THE NAME OF JESUS AND FALL OF THE DAMNED

-Gaulli's astonishing creation went beyond anything that had preceded it in unifying architecture, sculpture, and painting. Every element is dedicated to creating the illusion that clouds and angels have descended through an opening in the top of the church into the upper reaches of the nave. - The extremely foreshortened figures are projected as if seen from below, and the whole composition is focused off-center on the golden aura around the letters IHS, the monogram of Jesus and the insignia of the Jesuits. -The subject is the Last Judgment, with the elect rising toward the name of God and the damned plummeting through the ceiling toward the nave floor. -The sweeping extension of the work into the nave space, the powerful appeal to the viewer's emotions, and the near-total unity of the multimedia visual effect—all hallmarks of Italian Baroque—were never surpassed.

Fig. 23-2 Carlo Maderno and Gianlorenzo Bernini ST. PETER'S BASILICA AND PIAZZA, VATICAN, ROME

-Half a century after Michelangelo had returned St. Peter's Basilica to Bramante's original vision of a central-plan building, Pope Paul V Borghese (pontificate 1605-21) commissioned Carlo Maderno (1556-1629) to provide the church with a longitudinal nave and a new façade (fig. 23-2). -Construction began in 1607, and everything but the façade bell towers was completed by 1615 (see Architectural Animation). Rooted in the design of Il Gesù's façade (see fig. 21-48A), Maderno's façade for St. Peter's steps forward in three progressively projecting planes: from the corners to the doorways flanking the central entrance area, then the entrance area, then the central doorway itself. -Similarly, the colossal orders connecting the first and second stories are flat pilasters at the corners but fully round columns where they flank the doorways. These columns support a continuous entablature that also steps out—following the columns—as it moves toward the central door. -Perhaps only a Baroque artist of Bernini's talents could have unified the many artistic periods and styles that come together in St. Peter's Basilica (starting with Bramante's original design for the building in the sixteenth century). The basilica in no way suggests a piecing together of parts made by different builders at different times but rather presents itself as a triumphal unity of all the parts in one coherent whole.

Fig. 23-32 Frans Hals OFFICERS OF THE HAARLEM MILITIA COMPANY OF ST. ADRIAN

-Hals transforms the group portrait into a lively social event. The company, made up of several guard units, was charged with the military protection of Haarlem. -Officers came from the upper middle class and held their commissions for three years, whereas the ordinary guards were tradespeople and craftspeople. -Each company was organized like a guild, traditionally under the patronage of a saint, and functioned mainly as a fraternal order, holding archery competitions and taking part in city processions. -Hals's composition is based on a strong underlying geometry of diagonal lines—gestures, banners, and sashes—balanced by the stabilizing perpendiculars of table, window, and tall glass. -The black suits and hats make the white ruffs and sashes of rose, white, and baby blue even more brilliant.

Fig. 23-19 Diego Velázquez WATER CARRIER OF SEVILLE

-His early water carrier of seville (fig. 23-19) is a study of the surfaces and textures of the splendid ceramic pots that have characterized folk art through the centuries. Velázquez was devoted to studying and sketching from life: The man in the painting was a well-known Sevillian waterseller. -Like Sánchez Cotán, Velázquez arranged the elements of his paintings with almost mathematical rigor. The objects and figures allow the artist to exhibit his virtuosity in rendering volumes and contrasting textures in dramatic natural light. -Light reflects in different ways off the glazed waterpot at the left and the coarser clay jug in the foreground; it is absorbed by the rough wool and dense velvet of the costumes; it is refracted as it passes through the clear glass held by the man and the waterdrops on the jug's surface.

impasto

As he aged, Rembrandt painted ever more brilliantly, varying textures and paint from the thinnest glazes to thick impasto (heavily applied paint), creating a rich, luminous chiaroscuro ranging from deepest shadow to brilliant highlights in a dazzling display of gold, red, and chestnut-brown. His sensitivity to the human condition is perhaps nowhere more powerfully expressed than in his late self-portraits, which became more searching as he aged. Distilling a lifetime of study and contemplation, he expressed an internalized spirituality new in the history of art.

Fig. 23-35 Rembrandt van Rijn THE ANATOMY LESSON OF DR. NICOLAES TULP

-In his first group portrait Rembrandt combined his scientific and humanistic interests. Frans Hals had activated the group portrait rather than conceiving it as a simple reproduction of posed figures and faces; Rembrandt transformed it into a charged moment from a life story. - Dr. Tulp, head of the surgeons' guild from 1628 to 1653, sits right of center, while a group of fellow physicians gathers around to observe the cadaver and learn from the famed anatomist. -Rembrandt built his composition on a sharp diagonal that pierces space from right to left, uniting the cadaver on the table, the calculated arrangement of speaker and listeners, and the open book into a dramatic narrative event. -Rembrandt makes effective use of Caravaggio's tenebrist technique, as the figures emerge from a dark and undefined ambience, their attentive faces framed by brilliant white ruffs. Light streams down to spotlight the ghostly flesh of the cadaver, drawing our attention to the extended arms of Dr. Tulp, who flexes his own left hand to demonstrate the action of the cadaver's arm muscles that he lifts up with silver forceps. -Unseen by the viewers are the illustrations of the huge book, presumably an edition of Andreas Vesalius's study of human anatomy, published in Basel in 1543, which was the first attempt at accurate anatomical illustrations in print. Rembrandt's painting has been seen as an homage to Vesalius and to science, as well as a portrait of the members of the Amsterdam surgeons' guild.

Fig. 23-51 Jules Hardouin-Mansart and Charles Le Brun HALL OF MIRRORS, PALACE OF VERSAILLES

-In his renovation of Le Vau's center-block façade, Hardouin-Mansart enclosed the previously open gallery on the main level, creating the famed hall of mirrors (fig. 23-51), which is about 240 feet long and 47 feet high. He achieved architectural symmetry and a sense of both splendor and expansiveness by lining the interior wall with glass mirrors, matching in size and shape the arched windows in the opposing wall. -Mirrors were small and extremely expensive in the seventeenth century, and these huge walls of reflective glass were created by fitting 18-inch panels together. They reflect the natural light from the windows and give the impression of an even larger space; at night, the reflections of flickering candles must have turned the mirrored gallery into a shimmering tableau in which the king and courtiers saw themselves as they promenaded. -In the seventeenth century, mirrors and clear window glass were enormously expensive. To furnish the Hall of Mirrors, hundreds of glass panels of manageable size had to be assembled into the proper shape and attached to one another with glazing bars, which became part of the decorative pattern of the vast room. -Inspired by Carracci's Farnese ceiling (see fig. 23-8), Le Brun decorated the vaulted ceiling with paintings on canvas (more stable in the damp northern climate) glorifying the reign and military triumphs of Louis XIV, accompanied by Classical gods. In 1642, Le Brun had studied in Italy, where he came under the influence of the Classical style of his compatriot Nicolas Poussin. As "first painter to the king" and director of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, Le Brun controlled art education and patronage from 1661/1663 until his death in 1690. He tempered the warmly exuberant Baroque ceilings he had seen in Rome with Poussin's cool Classicism. The underlying theme for his design and decoration of Versailles was the glorification of the king as Apollo the sun god, with whom Louis identified. Louis XIV thought of the duties of kingship, including its pageantry, as a solemn performance, so it is most appropriate that Rigaud's portrait presents him on a raised, stagelike platform, with a theatrical curtain (see fig. 23-49). Versailles became the splendid stage on which the king played the principal role in the grandiose drama of state.

