baroque flanders, spain, and england

Peter Paul Rubens was from Flanders.
He was a famous and respected painter and a noted diplomat.
Rubens was knighted by King Phillip IV of Spain and King Charles I of England.
Born 1577, died 1640.
Notable work: The Kermis, 1635, oil on canvas, $4'8 \frac{5}{8}$ by $8'8 \frac{3}{4}$ .

Color was the essence of painting.
Rubens' works are imbued with frank sensuality, although moral overtones are often present.
Rubens used loose brushwork and vibrant colors.
His works have a sense of dramatic value through the use of diagonals, expansive space and scale, frenzied motions, off-balance figures, and dynamic colors.
His works appeal to the emotions, leading with the heart first.
Rubens created action by starting at the left bottom or right bottom of the canvas, drawing the viewer into the scene as the action goes dynamically across the canvas in upward diagonals.
He often used dramatic foreshortening.
His works reflect an interest in variations of color and texture, including those of human skin.
Notable works: Rape of Leucippus’s Daughters, 1618; Portrait of Helene Fourment, 1636-1638; Descent from the Cross, 1611-1614 (6 feet).

Spain entered a period of decline in the 17th century.
The reign of King Philip III (r. 1598-1621) was marked by corruption.
The reign of Philip IV (r. 1621-1665) is noted for disastrous, costly military ventures.
Despite the decline, the arts flourished as the court continued to support them lavishly during the 17th century.
Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas (The Maids of Honor), 1656, oil on canvas, $10' \frac{3}{4}$  $9' \frac{3}{4}$ .

Diego Velázquez (1599-1660).
Las Meninas, oil on canvas, $10'\frac{3}{4}$ by $9' \frac{3}{4}$ .
Velázquez was a protégé of Peter Paul Rubens.
Velázquez was the only artist permitted to paint the king.
Las Meninas is a life-sized group portrait and Velázquez’s last great royal commission before his death.
Notable work: The Dwarf Francisco Lezcano, 1645.
El Triumfo de Baco, or Los Borrachos (The Triumph of Bacchus, or The Drunkards), 1628–1629, oil on canvas.

King Henry VIII (1491 – 1547) broke with the Roman Catholic Church to establish the Church of England during his reign (1509 – 1547).
Despite six wives, King Henry VIII produced only one son, Edward, who survived past infancy.
Henry’s eldest child was Mary, who succeeded her half-brother to the throne when King Edward VI died at age 15.
Queen Mary became known as “Bloody Mary” when she restored England to Catholicism and ordered the slaughter of Protestants, most of whom were burned alive for heresy. The total number of deaths is disputed by historians, but many prominent Protestant clerics were among those burned at the stake.
Her younger sister, Queen Elizabeth I, succeeded her. Queen Elizabeth reestablished the Church of England and ruled for nearly 45 years.

Queen Elizabeth I, of the Tudor family, was succeeded by the first Stuart king, her cousin, James, who became King James I.
The Stuart monarchy strongly asserted its rule as an Absolute Monarchy, insisting that kings were “divinely appointed.”
The English people, however, increasingly opposed absolutism.
Puritans (English Calvinists) increasingly dominated the English Parliament. They were angry when King Charles I, James’ son and successor, married a Catholic and proposed changes to the English Church’s liturgy, which many believed brought it dangerously close to Catholicism.
The struggles between Absolutism and Constitutional Monarchy led to:
- Civil War (1642-1648)
- King Charles I was executed in 1649
- Oliver Cromwell led the Puritans against the king.
- The King was defeated, and Cromwell established a Commonwealth.
Cromwell’s Commonwealth was initially intended to be a Republic, but he soon dissolved Parliament and named himself Lord Protector. The country, again, was under the rule of one who was not respecting the wishes of the people, who wanted a freely elected parliament government.
When Cromwell died, a new parliament convened and asked Charles II to become King. The question remained: Who should rule? The King or Parliament?

Stuart Monarchy was restored in 1660
The threat of the monarchy adopting Catholicism continued to plague the Puritan population.
King Charles II’s brother was Catholic and became king in 1685. When he antagonized the Puritans by appointing Catholics to the highest government and army posts…
- Glorious Revolution resulted in 1688.
William of Orange, a Dutch Protestant who was married to the King’s Protestant daughter, invaded England. King James II fled.
The British Parliament enacted a Bill of Rights endorsing religious tolerance and forbidding the king from annulling laws that were passed by the elected Parliament, thus ending the “divine right to rule” of kings in England.

Between 1642 and 1660, the Puritans worked to end theatre in England because they viewed it as “sinful.”
A law was passed in 1642 that suspended performances for five years.
After the law expired, Oliver Cromwell's government passed another law declaring that all actors were to be considered rogues.
Many theatres were even dismantled.
In 1660, when King Charles II restored the monarchy, theater resumed. This period is known as the Restoration.
Restoration drama (after 1660) is notable for its wit and sensuality, but also for the presence of female actors on the English stage for the first time, and female playwrights.