IHUM 202 Midterm #1

Isenheim Altarpiece

by Matthias Grunewald Northern Renaissance The intensity of feeling and seriousness that we saw in the painting of van der Weyden and Bosch also appear in the work of Matthias Grünewald (ca. 1470-1528). Multitalented Grünewald served as architect, engineer, and painter to the court of the archbishops of Mainz. His most famous work is the so-called Isenheim Altarpiece, a monumentally large polyptych painted around 1510 to 1515 for the hospital of the Abbey of Saint Anthony, a facility in Isenheim, near Strasbourg, dedicated to the treatment of people with skin diseases. These included syphilis, leprosy, and ergotism, a gangrenous condition caused by eating grain contaminated with the ergot fungus. Physical illness was viewed as a function of spiritual illness, and so Grünewald's altarpiece, like Pope Innocent III's sermon On the Misery of the Human Condition of nearly 300 years earlier, was designed to move these sinners to repentance. But more important it offered hope to the hopelessly afflicted, reminding them that they were not alone in their suffering, that Christ had suffered like them. The Crucifixion in the Isenheim Altarpiece is among the grimmest ever painted (Fig. 16.13), Christ's flesh ripped and torn by thorns, more startlingly realistic in its detail than any Crucifixion ever painted in the South. His body seems emaciated, his ashen skin drawn tightly across his abdomen and rib cage. He hangs limply from the cross, which seems to bend under his weight, his hands splayed open, contorted by pain. His lips are blue, and, as if to emphasize Christ's morbidity, Grünewald's palette of purple-green and yellow-brown almost reeks of rotten flesh. All is darkness, echoing the account of the Crucifixion in the Gospel of Mark (15:33): "And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour." Below, in the predella, or supporting base, of the altarpiece, a Lamentation shows Christ's body, stiff in rigor mortis, as it is settled into the tomb. Grünewald's altarpiece is typical of Northern European art in its unswerving attention to the reality of death, represented in the minutest detail, but it is also uniquely German in its intense emotionalism and almost mystical sense of transcendence. NOTE THE DOUBLE SIDED NATURE. KNOW BOTH SIDES

Altar

n. Any raised place or structure on which sacrifices may be offered or incense burned.

Oil painting

A technique of painting developed by Netherlandish painters in the first half of the fifteenth century using pigments suspended in oil.

Thomas Muntzer

"An early Reformation-era German pastor who was a rebel leader during the Peasants' War. Radical Reformation, Protestant reformers." Müntzer thoroughly believed that reform of the Church required the absolute abolition of the vestiges of feudalism, the rule of what he called the "Godless princes" and the self-serving scholars and priests who worked for them. He numbered Luther among these. Müntzer differed from Luther theologically in that he saw Luther's "faith" as based on scripture whereas he, Müntzer, believed that God spoke spiritually to every individual with faith, and that God's word came in visions and dreams as well as from scripture. Politically, their differences were even more extreme. Müntzer's revelations—his spiritual conversations with his God—led him to believe that a revolutionary transformation of society was required. When Luther objected, Müntzer replied in an invective-ridden tract, A Highly Provoked Vindication and a Refutation of the Unspiritual Soft-Living Flesh in Wittenberg Whose Robbery and Distortion of Scripture Has So Grievously Polluted Our Wretched Christian Church, published in 1524. "The great do whatever they please," Müntzer wrote, "and Doctor Liar [Luther] responds, Amen. It is the lords themselves who make the poor man their enemy. If they refuse to do away with the causes of insurrection, how can trouble be avoided? If saying that makes me an inciter to insurrection, so be it!" Luther was actually sympathetic to the peasants' plight, but he lacked the militancy of Müntzer, who soon raised an army and joined forces with the rebels in Frankenhausen. Within days, the troops of the princes encircled the town, and Müntzer, certain that God was on his side, led the peasants against the princes in the so-called Peasant War. In the ensuing battle, the princes lost six men, Müntzer 6,000. Ten days later, Müntzer was executed.

Cult of Feeling

"The movement derives from an outdated form of psychotherapy based on the superficial doctrine that how you feel is who you are. Thus we live in a "cult of feelings," where what you feel has become at least as important as what you do."

Triptych

A work made of three parts, usually painted panels hinged together.

Michelangelo

(1475-1564) An Italian sculptor, painter, poet, engineer, and architect. Famous works include the mural on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and the sculpture of the biblical character David. The demand for clarity and directness that marks the art and music of the Counter-Reformation did not constrain so original an artist as Michelangelo, who introduced a different, more inventive direction in sixteenth-century art. Raphael had already arrived at a new style in the last paintings he executed for the Vatican before his death in 1520. He replaced the clarity, restraint, and order of his School of Athens (see Chapter 15, Closer Look) with a more active, dynamic, even physically distorted realization of the human figure, probably in response to Michelangelo's own innovations in the same direction in the later frescoes for the Sistine Chapel ceiling—in the Libyan Sibyl, for instance, or the figures of Day and Night in the tomb of Giuliano de' Medici (see Figs. 15.12 and 15.18 in Chapter 15). This new proto-Mannerist style, reflecting the virtuosity and sophistication of its practitioners, manifests itself in architecture in Michelangelo's stairway for the Laurentian Library (see Fig. 15.19 in Chapter 15), which some believe to be among the style's earliest examples. In painting and sculpture, it resulted in distorted, artificial poses, mysterious or obscure settings, and, very often, elongated proportions. It is marked by the rejection of the Classicizing tendencies of the High Renaissance and by the artist's display of virtuosity through manipulations and distortions of the conventional figure. Michelangelo's Pietà, one of the artist's last works, is a fully realized example of the new Mannerist artistic vocabulary (Fig. 20.3). The traditional contrapposto pose that evolved from Classical Greek sculpture in order to give a static figure the illusion of potential movement is here exaggerated by the dynamic, spiral turn of the Christ's body as he falls to the ground. The result is what would become known as a serpentine figure, with no single predominant view. The right arm twists away from the body even as Christ's right leg seems to fold forward to the right at a 90-degree angle. pictured: the last judgement

Ulrich Zwingli

(1484-1531) Swiss reformer, influenced by Christian humanism. He looked to the state to supervise the church. Banned music and relics from services. Killed in a civil war. In 1519, Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531), strongly influenced by Erasmus, entered the contest to be chosen as people's priest of the Great Minster Church in Zurich, Switzerland. The town council had been granted authority by the Church to select its own clergy. Zwingli's candidacy was compromised by the fact that he lived openly with a woman with whom he had fathered six children. The open rejection of celibacy galvanized the electorate, who believed celibacy to be an entirely unfair demand on the clergy. Zwingli was elected, and from that position of power, he soon challenged not only the practice of clerical celibacy, but also such practices as fasting, the veneration of saints, the value of pilgrimages, and the ideas of purgatory and transubstantiation. On this last point, he was especially at odds with Luther. From Zwingli's point of view, communion was symbolic, while Luther held that consubstantiation, the coexistence of the bread and wine with the blood and body of Christ, did indeed occur when the bread and wine of the Eucharist were blessed. Had the two been able to agree on this point, a single, unified Protestant church might have transpired. Zwingli quickly instituted a program of iconoclasm in Zurich. Churches were purged of all imagery on the grounds that images provoked at least the potential for idolatry. Such works were seen, as well, as the embodiment of the Catholic taste for material, rather than spiritual, well-being. Outraged at the pomp, expense, and seeming excess with which the Vatican was decorating Rome, Zwingli used the authority of the prohibition against worship of false idols in the Ten Commandments to argue that art's appeal to the senses rather than the intellect was contrary to proper religious practice and unbecoming to the dignity of any place of worship. In Zurich, the churches were closed for 13 days in August 1523, while all offending objects were removed—metal items were melted for reuse and the rest destroyed—and the walls were whitewashed. Zwingli was ecstatic: "In Zurich we have churches which are positively luminous; the walls are beautiful white!" By the late 1520s, civil war between Protestant and Catholic cantons, or states, broke out in Switzerland. The Protestants won the first major battle, but during the second battle, Zwingli was wounded by his Catholic adversaries, then summarily executed, and his remains were scattered so that no relics would survive his death. The compromise that resulted was that each Swiss canton was now free to choose its own religion.

Louis XIV

(1638-1715) Known as the Sun King, he was an absolute monarch that completely controlled France. One of his greatest accomplishments was the building of the palace at Versailles. Louis XIV loved the pomp and ceremony of his court and the art forms that allowed him to most thoroughly engage this taste: dance and music. Louis commissioned many ballets that required increasingly difficult movements of the dancers. As a result, his Royal Academy of Dance soon established the rules for the five positions of ballet that became the basis of classical dance. They valued, above all, clarity of line in the dancer's movement, balance, and, in the performance of the troop as a whole, symmetry. But in true Baroque fashion, the individual soloist was encouraged to elaborate upon the classical foundations of the ballet in exuberant, even surprising expressions of virtuosity. From a young age, Louis had detested the Louvre, the royal palace in Paris that had been the seat of French government since the Middle Ages. He had assumed the throne at 5 years of age, and a year later, he had been forced to flee Paris after an angry mob broke into the Louvre and demanded to see their child king. (Louis in his bedchamber feigned sleep, and the mob left after simply looking at him.) But the episode made Louis feel unsafe in the Louvre. Thus, in 1661, when he was 23 years of age, he began construction of a new residence in the small town of Versailles, 12 miles southeast of Paris. For 20 years, some 36,000 workers labored to make Versailles the most magnificent royal residence in the world (Fig. 23.2). When Louis permanently moved his court and governmental offices there in 1682, Versailles became the unofficial capital of France and symbol of Louis's absolute power and authority. More than any other art, French architecture was designed to convey the absolute power of the monarchy. From the moment that Louis XIV initiated the project at Versailles, it was understood that the new palace must be unequaled in grandeur, unparalleled in scale and size, and unsurpassed in lavish decoration and ornament. It would be the very image of the king, in whose majesty, according to Bishop Bossuet, "lies the majesty of God." The elaborate design of the new palace at Versailles was intended to leave the attending nobility in awe. Charles Le Brun, who had participated in designing the new east facade of the Louvre (see Fig. 21.21 in Chapter 21), now served as chief painter to the king, and directed the team of artists who decorated the palace's interior. The Hall of Mirrors (Fig. 23.3) was begun in 1678 to celebrate the high point of Louis XIV's political career, the end of six years of war with Holland. With the signing of the Treaty of Nijmegen, France gained control of the Franche-Comté region of eastern France. Such luxury was in stark contrast to how the common people lived throughout France. Louis's centralized government did not address the enemies of their daily lives: drought, famine, and plague.