Fig. 23-27 Peter Paul Rubens HENRY IV RECEIVING THE PORTRAIT OF MARIE DE' MEDICI

-In the painting depicting the royal engagement (fig. 23-27), Henry IV immediately falls in love with Marie as he gazes at her portrait, shown to him—at the exact center of the composition—by Cupid and Hymen, the god of marriage. The supreme Roman god Jupiter and his wife Juno look down approvingly from the clouds. -A personification of France encourages Henry, outfitted with steel breastplate and silhouetted against a landscape in which the smoke of a battle lingers in the distance, to abandon war for love, as putti play below with the rest of his armor. -The ripe colors, lavish textures, and dramatic diagonals give sustained visual excitement to these enormous canvases, making them not only important works of art but also political propaganda of the highest order.

Church of San Carlo (about the design)

-It is difficult today to appreciate how audacious Borromini's design for this small church was. He abandoned the modular, additive system of planning taken for granted by every architect since Brunelleschi. -He worked instead from an overriding geometrical scheme, as a Gothic architect might, subdividing modular units to obtain more complex, rational shapes. For example, the elongated, octagonal plan of San Carlo is composed of two triangles set base to base along the short axis of the plan (see fig. 23-6B). -This diamond shape is then subdivided into secondary triangular units made by calculating the distances between what will become the concave centers of the four major and five minor niches. Yet Borromini's conception of the whole is not medieval. -The chapel is dominated horizontally by a Classical entablature that breaks any surge upward toward the dome. Borromini's treatment of the architectural elements as if they were malleable was also unprecedented. -His contemporaries understood immediately what an extraordinary innovation the church represented; the Trinitarian monks who had commissioned it received requests for plans from visitors from all over Europe. -Although Borromini's innovative work had little impact on the architecture of Classically minded Rome, it was widely imitated in northern Italy and beyond the Alps.

Fig. 23-3 Gianlorenzo Bernini BALDACCHINO (symbolism)

-It symbolized the direct descent of Christian authority from Peter to the current pope, a belief rejected by Protestants and therefore deliberately emphasized in Counter-Reformation Catholicism. Above the shrine, a brilliant stained-glass window portrays the Holy Spirit as a dove surrounded by an oval of golden rays. -Gilded angels and gilt-bronze rays fan out around the window and seem to extend the penetration of the natural light—and the Holy Spirit—into the apse of the church. - The gilding also reflects the light back to the window itself, creating a dazzling, ethereal effect that the seventeenth century, with its interest in mystics and visions, would see as the activation of divinity.

Vermeer's style

-Most of Vermeer's paintings portray enigmatic scenes of women in their homes, alone or with a servant, occupied with a refined activity such as writing, reading letters, or playing a musical instrument. -These are quiet and still interior scenes, gentle in color, asymmetrical but strongly geometric in organization. - By creating a contained and consistent architectonic world in which each object adds to the clarity and balance of the composition, Vermeer transports everyday scenes to a level of unearthly perfection. An even, pearly light from a window often gives solidity to the figures and objects in a room. -All emotion is subdued, evoking a mood of quiet meditation. Vermeer's brushwork is so controlled that it becomes invisible, except when he paints his characteristic pools of reflected light as tiny, pearl-like droplets of color.

17th century Renaissance Art in Europe

-Of course, the arts had long been used to convince or inspire, but the Catholic Church in the seventeenth century pushed this practice to a new height of effectiveness. -To serve the educational and evangelical mission of the revitalized and conservative Church, paintings and sculpture had to depict events and people accurately and clearly, following guidelines established by religious leaders. -Throughout Catholic Europe, painters such as Rubens and Caravaggio created brilliant religious art under official Church sponsorship. And although today some viewers find this sculpture of St. Teresa uncomfortably charged with sexuality, the Church approved of the depictions of such sensational and supernatural mystical visions. -They helped worshipers achieve the emotional state of religious ecstasy that was a goal of the Counter-Reformation

Fig. 23-13 Artemisia Gentileschi JUDITH BEHEADING HOLOFERNES

-One of her most famous paintings, a clear example of her debt to Caravaggio's tenebrism and naturalism, is judith beheading holofernes (fig. 23-13), which she gave to Cosimo II shortly before she left Florence to return to Rome in 1620. The subject is drawn from the biblical book of Judith, which recounts the story of the destructive invasion of Judah by the Assyrian general Holofernes, when the brave Jewish widow Judith risked her life to save her people. -Using her charm to gain Holofernes's trust, Judith enters his tent with her maidservant while he is drunk and beheads him with his own sword. Gentileschi emphasizes the grisly facts of this heroic act, as the women struggle to subdue Holofernes while blood spurts from the severing of his jugular. Dramatic spotlighting and a convergence of compositional diagonals rivet our attention on the most sensational aspects of the scene, which have been pushed toward us in the foreground. -Throughout her life, Gentileschi painted many such images of heroic biblical women, which art historians have interpreted in relation to her own struggle to claim her rightful place in an art world dominated by men.

Fig. 23-44 Emanuel de Witte PORTUGUESE SYNAGOGUE, AMSTERDAM

-One of these is his portuguese synagogue, amsterdam (fig. 23-44) of 1680. The synagogue shown here, which still stands in Amsterdam, is a rectangular hall divided into one wide central aisle with narrow side aisles, each covered with a wooden barrel vault resting on lintels supported by columns. -De Witte's shift of the viewpoint slightly to one side has created an intriguing spatial composition, and strong contrasts of light and shade add dramatic movement to the simple interior. The elegant couple and the dogs in the foreground provide both a sense of scale for the architecture and some human interest for viewers. -Today, this painting is interesting not only as a work of art, but also as a record of seventeenth-century synagogue architecture, documenting Dutch religious tolerance in an age when European Jews were often persecuted. -Expelled from Spain and Portugal from the late fifteenth century on, many Jews had settled in Amsterdam, and their community numbered about 2,300 people, most of whom were well-to-do merchants. Fund-raising for a new synagogue began in 1670, and in 1671 Elias Bouman and Daniel Stalpaert began work on the building. -With its classical architecture, Brazilian jacaranda-wood furniture, and 26 brass chandeliers, this synagogue was considered one of the most impressive buildings in Amsterdam.

Fig. 23-30 Clara Peeters STILL LIFE WITH FLOWERS, GOBLET, DRIED FRUIT, AND PRETZELS

-Our use of the term "still life" for paintings of objects on a table comes from the Dutch stilleven, a word coined about 1650. The Antwerp artist Clara Peeters (1594-c. 1657) specialized in still lifes (see "Closer Look"). -She was a precocious young woman whose career seems to have begun before she was 14. Of some 50 paintings now attributed to her (of which more than 30 are signed), many are of the type called "breakfast pieces," showing a table set for a meal of bread and fruit. Peeters was one of the first artists to combine flowers and food in a single painting, as in her still life with flowers, goblet, dried fruit, and pretzels (fig. 23-30) of 1611. -Peeters arranged rich tableware and food against neutral, almost black backgrounds, the better to emphasize the fall of light over the contrasting surface textures. In a display of precious objects that must have appealed to her clients, the luxurious goblet and bowl contrast with simple stoneware and pewter, as do the delicate flowers with the homey pretzels. The pretzels are a particularly interesting Baroque element, with their complex multiple curves.

Fig. 23-17 Jusepe de Ribera MARTYRDOM OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW

-Ribera's painting of the martyrdom of st. bartholomew (the apostle who was martyred by being skinned alive) captures the horror of the violence to come while emphasizing the saint's spirituality and acceptance (fig. 23-17). -The bound Bartholomew looks heavenward as his executioner tests the sharpness of the knife that he will soon use on his victim. Ribera has learned the lessons of Caravaggio well, as he highlights the intensely realistic faces with the dramatic light of tenebrism and describes the aging, wrinkled flesh in great detail. - The compression of the figures into the foreground space heightens our sense of being witness to this scene (see fig. 23-12).

