Seventeenth-Century Art in Europe Notes

Art as propaganda: Catholic Church used art to inspire faith and counteract Protestantism.
Emphasis on emotional engagement: Art aimed to evoke feelings of religious ecstasy and inspire Christian practice.
Guidelines for religious art: Accuracy, clarity, and the ability to arouse Catholic piety were prioritized.

Emerged from the Renaissance, Reformation, and scientific advancements.
Characterized by intense emotional response, theatrical compositions, and technical virtuosity.
Baroque art often combined multiple media within a single work.
Sought to engage viewers as participants, incorporating the surrounding environment.
Classicism remained a variant featuring idealization, balanced compositions, and references to ancient Greece and Rome.

Counter-Reformation goal: Embellishment of churches.
Urban renewal in Rome: Pope Sixtus V connected pilgrimage churches with avenues and piazzas, marking each site with an Egyptian obelisk. note that this required unchallengeable power and vast financial resources
Church architecture: Long, wide naves were favored to accommodate large congregations.
Opulent visual effects: Utilized to heighten emotional involvement of worshipers.

Carlo Maderno extended St. Peter's Basilica with a longitudinal nave and new facade.
Gianlorenzo Bernini succeeded Maderno, creating the Baldacchino over the high altar.
The BALDACCHINO (FIG. 23-3), completed in 1633, stands almost 100 feet high and exemplifies the Baroque objective to create multimedia works.
Bernini designed the Chair of Peter shrine and the colonnade forming a double piazza in front of St. Peter's.
Bernini characterized his design as the "maternal arms of the church" reaching out to the world.

Bernini's David: Three-dimensional composition that intrudes into the viewer's space.
Cornaro Chapel: Theatrical setting for St. Teresa of Ávila's ecstasy, combining sculpture, architecture, and painting.

Francesco Borromini designed San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, featuring an elongated central-plan interior space with undulating walls.
The coffers filling the interior of the oval dome form an eccentric honeycomb of crosses, elongated hexagons, and octagons.
Borromini's design abandoned the modular system, working from an overriding geometrical scheme.
Borromini's treatment of the architectural elements as if they were malleable was also unprecedented.

The Carracci: Ordered Classicism, rejected Mannerism, emphasized line, compositional structure, and figural solidity.
Caravaggio: Dramatic naturalism, realism, theatrical lighting, worked directly from models.
Annibale Carracci CEILING OF GALLERY, PALAZZO FARNESE features scenes of love based on Ovid's Metamorphoses.
The paintings are set in the center of the vault, is The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne.

Caravaggio's Bacchus: Painted exactly what he saw.
Caravaggio's paintings showed St. Matthew from the life of the patron's patron saint.
Caravaggio's The Calling of St. Matthew: Conversion, a common Counter-Reformation theme is highlighted.
Conversion of St. Paul: Focuses on Paul's internal involvement and personal experience.

The Glorification of the Papacy of Urban VIII: Model for Baroque illusionistic palace.
Giovanni Battista Gaulli: The Triumph of the Name of Jesus and Fall of the Damned.

Paintings of artfully arranged objects rendered with intense attention to detail.
Juan Sánchez Cotán's STILL LIFE WITH QUINCE, CABBAGE, MELON, AND CUCUMBER contrasts shapes with geometry.

Diego Velázquez, the greatest painter to emerge from the Caravaggesque school of Seville arranged elements with mathematical rigor.
Velázquez's WATER CARRIER OF SEVILLE is a study of surfaces and textures.
Velázquez's THE SURRENDER AT BREDA (THE LANCES) shows a gracious exchange of victory.
LAZ MENINAS by Velázquez
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo: THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

CATHEDRAL OF SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA: Facade built in 1667-1680 and then copied as the north tower.