Baroque

(art & music) opulent and grand. Appealed to the emotional side of things. More sensual with lots of feelings

Emergence of the middle class

(the northern renaissance) The middle class changed the trading routes and were influential in art. This was a change since the nobility and the upper class/church were usually in charge of what was created.

Mannerism

(weird elongated necks and weird proportions)

Louis XV

- King of France (1774-1792). In 1789 he summoned the Estates-General, but he did not grant the reforms that were demanded and revolution followed. Louis and his queen, Marie Antoinette, were executed in 1793.

John Calvin

1509-1564. French theologian. Developed the Christian theology known as Calvinism. Attracted Protestant followers with his teachings. religious reformer who believed in predestination and a strict sense of morality for society Calvin was a French religious reformer who had undergone a religious conversion of extreme intensity. Calvin was convinced that the city could become a model of moral rectitude and Christian piety. For four years, he fought to have the city adopt strict moral codes, locking horns with the city's large population of Catholics. In 1538, his insistence that church worship and discipline belonged in the hands of the clergy, not politicians, led to his banishment from the city. But in 1541, the city recalled him, and he began to institute the reforms that he thought were necessary. Calvin believed in a doctrine of predestination, the idea that people are "elected" by God to salvation prior to coming into the world, and that anyone so elected self-evidently lives in a way that pleases God. In fact, later Calvinists would come to believe that living a pure and pious life—often coupled with business success—made one's election manifest to one's neighbors. As Calvin explained election in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536): "God divinely predestines some to eternal salvation—the Elect—and others to eternal perdition—the Damned; and since no one knows with absolute certainty whether he or she is one of the Elect, all must live as if they were obeying God's commands." In effect, one could only intuit one's election, but never know it with certainty. To this end, Calvinist Geneva—a city where all lived by God's commands—prohibited dancing and singing ("If any one sing immoral, dissolute, or outrageous songs, or dance the virollet or other dance, he shall be put in prison for three days. ..."), drunkenness ("If any one be found intoxicated he shall pay for the first offense 3 sous ... for the second offense he shall be held to pay the sum of 6 sous, and for the third 10 sous and be put in prison"), and blasphemy. Women were prohibited from wearing rouge, lace, and jewelry; men from gambling and playing cards. Men who beat their wives were severely punished, quickly giving the city a reputation as "a paradise for women." So vigilant—and intolerant—was Calvin's Consistory, the ecclesiastical court that supervised the morals of the city and that was made up of 12 city elders and the pastors of its churches, that in some ways Geneva came to resemble a religious police state. When theologian and scientist Michael Servetus (1511-53), discoverer of the pulmonary circulation of blood, arrived in Geneva in 1553, Calvin had already condemned his theological writings as the most "impious ravings of all the ages." Servetus argued that infant baptism was diabolical, that there was no such thing as original sin, and that the Trinity was a "three-headed Cerberus," the mythological dog guarding the gates to Hades. He was promptly arrested—Calvin serving as the chief witness against him—and condemned to death at the stake over a slow-burning green wood fire. Nevertheless, by the time he was done instituting these reforms, Calvin was extremely popular. Before his death in 1564, nearly 7,000 religious refugees had arrived in Geneva seeking protection for their own religious practice. Many of these carried his teachings back to their homelands—to France, the Netherlands, England, Scotland, Poland, and even the fledgling Americas. So austere was the life they had learned in Geneva that, in England, they soon became known by the name of "Puritans." The intolerance of Calvin's Geneva migrated with them, especially to the Puritan colonies in North America.

The printing press

15th century invention which revolutionized the ability to print information which in turn affected the speed of the spread of information itself. Invented during the 15th century by Johanne Gutenberg Helped to bring about the reformation and the mass printing of the Bible Along with the printing press came movable type It is debatable whether the Reformation would have occurred without the invention, a half-century earlier, of the printing press. Sometime between 1435 and 1455, in the German city of Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg (ca. 1390-1468) discovered a process for casting individual letterforms by using an alloy of lead and antimony. The letterforms could be composed into pages of type and then printed on a wooden standing press using ink made of lampblack and oil varnish. Although the Chinese alchemist Pi Sheng had invented movable type in 1045 ce, now, for the first time the technology was available in the West, and identical copies of written works could be reproduced over and over again. In 1455, Gutenberg published his first major work, the Gutenberg Bible (Fig. 17.7)—also known as the Forty-Two-Line Bible because each column of type contains 42 lines—the first substantial book to be published from movable type in Europe. The text is Saint Jerome's translation into Latin of the original Hebrew and Greek. The book's typeface is heavily influenced by the Gothic manuscript tradition, probably because the printer wanted it to look as if it were hand-copied. The publication of another Bible, the so-called Thirty-Six-Line Bible, quickly followed in 1458 to 1461. By the end of the century, printing presses were churning out a wide variety of books in at least 60 German cities and in 200 others throughout Europe. Publishers were quick to print the great humanist texts.

Enlightenment Period

18th century European movement in which thinkers attempted to apply the principles of reason and the scientific method to all aspects of life. Also known as Age of Reason. 1685-1815 Early Enlightenment 1685-1730 High Enlightenment 1730-1780 Late Enlightenment and Beyond 1780-1815 More into philosophy and questioning everything

Satire

A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies. E.g. Gin Lane, Candide

Hamlet

Shakespeare (longer quote) revenge, death iambic pentameter

Martin Luther

95 Thesis, posted in 1517, led to religious reform in Germany, denied papal power and absolutist rule. Claimed there were only 2 sacraments: baptism and communion. Luther's thinking amounts to an almost total rejection of traditional Church doctrine. He argued that the moral virtue that God commands of humanity does not exhibit itself in good deeds or works—in commissioning an altarpiece, for instance—for if this were true, people could never know if they had done enough good works to merit salvation. This was the source of Luther's frustration, even anger. God, Luther was certain, accepts all believers in spite of, not because of, what they do. The Bible, he argued, rejects "the wicked idea of the entire kingdom of the pope, the teaching that a Christian man must be uncertain of the grace of God toward him. If this opinion stands, then Christ is completely useless. ... Therefore the papacy is a veritable torture chamber of consciences and the very kingdom of the devil." From Luther's point of view, Christ had already atoned for humankind's sins—what was the point of his sacrifice?—and he provided the faithful with the certainty of their salvation. So Luther began to preach the doctrine of salvation by faith rather than by works. Like both Dante and Chaucer before him, Luther was particularly bothered by the concept of indulgences, remissions of penalties to be suffered in purgatory. Theoretically, indulgences pave the way to heaven for any sinner, and given the apocalyptic fervor of the day, they were especially popular. Luther's specific target was Johannes Tetzel, a Dominican monk notorious as a traveling seller of indulgences (Fig. 17.4). Tetzel had been jointly hired by Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz and Pope Leo X to raise money to cover the archbishop's debts and to fund Leo's rebuilding of Saint Peter's in Rome. The sale of indulgences supported these projects. At the heart of his opposition, in fact, was class division. Only the rich could afford to pay for the remission of their sins and those of their families. If the poor did buy them, they did so at great sacrifice to the well-being of their families. Then they had to watch the proceeds from the practice build the most extravagant, even profligate of projects in Rome. Such injustice and inequity fueled Luther's rage.

Rococo

: exaggeration of peasant life, very sensual

Humanism

A Renaissance intellectual movement in which thinkers studied classical texts and focused on human potential and achievements, especially political action. When Thomas More published his Utopia in 1516, it was widely understood to be more than just a description of an unrealized, ideal state—in Greek, eu means "good" and topos "place," hence "Good place," but also, the root might be, ou meaning "not," hence "No place"—and thus a profound critique of the English political system. At the heart of the critique is More's implicit comparison between his own corrupt Christian society and the ideal society he imagines.

Inquisition

A Roman Catholic tribunal for investigating and prosecuting charges of heresy - especially the one active in Spain during the 1400s. In Spain, the Church implemented the Inquisition in 1478, much earlier than in Italy, but not as a method of enforcing the strictures of the Counter-Reformation. Rather, it was used as a tool to expel or convert all non-Christian Spaniards. Its first target was the Muslims of Andalusia, the Islamic emirate in the south of Spain. In 1492, after the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella had finally succeeded in taking the Nasrid stronghold of Granada (see Chapter 9), the Church encouraged Muslims to convert by means of friendly persuasion, permitting them to retain the Mudéjar language and culture, and to use Arabic during religious services. By 1500, however, the clergy had begun to impose Christianity upon the Muslim population by force, systematically baptizing Muslims in mass ceremonies. Within the year, all Muslims were officially considered Christian—moriscos, they were called—and by royal decree in October 1501, a huge bonfire destroyed Arabic books in Granada, signaling the symbolic if not actual end of Muslim al-Andalus. The second target of the Spanish Inquisition was Spaniards of Jewish origin who had converted to Christianity, known as conversos. Since 1480, the Inquisition had persecuted Jews whose conversion they deemed suspect and had executed scores of them on the charge of heresy. The fall of Granada inspired the inquisitors to bring about the conversion of all Jews. So on March 31, 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella issued an edict of expulsion, giving the Jews of Castile and Aragon until July 31 to accept baptism or leave the country. Over half the Jews of Spain chose to leave. (Over the course of the previous century, many thousands had already emigrated, as Spanish Christendom had become intolerant of their presence. In Barcelona, where more than 4,000 Jews had lived the century before, only 20 Jewish families remained in 1492.) The forcible conversion and expulsion of the conversos and moriscos reinforced the image of the Spanish monarchy as champions of Christianity, a role that both Charles V and Philip II would take very seriously.

Iconoclasm

A belief that the practice of worshiping and honoring objects such as icons was sinful. The idea, practice, or doctrine of an iconoclast to destroy or ban religious images and their veneration. Sparked by Martin Luther: Zwingli quickly instituted a program of iconoclasm in Zurich. Churches were purged of all imagery on the grounds that images provoked at least the potential for idolatry. Such works were seen, as well, as the embodiment of the Catholic taste for material, rather than spiritual, well-being. Outraged at the pomp, expense, and seeming excess with which the Vatican was decorating Rome, Zwingli used the authority of the prohibition against worship of false idols in the Ten Commandments to argue that art's appeal to the senses rather than the intellect was contrary to proper religious practice and unbecoming to the dignity of any place of worship. In Zurich, the churches were closed for 13 days in August 1523, while all offending objects were removed—metal items were melted for reuse and the rest destroyed—and the walls were whitewashed. Zwingli was ecstatic: "In Zurich we have churches which are positively luminous; the walls are beautiful white!"