Emanuel de Witte

-Rotterdam specialized in architectural interiors, first in Delft in the 1640s and then in Amsterdam after settling there permanently in 1652. Although many of his interiors were composites of features from several locations combined in one idealized architectural view, De Witte also painted faithful "portraits" of actual buildings.

Fig. 23-26 Peter Paul Rubens THE RAISING OF THE CROSS

-Rubens's first major commission in Antwerp was a large canvas triptych for the main altar of the church of St. Walpurga, the raising of the cross (fig. 23-26), painted in 1610-1611. He extended the central action and the landscape through all three panels. -At the center, Herculean figures strain to haul upright the wooden cross with Jesus already stretched upon it. At the left, the followers of Jesus join in mourning, and at the right, soldiers supervise the execution. -The drama and intense emotion of Caravaggio is merged here with the virtuoso technique of Annibale Carracci, but transformed and reinterpreted according to Rubens's own unique ideal of thematic and formal unity. -The heroic nude figures, dramatic lighting effects, dynamic diagonal composition, and intense emotions show his debt to Italian art, but the rich colors and careful description of surface textures reflect his native Flemish tradition. -Rubens's expressive visual language was considered just as appropriate for representing secular rulers as it was for religious subjects. Moreover, his intelligence, courtly manners, and personal charm made him a valuable and trusted courtier to his royal patrons, who included Philip IV of Spain, Queen Marie de' Medici of France, and Charles I of England. -In 1621, Marie de' Medici, who had been regent for her son Louis XIII, asked Rubens to paint the story of her life, to glorify her role in ruling France and commemorate the founding of the new Bourbon royal dynasty. In 24 paintings, Rubens portrayed Marie's life and career as one continuous triumph overseen by the ancient gods of Greece and Rome.

Fig. 23-43 Jan Steen THE FEAST OF ST. NICHOLAS

-Steen's paintings of children are especially remarkable, for he captured not only their childish physiques but also their fleeting moods and expressions with rapid, fluid brushstrokes. A characteristic example is the feast of st. nicholas (fig. 23-43), from the 1660s. -Steen's household setting holds neither the intimate order and stillness favored by Vermeer, nor the elegant decorum and guarded interaction portrayed by Ter Borch. -This is a scene of noisy commotion within a joyous family get-together, where children react in various ways—disappointment, delight, possessiveness—to the pre-Christmas gifts St. Nicholas has left for them in their shoes. - Steen renders the objects scattered in the disordered foreground with meticulous attention to the details of surface texture, but the focus here is the festive atmosphere of a boisterous holiday morning and the folksy figures who delight in the celebration.

Fig. 23-24 Peter Paul Rubens SELF-PORTRAIT WITH ISABELLA BRAND

-Ten days after that appointment, he married the 18-year-old Isabella Brandt (1596-1626), an alliance that was financially beneficial to the artist, then almost twice the age of his bride. He commemorated the marriage with a spectacular double portrait of himself and his bride seated together in front of a honeysuckle bower that evokes a state of marital bliss (fig. 23-24). -The self-confident couple looks out to engage viewers directly, and the rich detail of their lavish costumes is described with precision, demonstrating both the artist's virtuosity and the couple's wealth and sophistication. -They join right hands in a traditional gesture of marriage, and the artist slips his foot into the folds of Isabella's flowing red skirt, suggesting a more intimate connection between them. They would have three children before Isabella's untimely death in 1626.

What are the distinctive styles and subjects preferred in paintings from the Protestant Netherlands?

-The Dutch delighted in depictions of themselves and their country—the landscape, cities, and domestic life—not to mention beautiful and interesting objects in still-life paintings and interior scenes. A well-educated people, the Dutch were also fascinated by history, mythology, the Bible, new scientific discoveries, commercial expansion abroad, and colonial exploration. -Visitors to the Netherlands in the seventeenth century noted the popularity of art among merchants and working people. This taste for art stimulated a free market for paintings that functioned like other commodity markets. -Artists had to compete to capture the interest of the public by painting on speculation—completing paintings before offering them for sale, in contrast to commissions, which were created only after a purchase agreement was made. Specialists in particularly popular types of images were most likely to be financially successful, and what most Dutch patrons wanted were paintings of themselves, their country, their homes, their possessions, and the life around them—characterized by active trade, bustling mercantilism, Protestant religiosity, and jarring class distinctions. -The demand for art also gave rise to an active market for the graphic arts, both for original compositions and for copies of paintings, since one copperplate could produce hundreds of impressions, and worn-out plates could be reworked and used again.

dutch still life painting

-The Dutch were so proud of their still-life painting tradition that they presented a flower painting by Rachel Ruysch to the French queen Marie de' Medici during her state visit to Amsterdam. -Like genre paintings, a still-life painting might carry moralizing connotations and commonly had a vanitas theme, reminding viewers of the transience of life and material possessions, even art. Yet it could also document and showcase the wealth of its owner.

Fig. 23-45 Jacob van Ruisdael VIEW OF HAARLEM FROM THE DUNES AT OVERVEEN

-The Haarlem landscape specialist Jacob van Ruisdael (1628/1629-1682), whose popularity drew many pupils to his workshop, was especially adept at both the invention of dramatic compositions and the projection of moods. -His view of haarlem from the dunes at overveen (fig. 23-45), painted about 1670, celebrates the flatlands outside Haarlem that had been reclaimed from the sea as part of a massive landfill project that the Dutch compared with God's restoration of the Earth after Noah's Flood. - Such a religious interpretation may be referenced here in the prominent Gothic church of St. Bavo looming on the horizon. There may be other messages as well. While almost three-quarters of this painting is devoted to a rendering of the powerfully cloudy sky, tiny humans can be seen laboring below, caught in the process of spreading white linen across the broad fields to bleach in the sun. -This glorification of the industriousness of citizens engaged in one of Haarlem's principal industries must have made the painting particularly appealing to the patriotic local market.

The Carracci Brothers

-The brothers Agostino (1557-1602) and Annibale (1560-1609) Carracci and their cousin Ludovico (1555-1619) shared a studio in Bologna. - As their re-evaluation of the High Renaissance masters attracted interest among their peers, they opened their doors to friends and students and then, in 1582, founded an art academy, where students drew from live models and studied art theory, Renaissance painting, and antique Classical sculpture. -The Carracci placed a high value on accurate drawing, complex figure compositions, complicated narratives, and technical expertise in both oil and fresco painting. -During its short life, the academy had an impact on the development of the arts and art education through its insistence on both life drawing (to achieve naturalism) and aesthetic theory (to achieve artistic harmony).

Fig. 23-12 Caravaggio THE CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL

-The emotional power of Caravaggio's theatrical approach to sacred narrative is nowhere more evident than in his conversion of st. paul for the Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo (fig. 23-12). -This is one of two paintings commissioned for this chapel in 1600; the other portrayed the Crucifixion of St. Peter. As with Caravaggio's St. Matthew for the Contarelli Chapel, the first pair was rejected when Caravaggio delivered them and later acquired by a private collector. -This second version of Paul's conversion is direct and simple. Caravaggio focuses on Paul's internal involvement with a pivotal moment, not its external cause. There is no indication of a heavenly apparition, only Paul's response to it. -There is no clear physical setting, only mysterious darkness. And Paul's experience is personal. Whereas he has been flung from his horse and threatens to tumble into the viewer's own space—arms outstretched and legs akimbo, bathed in a strong spotlight—the horse and groom behind him seem oblivious to Paul's experience. -The horse takes up more space in the painting than the saint, and the unsettling position of its lifted foreleg, precariously poised over Paul's sprawled body, adds further tension to an already charged presentation.

cultural and historical background of 17th century in Europe

-The intellectual and political forces set in motion by the Renaissance and Reformation of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries intensified during the seventeenth century. Religious wars continued, although gradually the Protestant forces gained control in the north, where Spain recognized the independence of the Dutch Republic in 1648. - Catholicism maintained its primacy in southern Europe, the Holy Roman Empire, and France through the efforts of an energized papacy aided by the new Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuit Order (map 23-1). -At the same time, scientific advances compelled people to question their worldview. Of great importance was the growing understanding that the Earth was not the center of the universe, but a planet revolving around the Sun. -As rulers' economic strength began to slip away, artists found patrons in the Church and the secular state, as well as in the newly confident and prosperous urban middle classes. -What evolved was a style that art historians have called "Baroque." The label may be related to the Italian word barocco, a jeweler's term for an irregularly shaped pearl—something beautiful, fascinating, and strange. -Protestantism still dominated northern Europe, while in the south Roman Catholicism remained strong after the Counter-Reformation. The Habsburg empire was now divided into two parts, under separate rulers.

