Ch 10: The Counter Reformation and the Baroque"

Giuseppe Arcimboldo

• Summer, oil on limewood

• Most famous the Four Season series

• Worked at Habsburg Court under Holy Roman Emperor King Maximilian

• Giovanni Battista Fonteo's poem expresses peace & prosperity the emperor gave the world

  Winter, oil on limewood

• Charles V & Maximilian Il convinced pope to convene the Council of Trent in 1545

The Baroque

Barroco, Portuguese term irregular pearl, developed at Vatican & dedicated to the Counter Reformation cause

Absolutism & Divine Right

Age of Absolutism: Louis XIV exert royal power over his dominions on grounds of Divine Right; a right to rule directly from the will of God

Early Counter Reformation & Mannerism

Pope Alexander VI decreed New Worlds Church property; he rented the countries to Spain Charles V sacked Rome in 1527 imprisoned Pope Clement VII

Council of Trent & Catholic Reform of the Arts

Three fronts to Counter Reformation; a revitalized papacy, new monastic orders, & a reforming council

Revitalized Papacy

Reclaim moral leadership of the church, reinforced papal bureaucracy, & enable more discipline throughout ecclesiastical hierarchy

New Monastic Orders

Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits Jesuits founded by Ignatius Loyola

Reforming Council aka Council of Trent

• All arts & music be available to uneducated

• Music word's intelligibility more important than melody; Venice barely felt Council's musical restrictions

• Architecture take a worshipful environment

• Paintings & sculpture be simple, direct, unobjectionable, decent in appearance

Rise of Mannerism

Sculptors rejected idealism & twisted human figures into unusual & bizarre poses to express their ideas of beauty

Michelangelo

• Pieta, marble

• Mannerist & anti classical: rejects traditional contrapposto uses a serpentine figure style

Michelangelo

Last Judgment, fresco

Mannerist style: elongated bodies, heads reduced in size, expressive faces, chaotic surface appearance, bodies swirling around central image of Jesus

Decreed Last Judgment nudes obscene & must be painted over w/ loin cloths by people known as braghettoni

Correggio

Jupiter and lo, oil on canvas

Mannerist style: bizarre juxtaposition; lo's flesh toned body against Jupiter's dark, amorphous Form

Parmigianino

• The Madonna with a Long Neck, oil on panel

• Mannerism: distortion, dissonance, & ambiguity, & eccentric organization

Veronese

• Last Supper, oil on canvas
  Pope Paul Ill initiated a Roman Inquisition

• Painting heresy & inappropriate treatment of subject matter
  Changed name to Feast in the House of Levi, oil on canvas

The Spanish Inquisition

New religious style: The "illuminated ones"

• Individualistic, private type of faith; spirit alternates between ecstatic throes of sweet happy pain & a fearful glowing fire

El Greco

• Resurrection, oil on canvas

• Painting's Mannerist verticality mirrors elongated serpentine bodies

• Appropriate as draperies fall over certain body parts

Cervantes & the Picaresque Tradition

Lope de Vega and Don Quixote

• Lope de Vega: founder of Spanish theater Lazarillo de Tormes: Picaresque novel

• Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

• Don Quixote uses everyday speech, creates vivid portraits of characters, & presents the narrative very realistically

The Baroque in Italy

• Religious art's only purpose: teach & inspire the faithful, be intelligible, realistic, & emotional stimulus to the piety

• Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, all Jesuits to use all their senses to experience a spiritual calling

Andrea Pozzo

• Apotheosis of Saint Ignatius, fresco

• Represents four known continents where Jesuits did their mission work

• Foreshortening allows ceiling to have infinite space

Bernini

• The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, mixed media

• Council of Trent decree: real people caught in dramatic, emotion-charged moments

• Depicts moment St. Teresa receives the Holy Spirit

Caravaggio

• The Conversion of St. Paul, oil on canvas

• Tenebrism: dramatic contrast between light & dark

• John Donne's poem "Batter My Heart" captures Saul's moment of conversion

• Extreme light & dark painting styles reflects emotional & spiritual conflicts of Counter- reformation

Artemisia Gentileschi

• Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes, oil on canvas

• Night pictures

• Caravaggesque tenebrism

• Self-portrait

• Style: flamboyant & Dramatic

Antonio Vivaldi

• The Four Seasons; named after each season of the yr.

• Specialized in concerto

• Council of Trent decreed all music during mass must not be secular

• Program music: instrumental music connected to the story or idea

Secular Baroque in the North

Amsterdam painters' style was Restrained Baroque; sober values of their religion & civic ideals of their republic

Jan Brueghel the Elder

Still Life with Bouquet of Flowers, oil on panel

• Exotic Flowers; still life

• Vanitas Paintings: pleasurable things in life fade; spiritual world needs to command our attention

Jacob van Ruisdael

View of Haarlem from the Dunes at Overveen, oil on canvas

Landscape painting reflects light to dark is the rhythm of life

Jan Steen

• The Dancing Couple, oil on canvas; tells of the fleeting nature of human life

• Genre scenes: depictions of everyday life

Johannes Vermeer

Woman with a Pearl Necklace, oil on canvas

• Reveal domestic, quiet world of women

• Tabula rasa: a blank slate; moral history remains to be written

Kembranat van Kijn

• Captain Frans Banning Cocq Mustering His Company (The Night Watch), oil on canvas

• Drama of Light

• Depicts civic pride

• Rembrandt's painting shows dramatic use of chiaroscuro, forceful expressiveness, w/ full range of human moods & emotions

Baroque Music in the North

Baroque music purposefully dramatic & committed to arousing emotion in listener

• The Golden Age of the organ

• Bartholomeo Cristofori: perfected piano
  forte = loud & soft

Johann Sebastian Bach

• Cantata: a multi movement musical commentary on the day's text, sung by soloists, & chorus accompanied
  

• Counterpoint: addition of one or more independent melodies above or below the main melody

Oratorios, long chorale works, w/out action or scenery, performed by a narrator, soloist, a chorus, & orchestra
Passions: tells a story from the Gospels about Death and Resurrection of Jesus

Absolutism & the Baroque Court

• Louis XIV constructed Versailles Palace, moved his court & government offices there & became unofficial capital of France

• Andre Le Notre: Landscape architect

Hall of Mirrors

• Charles LeBrun Louis XIV's chief painter

• 30 paintings show Louis XIV as a Roman Emperor, astute administrator, & a military genius

The Court Arts of Spain

• King of Spain, Philip IV

• Declining economics & social conditions threatens king's absolutist authority

• Remedy: support the arts

Peter Paul Reubens

• Hired by Philip IV

• Paints women voluptuously, robustly, & placed in foreground

Diego Velazques

• Las Meninas (The Maids of Honor), oil on canvas

• Strong interplay of illusion & space

• Only painter allowed to paint Spain's King Philip IV