The Reformation

A religious movement of the 16th century that began as an attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church and resulted in the creation of Protestant churches. October 31, 1517 was the day Martin Luther posted the Ninety-Five Theses to the door Martin Luther's aim to reform the catholic church Became known as the Protestant Reformation Printing press helped to spur the reformation Bothered by indulgences

Industrial Revolution

A series of improvements in industrial technology that transformed the process of manufacturing goods. New machinery in new factories created a supply of consumer goods unprecedented in history, answering an ever-increasing demand for everyday items, from toys, furniture, kitchen utensils, and china, to silverware, watches, and candlesticks. Textiles were in particular demand, and in many ways, advances in textile manufacture could be called the driving force of the Industrial Revolution. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, textiles were made of wool from sheep raised in the English Midlands. A thriving cottage industry, in which weavers used handlooms and spinning wheels, textile manufacture changed dramatically in 1733 when John Kay in Lancashire invented the flying shuttle. Using this device, a weaver could propel the shuttle, which carries the yarn that forms the weft through the fibers of the warp, beyond the weaver's reach. Cloth could be made both wider and more rapidly. Invention after invention followed, culminating in 1769 when Richard Arkwright (1732-92) patented the water frame, a waterwheel used to power looms. With their increased power, looms could operate at much higher speeds. Arkwright had duped the actual inventors out of their design, and in 1771 installed the water frame in a cotton mill in Derbyshire, on the River Derwent. These first textile mills, needing water power to drive their machinery, were built on fast-moving streams like the Derwent. But after the 1780s, with the application of Watts's steam power, mills soon sprang up in urban centers. In the last 20 years of the eighteenth century, English cotton output increased 800 percent, accounting for 40 percent of the nation's exports. Another important development was the discovery of techniques for producing iron of unprecedented quality in a cost-effective manner. Early in the century, Abraham Darby (1678-1717) discovered that it was possible to fire cast iron with coke—a carbon-based fuel made from coal. Darby's grandson, Abraham Darby III (1750-91), inherited the patent rights to the process; to demonstrate the structural strength of the cast iron he was able to manufacture, he proposed to build a single-arch cast-iron bridge across the River Severn, high enough to accommodate barge traffic on the river. The bridge at Coalbrookdale (Fig. 24.11) was designed by a local architect, while its 70-foot ribs were cast at Darby's ironworks. The bridge's 100-foot span, arching 40 feet above the river, demonstrated once and for all the structural potential of iron. A century later, such bridges would carry railroad cars, as the need for transporting new mass-produced goods exploded.

Sonata form

A small form within the greater symphonic form. Consists of exposition, development, and recapitulation (Fig. 25.18). In the exposition, the composer "exposes" the main theme in the composition's "home" key and then contrasts it with a second theme in a different key. In the development, the composer further develops the two themes in contrasting keys, and then, in the recapitulation, restates the two themes, but both now in the home key. Use of the home key in the restatement resolves the tension between the two themes. A short coda (or "tail") is often added to bring the piece to a definitive end, typically with a strong harmonic closing (called a cadence by musicians).

Jesuits

Also known as the Society of Jesus; founded by Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) as a teaching and missionary order to resist the spread of Protestantism. The Counter-Reformation (see Chapter 20) had the support of clergy and laypeople through newly organized groups such as the Modern Devotion and the Oratory of Divine Love. These groups encouraged a return to the principles of simplicity, ethical living, and piety that Erasmus had championed. The Society of Jesus, known more familiarly as the Jesuits, took a tougher approach. Founded by Ignatius of Loyola in the 1530s, it advocated a return to strict and uncompromising obedience to the authority of the Church and its ecclesiastical hierarchy. The society's Rule 13 sums up its notion of obedience: "I will believe that the white that I see is black if the hierarchical Church so defines it." Then, in 1545, Pope Paul III convened the Council of Trent in order to define Church doctrine and recommend far-reaching reforms in the abuses practiced by the Church, particularly the selling of indulgences.

Publication of Encyclopédie:

Although the Encyclopédie was rather innocently subtitled a Classified Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Trades, the stated intention of the massive 35-volume text, which employed more than 180 writers, was "to change the general way of thinking." Something of the danger that the Encyclopédie presented to the monarchy is evident in the entry on natural law written by French lawyer Antoine-Gaspard Boucher d'Argis. Such thinking was fundamental to the Enlightenment's emphasis on human liberty and would fuel revolutions in both America and France. Similar thinking could be found in the sections of the Encyclopédie on ¬political science written by the Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755), a deep believer in the writings of John Locke and England's parliamentary democracy. In his 1748 treatise The Spirit of the Laws, he had argued for the separation of powers, dividing government into ¬executive, legislative, and judicial branches—an argument that would provide one of the foundations for the American Constitution in the 1780s. Freedom of thought was, in fact, fundamental to the transmission of knowledge, and any state that suppressed it was considered an obstacle to progress. So when Louis XV's censors halted publication of the Encyclopédie in 1759, the philosophes affirmed the despotism of the French state, even if other government officials, prompted by the -salon hostesses, secretly worked to ensure the work's continued viability. Funded by its 4,000 subscribers, the Encyclopédie was read by perhaps 100 times that many people, as private circulating libraries rented it to customers throughout the country. In its comprehensiveness, it represents a fundamental principle of the Enlightenment, also evident in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (see Chapter 24), to accumulate, codify, and preserve human knowledge. Like the Histoire Naturelle ("Natural History") of Georges-Louis Leclerc (1707-88), published in 36 volumes from 1749 to 1788, which claimed to include everything known about the natural world up to the moment of publication, the Encyclopédie claimed to be a collection of "all the knowledge scattered over the face of the earth." The principle guiding this encyclopedic impulse is rational humanism, the belief that through logical, careful thought, progress is inevitable. In other words, the more people know, the more likely they will invent new ways of doing things. Thus, the Encyclopédie illustrated manufacturing processes in the most careful detail, imagining that astute readers might recognize better, more efficient methods of manufacturing even as the processes were demystified

Gnetti Family

Among Fontana's greatest works is an altarpiece commissioned by the Gnetti family of Bologna, a Consecration of the Virgin. Instead of including its patrons, Fontana painted their children (Fig. 20.12). It is a fully Mannerist work. Note the elongated features of Saint Donnino, at the left, handing a key to the two boys; the expressive features of the children, each of whom seems occupied with his or her own individual thoughts; and, especially, the serpentine pose of the angel who holds the top of the cross. The Church had called for a high moral tone in religious art, and Fontana's altarpiece, with its emphasis on prayer and devotion and the familial continuity of the Church's flock, fulfilled that desire. Above all, especially in celebrating the piety of the children, it is a completely decorous work.

Polyptych

An altarpiece constructed from multiple panels.

Tenebrism

An exaggerated form of chiaroscuro. Time and again, his (Caravagio's) paintings dramatize this moment of conversion through use of the technique known as tenebrism. As opposed to chiaroscuro, which many artists employ to create spatial depth and volumetric forms through slight gradations of light and dark, a tenebrist style is not necessarily connected to modeling at all. Tenebrism makes use of large areas of dark contrasting sharply with smaller brightly illuminated areas. In The Calling of Saint Matthew, Christ's hand and face rise up out of the darkness, as if his very gesture creates light itself—and by extension Matthew's salvation.

Northern Renaissance:

Art determined by merchants/middle class, before this wealthy families were patrons or the church paid for art. Trade is important, rise in secular art,Classicism

Johann Sebastian Bach

Baroque Bach was very much a master of the keyboard in Sweelinck's Baroque tradition. Like Sweelinck, Bach sought to convey the devotional piety of the Protestant tradition through his religious music. And like Sweelinck, he was an organist, first in the churches of small German towns, then in the courts of the Duke of Weimar and the Prince of Cöthen, and finally at Saint Thomas's Lutheran Church in Leipzig. There he wrote most of the music for the Lutheran church services, which were much more elaborate than the Calvinist services in Amsterdam. VOCAL MUSIC For each Sunday service, Bach also composed a cantata, a multimovement musical commentary on the chosen text of the day, sung by soloists and chorus accompanied by one or more instruments, usually the organ. The first half of the cantata was performed after the scriptural lesson and the second half after the sermon, concluding with a chorale, a hymn sung in the vernacular by the entire congregation. Like operas, cantatas include both recitative parts and arias (see Chapter 21). Bach's cantatas are usually based on the simple melodies of Lutheran chorales, but are transformed by his genius for counterpoint, the addition of one or more independent melodies above or below the main melody, in this case the line of the Lutheran chorale. The result is an ornate musical texture that is characteristically Baroque. Jesu, der du meine Seele ("Jesus, It Is By You That My Soul") provides a perfect example, and it reveals the extraordinary productivity of Bach as a composer, driven as he was by the Baroque demand for the new and the original. He wrote it in 1724, a week after writing another entirely new cantata, and a week before writing yet another. (Bach was compelled to write them in time for his choir and orchestra to rehearse.) The opening chorus (track 22.1) is based on the words and melody of a chorale that would have been familiar to all parishioners. That melody is always presented by the soprano, and is first heard 21 measures into the composition after an extended passage for the orchestra. Even the untrained ear can appreciate the play between this melody and the others introduced in counterpoint to it. Bach: Cantata No. 78 "Jesu, der du meine Seele," I Over the course of his career, Bach composed more than 300 cantatas, or five complete sets, one for each Sunday and feast day of the church calendar. In addition, he composed large-scale oratorios. These are lengthy choral works, either sacred or secular, but without action or scenery, performed by a narrator, soloists, chorus, and orchestra (see Chapter 21) for Christmas and Easter. Bach's Christmas Oratorio is a unique example of the form. It consists of six cantatas, written to be sung on six separate days over the course of the Christmas season from 1734 to 1735, beginning on Christmas Day and ending on Epiphany (January 6). Based on the Gospels of Saint Luke and Saint Matthew, the story is narrated by a tenor soloist in the role of an Evangelist. Other soloists include an Angel, in the second cantata, and Herod, in the sixth. The chorus itself assumes several roles: the heavenly host singing "Glory to God" in the second cantata; the shepherds singing "Let us, even now, go to Bethlehem" in the third; and, in the fifth, the Wise Men, singing "Where is this new-born child; the king of the Jews?" Solo arias interrupt the narrative in order to reflect upon the meanings of the story. One of Bach's greatest achievements in vocal music is The Passion According to Saint Matthew, written for the Good Friday service in Leipzig in 1727. A passion is similar to an oratorio in form but tells the story from the gospels of the death and Resurrection of Jesus. Composed of the sung texts of Chapters 26 and 27 of the Gospel of Matthew, it narrates the events between the Last Supper and the Resurrection. It is a huge work, over three hours long. A double chorus assisted by a boys' choir alternates with soloists (representing Matthew, Jesus, Judas, and others) who sing arias and recitatives, all accompanied by a double orchestra and two organs. As in the Christmas Oratorio, the story is narrated by a tenor Evangelist. The words of Jesus are surrounded by a lush string accompaniment, Bach's way of creating a musical halo around them. All told, in the Passion of Saint Matthew Bach seems to have captured the entire range of human emotion, from terror and grief to the highest joy.