Rembrandt van Rijn

-The most important painter working in Amsterdam in the seventeenth century was Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669). One of nine children born in Leiden to a miller and his wife, Rembrandt studied under Pieter Lastman (1583-1633), the principal painter in Amsterdam at the time. -From Lastman, a history painter who had worked in Rome, Rembrandt absorbed an interest in the naturalism, drama, and tenebrism championed by Caravaggio. By the 1630s, Rembrandt was established in Amsterdam primarily as a portrait painter, although he also painted a wide range of narrative themes and landscapes. -Prolific and popular with his Amsterdam clientele, Rembrandt ran a busy studio producing works that sold for high prices. The prodigious output of his large workshop and of the many followers who imitated his manner has made it difficult for scholars to define his body of work, and many paintings formerly attributed to -Rembrandt have recently been assigned to other artists. Rembrandt's mature work reflected his cosmopolitan city environment, his study of science and nature, and the broadening of his artistic vocabulary by the study of Italian Renaissance art, chiefly from engravings and paintings imported by the busy Amsterdam art market. -In 1642, Rembrandt was one of several artists commissioned by a wealthy civic-guard company to create large group portraits of its members for its new meeting hall. -Rembrandt was the first artist to popularize etching as a major form of artistic expression.

Spanish painting 17th century

-The primary influence on Spanish painting in the fifteenth century had been the art of Flanders; in the sixteenth, it had been the art of Florence and Rome. -Seventeenth-century Spanish painting, profoundly influenced by Caravaggio, was characterized by an ecstatic religiosity, as well as realistic surface detail that emerges from the deep shadows of tenebrism. -Late in the sixteenth century, Spanish artists developed a significant interest in paintings of artfully arranged objects rendered with intense attention to detail. Juan Sánchez Cotán (1561-1627) was one of the earliest painters of these pure still lifes in Spain.

17th century art (con)

-The role of viewers also changed. Italian Renaissance painters and patrons had been fascinated with the visual possibilities of perspective; they treasured an idealism of form and subject that kept viewers at a distance, reflecting intellectually on what they were seeing. -Seventeenth-century artists, on the other hand, sought to engage viewers as participants in the work of art and often reached out to incorporate or activate the surrounding environment into the meaning of the work itself. -In Catholic countries, representations of horrifying scenes of martyrdom or the passionate spiritual life of mystics sought to inspire viewers to a reinvigorated faith by making them feel what was going on, not simply contemplate it. In Protestant countries, images of communal parades and city views sought to inspire pride in civic accomplishments. - Viewers participated in works of art like audiences in a theater—vicariously but completely—as the work of art drew them visually and emotionally into its orbit. The seventeenth-century French critic Roger de Piles (1635-1709) described this exchange when he wrote: "True painting ... calls to us; and has so powerful an effect, that we cannot help coming near it, as if it had something to tell us" (Puttfarken, p. 55).

Fig. 23-1 Gianlorenzo Bernini ST. TERESA OF ÁVILA IN ECSTASY stylistic and historical context.

-The sculpture is an exquisite example of the emotional, theatrical style perfected by Bernini in response to the religious and political climate in Rome during the period of spiritual renewal known as the Counter-Reformation. -Many had seen the Protestant Reformation of the previous century as an outgrowth of Renaissance humanism with its emphasis on rationality and independent thinking. In response, the Catholic Church took a reactionary, authoritarian position, supported by the new Society of Jesus founded by Ignatius of Loyola (d. 1556, canonized 1622). -In the "spiritual exercises" (1522-1523) initiated by St. Ignatius, Christians were enjoined to use all their senses to transport themselves emotionally as they imagined the events on which they were meditating. -They were to feel the burning fires of hell or the bliss of heaven, the lashing of the whips and the flesh-piercing crown of thorns. Art became an instrument of propaganda and also a means of leading the spectator to a reinvigorated Christian practice and belief. -Bernini's skill at capturing the movements and emotions of these figures is matched by his virtuosity in simulating different textures and colors in the pure white marble; the angel's gauzy, clinging draperies seem silken in contrast with Teresa's heavy woolen monastic robe. Bernini effectively used the configuration of the garment's folds to convey the saint's swooning, sensuous body beneath, even though only Teresa's face, hands, and bare feet are actually visible.

Fig. 23-14 Pietro da Cortona THE GLORIFICATION OF THE PAPACY OF URBAN VIII

-his great fresco became a model for a succession of Baroque illusionistic palace ceilings throughout Europe (fig. 23-14). -He structured his mythological scenes around a vaultlike skeleton of architecture painted in quadratura that appears to be attached to the actual cornice of the room. -But in contrast to Annibale Carracci's neat separations and careful quadro riportato framing (see fig. 23-8), Pietro's figures weave in and out of their setting in active and complex profusion; some rest on the actual cornice, while others float weightlessly against the sky. -Instead of Annibale's warm, nearly even light, Pietro's dramatic illumination, with its bursts of brilliance alternating with deep shadows, fuses the ceiling into a dense but unified whole.

Fig. 23-31 Hendrick ter Brugghen ST. SEBASTIAN TENDED BY ST. IRENE

-The sickly gray-green flesh of the nearly dead St. Sebastian, painted in an almost monochromatic palette, contrasts with the brilliant red-and-gold brocade of what seems to be his crumpled garment. (Actually this is the cope of the bishop of Utrecht, which had survived destruction by Protestants and become a symbol of Catholicism in Utrecht.) -The saint is cast as a heroic figure, his strong, youthful body still bound to the tree. But St. Irene (the patron saint of nurses) delicately removes one of the arrows that pierce him, and her maid reaches to untie his wrists. -In a typically Baroque manner, the powerful diagonal created by St. Sebastian's left arm dislodges him from the triangular stability of the group. The immediacy and emotional engagement of the work are enhanced by crowding all the figures into the foreground plane, an effect strengthened by the low horizon line, another aspect of this painting that recalls the work of Caravaggio. -The tenebrism and dramatic lighting effects are likewise Caravaggesque, as is the frank realism of the women's faces, with reddened noses and rosy cheeks. Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Rubens all admired Ter Brugghen's painting.

