Baroque critical quotations

work of art : quote, source (critic)

Villa Borghese

“an Elysium of delight” - John Evelyn

Apollo and Daphne

“a sublime artificer born to illuminate the century” - Pope Urban VIII

“Michelangelo made God-men, Bernini made men-men” - Schama

“Heralded in his lifetime as the heir of Michelangelo” Micheal Will

Milo de Croton

“finest of French sculptors” - Sutherland Harris

“Human glory is ephemeral”, the cup he won at the games is now “a worthless object” - Valerie

Vaux le Vicomte

“no art style is more directly expressive of the political ambitions and achievements of a monarch” - Honour and Fleming

architecture was used as “an expression of absolute rule that has not been seen in Europe since antiquity” - Borngasser

“French architects considered themselves professional men , dedicated to the service and the glorification of their king” - encyclopaedia of Art History

Quirinale de St Andrea

“he takes advantage of the Mannerist freedom from the limitations imposed by stone” - Wittkower

“Interiors were made to curve” - Encyclopaedia of Art History

Val de Grace

curving forms “introduced another constant of the Baroque, the idea of movement” - Encyclopaedia of Art History

“French architects considered themselves professional men , dedicated to the service and the glorification of their king” - encyclopaedia of Art History

“to spare no expense and to leave an eternal mark of her piety”

Amor Vincit Omni

“a compound of admiration and almost childish rebellion” Hibbard

“intended to mock the visual language of Michelangelo and to expose that the artist’s sublimated homosexuality” - Sutherland Harris

Daughters of Leucippus

“Force now came to be regarded as the decisive factor [which determined politics]” - Margaret Carroll

“contemplate contemporary politics through allegorical language… questions of war and peace” - Lisa Rosenthal

St Serapion

“Spanish Caravaggio”

St Peter

“The genius was the thug” - Schama

“Man’s direct gnosis of the Divine” - Wittkower

“he rips away the protective distance between us and them, which only enhances the power of his work” - Schama

light “has the power to reveal and conceal” - Wittkower

St Bibiana

“a sublime artificer, born […] to illuminate the century” Pope Urban VIII

“marble does seem to mutate into other substances: fibrous rope; brilliant steel; locks of hair” - Baldinucci

Christ of Clemency

Montañes was the “god of wood”

“[christ was] to be alive, before He had died” - the contract set out by Leca (patron)

Portrait Bust of Scipione Borghese

“in conversation” - Wittkower

“the artist then made a copy of the bust in fifteen nights”” - Baldinucci

‘Sublime artificer” - Pope Urban VIII

“A personal approach to official portraiture”

Portrait of a couple in the Honeysuckle Bower

"allusion to the garden of love”; “a picture of a prosperous happy couple” - Sutherland Harris

Het Steen

“a gentleman, a great craftsman, and a great intellect” - Sutherland Harris

Penitent Magdalen

“an assault on Mannerism’s rarefied complexity and artificiality” - Met Museum

Still life With Lemons

“a visual field so purified and so perfectly composed” - Bryson

“Brink of transfiguration or transubstantiation - Bryson

“Spanish Caravaggio”

Basket of Fruit

“always leaves space for doubt, as even some of the vine leaves begin to to wither” - Graham-Dixon