Johannes Goedaert Self-Portrait

Baroque I can't find anything about this piece.

Handel

Baroque The sense of prosperity and promise created by the Industrial Revolution in England found expression, particularly, in the music of German-born George Frederick Handel (1685-1759). Handel had studied opera in Italy for several years, and was serving as Master of the Chapel in the Hanover court when George I was named King of England. He followed the king to London in the fall of 1712. He was appointed composer to the Chapel Royal in 1723, became a British citizen in 1727, and, when George II was crowned in 1728, composed four anthems for the ceremony. Over the course of his career, Handel composed several orchestral suites (musical series of thematically related movements) that remain preeminent examples of the genre. Water Music was written for a royal procession down the River Thames in 1717, and Music for the Royal Fireworks (1749) celebrated the end of a war with Austria. He wrote concertos for the oboe and the organ, performing the latter himself between acts of his operas and oratorios at London theaters. Opera was, in fact, his chief preoccupation—he composed 50 in his lifetime, 46 in Italian and 4 in German—but it was the oratorio, the same genre that so attracted Johann Sebastian Bach (see Chapter 22), that made his reputation. An oratorio is a lengthy choral work, usually employing religious subject matter, performed by a narrator, soloists, choruses, and orchestra. It resembles opera in that it includes arias, recitatives, and choruses (see Chapter 21), but unlike opera, it does not have action, scenery, or costumes. To compensate for the lack of action, a narrator often connects threads of the plot. Handel composed his oratorios in English rather than Italian, the preferred opera language at that time. It is not clear just why he wrote oratorios, but a displeased bishop of London may have had something to do with it. The bishop banned Handel's biblical opera, Esther, in 1732, asserting that a stage production of the Bible was inappropriate. By using the oratorio form, Handel could treat biblical themes decorously. Handel's greatest achievement is the oratorio Messiah. Written in 24 days, the work premiered in Dublin, Ireland, in 1742, as a benefit for Irish charities. It is probably the best known of all oratorios, although it is thoroughly atypical of the genre: The Messiah has no narrator, no characters, and no plot. Instead, Handel collected loosely related verses from the Old and New Testaments. It was an immediate success. Many Englishmen thought of their country as enjoying God's favor as biblical Israel had in the Old Testament, and Handel tapped into this growing sense of national pride. The Messiah recounts, in three parts, the biblical prophecies of the coming of a Saviour, the suffering and death of Jesus, and the Resurrection and redemption of humankind. The Messiah is sometimes remarkable in its inventiveness. When, for instance, Handel scored the text "All we, like sheep, have gone astray," he made the last words scatter in separate melodies across the different voices, mimicking the scattering referred to in the text. This technique, known as word painting, had been used during the Renaissance—the mood of the musical elements imitated the meaning of the text (see Chapter 15). Tradition has it that in 1743 when George II first heard the now famous "Hallelujah Chorus" (track 24.1), which concludes the second part of the composition, he rose from his seat—whether in awe or simply because he was tired of sitting, no one knows—a gesture that has since become standard practice for all English-speaking audiences. For the rest of Handel's life, he performed the Messiah regularly, usually with a chorus of 16 voices and an orchestra of 40, both relatively large for the time.

Enlightenment:

Candide, Satire, think for themselves and question everything

Methodological doubt

Cartesian Doubt is a form of methodological skepticism associated with the writings and methodology of René Descartes (March 31, 1596-Feb 11, 1650).[1][2] Cartesian doubt is also known as Cartesian skepticism, methodic doubt, methodological skepticism, universal doubt, systematic doubt or hyperbolic doubt. Cartesian doubt is a systematic process of being skeptical about (or doubting) the truth of one's beliefs, which has become a characteristic method in philosophy. Additionally, Descartes' method has been seen by many as the root of the modern scientific method. T

Cartesian duality

Descartes view of the world as consisting of two fundamental entities matter and mind. we refer to Descartes's method as Cartesian—is an absolute distinction between mind and matter, and hence between the metaphysical soul and the physical body, a system of oppositions that has come to be known as Cartesian dualism. The remarkable result of this approach is that, beginning with this one "first principle" in his Discourse on Method, Descartes comes to prove, at least to his own satisfaction, the existence of God. He would repeat this argument many times, most formally in his 1641 Meditations, but the logic, simply stated, is as follows: (1) I think, and I possess an idea of God (that is, the idea exists in me and I can be aware of it as an object of my understanding); (2) The idea of God is the idea of an actually infinite perfect being; (3) Such an idea could only originate in an actually infinite perfect being ("it had been placed in me by a Nature which was really more perfect than mine could be, and which had within itself all the perfections of which I could form any idea"); and (4) Therefore, there is an infinitely perfect being, which we call God. This line of thinking established Descartes as one of the most important founders of deism (from the Latin deus, "god"), the brand of faith that argues that the basis of belief in God is reason and logic rather than revelation or tradition. Descartes did not believe that God was at all interested in interfering in human affairs. Nor was God endowed, particularly, with human character. He was, in Descartes's words, "the mathematical order of nature." Descartes was himself a mathematician of considerable inventiveness, founding analytic geometry, the bridge between algebra and geometry crucial to the invention of calculus.

William Hogarth

English artist noted for a series of engravings that satirized the affectations of his time (1697-1764) By 1743, thousands of Londoners were addicted to gin, their sole means of escape from the misery of poverty. In 1751, just four years after Canaletto painted his view of London, William Hogarth published Gin Lane, a print that illustrated life in the gin shops (Fig. 24.4). In the foreground, a man so emaciated by drink that he seems a virtual skeleton lies dying, half-naked, presumably having already pawned the rest of his clothes. A woman takes snuff on the stairs as her child falls over the railing beside her. At the door to the thriving pawnshop behind her, a carpenter sells his tools, the means of his livelihood, as a woman waits to sell her kitchen utensils, the means of her nourishment. In the background, a young woman is laid out in a coffin, as her child weeps beside her. A building comes tumbling down, a man parades down the street with a bellows on his head and a child skewered on his staff—an allegorical if not realistic detail. In the top story of the building on the right, another man has hanged himself. At the lower left, above the door to the Gin Royal, one of the only buildings in good condition, are these words: "Drunk for a penny / Dead drunk for two pence / Clean Straw for Nothing." In Gin Lane, Hogarth turned his attention, not to the promise of the English Enlightenment, but to the reality of London at its worst. He did so with the savage wit and broad humor that marks the best social satire. And he did so with the conviction that his images of what he called "modern moral subjects" might not only amuse a wide audience, but would influence that audience's behavior as well. Hogarth usually painted his subjects first, but recognizing the limited audience of a painting, he produced engraved versions of them for wider distribution. Hogarth recognized that his work appealed to a large popular audience, and that by distributing engravings of his works he might make a comfortable living by entertaining it. A successful engraving had to sell enough impressions to pay for its production and earn a profit for its maker, who was not usually the artist. Before Hogarth's time, British printmakers had kept most of the profits from an illustration. But Hogarth marketed his prints himself by means of illustrated subscription tickets, newspaper advertisements, and broadsides, and kept the profits. Especially popular were three series of prints, each telling a different tale. One of the series, Marriage à la Mode, was produced as both one-of-a-kind paintings and a subscription series of engravings. In six images, the series tells the story of a marriage of convenience between the son of a bankrupt nobleman, the Earl of Squanderfield, and the daughter of a wealthy tradesman. The moral bankruptcy of British society—not just the poor—is Hogarth's subject. His caricature—a portrait that exaggerates a person's peculiarities or defects—of each of his cast of characters is underscored by their names: Squanderfield, Silvertongue, and so on. The loveless couple is sacrificed to the desires of their parents, for money or social position, and the results of this union go from bad to worse. By the time we arrive at the fourth image, The Countess's Levée, or Morning Party (Fig. 24.5), which encapsulates the morning ritual of the young wife, the moral depravity of the couple's lifestyle is clear. An Italian castrato—a singer castrated in his youth so that he might retain his high voice—sings to the inattentive crowd, accompanied by his flautist. Next to them, a hanger-on with his hair in curlers sips his tea. The lady of the house listens attentively to her illicit lover Silvertongue, the family lawyer, whose portrait overlooks the room. Below them, a black child-servant points to a statue of Actaeon. (In Classical mythology, Actaeon was a hunter who was transformed into a stag for having observed the goddess Diana bathing. His horns traditionally signify a cuckold, a man whose wife is unfaithful.)

Albrecht Dürer

Famous Northern Renaissance artist, he often used woodcutting along with Italian Renaissance techniques like proportion, perspective and modeling. (Knight Death, and Devil; Four Apostles) Dürer was determined to introduce a more scientific approach to painting to Germany. To do so, he published theoretical treatises on drawing, perspective, proportion, measurement, and the techniques of painting. Dürer presents the artist as a disinterested observer. His imagination is moved by the objective recording of reality, not by the subjective feelings the model might inspire in him. For Dürer, creating art was a sacred act; it made manifest God's work, from the Creation to Christ's Passion. Remember the greenery that he painted as well as the print of the artist and the nude.