Fig. 23-14 Pietro da Cortona THE GLORIFICATION OF THE PAPACY OF URBAN VIII (symbolism)

-The subject is an elaborate allegory of the virtues of the pope. Just below the center of the vault, seated at the top of a pyramid of clouds and figures personifying Time and the Fates, Divine Providence (in gold against an open sky) gestures toward three giant bees surrounded by a huge laurel wreath (both Barberini emblems) carried by Faith, Hope, and Charity. -Immortality offers a crown of stars, while other figures present the crossed keys and the triple-tiered crown of the papacy. Around these figures are scenes of Roman gods and goddesses, who demonstrate the pope's wisdom and virtue by triumphing over the vices. -So complex was the imagery that a guide gave visitors an explanation, and one member of the household published a pamphlet explaining the painting that is still in use today

Fig. 23-8 Annibale Carracci CEILING OF GALLERY, PALAZZO FARNESE (continued)

-The viewer is invited to compare the warm flesh tones of these youths and their lifelike poses with the more idealized painted bodies in the framed scenes next to them. Above, paintings of stucco-colored sculptures of herms (plain shafts topped by human torsos) twist and turn as they support the painted framework of the vault, exposing a variety of feelings with their expressions and seemingly communicating with one another. -Many of Annibale's ideas are inspired by motifs in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling (see fig. 21-17). The figure types, true to their source, are heroic, muscular, and drawn with precise anatomical accuracy. But instead of Michelangelo's cool illumination and intellectual detachment, the Carracci ceiling glows with a warm light that recalls the work of the Venetian painters Titian and Veronese and seems buoyant with optimism and lively engagement. -The ceiling was highly admired, famous from the moment it was finished. The proud Farnese family generously allowed young artists to sketch the figures there, so that Carracci's masterpiece influenced Italian art well into the following century.

Baroque ceilings

-Theatricality, intricacy, and the opening of space reached an apogee in Baroque ceiling decoration—complex constructions combining architecture, painting, and stucco sculpture. These grand, illusionistic projects were carried out in the domes and vaults of churches, civic buildings, palaces, and villas, and went far beyond even Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling (see fig. 21-17) or Correggio's dome at Parma (see fig. 21-24). -Baroque ceiling painters sought the drama of an immeasurable heaven that extended into vertiginous zones far beyond the limits of High Renaissance taste. To achieve this, they employed the system of quadratura (literally, "squaring" or "gridwork"): an architectural setting painted in meticulous perspective and usually requiring viewing from a specific spot to achieve the desired effect of soaring space. -The resulting viewpoint is called di sotto in sù ("from below upwards"), which we first saw, in a limited fashion, in Mantegna's ceiling in Mantua (see fig. 20-40). Because it required such careful calculation, figure painters usually had specialists in quadratura paint the architectural frame for the

In comparing Bernini's David to Donatello's and Verrocchio's David

-Unlike Donatello's sassy boy (see fig. 20-14) and Verrocchio's poised and proud adolescent (see fig. 20-27)—both already victorious—or Michelangelo's pensive young man contemplating the task ahead (see fig. 21-15), Bernini's more mature David, with his sinewy body, tightly clenched mouth, and straining muscles, is all tension, action, and determination. -By creating a twisting figure caught in movement, Bernini incorporates the surrounding space within his composition, implying the presence of an unseen adversary somewhere behind the viewer. Thus, the viewer becomes part of the action, rather than its displaced and dispassionate observer.

Fig. 23-29 Anthony van Dyck CHARLES I AT THE HUNT

-Van Dyck's many portraits of the royal family provide a sympathetic record of their features and demeanor. In charles i at the hunt (fig. 23-29), of 1635, Van Dyck was able, by clever manipulation of the setting, to portray the king truthfully and still present him as an imposing figure. -Dressed casually for the hunt and standing on a bluff overlooking a distant view (a device used by Rubens to enhance the stature of Henry IV; see fig. 23-27), Charles, who was in fact very short, appears here taller than his pages and even than his horse, since its head is down and its heavy body is partly off the canvas. -The viewer's gaze is diverted from the king's delicate frame to his pleasant features, framed by his jauntily cocked cavalier's hat and the graceful cascade of his hair. As if in polite homage, the tree branches bow gracefully toward him, echoing the curving lines of the hat.

Fig. 23-20 Diego Velázquez THE SURRENDER AT BREDA (THE LANCES)

-Velázquez displays here his compositional virtuosity and his extraordinary gifts as a visual storyteller. A strong diagonal, starting in the sword of the Dutch soldier in the lower left foreground and ending in the checked banner on the upper right, unites the composition and moves the viewer from the defeated to the victorious soldiers in the direction of the surrender itself. -Portraitlike faces, meaningful gestures, and controlled color and texture convince us of the reality of the scene. Across the upper half of the huge canvas, the landscape background is startling. Velázquez painted an entirely imaginary Netherlands in greens and blues worked with flowing, liquid brushstrokes. -Luminosity is achieved by laying down a thick layer of lead white and then flowing the layers of color over it. The silvery light forms a background for dramatically silhouetted figures and weapons. -Velázquez revealed a breadth and intensity unsurpassed in his century, and became an inspiration to modern artists such as Manet and Picasso.

Fig. 23-20 Diego Velázquez THE SURRENDER AT BREDA (THE LANCES) historical context

-Velázquez's Italian studies and his growing skill in composition are apparent in both figure and landscape paintings. In the surrender at breda (fig. 23-20), painted in 1634-1635, Velázquez treats the theme of triumph and conquest in an entirely new way—far removed from traditional gloating military propaganda. -Years earlier, in 1625, Ambrosio Spinola, the duke of Alba and the Spanish governor, had defeated the Dutch at Breda. As Velázquez imagined the scene of surrender, the opposing armies stand on a hilltop overlooking a vast valley where the city of Breda burns and soldiers are still deployed. -The Dutch commander, Justin of Nassau, hands over the keys of Breda to the victorious Spanish commander. The entire exchange seems extraordinarily gracious, an emblem of a courtly ideal of gentlemanly conduct. The victors stand at attention, holding their densely packed lances upright in a vertical pattern—giving the painting its popular name, The Lances—while the defeated Dutch, a motley group, stand out of order, with pikes and banners drooping. -In fact, according to reports, no keys were involved and the Dutch were more presentable in appearance than the Spaniards. Velázquez has taken liberties with historical fact to create for his Spanish patron a work of art that focuses on the meaning of the surrender, rather than its actual appearance.

Fig. 23-21 Diego Velázquez LAS MENINAS (THE MAIDS OF HONOR)

-Velázquez's most enigmatic, and perhaps most striking, work is the enormous multiple portrait known as las meninas (the maids of honor) (fig. 23-21), painted in 1656, near the end of his life. Nearly 10½ feet tall and over 9 feet wide, this painting continues to challenge viewers and stimulate debate among art historians. Velázquez draws viewers directly into the scene. -In one interpretation, the viewer stands in the very space occupied by King Philip and his queen, whose reflections can be seen in the large mirror on the back wall, perhaps a clever reference to Jan van Eyck's Double Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife (see fig. 19-1), which was a part of the Spanish royal collection at this time. -Echoing pictorially the claim made in Jan's signature, Velázquez himself is also present, brushes in hand, beside a huge canvas. -The central focus, however, is neither the artist nor the royal couple but their brilliantly illuminated 5-year-old daughter, the Infanta (princess) Margarita, who is surrounded by her attendants, most of whom are identifiable portraits.

Fig. 23-3 Gianlorenzo Bernini BALDACCHINO

-When Urban VIII was elected pope in 1623, he unhesitatingly gave the young Bernini the daunting task of designing an enormous bronze baldacchino, or canopy, over the high altar of St. Peter's. The church was so large that a dramatic focus on the altar was essential. The resulting baldacchino (fig. 23-3), -completed in 1633, stands almost 100 feet high and exemplifies the Baroque objective to create multimedia works—combining architecture, sculpture, and sometimes painting as well—that defy simple categorization. -The gigantic corner columns symbolize the union of Christianity and its Jewish tradition; the vine of the Eucharist climbs the twisted columns associated with the Temple of Solomon. They support an entablature with a crowning element topped with an orb (a sphere representing the universe) and a cross (symbolizing the reign of Christ). -Figures of angels and putti decorate the entablature, which is hung with tasseled panels in imitation of a cloth canopy. This imposing work not only marks the site of the tomb of St. Peter, but also serves as a tribute to Urban VIII and his family, the Barberini, whose emblems are prominently displayed—honeybees and suns on the tasseled panels and laurel leaves on the climbing vines.

