Baroque and Mannerism Art

Baroque Art and Architecture

  • 1600-1750

  • from a Portuguese word “barocca” meaning a pearl of irragular shape

  • implies strageness, irregularity, and extravagence

    • the more dramatic the better

  • dramatic and emotional

  • colors were brighter than bright and darker than dark

  • counter-reformation art

  • paintings and sculptures in church context should speak to the illiterate rather than the well-informed

  • ecclesiastical art- appeal to the emotions (wow factor)

  • Holland → real people portayed as the primary subject

Mannerism

The Changing Role of the Artist

  • Giorgio Vasari

    • “Lives of the Artist” 1568

    • He believed that the artist was no longer just a member of a crafts guild

  • The artist was an equal in the courts of Europe with scholars, poets, and humanists

  • Therefore, the artist should be recognized and rewarded for their technique (maneria)

Late Renaissance (pre-Baroque)

  • Art was at an impasse after the perfection and harmony of the Renaissance

  • Anithetical to the principles of the High Renaissance

  • From Italian de maneria

    • a work of art done in the artist’s charistaristic touch or recognizable manner

  • First used by the German historian Heinrich Wolfflin in the early 20c

  • Influences Michelangelo’s later works

Features of Mannerism

  1. Replace harmony with dissonance and discord

    • Alessandro Alori, “Susanna and the Elders”

    • Twisted bodies or “weight shift” (contrapposto)

  2. Replace reason with emotion

    • Rosso Fiorentino “Pieta”

    • El Greco “Pieta”

  3. Replace reality with imagination

    • Parmigianino “The Mystic Marriage of St. Cathrine”

  4. Create instability instead of equalibrium

    • Francesci Primaticcio “The Rape of Helene”

  5. Bodies are distorted

    • El Greco “Christ in Agony on the Cross”

      • an attempt to express religious tensions of the time

  6. Colors are lurid

    • Giorgione “The Tempest”

      • less or dimished highlights

    • Caravaggio “The Calling of St. Matthew”

  7. Pictoral space is crowded

    • Parmagianino “Madonna with the Long Neck”

    • Tintoretto “The Last Supper”

  8. A void in the center

    • Titam “Bacchus and Ariadne”

  9. Hanging figures

    • Tintoretto “The Annunciation”