Peter Paul Rubens

Flemish baroque tradition Netherlandish Painter came together with Jan Brueghel the Elder to paint a series of five paintings on the theme of the five senses in 1617 to 1618, they knew that the new universe of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo had to be addressed in their Allegory of Sight

Jan van Eyck

Flemish painter who was a founder of the Flemish school of painting and who pioneered modern techniques of oil painting (1390-1441) The medium of oil painting had been known for several centuries, and medieval painters had used oils to decorate stone, metal, and occasionally plaster walls. As we will see, oil painting enabled artists such as Jan van Eyck to add the kind of detail and subtle color and value gradations to their paintings that resulted in a remarkable realism. For many art historians, this detailed naturalism is the most distinctive feature of Northern European art. By the sixteenth century, at any rate, Bruges printmaker Johannes Stradanus popularized the idea of van Eyck's mastery of the medium with the publication of his print, Jan van Eyck's Studio (Fig. 16.2). This print shows van Eyck's Bruges studio as a factory where paintings are made as goods for consumption by a rising middle class.

Manichean pessimism

Found in Candide The Manichaeans see the universe in terms of the dual forces of good and evil. They believe that these two forces are equally powerful in the world and are continually in conflict. Manichaeans believe that through spiritual knowledge, human beings can conquer the evil side of their natures. Christians, whose doctrines hinge on a belief in a good and all-powerful god who is more powerful than the evil represented by Satan, fiercely reject Manichaeism. The precepts of Manichaeism also directly conflict with Pangloss's optimism, since a world dominated in part by evil cannot be perfect or perfectible. Absolute pessimism, Voltaire seems to say, is as short-sighted and self-defeating as absolute optimism.

Rubensiste:

French school of thought during the Baroque/Rococo period. Rubensiste focused on color while Poussiniste focused on lines

"Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina,"

Galileo The catholic church was still running things, and they didn't like that galileo had beliefs that they disagreed with, but that scripture and science should be reconciled.

Fêtes galantes

Gallant, and by extension amorous, celebrations or parties enjoyed by an elite group in a pastoral or garden setting. Watteau was best known for his paintings of fêtes galantes—gallant, and by extension amorous, celebrations or parties enjoyed by an elite group in a pastoral or garden setting. The erotic overtones of these fêtes galantes are immediately apparent in The Embarkation from Cythera in the pedestal statue of Venus at the right side of the painting and the flock of winged cupids darting about among the revelers (Fig. 25.3). The scene is the island of Cythera, the mythical birthplace of the goddess. Below her statue, which the pilgrims have decked with garlands of roses, a woman leans across her companion's lap as three cupids try to push the two closer together. Behind them, a gentleman leans toward his lady to say words that will be overheard by another woman behind them, who gathers roses with her lover as she leans over them both. Farther back in the scene, a gentleman helps his lady to her feet while another couple turns to leave, the woman looking back in regret that they must depart the garden island.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Greatest sculptor of the 17th century Known for having developed the Baroque style of sculpture Well known works include Piazza St. Pietro, colonnades in front of St. Peter's Basilica and interior decoration, statue of David, Ecstasy of St. Teresa

Frans Hals

Hals could paint Halls of people (group paintings) The leading portrait painter of early seventeenth-century Holland was Frans Hals (1581-1666) of Haarlem. Hals worked quickly, probably without preliminary sketches (none survive), with the loose and gestural brushstrokes apparent in his lively portrait of Descartes (see Fig. 22.5). He avoided flattering his sitters by softening or altering their features, seeking instead to convey their vitality and personality. Hals was particularly successful at the group portrait, a large canvas commissioned by a civic institution to document or commemorate its membership at a particular time. Between 1616 and 1639, Hals painted five enormous group portraits for the two Haarlem militias: the Civic Guard of Saint George and the Cluveniers, who were also known as the Civic Guard of Saint Adrian. This was a mammoth task, because the five canvases alone contain 68 portraits of 61 different prominent Haarlem citizens, plus one dog. Group portraits of the civic guards had been commissioned before, but these set a new standard. Until this series, such group portraits had tended to be little more than formal rows of individual portraits. In the first of these paintings, Banquet of the Officers of the Saint George Civic Guard, Hals turns the group portrait into a lively social event, capturing in specific detail a fleeting moment at the farewell banquet for the officers who had completed their three-year stint (Fig. 22.15). Despite the casualness of the scene, Hals shows the hierarchy of the company by arranging its highest officers under the tip of the flag that tops an imaginary pyramid of figures. Alone at the head of the table and closest to the viewer sits the colonel, with the provost marshal, the second in command, on his right. They are the highest-ranking officers. Three captains sit down along the side of the table to the colonel's left, and three lieutenants sit at the far end of the table between the colonel and the provost. Three ensigns, not technically part of the officers' corps, stand at the right. Holding the flag at the back of the composition is a servant. So vigorous are Hals's portraits that this painting quickly became a symbol of the strength and healthy optimism of the men who established the new Dutch Republic.

New Self

Hamlet idea, humanistic multi-dimensional person

Dissolution Act of 1536

Henry VIII getting rid of monastic lands to get more money As the densely packed foreground in Fig. 19.2 indicates, London in 1547 was just beginning a construction boom almost unprecedented in the Western world. Precipitating the boom was the Dissolution Act of 1536 dissolving the monasteries and selling off Church holdings. Henry VIII's high-handed decree was motivated primarily by a need for money, though Henry's quarrel with the Roman Church and his desire to assert authority as head of the Church in England may have played a part. Considerable wealth was required to support his numerous estates and the palaces he was in the habit of building—as well as the enormous court that followed him everywhere.

Matthias Grunewald

Isenheim Altarpiece Matthias Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece is grimly realistic in its portrayal of death, and yet transcendently emotional. Multitalented Grünewald served as architect, engineer, and painter to the court of the archbishops of Mainz. His most famous work is the so-called Isenheim Altarpiece, a monumentally large polyptych painted around 1510 to 1515 for the hospital of the Abbey of Saint Anthony, a facility in Isenheim, near Strasbourg, dedicated to the treatment of people with skin diseases.

Philosophical optimism

It's the belief that everything that takes place occurs for good. Looking at all things in a positive manner, no matter how bad it may be. Candide following Pangloss's philosophy believed this.

Charles I

King of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1625-1649). His power struggles with Parliament resulted in the English Civil War (1642-1648) in which Charles was defeated. He was tried for treason and beheaded in 1649 Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army had consolidated its control over England. Charles was tried, convicted, and executed for high treason in January 1649. The monarchy was abolished and a republic called the Commonwealth of England was declared. The monarchy would be restored to Charles's son, Charles II, in 1660.

Albrecht Durer (his overall style and works covered in our text)

Northern Renaissance Expert painter Greatest printmaker of his day (Woodcut and engraving) Some works include his self portrait, woodcut of The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, woodcut Melancholia, Adam and Eve

Ornamentation

Note or notes added to the original melodic line for embellishment and added interest Decoration

Artemisia Gentileschi

One of Caravaggio's most important followers, and one of the first women artists to achieve an international reputation, was Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1652/3). Born in Rome, she was raised by her father, Orazio, himself a painter and Caravaggisto. Orazio was among Caravaggio's closest friends. As a young girl, Artemisia could not have helped but hear of Caravaggio's frequent run-ins with the law—for throwing a plate of artichokes at a waiter, for street brawling, for carrying weapons illegally, and, ultimately, in 1606, for murdering a referee in a tennis match. Artemisia's own scandal would follow. It and much of her painting must be understood within the context of this social milieu—the loosely renegade world of Roman artists at the start of the seventeenth century. In 1612, when she was 19, she was raped by Agostino Tassi, a Florentine artist who worked in her father's studio and served as her teacher. Orazio filed suit against Tassi for injury and damage to his daughter. The transcript of the seven-month trial survives. Artemisia accused Tassi of repeatedly trying to meet with her alone in her bedroom and, when he finally succeeded, of raping her. When he subsequently promised to marry her, she freely accepted his continued advances, naïvely assuming marriage would follow. When he refused to marry her, the lawsuit followed. At trial, Tassi accused her of having slept with many others before him. Gentileschi was tortured with thumbscrews to "prove" the validity of her testimony, and was examined by midwives to ascertain how recently she had lost her virginity. Tassi further humiliated her by claiming that Artemisia was an unskilled artist who did not even understand the laws of perspective. Finally, a former friend of Tassi's testified that Tassi had boasted about his exploits with Artemisia. Ultimately, he was convicted of rape but served only a year in prison. Soon after the long trial ended, Artemisia married an artist and moved with him to Florence. In 1616, she was admitted to the Florentine Academy of Design. Beginning in 1612, Artemisia painted five separate versions of the biblical story of Judith and Holofernes. The subject was especially popular in Florence, which identified with both the Jewish hero David and the Jewish heroine Judith (both of whom had been celebrated in sculptures by Donatello and Michelangelo). When Artemisia moved there, her personal investment in the subject found ready patronage in the city. Nevertheless, it is nearly impossible to see the paintings outside the context of her biography. She painted her first version of the theme during and just after the trial itself, and the last, Judith and Maidservant with Head of Holofernes, in about 1625 (Fig. 21.17), suggesting that in this series she transforms her personal tragedy in her painting. In all of them, Judith is a self-portrait of the artist. In the Hebrew Bible's Book of Judith, the Jewish heroine enters the enemy Assyrian camp intending to seduce their lustful leader, Holofernes, who has laid siege to her people. When Holofernes falls asleep, she beheads him with his own sword and carries her trophy back to her people in a bag. The Jews then go on to defeat the leaderless Assyrians. Gentileschi lights the scene by a single candle, dramatically accentuating the Caravaggesque tenebrism of the presentation. Judith shades her eyes from its light, presumably in order to look out into the darkness that surrounds her. Her hand also invokes our silence, as if danger lurks nearby. The maid stops wrapping Holofernes's head in a towel, looking on alertly herself. Together, mistress and maid, larger than life-size and heroic, have taken their revenge on not only the Assyrians, but on lust-driven men in general. As is so often the case in Baroque painting, the space of the drama is larger than the space of the frame. The same invisible complement outside Bernini's David (see Fig. 21.17) hovers in the darkness beyond reach of our vision here.