Fig. 23-36 Rembrandt van Rijn THE COMPANY OF CAPTAIN FRANS BANNING COCQ (THE NIGHT WATCH)

-carries the idea of a group portrait as a dramatic event even further. Because a dense layer of grime had darkened and obscured its colors, this painting was once thought to be a nocturnal scene and was therefore called The Night Watch. -After cleaning and restoration in 1975-1976, it now exhibits a natural golden light that sets afire the palette of rich colors—browns, blues, olive-green, orange, and red—around a central core of lemon yellow in the costume of a lieutenant. -To the dramatic group composition, showing a company forming for a parade in an Amsterdam street, Rembrandt added several colorful but seemingly unnecessary figures. While the officers stride purposefully forward, the rest of the men and several mischievous children mill about. -The radiant young girl in the left middle ground, carrying a chicken with prominent claws (klauw in Dutch), may be a pun on the kind of guns (klower) that gave the name (the Kloveniers) to the company. Chicken legs with claws also are part of its coat of arms. -The complex interactions of the figures and the vivid, individualized likenesses of the militiamen make this one of the greatest group portraits in the Dutch tradition.

Church of San Carlo design (con)

-executed more than two decades later, was as innovative as his planning of the interior. He turned the building's front into an undulating, sculpture-filled screen punctuated with large columns and deep concave and convex niches that create dramatic effects of light and shadow. -He also gave his façade a strong vertical thrust in the center by placing over the tall doorway a statue-filled niche, then a windowed niche covered with a canopy, then a giant, forward-leaning cartouche held up by angels carved in such high relief that they appear to hover in front of the wall. -The entire composition is crowned with a balustrade broken by the sharply pointed frame of the cartouche. As with the design of the building itself, Borromini's façade was enthusiastically imitated in northern Italy and especially in northern and eastern Europe.

Bernini

-his collaborator of five years, succeeded him as Vatican architect. Bernini was taught by his father, and part of his training involved sketching the Vatican collection of ancient sculpture, such as Laocoön and His Sons (see fig. 5-65), as well as the many examples of Renaissance painting in the papal palace. -Throughout his life, Bernini admired antique art and, like other artists of this period, considered himself a Classicist. Today, we not only appreciate his strong debt to the Renaissance tradition but also acknowledge the way he broke through that tradition to develop a new, Baroque style.

Fig. 23-9 Caravaggio BACCHUS

-is among the most polished of these early works. Caravaggio seems to have painted exactly what he saw, reproducing the "farmer's tan" of those parts of this partially dressed youth's skin—hand and face—that have been exposed to the sun, as well as the dirt under his fingernails. The figure himself is strikingly androgynous. - Made up with painted lips and smoothly arching eyebrows, he seems to offer the viewer the gorgeous goblet of wine held delicately in his left hand, while fingering the black bow that holds his loose clothing together at the waist. -This may be a provocative invitation to an erotic encounter or a young actor outfitted for the role of Bacchus, god of wine—and the juxtaposition of the youth's invitation with a still life of rotting fruit may add a message about the transitory nature of sensual pleasure, either admonishing viewers to avoid sins of the flesh or encouraging them to enjoy life's pleasures while they can. The ambiguity makes the painting even more provocative.

Fig. 23-40 Johannes Vermeer VIEW OF DELFT

-no simple cityscape. Although the artist convinces the viewer of its authenticity, he does not paint a photographic reproduction of the scene; he moves buildings around to create an ideal composition. -Vermeer endows the city with a timeless stability through a stress on horizontal lines, the careful placement of buildings, the quiet atmosphere, and the clear, even light that seems to emerge from beneath low-lying clouds. -Vermeer may also have experimented with the mechanical device known as the camera obscura. This would not have been used by Vermeer as a method of reproducing the image but as another tool in the visual analysis of the composition. -The camera obscura would have enhanced optical distortions that led to the "beading" of highlights (seen here on the harbored ships and dark gray architecture), which creates the illusion of brilliant light but does not dissolve the underlying form.

Fig. 23-16 Juan Sánchez Cotán STILL LIFE WITH QUINCE, CABBAGE, MELON, AND CUCUMBER

-of about 1602, he contrasts the irregular, curved shapes of the fruits and vegetables with the angular geometry of their setting. His precisely ordered subjects—two of which are suspended from strings—form a long, sagging arc from the upper left to the lower right. -The fruits and vegetables appear within a cantarero (primitive pantry), but it is unclear why they have been arranged in this way. Set in a strong light against impenetrable darkness, this highly artificial arrangement of strikingly lifelike forms suggests not only a -fascination with spatial ambiguity, but also a contemplative sensibility and interest in the qualities of objects that look forward to the work of Zurbarán and Velázquez.

Fig. 23-53 Louis or Antoine Le Nain A PEASANT FAMILY IN AN INTERIOR

-of about 1640, probably by Louis Le Nain, is the largest and one of the most lyrical of these noble scenes of peasant life. Three generations of this family are gathered around a table. The adults acknowledge our presence—a spotlighted woman at left even seems to offer us some wine—whereas the children remain lost in dreams or focused on play. -The casualness of costume and behavior is underlined by the foreground clutter of pets and kitchen equipment. It is only after we survey the frieze of figures illuminated around the table that the painting reveals one of its most extraordinary passages—a boy in the left background, warming himself in front of a fireplace and represented only as a dark silhouette from behind, edged by the soft golden firelight. Why the brothers chose to paint these peasant families, and who bought their paintings, are questions still unresolved.

Fig. 23-47 Rachel Ruysch FLOWER STILL LIFE

-painted shortly after the end of the century, Ruysch placed the container at the center of the canvas's width, then created an asymmetrical floral arrangement of pale oranges, pinks, and yellows rising from lower left to top right of the picture, offset by the strong diagonal of the tabletop. -To further balance the painting, she placed highlighted blossoms and leaves on the dark left half of the canvas and silhouetted them against the light wall area on the right. -Ruysch often emphasized the beauty of curving flower stems and enlivened her compositions with interesting additions, such as casually placed pieces of fruit or insects, in this case a large gray moth (lower left) and two snail shells. -Flower painting was almost never a straightforward depiction of actual fresh flowers. Instead, artists made color sketches of fresh examples of each type of flower and studied scientifically accurate color illustrations in botanical publications. In the studio, using their sketches and notebooks, they would compose bouquets of perfect specimens of a variety of flowers that could never be found blooming at the same time. The short life of flowers was a poignant reminder of the fleeting nature of beauty and of human life.

Carravagio's style

-satisfied the Baroque demand for drama and clarity by developing realism in a powerful new direction. He painted people he saw in the world around him—even the lowlife of Rome—and worked directly from models without elaborate drawings and compositional notes. -Unlike the Carracci, he claimed to ignore the influence of the great masters so as to focus steadfastly on a sense of immediacy and invention. -painted for a small, sophisticated circle associated with the household of art patron Cardinal del Monte, where the artist was invited to live. His subjects from the 1590s include not only still lifes but also genre scenes featuring fortune-tellers, cardsharps, and glamorous young men dressed as musicians or mythological figures.

