Baroque Painting (Baroque Art: Part I)

if it ain't broke don't fix it hey there students in this lecture I'm going to talk about the Baroque which was an art movement in the 17th and early 18th century which comes after the Renaissance before the Enlightenment neoclassicism and all of that its origins like Renaissance art were in Italy and the historical context we really have two historical movements that are associated with the Baroque first the counter-reformation and second absolutism this art was created for turbulent times if you think about the Renaissance this is all about finding these classical texts and studying them and you know all nerding out and really Renaissance art is a lot like that but then we think about the entrance of the Reformation and the Wars of the Reformation the 30 Years War which brought about unprecedented destruction in Europe now of course there was the Black Plague but I mean as far as like warfare and all that you see what I'm getting at so as far as the Baroque tradition it represents a rejection of Renaissance restraint if we look at the School of Athens we see here this very technically perfect painting from the Renaissance where it looks like it could have been posed for where it's just like okay everybody's in there now everybody be still and just stuff okay kind of like you're doing a mannequin challenge or something like that and that's Renaissance art restraint that you are supposed to think about balance in the composition and you're supposed to hold something back Renaissance art was not very emotional one thing we need to note here while this painting of Aeneas fleeing burning Troy while it's not restrained you see here all of the running around you see stuff burning you see that it's not balanced you see action but at the same time you still see this framework of classical themes so when we're looking at Baroque art we're still going to see things that are very predominantly religious or gray founded in the greco-roman classical tradition a few buzzwords when I think about Baroque art are first of all motion so as I said like the Renaissance art you see stillness in Baroque art you see motion represented as if somebody just walked by something that was going on and snapped a candid shot not so much something that's posed for emotions so not only motion but also emotion there is less restraint in Baroque art and there is more of an emotional feel to it turbulence now notice here I'm breaking some rules of capitalization because Baroque art challenged these existing rules of symmetry and all of that grandeur one thing about the Baroque is everything about it communicated grandeur it's made in this grand style and so that's why the Catholic Church and the absolutist use Baroque art in order to prop up their reputation to show off their wealth to show off their grandeur and finally contrast especially when we look at the work of Caravaggio and people who were influenced by him then we're going to see that there is quite a light and dark thing whereas if you look at the Renaissance art you see that it's pretty much bright throughout so we're going to look at some of Caravaggio's work in just a bit and really if we want it just in one word or phrase when you think about Baroque art it represents an embrace of the extra when we see this here we see Saint Michael trampling the devil and you see this action sequence you see the the emotion here you see the devil suffering you see that Saint Michael is about to drive his sword into him I mean you really if you look at this closely enough you can see the raw impact here it's not just setups for looks or something like that I mean you can feel what is going on here so bling it on don't be afraid to be extra if you're a baroque artist when you look here Saint Ignatius of Loyola too picked it in all of his blinging glory so let's go ahead and start looking at baroque paintings starting with Caravaggio my favorite baroque painter now you see here the crowning of thorns and when you look here nobody is looking at the camera this this is right here in a moment of action it's of course very intense and when you think about the counter-reformation this is something here that Catholicism really emphasizes The Passion of Christ the crucifixion of Christ and so what we see here is Jesus being crowned with thorns now another thing to note is that Jesus is not depicted as ideal kind of agio like to use real figures notice that Jesus is not ripped or anything like that he's just got the body of a normal guy so Caravaggio wanted to depict things in a grand style but also when it came to the human body presenting the human body as it really is and not how it would appear ideally we see here st. jerome now if we were looking at Renaissance art he would be ripped but the thing is he's an old man and in fact an old man who's about to die as you see with the skull they're memento mori remember your death all right remember that one day you were going to die which is of course another thing that Christians are told to be mindful of and so we see st. jerome here looking as he really would have looked now once again look at the contrast it looks as if there's a spotlight shining on st. jerome here then we see David with the head of Goliath