Patronage (wealthy, Church, middle class)

One of the greatest differences between the Renaissance cultures of the North and South is the nature of patronage that developed in each. In the south of Europe, the most important patrons were the politically powerful families. The Medici, the Gonzagas, and the Montefeltros—and the papacy (often members of these same families)—all used their patronage to further their political prestige. In the North, trade had created a wealthy and relatively large class of merchants, who gradually came to rival the French and Burgundian courts as the most important patrons of the day. Wealthy nobles, like Philip the Good of Burgundy, certainly influenced artistic developments, but gradually, the taste of the new business class came to dominate the production and distribution of works of art. This new business class represented a new audience for artists, in both the North and South. Motivated by the marketplace, artists sought to please this new class. In turn, members of the business class fostered the careers of several artists who were highly skilled in the use of oil paint. These artists, Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, and Hieronymus Bosch, are associated with particular northern centers of culture.

Joseph Haydn

One of the most important contributors to the development of the symphonic form was the composer Joseph Haydn (1732-1809). In 1761, at the age of 29, he was appointed musical director to the court of the Hungarian nobleman Prince Paul Anton Esterházy. Haydn worked for Esterházy for nearly 30 years, isolated at Esterháza Palace in Eisenstadt, about 30 miles south of Vienna. The palace, modeled on Versailles, included two theaters (one for opera) and two concert halls. In these surroundings, Haydn composed an extraordinary amount of music: operas, oratorios, concertos, sonatas, overtures, liturgical music, and above all, the two genres that he was instrumental in developing—the Classical symphony and the string quartet. (He composed 106 of the former and 67 of the latter.) He also oversaw the repair of instruments, trained a chorus, and rehearsed and performed with a symphony of about 25 musicians. The string quartet, the first of the new Classical genres that Haydn played such a large role in developing, features four string instruments: two violins, a viola, and a cello. Since all the instruments are from the same family, the music has a distinctly uniform sound. Its form closely follows that of the symphony. The string quartet was a product of the Classical age of music, performed almost exclusively in private settings, such as salons, for small audiences that understood the form to be a musical variation of their own conversations, an intimate exchange among friends. Haydn was able to create new genres such as the string quartet precisely because Esterházy gave him the freedom to do so. "I could make experiments," Haydn told a biographer, "observe what elicited or weakened an impression, and thus correct, add, delete, take risks. I was cut off from the world ... and so I had to become original." When Esterházy died in 1790, his son disbanded the orchestra and a London promoter, Johann Peter Salomon, invited Haydn to England. There he composed his last 12 symphonies for an orchestra of some 60 musicians. Among the greatest of the London symphonies is Symphony No. 94, the so-called Surprise Symphony. It was so named for a completely unanticipated fortissimo ("very loud") percussive stroke that occurs on a weak beat in the second movement of the piece. This moment was calculated, so the story goes, to awaken Haydn's dozing audience, since concerts usually lasted well past midnight. The third movement of Symphony No. 94 (track 25.1) is in minuet-and-trio form. It is among Haydn's greatest works. In the very first section of the movement, the graceful cadences of the minuet last for only about 13 seconds, but in that short span, Haydn changes dynamics four times. He then repeats this first section, so that in the first 30 seconds of the composition, a total of eight changes in dynamics occur. The violins alone play the quiet, or piano, passages, and the full orchestra the loud, or fortissimo, passages. This opening theme, with all its contrasting elements, is followed by the second theme of the opening minuet, after which the first theme briefly repeats, followed in turn by a repetition of the entire second theme. The trio manipulates the themes of the first minuet, lending them an entirely different texture, as first horns and violins alternate and then oboes and bassoons replace the horns, adding a sudden and surprising shift to a minor key. Finally, the entire minuet repeats exactly. The full effect is one of almost stunning emotional range.

Galerie des Glaces (Hall of Mirrors)

Palace of Versailles French Baroque The elaborate design of the new palace at Versailles was intended to leave the attending nobility in awe. Charles Le Brun, who had participated in designing the new east facade of the Louvre (see Fig. 21.21 in Chapter 21), now served as chief painter to the king, and directed the team of artists who decorated the palace's interior. The Hall of Mirrors (Fig. 23.3) was begun in 1678 to celebrate the high point of Louis XIV's political career, the end of six years of war with Holland. With the signing of the Treaty of Nijmegen, France gained control of the Franche-Comté region of eastern France. The Galerie des Glaces is 233 feet long and served as a reception space for state occasions. It gets its name from the Venetian mirrors—extraordinarily expensive at the time—that line the wall opposite windows of the same shape and size, creating by their reflection a sense of space even vaster than it actually is.

Denis Diderot

Philosopher who edited a book called the Encyclopedia which was banned by the French king and pope. The work was unpopular in the French court: Louis XV claimed that the Encyclopédie was doing "irreparable damage to morality and religion" and twice banned its printing. But despite the opposition, the court's salons proved useful to the Encyclopedists. he principle guiding this encyclopedic impulse is rational humanism, the belief that through logical, careful thought, progress is inevitable. In other words, the more people know, the more likely they will invent new ways of doing things. Thus, the Encyclopédie illustrated manufacturing processes in the most careful detail, imagining that astute readers might recognize better, more efficient methods of manufacturing even as the processes were demystified

Science of observation

Scientific discoveries during the Baroque Period challenged the authority of both the Catholic and Protestant churches. Some philosophers and scientists questioned religious ideals, while others continued to incorporate aspects of religion into their theories and views of the physical world. One of the most fundamental principles guiding the new science was the proposition that, through the direct and careful observation of natural phenomena, one could draw general conclusions from particular examples.

Council of Trent (1545)

Roman Catholic council convened to examine Church's teachings; reaffirmed teachings of Church to end abuses (stopped selling indulgences) Charged with reforming the Church. It met in three sessions, and owing to war, plague, and the political strategies of the papacy itself, it spanned the careers of four different popes over 18 years Embodiment of Counter-Reformation Strongly reinforced the doctrine of the Roman-Catholic Church The Council concentrated on restoring internal Church discipline. It called a halt to the selling of Church offices and religious goods, a common practice used by clergy to pad their coffers. It required bishops, many of whom lived in Rome, to return to their dioceses, where, they were told, they needed to preach regularly, exert discipline over local religious practice, and be active among their parishioners. They were warned not to live ostentatiously The bishops were to maintain strict celibacy, which they had not been required to do before. And they were to construct a seminary in every diocese. it strongly reinforced traditional Roman Catholic doctrine.

Medici Family

Ruled Florence during the Renaissance, became wealthy from banking, spent a lot of money on art, controlled Florence for about 3 centuries In fact, when the Medici returned to power in Florence in 1512, they did so under the sway of two great Medici popes: Leo X (papacy 1513-21), who was Lorenzo the Magnificent's son, Giovanni de' Medici; and Clement VII (papacy 1523-34), who was Lorenzo's nephew, Giulio de' Medici. Whether in the church or the republic, Rome or Florence, the men of this patrician family were a dominant force.

Ritornello

Short, recurring instrumental passage found in both the aria and the Baroque concerto "something that returns" (i.e., returning thematic material). At the outset, the entire orchestra performs the ritornello in the tonic—the specific home pitch around which the composition is organized. Solo episodes interrupt alternating with the ritornello, performed in partial form and in different keys, back and forth, until the ritornello returns again in its entirety in the tonic in the concluding section. LISTEN to VIVALDI if you want a great example.

Philosophes

The "philosophers" who dominated the intellectual life of the French Enlightenment and who frequented salons. Most philosophes were deists, who accepted the idea that God created the universe but did not believe he had much, if anything, to do with its day-to-day workings. Rather, the universe proceeded according to what they termed natural law, law derived from nature and binding upon human society. In Newtonian terms, God had created a great clock, and it ran like clockwork, except for the interference of inept humanity. So humans had to take control of their own destinies. Deists viewed the Bible as a work of mythology and superstition, not the revealed truth of God. They scoffed at the idea of the divine right of kings. The logic of their position led the philosophes to a simple proposition, stated plainly by the philosophe Denis Diderot (1713-84): "Men will not be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."

Tonality

The key of a composition.

Linear perspective

one-point perspective A type of scientific (linear) perspective in which all lines appear to converge at a single vanishing point on the horizon.

Alexander Pope

The English poet Alexander Pope shared Swift's assessment of the English nobility. For 12 years, from 1715 until 1727, Pope spent the majority of his time translating Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and producing a six-volume edition of Shakespeare, projects of such popularity that he became a wealthy man. But in 1727, his literary career changed directions and, as he wrote, he "stooped to truth, and moralized his song"—he turned, in short, to satire. His first effort was the mock epic Dunciad, published in 1728 and dedicated to Jonathan Swift. The poem opens with a direct attack on the king, George II (r. 1727-60), who had recently succeeded his father, George I, to the throne. For Pope, this suggested the goddess Dullness reigned over an England where "Dunce the second rules like Dunce the first." Pope's dunces are the very nobility that Swift attacks in the fourth book of Gulliver—men of "dullness, ignorance, caprice, sensuality, and pride"—and the writers of the day whom Pope perceived to be supporting the policies of Walpole and the king. Against what he believed to be the debased English court, Pope argues for honesty, charity, selflessness, and the order, harmony, and balance of the Classics, values set forth in An Essay on Man, published between 1732 and 1734. Pope intended the poem to be the cornerstone of a complete system of ethics that he never completed. His purpose was to show that despite the apparent imperfection, complexity, and rampant evil of the universe, it nevertheless functions in a rational way, according to natural laws. The world appears imperfect to us only because our perceptions are limited by our feeble moral and intellectual capacity. In reality, as he puts it at the end of the poem's first section (Reading 24.8): Reading 24.8 from Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1732-34) Pope does not mean to condone evil in this last line. Rather, he implies that God has chosen to grant humankind a certain imperfection, a freedom of choice that reflects its position in the universe. At the start of the second section of the poem, immediately after this passage, Pope outlines humankind's place. In the end, for Pope, humankind must strive for good, even if in its frailty it is doomed to fail. But the possibility of success also looms large. Pope suggests this through the very form of his poem—heroic couplets, rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter lines (the meter of Shakespeare, consisting of five short-long syllabic units)—that reflect the balance and harmony of Classical art and thought.