Fig. 23-6A Francesco Borromini FAÇADE OF THE CHURCH OF SAN CARLO ALLE QUATTRO FONTANE

-stands on a narrow piece of land with one corner cut off to accommodate one of the fountains that give the church its name (fig. 23-6). -To fit the irregular site, Borromini created an elongated central-plan interior space with undulating walls. Robust pairs of columns support a massive entablature, over which an oval dome, supported on pendentives, seems to hover (fig. 23-7). The coffers (inset panels in geometric shapes) filling the interior of the oval dome form an eccentric honeycomb of crosses, elongated hexagons, and octagons. -These coffers decrease sharply in size as they approach the apex, or highest point, where the dove of the Holy Spirit hovers in a climax that brings together the geometry used in the chapel: oval, octagon, circle, and—very important—a triangle, symbol of the Trinity as well as of the church's patrons. The dome appears to be shimmering and inflating—almost floating up and away—thanks to light sources placed in the lower coffers and the lantern.

Fig. 23-41 Johannes Vermeer WOMAN HOLDING A BALANCE

-studied equilibrium creates a monumental composition and a moment of supreme stillness. The woman contemplates the balance in her right hand, drawing our attention to the act of weighing and judging. -Her hand and the scale are central, but directly behind her head is a painting of the Last Judgment, highlighting the figure of Christ the Judge in a gold oval above her head. -The juxtaposition seems to turn Vermeer's genre scene into a metaphor for eternal judgment, a sobering religious reference that may reflect the artist's own position as a Catholic living in a Protestant country. -The woman's moment of quiet introspection in front of the gold and pearls displayed on the table before her, shimmering with reflected light from the window, also evokes the vanitas theme of the transience of earthly life.

Fig. 23-1 Gianlorenzo Bernini ST. TERESA OF ÁVILA IN ECSTASY

-swoons in ecstasy on a bank of billowing marble clouds (fig. 23-1). A smiling angel tugs at her clothing while balancing an arrow pointed in her direction. -Gilded bronze rays of supernatural light descend, even as actual light illuminates the figures from a hidden window above. This dramatic scene, created by Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) -represents a famous vision described with startling clarity by Teresa, in which an angel pierced her body repeatedly with an arrow, transporting her to a state of ecstatic oneness with God.

Critics reactions of Caravaggio

-the Spaniard Vincente Carducho, wrote in his Dialogue on Painting (Madrid, 1633) that Caravaggio was an "omen of the ruin and demise of painting" because he painted "with nothing but nature before him, which he simply copied in his amazing way" (Enggass and Brown, pp. 173-174). -Others recognized him as a great innovator who reintroduced realism into art and developed new, dramatic lighting effects. Seventeenth-century art historian Giovanni Bellori described Caravaggio's painting as ... reinforced throughout with bold shadows and a great deal of black to give relief to the forms. He went so far in this manner of working that he never brought his figures out into the daylight, but placed them in the dark brown atmosphere of a closed room, using a high light that descended vertically over the principal parts of the bodies while leaving the remainder in shadow in order to give force through a strong contrast of light and dark.... (Bellori, -Lives of the Painters, Rome, 1672, in Enggass and Brown, p. 79) Caravaggio's approach has been compared to the preaching of Filippo Neri (1515-15

Fig. 23-33 Frans Hals MALLE BABBE

-the figure is based on a well-known Haarlem barmaid who was eventually confined to a charitable mental institution; the word "Malle" means loony or mad, and the owl was a popular symbol of folly. -Hals's painting technique in this character study is looser and more energetic than in most of his formal portraits, where he often restrained his stylistic exuberance to conform to the expectations of his wealthy sitters. Here he felt freer in a painting that may have had personal significance. -The historical Malle Babbe was confined to the same workhouse for the mentally impaired as Hals's own son Pieter, raising the question of whether this lively vignette of pub life was meant as a bracing social commentary. -A painting that was long praised as one of Hals's finest works is actually by Judith Leyster (c. 1609-1660), Hals's contemporary.

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez

-the greatest painter to emerge from the Caravaggesque school of Seville, shared Zurbarán's fascination with objects. He entered Seville's painters' guild in 1617. Like Ribera, he began his career as a tenebrist and naturalist. -During his early years, he painted scenes set in taverns, markets, and kitchens, and emphasized still lifes of various foods and kitchen utensils. -The cleaning of Las Meninas in 1984 revealed much about Velázquez's methods. He used a minimum of underdrawing, building up his forms with layers of loosely applied paint and finishing off the surfaces with dashing highlights in white, lemon yellow, and pale orange. -Rather than using light to model volumes in the time-honored manner, Velázquez tried to depict the optical properties of light reflecting from surfaces. On close inspection his forms dissolve into a maze of individual strokes of paint.

Frans Hals

-the leading painter of Haarlem, developed a style grounded in the Netherlandish love of description and inspired by the Caravaggesque style introduced by artists such as Ter Brugghen. Like Velázquez, he tried to recreate the optical effects of light on the shapes and textures of objects. -He painted boldly, with slashing strokes and angular patches of paint. Only when seen at a distance do the colors merge into solid forms over which a flickering light seems to move. -In Hals's hands, this loose and seemingly effortless technique suggests the spontaneity of an infectious joy in life. He was known primarily as a portraitist. -Although Hals focused his career on portraits of wealthy members of Haarlem's merchant class, he also painted images of eccentric local figures that, although they follow the format of portraiture, functioned as genre paintings by commenting on the nature of modern life. -Among the most striking of these is a painting of the 1630s, portraying a laughing—presumably drunk—older woman with a large beer tankard in her right hand and a shadowy owl perched on her shoulder, known as malle babbe (fig. 23-33).

Seventeenth-century Dutch portraiture

-took many forms, ranging from single figures in sparsely furnished settings to allegorical depictions of groups in elaborate costumes surrounded by symbols and attributes. Although the faithful description of facial features and costumes was the most important gauge of a portrait's success, some painters, like Hals, went beyond likeness to convey a sense of mood or emotion in the sitter. -Fundamentally, portraits functioned as social statements of the sitters' status coupled with a clear sense of identity rooted in recognizable faces. -Group portraiture documenting the membership of corporate organizations was a Dutch specialty, and Hals painted some of the greatest examples. -These large canvases, filled with many individuals who shared the cost of the commission, challenged painters to present a coherent, interesting composition that nevertheless gave equal attention to each individual portrait. -Most artists arranged their sitters in neat rows to depict every face clearly, but in officers of the haarlem militia company of st. adrian (fig. 23-32) of about 1627, Hals transforms the group portrait into a lively social event.

Rubens

-visited every major Italian city, went to Madrid as the duke's emissary, and spent two extended periods in Rome, where he studied the great works of Roman antiquity and the Italian Renaissance. -While in Italy, Rubens studied the paintings of two contemporaries, Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci. By 1607 Rubens had persuaded the duke of Mantua to buy the former's Death of the Virgin (c. 1601-1602), which had been rejected by Caravaggio's patrons because of its shocking realism.

Fig. 23-42 Gerard ter Borch THE SUITOR'S VISIT

-was one of the most refined of the genre painters. In his painting traditionally known as the suitor's visit (fig. 23-42), from about 1658, a well-dressed man bows gracefully to an elegant woman in white satin, who stands in a sumptuously furnished room in which another woman plays a lute. Another man, in front of a fireplace, turns to observe the newcomer. -The painting appears to represent a prosperous gentleman paying a call on a lady of equal social status, possibly a courtship scene. The spaniel and the musician seem to be simply part of the scene, but we are already familiar with the dog as a symbol of fidelity, and stringed instruments were said to symbolize, through their tuning, the harmony of souls and thus, possibly, a loving relationship. On the other hand, music making was also associated with sensory pleasure evoked by touch. -Ter Borch's exquisite rendering highlights the lace, velvet, and especially the satin of these opulent outfits, potentially symbols of personal excess. If there is a moral lesson, it is presented discreetly and ambiguously.