now you see here that there is not a shyness about depicting blood or gore you see that Goliath's head is all bloody you've got blood kind of coming out of that and David is you know is looking at it and then Goliath's just like ooh you know this is maybe like you know some of you when you've got an exam on this or something like that but this is Baroque art once again David you see is not depicted as anatomically perfect or anything like that he's depicted as a normal guy who just killed a man and speaking of killing people now this is a very intense painting of Judith beheading Holofernes now speaking of Catholicism this is something that would appear in a Catholic Bible in the Old Testament what are called the deuterocanonical books or apocryphal books that don't appear in Protestant Bibles but there's a story here about Judith who attracted an Assyrian officer Holofernes and then she killed him now note here that you know Renaissance art doesn't really show spattering blood and then we see the look on this guy's face like oh good got my head off actually he's probably not making any noise because she's probably already cut into his voice box and gosh look at those forearms I guess they're still using male models at this point any guy would be jealous on I'm you know very muscular now then we see that she's very uncertain you know it's like am i doing this right and then there is the maid there an old woman passively looking on as this is happening and this is important cuz we're gonna contrast this in just a second now again note the lights and the darks the spotlight sort of effect here so we see here a moment of action and emotion which is very much present in baroque painting and you're not going to find this in Renaissance art so when we compare this if we look at Caravaggio's artistic interpretation of the story compared with lucas cranek the elder we see here in this Renaissance version I mean the this head of Holofernes is just sitting there I guess is it sitting on velvet I mean or is that his neck I can't really tell but at the same time you don't see anything gory she's got the sword there which suggests that she just killed him but then again a guy isn't stopping Judith from getting her globe up we see here that she is really glowing up and it's it's not really that emotional it's just like so what I just killed the guy you want to make something of it you know I don't want to challenge this woman but at the same time we don't really see the intense action or emotion that we see in Caravaggio's painting and so let's look at a woman's interpretation of the same thing this is a painting by Artemisia Gentileschi and this is the same event and you can tell that it is somewhat based on Caravaggio's but it's a much more intense perspective Caravaggio had blood spattering but here you actually see blood on the sheet extremely intense and so you have to know Artemisia Gentileschi story to really appreciate this painting and the raw emotion that went into it Artemisia Gentileschi was the daughter of a painter and she was the first woman to be admitted into the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence now the tragedy of Gentileschi which really impacted her work was that as a young woman she was raped by the man who was hired to be her tutor she actually pressed charges she and her father pressed charges and there was a seven-month trial and during this trial Gentileschi was tortured with thumbscrews this device here that can crush your fingers and toes and the point here was to test the veracity of her testimony against her rapist so a woman in this in this period in this place and early modern Italy if she were to accuse a man of raping her in order to test her testimony then she had to be tortured so magnify all of these things here that she was raped by a man who went on to dishonor her by not marrying her she had to endure a seven-month trial had to endure torture and public scorn and all of these other things that went into this painting and so let's take a closer look here now we see here that judith in her made our beheading Holofernes now this here is the face of her rapist she has put him here and so when you look at this painting and then you look at the two women here and you compare this to Caravaggio's painting now note here that the maid is much younger here and the maid is also taking an active role in what's going on let me help you and so this is really when you look at this these are two young women who are you know cutting off the head of the metaphorical patriarchy this is revenge art you see here in this look on this guy's face in the blood on the sheets everything about this painting is emotional and intense and if you like what you've seen so far I would invite you to continue on with the next segment which will focus on baroque sculpture and architecture see in a bit [Music]

Channel: Tom Richey

Views: 62,814

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Keywords: Baroque Painting, The Baroque, Baroque Art, Caravaggio, Caravaggio art, artemisia gentileschi, Baroque, AP Euro Baroque, Baroque AP Euro, Tom Richey Baroque, Tom Richey AP Euro, Tom Richey

Id: _tmha5Iw3b4

Length: 12min 19sec (739 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 08 2017