Great Chain of Being

The Great Chain of Being is a hierarchical structure of all matter and life, thought in medieval Christianity to have been decreed by God. The chain starts with God and progresses downward to angels, demons (fallen/renegade angels), stars, the Moon, kings, princes, nobles, commoners, wild animals, domesticated animals, trees, other plants, precious stones, precious metals, and other minerals.[1] The Great Chain of Being (Latin: scala naturae, "Ladder of Being") is a concept derived from Plato, Aristotle (in his Historia Animalium), Plotinus and Proclus. Further developed during the Middle Ages, it reached full expression in early modern Neoplatonism.

Chiaroscuro

The treatment of light and shade in a work of art, especially to give an illusion of depth.

Jean-Antoine Watteau

The Rococo found its most eloquent expression in France in the paintings of Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). This is ironic because he did not have aristocratic patrons and was little known during his lifetime beyond a small group of bourgeois buyers, such as bankers and dealers. One of his most famous paintings in fact served as a signboard for the shop of a Paris art dealer (Closer Look). In a very short time, however, Watteau's work became a favorite of the Prussian ruler Frederick the Great (discussed in the next section of this chapter), and a great many of his paintings entered Frederick's collection. Watteau was best known for his paintings of fêtes galantes—gallant, and by extension amorous, celebrations or parties enjoyed by an elite group in a pastoral or garden setting. The erotic overtones of these fêtes galantes are immediately apparent in The Embarkation from Cythera in the pedestal statue of Venus at the right side of the painting and the flock of winged cupids darting about among the revelers (Fig. 25.3). The scene is the island of Cythera, the mythical birthplace of the goddess. Below her statue, which the pilgrims have decked with garlands of roses, a woman leans across her companion's lap as three cupids try to push the two closer together. Behind them, a gentleman leans toward his lady to say words that will be overheard by another woman behind them, who gathers roses with her lover as she leans over them both. Farther back in the scene, a gentleman helps his lady to her feet while another couple turns to leave, the woman looking back in regret that they must depart the garden island.

Predella

The base of an altarpiece.

Antependium

The front of the altar

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The greatest musical genius of the Classical era was Haydn's younger contemporary and colleague, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91). Mozart wrote his first original composition at age 6, in 1762, the year after Haydn assumed his post with Prince Esterházy. When he was just 8, the prodigy penned his first symphony. Over the course of his 35-year life, Mozart would write 40 more, plus 70 string quartets, 20 operas, 60 sonatas, and 23 piano concertos. (All of Mozart's works were cataloged and numbered in the nineteenth century by Ludwig von Köchel, resulting in each of them being identified with the letter K.) Haydn told Mozart's father that the boy was simply "the greatest composer I know in person or by name," and in 1785 Mozart dedicated six string quartets to the older composer. On several occasions the two met at parties, where they performed string quartets together, Haydn on the violin, Mozart on the viola. By the time Mozart was 6 years old, his father, Leopold, began taking him and his sister, Anna, also a talented keyboard player, on concert tours throughout Europe. The tours exposed the young genius to virtually every musical development in eighteenth-century Europe, all of which he absorbed completely. As Mozart grew into adulthood, he suffered from depression and illness. He was unable to secure a position in the Habsburg court in Vienna until late in his life, when he was given the minor task of writing new dances for New Year's and other celebrations, so he was forced to teach composition to supplement his income. By the mid-1780s, he had also begun to perform his piano concertos in public concerts, from which he derived some real income. Despite the stunning successes of his operas, Mozart's music was generally regarded as overly complicated, too demanding emotionally and intellectually for a popular audience to absorb. When the Habsburg emperor Joseph II commented that the opera Don Giovanni was beautiful "but no food for the teeth of my Viennese"—meaning too refined for their taste—Mozart reportedly replied, "Then give them time to chew it." Indeed, his work often took time to absorb. Mozart could pack more distinct melodies into a single movement than most composers could write for an entire symphony, and each line would arise and grow naturally from the beginning to the end of the piece. But the reaction of Joseph II to another of his operas is typical: "Too many notes!" Ironically, it is exactly this richness that we value today. An example of Mozart's complexity is his Symphony No. 40, composed in the course of eight weeks in the summer of 1788. Unlike Haydn, who had a standing orchestra at his disposal, Mozart had no compelling reason to compose symphonies on a regular basis. Symphony No. 40 and the two others he wrote in 1788 were probably undertaken with an eye toward an upcoming trip to London, where he planned to showcase his talents. The symphony is marked by almost perfect balance and control, and although its sonata form is easy to hear and follow, it is also easy to hear the ways in which Mozart manipulates the form in order to play with his audience's expectations. In the first movement, Mozart uses the sonata form in a way that is very easy for the listener to hear, and yet the movement is full of small—and sometimes larger—surprises (track 25.2). The composition shifts dramatically between loud and soft passages, woodwinds and strings, rising and falling phrasings, and major and minor keys. Particularly dramatic is the way Mozart leads the listener to anticipate the beginning of the recapitulation, only to withhold it. As developed in the clear forms originated by Haydn and Mozart, the Classical symphony is nearly the antithesis of the delicately ornate style galant of the Rococo. As such, it announces the demise of the Rococo style.

Neoclassicism:

They were sick of the opulence of the baroque era and wanted to go back to simpler times. Reverted back to Roman/Greek style.

Paul's Cathedral

by Christopher Wren Enlightenment Saint Paul's was the first cathedral ever built for the Anglican Church of England. It rises above the foundations of an earlier church destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. In its design, architect Christopher Wren drew on Classical, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque elements. Its imposing two-story facade is crowned by symmetrical twin clock towers and a massive dome. The floor plan—an elongated, cruciform (crosslike) design—is Gothic. The dome is Renaissance, purposefully echoing Bramante's Tempietto (see Fig. 15.5 in Chapter 15) but maintaining the monumental presence of Michelangelo's dome for Saint Peter's (see Fig. 15.6 in Chapter 15). The facade, with its two tiers of paired Corinthian columns, recalls the French Baroque Louvre in Paris (see Fig. 21.21 in Chapter 21). And the two towers were inspired by a Baroque church in Rome. Wren manages to bring all these elements together into a coherent whole.

Inductive reasoning

reasoning from detailed facts to general principles One of the most fundamental principles guiding the new science was the proposition that, through the direct and careful observation of natural phenomena, one could draw general conclusions from particular examples. This process is known as inductive reasoning, and with it, scientists believed they could predict the workings of nature as a whole.

Empirical method

When inductive reasoning was combined with scientific experimentation, it produced a manner of inquiry that we call the empirical method. The leading advocate of the empirical method in the seventeenth century was the English scientist Francis Bacon

Deism

a brand of faith that argues that the basis of belief in God is reason and logic, rather than revelation or tradition.

St. Peter's Square

a large plaza located directly in front of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City, the papal enclave inside Rome

Diptych

a painting or carving (especially an altarpiece) on two panels (usually hinged like a book)

Heroic couplet

a pair of rhyming iambic pentameters used by Alexandar Pope

Altarpiece

a work of art, especially a painting on wood, set above and behind an altar. Look at the art. Which pieces would be used for altarpieces? the triptychs?

Conversion of Saint Paul

by Caravaggio Baroque One of the clearest instances of Caravaggio's use of light to dramatize moments of conversion is the Conversion of Saint Paul, painted around 1601 (Fig. 21.14). Though painted nearly 50 years before Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (see Fig. 21.6), its theme is essentially the same, as is its implied sexuality. Here, Caravaggio portrays the moment when the Roman legionnaire Saul (who will become Saint Paul) has fallen off his horse and hears the words, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" (Acts 9:4). Neither Saul's servant nor his horse hears a thing. Light, the visible manifestation of Christ's words, falls on the foreshortened soldier. Saul reaches into the air in both a shock of recognition and a gesture of embrace.

The Ambassadors

by Hans Holbein the Younger Northern Renaissance Henry VII loved both astronomy and mapmaking, and his passion for them is probably reflected in the objects that decorate Hans Holbein's famous painting The Ambassadors (see Closer Look). His learning was so great that on the day of Henry's coronation, June 24, 1509, the humanist philosopher, author, and statesman Thomas More (1478-1535), wrote: "This day consecrates a young man who is the everlasting glory of our age." Note the skull in the painting forefront. This painting was supposed to represent both luthren and catholic ideals coming together. They "stand on holy ground" as indicated by the tile being a direct representation of a sacred place.

Garden of Earthly Delights

by Hieronymus Bosch Northern Renaissance Triptych Northern pessimism manifests itself most dramatically in Bosch's most ambitious painting, a triptych with closing doors known as the Garden of Earthly Delights, painted around 1505 to 1510 (see Closer Look). Although the painting takes the form of a triptych winged altarpiece, it was never intended for a religious setting. The Garden of Earthly Delights hung in a palace in Brussels, where invading Spanish troops seized it in 1568 and took it to Madrid, where it remains. The painting is really a conversation piece, a work designed to invite discussion of its meaning. Bosch has given us an enigmatic essay on what the world might be like if the fall of Adam and Eve had never happened. It presents, in other words, a world technically without sin, yet rampant with behavior that its viewers, the fallen sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, could only identify as sinful.

The Death of Marat

by Jacques-Louis David Neoclassical Tensions remained high. On July 13, 1793, the day before the celebration honoring the storming of the Bastille, the Jacobin hero and fiery editor of The Friend of the People, Jean-Paul Marat (1743-93), was assassinated in his bath, where he normally spent hours to treat a severe case of eczema. The assassin was Charlotte Corday, a young royalist who believed she was the new Joan of Arc, destined to liberate France from Jacobin radicalism. The Jacobins of the National Assembly asked David to paint a Death of Marat (Fig. 26.6). This work is notable for its seemingly unflinching depiction of its hero at the moment of his brutal death and for David's ability to turn a lowly bathroom setting into a monumental image. Marat had specifically designed a desk to fit over the bath to allow him to conduct business while attending to his terrible skin disease. The pose David chose for him is an instance of using a religious device for a secular image, for the revolutionary patriot confronts the viewer in a position reminiscent of the dead Christ at the Lamentation, traditionally depicted with his right arm dropping to his side. David also pushes Marat to the front of the picture plane so that the viewer seems to be in the same room with the body. Marat holds in one hand the letter from Corday that had gained her entry, and in the other his pen, with which he had been writing the note that hangs over the edge of the crate he used as a desk. The letter of introduction from Corday to Marat is partly legible. Translated from the French, it reads, "My unhappiness alone suffices to give a right to your good will." Her "unhappiness" was her distaste for Marat and the antiroyalist politics he represented, but Corday understood full well that Marat would misinterpret her meaning, supposing that she was complaining about the monarchy, not representing its interests.