Fig. 23-58 INTERIOR, BANQUETING HOUSE, WHITEHALL PALACE

Although the exterior suggests two stories, the interior of the Banqueting House (fig. 23-58) is actually one large hall divided by a balcony, with antechambers at each end. Ionic columns and pilasters suggest a colonnade but do not impinge on the ideal, double-cube space, which measures 55 feet in width by 110 feet in length by 55 feet in height. In 1630, Charles I commissioned Peter Paul Rubens—who was in England on a peace mission—to decorate the ceiling. Jones had divided the flat ceiling into nine compartments, for which Rubens painted canvases glorifying the reign of James I. Installed in 1635, the central oval shows the triumph of the Stuart dynasty with the king carried to heaven on clouds of glory. The large rectangular panel beyond it depicts the birth of the new nation, flanked by allegorical paintings of heroic strength and virtue overcoming vice. In the long paintings alongside the oval, putti holding the fruits of the earth symbolize the peace and prosperity of England and Scotland under Stuart rule. So proud was Charles of the result that, rather than allow the smoke of candles and torches to harm the ceiling decoration, he moved evening entertainments to an adjacent pavilion.

Fig. 23-22 Bartolomé Esteban Murillo THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

Counter-Reformation authorities had provided specific instructions for artists painting the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception: Mary was to be dressed in blue and white, her hands folded in prayer as she is carried upward by angels, sometimes in large flocks. She may be surrounded by an unearthly light ("clothed in the sun") and may stand on a crescent moon in reference to the woman of the Apocalypse (see fig. 15-14). Angels often carry palms and symbols of the Virgin, such as a mirror, a fountain, roses, and lilies, and they may vanquish the serpent, Satan. The Church exported to the New World many paintings faithful to these orthodox guidelines by Murillo, Zurbarán, and others. When the indigenous population began to visualize the Christian story (see fig. 30-47), paintings such as Murillo's the immaculate conception (fig. 23-22) provided prompts for their imaginings.

Fig. 23-49 Hyacinthe Rigaud LOUIS XIV

Hardouin-Mansart was responsible for the addition of the long lateral wings and the renovation of Le Vau's central block on the garden side to match these wings (fig. 23-50). The three-story façade has a lightly rusticated ground floor, a main floor lined with enormous arched windows separated by Ionic columns or pilasters, an attic level whose rectangular windows are also flanked by pilasters, and a flat, terraced roof. The overall design is a sensitive balance of horizontals and verticals relieved by a restrained overlay of regularly spaced projecting blocks with open, colonnaded porches.

Fig. 23-52 Georges de La Tour MARY MAGDALEN WITH THE SMOKING FLAME

La Tour painted many images of Mary Magdalen. In mary magdalen with the smoking flame (fig. 23-52), as in many of his other paintings, the light emanates from a source shown in the painting, in this case the flame from an oil lamp. Its warm glow gently brushes over hand and skull—symbol of mortality—to establish the foreground. The compression of the figure into the front of the pictorial space conveys a sense of intimacy between the saint and viewers, although she is completely unaware of our presence. Light not only unifies the painting, its controlled character also creates its somber mood. Mary Magdalen has put aside her rich clothing and jewels to meditate on the frailty and vanity of human life. Even the flickering light that rivets our attention on her meditative face and gesture is of limited duration.

Vermeer

One of the most intriguing Dutch artists of this period is Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), who was also an innkeeper and art dealer. He entered the Delft artists' guild in 1653 and painted only for local patrons. Meticulous in his technique, with a unique and highly structured compositional approach and soft, liquid painting style, Vermeer produced fewer than 40 canvases that can be securely attributed to him. The more these paintings are studied, the more questions arise about the artist's life and his methods.

Fig. 23-28 Peter Paul Rubens and Frans Snyders PROMETHEUS BOUND

Some of his most spectacular paintings were collaborations. Frans Snyders (1579-1657), a specialist in painting animals and flowers, was brought in by Rubens to paint the enormous eagle who devours the liver of the mythical hero in prometheus bound closer look video**

Le Nain brothers

The same feeling of timelessness and a comparable interest in effects of light characterize the paintings of the Le Nain brothers, Antoine (c. 1588-1648), Louis (c. 1593-1648), and Mathieu (1607-1677). Although all three were working in Paris by about 1630 and were founding members of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1648, little else is known about their lives and careers. Because they collaborated closely with each other, art historians have only recently begun to sort out their individual styles. They are best known for their painting of genre scenes in which French peasants pause from labor for quiet family diversions.

Spanish Architecture

Turning away from the severity displayed in the sixteenth-century El Escorial monastery-palace (see fig. 22-17), seventeenth-century Spanish architects again embraced the lavish decoration that had characterized their art since the fourteenth century. Profusions of ornament swept back into fashion, first in huge retablos (altarpieces), then in portals (main doors often embellished with sculpture), and finally in entire buildings.

camera obscura

a cameralike box used to record images from the real world). **full definition in textbook

The banqueting house (fig. 23-57),

built in 1619-1622 to replace an earlier hall destroyed by fire, was used for court ceremonies and entertainments such as the popular masques—stylized dramas combining theater, music, and dance in spectacles performed by professional actors, courtiers, and even members of the royal family itself. The west front, shown here, consisting of what appears to be two upper stories with superimposed Ionic and Composite orders raised over a plain basement level, exemplifies the understated elegance of Jones's interpretation of Palladian design. Pilasters flank the end bays, and engaged columns subtly emphasize the three bays at the center, a disposition repeated in the balustrade along the roofline. A rhythmic effect results from varying window treatments—triangular and segmental (semicircular) pediments on the first level, cornices with volute (scroll-form) brackets on the second. The sculpted garlands just below the roofline add an unexpected decorative touch.

Pietro Berrettini

called "Pietro da Cortona" after his hometown, carried the development of the Baroque ceiling away from Classicism into a more strongly unified and illusionistic direction. Trained in Florence and inspired by Veronese's ceiling in the Doge's Palace, which he saw on a trip to Venice in 1637, the artist was commissioned in the early 1630s by the Barberini family of Pope Urban VIII to decorate the ceiling of the audience hall of their Roman palace.

baroque

deliberately evokes intense emotional responses from viewers. Dramatically lit, theatrical compositions often combine several media within a single work as artists highlight their technical virtuosity.

Michelangelo Merisi

known as "Caravaggio" after his family's hometown in Lombardy, introduced a powerfully frank realism and dramatic, theatrical lighting and gesture to Italian Baroque art. The young painter brought an interest, perhaps a specialization, in still-life painting with him when he arrived in Rome from Milan late in 1592 and found studio work as a specialist painter of fruit and vegetables. When he began to work on his own, he continued to paint still lifes, but began to include half-length figures with them. By this time, his reputation had grown to the extent that an agent offered to market his pictures.

Fig. 23-39 Rembrandt van Rijn SELF-PORTRAIT

the artist assumes a regal pose, at ease, with arms and legs spread, holding a staff as if it were a baton of command. Yet we know that fortune no longer smiled on him; he had declared bankruptcy in 1656, and over the two-year period between that moment and this self-portrait he had sold his private art collection and even his house to cover his debts. It is possible to relate the stress of this situation to the way he represents himself here. A few well-placed brushstrokes suggest physical tension in the fingers and weariness in the deep-set eyes. Mercilessly analytical, the portrait depicts the furrowed brow, sagging flesh, and aging face of one who has suffered pitfalls but managed to survive, retaining his dignity.

The Madrid of Velázquez

was the center of Spanish art. Seville declined after an outbreak of plague in 1649, but it remained a center for trade with the Spanish colonies, where the work of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-1682) had a profound influence on art and religious iconography. Many patrons wanted images of the Virgin Mary and especially of the Immaculate Conception, the controversial idea that Mary was born free from original sin. Although the Immaculate Conception became Catholic dogma only in 1854, the concept, as well as devotion to Mary, grew during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.