Baroque Art and Beyond: A Comprehensive Overview of Key Movements

Baroque Art

  • Emphasis on Catholic elements.
  • Often from the 1600s.
  • Titles often include a saint.
  • Example: The Calling of Saint Matthew.
  • Aims to make the divine more human.

Carvaggio and Artemisia Genileschi

  • Considered Baroque artists.
  • Genileschi: A female artist in the 17th century.
  • Experienced a tragic upbringing, including being raped at a young age.
  • Her art reflects anger and empowerment.
  • Example: Head of Holofernes being cut off.
    • Reflects empowerment and control through art.
  • Dramatic lighting is characteristic of the Baroque period.
  • Date: mid-1600s, distinguishing it from Renaissance art (early 1500s, late 1400s).

Ecstasy of Saint Teresa

  • Features the word "saint" in the title.
  • Part of an altarpiece.

Rembrandt

  • Nightwatch.
  • Depicts musketeers, protectors similar to the Night's Watch in Game of Thrones.
  • Empowerment painting.

Spanish Baroque Art

Las Meninas by Diego Velasquez

  • Painted in 1656.
  • Voted the greatest painting in a 1985 poll.
  • Depicts a scene in the Spanish royal court.
  • Includes the Infanta Margarita Theresa, handmaids, dwarfs, and the artist himself.
  • King Philip IV and Queen Mariana are reflected in a blurry mirror.
  • Painted during the decline of the Spanish Empire.
  • The Infanta's healthy appearance symbolizes hope for the empire's future.
  • Life-sized canvas blurring the line between art and reality.
  • Use of perspective creates a three-dimensional effect.
  • Three focal points: the Infanta, the audience, and the mirror/portrait.
  • Elevated painting from a craft to an intellectual endeavor.
  • Captures the contrast between real and reflected worlds.

Rococo Art

  • Appealed to aristocrats.
  • Fancy, frothy, swirly, soft colors.
  • Used in ornate townhouses and salons, such as those of Madame du Pompadour.
  • Example: Features soft colors, angels, and frolicking aristocrats.

Neoclassical Art

  • A return to classical themes in the 1700s.
  • Distinguished from Renaissance art by the date (Renaissance is early 1500s).
  • Crisp strokes.
  • Example: Jacques Louis David's work.
    • Depicts Roman soldiers taking a pledge.
    • Reflects strength and unwavering resolve.

Romanticism

  • Began in the late 18th century and continued into the first half of the 19th century.
  • An intellectual movement that inspired art and revolutions.
  • A reaction against the logic and reason of the Enlightenment.
  • Focus on feelings and emotions.
  • Muse: poetry.
  • Explores emotions such as sacrifice, pain, and the idea of one person against all.
  • Values and love for nature.
  • Concerned about the impact of industrialism on nature.
  • Example: Jacques Louis David's romantic piece depicting the assassination of Marat by Charlotte Corday. *Jacques Louis David was a court painter for Napoleon.
    • Literary works:
      • Gyrtae's Sorrows of Young Werther.
      • Wordsworth's Ode to the Grecian Urn.
      • Grimm Brothers' fairy tales.
    • Gothic literature resurgence: Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley (Frankenstein).
    • Romantic poets: focus on feelings, nature, and pantheism.
    • Artistic inner feelings: anger, sadness, elation, and tension.
    • Rejection of the classics in favor of emotion.
    • Characteristics of music are captured as well.
    • Example: Romantic work focusing on nature, such as JMW Turner's painting showing an oncoming train.
      • Industrialism (train) vs. nature.

Art Valuation

Salvador Mundy (Renaissance art):
* Sold in 02/2017 for 450,000,000.
Self-portrait of Rembrandt:
* Valued at 50,000,000.
Girl with the Pearl Earring:
* Not for sale as it is in a public trust in The Hague.
Lady Liberty by Eugene Delacroix (Romanticism):
* Sketch sold for 2,600,000.

Multiple Choice Questions Review

Dutch Golden Age is not an artistic movement.
Mannerism is out of requested time frame.
* Neoclassical focus is on the classics but image has no classical reference. Thus the correct answer is Baroque.
Geometric painting/perspective began in the Renaissance time period.
Chiaroscuro use of light started in The Renaissance as well.
Subject Matter should be secular in nature: Correct answer.
Skill question looking for an artistic skill: color.
* Elimanate time period after 1882.
* Renaissance calm style: Correct answer.

More Romantic Examples

Eugene Delacroix
Death of Sardinopolis: In this case, Sardinopolis orders all the guards to execute them all.
Raft of Medusa: They have to resort people to what they had cannibalized.

Realism

  • 1850 to 1900.
  • Focus on raw reality and strategic action.
  • Subject matter: peasants, working class, factories, prostitutes.
  • Gustave Courbet *
    The Life of the Artist*.
    *Camera invented, so art moved towards the impression of an instant camera.
  • Camera:1870s.

Impressionism

Monet Impression at sunrise
Renoir party
Manet is also realist
* It tends to blur into itself.

Post Impressionists

Splintered into two groups
Seurat:Dot Theory.
Cezanne

  • Titles tend to be guessable.
    Overlap of the imperialists also in the art of picasso
    * Van Gogh is post impressive as well*
    * Ends up being mentally ill.

Early Expressionism

It Munch is the scream
Paralleling anxiety and today's social media

Symbolism

Symbolic a dream like merge
Freudian aspect in use

Picasso

KnownKnown for cubisim
Multiple periods
The blue period
The rose period
Picassos Guernica during interwar periods