Oath of the Horatii

by Jacques-Louis David Neoclassical his works have considerable emotional complexity. A case in point is his painting The Oath of the Horatii (Fig. 26.17), commissioned by the royal government in 1784 to 1785. The story derives from a play by French playwright Corneille (see Chapter 23), and is a sort of parable or example of loyal devotion to the state. It concerns the conflict between early Rome, led by Horatius, and neighboring Alba, led by Curatius. In order to spare a war that would be more generally destructive, the two civic leaders agreed to send their three sons—the Horatii and the Curatii—to battle each other. David presents the moment before the battle when the three sons of Horatius swear an oath to their father, promising to fight to the death. The sons on the left, the father in the middle, and the sisters to the right are each clearly and simply contained within the frame of one of three arches behind them. Except for Horatius' robe, the colors are muted and spare, the textures plain, and the paint itself almost flat. The male figures stand rigidly in profile, their legs extending forward tensely, as straight as the spear held by the foremost brother, which they parallel. Their orderly Neoclassical arrangement contrasts with that of the women, who are disposed in a more conventional, Baroque grouping. Seated, even collapsing, while the men stand erect, the women's soft curves and emotional despair contrast with the male realm of the painting. David's message here is that civic responsibility must eclipse the joys of domestic life, just as reason supplants emotion and Classical order supplants Baroque complexity. Sacrifice is the price of citizenship (a message that Louis XVI would have been wise to heed).

Woman with a Pearl Necklace

by Jan Vermeer Baroque The example here is Woman with a Pearl Necklace (Fig. 22.13). Light floods the room from a window at the left, where a yellow curtain has been drawn back, allowing the young woman to see herself better in a small mirror beside the window. She is richly dressed, wearing an ermine-trimmed yellow satin jacket. On the table before her are a basin and a powder brush; she has evidently completed the process of putting on makeup and arranging her hair as she draws the ribbons of her pearl necklace together and admires herself in the mirror. From her ear hangs a pearl earring, glistening in the light. The woman brims with self-confidence, and nothing in the painting suggests that Vermeer intends a moralistic message of some sort. While the woman's pearls might suggest her vanity—to say nothing of pride because of the way she gazes at them—they also traditionally symbolize truth, purity, even virginity. This latter reading is supported by the great, empty, and white stretch of wall that extends between her and the mirror. It is as if this young woman is a tabula rasa, a blank slate, whose moral history remains to be written.

Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife Giovanna Cenami

by Jan van Eyck Northern Renaissance This celebration of individual identity marks Renaissance art in both the North and South. It is especially apparent in van Eyck's double portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini, an Italian merchant representing Medici interests in Bruges, and his wife. In his paintings, van Eyck expresses his love of detail through his ability to render in oil paint the texture of things and the way light plays across their surfaces. This skill is apparent in the glittering jewels of God's crown in the Ghent Altarpiece, for instance, and in the green wool of the wife's dress or the ermine of Giovanni Arnolfini's robe. This love of detail, presented through a smooth surface that does not show brushstrokes, is the hallmark of Northern Renaissance painting, the characteristic that distinguishes it most from painting in the South. This is indicative of the wealth that merchants could accumulate. Jan van Eyck was a court painter, so the fact that they were able to get him to paint for them indicates wealth and connections.

The Shepherds of Arcadia (et in Arcadia Ego)

by Nicolas Poussin Baroque This poussiniste style is clearly evident in The Shepherds of Arcadia of 1638-39 (Fig. 23.8). Three shepherds trace out the inscription on a tomb, Et in Arcadia ego, "I too once dwelled in Arcadia," suggesting that death comes to us all. The Muse of History, standing to the right, affirms this message. Compared to the often exaggerated physiques of figures in Rubens's paintings, the muscular shepherds seem positively understated. Color, while sometimes brilliant, as in the yellow mantle robe of History, is muted by the evening light. But it is the compositional geometry of horizontals and verticals that is most typically poussiniste. Note how the arms of the two central figures form right angles and how they all fit within the cubical space suggested by the tomb itself. This cubic geometry finds its counterpoint in the way the lighted blue fold of History's dress parallels both the red-draped shepherd's lower leg and the leftmost shepherd's staff. These lines suggest a diagonal parallelogram working both against and with the central cube.

The Arrival and Reception of Marie de'Medici at Marseilles

by Peter Paul Rubens Baroque he Arrival and Reception of Marie de' Medici at Marseilles depicts the day Marie arrived in France from her native Italy en route to her marriage to King Henry IV (Fig. 23.6). The figure of Fame flies above her, blowing a trumpet, while Neptune, god of the sea, and his son Triton, accompanied by three water nymphs, rise from the waves to welcome her. A helmeted allegorical figure of France, wearing a fleur-de-lis robe like that worn by Louis XIV in his 1701 portrait, bows before her. Marie herself, not known for her beauty, is so enveloped by rich textures, extraordinary colors, and sensuous brushwork, that she seems transformed into a vision as extraordinary as the scene itself. The fleshy bodies of the nymphs in this painting are a signature stylistic component of Rubens's work. In fact, Rubens's style is almost literally a "fleshing out" of the late Italian Renaissance tradition. It is so distinctive that it came to be known as "Rubenesque." His nudes, which often startle contemporary viewers because we have developed almost entirely different standards of beauty, are notable for the way in which their flesh folds and drapes across their bodies. Their beauty rests in the sensuality of this flesh, which in some measure symbolizes the sensual life of self-indulgence and excess.

The Triumph of Death

by Pieter Bruegel the Elder Northern Renaissance So the painting can be read as something of a moral lesson. Certainly, other paintings by Bruegel have moral overtones and some even contrast starkly with the theme of this painting. The Triumph of Death (Fig. 17.14 ), which Bruegel painted just a couple of years before this cycle, is an example. It was painted 40 years after the Peasant War and in the manner of Hieronymus Bosch (see Chapter 16, Closer Look), who was a generation older than Bruegel. This pointedly political work depicts a massive army of skeletons laying waste to all living things. Men are hanged from scaffolds, beheaded by swords, and crushed beneath the wheels of a death cart. The natural world is transformed into a desert. But most pertinent to the political climate are the figures in the lower corners. On the right, the aristocracy is overcome as a gentleman plays the lute and sings a love song to his lady, both of them damningly indifferent to the destruction going on behind them. At the lower left, an emperor or king succumbs as skeletons help themselves to his gold and jewels, an image suggesting that wealth is incapable of saving even the monarchy. The painting underscores the division between the aristocracy and the common people, even as it argues for the equality of everyone in the face of death.

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp

by Rembrandt Baroque In one of his most famous group portraits, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp (Closer Look), Rembrandt would use this symbolic light for ironic effect. But in his religious works, especially, it would come to stand for the redemption offered to humankind by the example of Christ. he Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp was commissioned by Dr. Tulp to celebrate his second public anatomy demonstration

Merode Altarpiece

by Robert Campin Northern Renaissance Working with oil paint, Campin and other contemporary Northern painters were able to blend, shade, and bleed colors so skillfully that textures—Gabriel's exquisitely curly hair, Mary's soft skin and velvet dress, Joseph's wool robe, the brass pot hanging in the back alcove, even the transparent smoke rising from the candle—become nearly palpable (see Materials & Techniques). Light seems to emanate from within the painting itself. Gabriel's wings glow, an effect created by layering very thin, almost transparent coats of oil paint on the surface of the painting—a process known as glazing. The wings literally contain light, lending the archangel a physical presence and material reality. The spiritual is made real. In fact, the archangel appears no less (and no more) "real" than the brass pot above his head. The central panel of the Annunciation may have been painted first, as an independent painting; the wood of the panel is distinct from the wood used to create the narrower, flanking panels, and there are subtle stylistic differences. Shortly afterwards, the side panels would have been added by two other painters in the shop, but initially only the male donor was represented in the left panel. It was perhaps on the occasion of his marriage that he commissioned one of the painters who had already worked on the painting to add his wife behind him on the left panel.

Concerto

composition for instruments in which a solo instrument is set against an orchestral ensemble Finally, Antonio Vivaldi perfected the concerto as a genre, and many of his concertos were performed by the women at the Ospedale della Pietà, where he was musical director. What are the chief features of the concerto? Three movements, and secular

Franciscans

founded by St. Francis; order stressed vows of poverty and gentleness to all creatures The Franciscans are a group of related mendicant religious orders within the Catholic Church, founded in 1209 by Saint Francis of Assisi. These orders include the Order of Friars Minor, the Order of Saint Clare, and the Third Order of Saint Francis. They adhere to the teachings and spiritual disciplines of the founder and of his main associates and followers, such as Clare of Assisi, Anthony of Padua, and Elizabeth of Hungary, among many others.[2]

Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture

founded in 1648 by King Louis XIV. Its goals were to regularize taste and establish the classical style as the preferred French manner. They taught art students and sponsored exhibitions, or Salons. Tourists then, as they do today, wanted to understand what they were seeing. Among the objects of their travel were art exhibitions, particularly the Paris Salon—the official exhibition of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. It took place in the Salon Carré of the Louvre, which lent the exhibition its name. It ran from August 25 until the end of September almost every year from 1737 until 1751, and every other year from 1751 to 1791. But few visitors were well equipped to appreciate or understand what they were seeing, so a new brand of writing soon developed in response: art criticism.

Landscape

scenery In the Rococo era, the landscape changed: In the pleasure garden, there are none of the straight paths and manicured flower beds of the formal gardens of Versailles (see Fig. 23.4 and 23.5 in Chapter 23). Instead, the left-to-right axis is framed by two winding and serpentine paths that contain a lightly forested deer park. An example of the new English garden style (see Chapter 24), the ensemble appeared entirely rural and natural but was actually "put into order by artistic means." These paths contrast dramatically with the architectural symmetry and geometry of the old and new palaces. They suggest a growing awareness of the need to acknowledge or balance the conflicting claims of order, reason, and intellect with those of the senses, pleasure, and the imagination—between what might be called the useful, or practical, and the aesthetic, or beautiful.

Counter-Reformation

the reaction of the Roman Catholic Church to the Reformation reaffirming the veneration of saints and the authority of the Pope (to which Protestants objected). They knew that they wouldn't win people over with doctrinal changes so they had to reemphasize the divinity of the catholic church.