Baroque Sculpture and Architecture (Baroque Art: Part II)

hey there students and teachers in the last segment I focused on introducing the Baroque and also on baroque painting looking at the work of Caravaggio and Artemisia Gentileschi if you want to see that click on the card if you missed it but if you've already seen that then welcome back and let's talk about Baroque sculpture and architecture starting with Bernini the most famous baroque sculptor who came out of Italy now Bernie knees most famous work is the ecstasy of Saint Teresa I'd mentioned before how Baroque art was appropriated by the counter-reformation and what we're seeing here is a sculpture of Saint Teresa of Avila who was instrumental in the Counter Reformation and in founding a new religious order and in showing that a direct and personal and emotional and intense relationship with God is possible within the Catholic Church because it had been said before that you know okay the Protestants are saying that you don't need the church you can have a personal relationship with God but no you can have a personal relationship with God in the church and while Protestants were abolishing monastic orders this is glorifying monasticism now the story that's being told by this sculpture is a story from Saint Teresa's own diary where she wrote of the trans verb eration of herself as a spiritual wife to Christ that she is becoming spiritually married to Christ and I'm not going to put the text of that journal entry here because it is very vivid some of you are watching from schools I'm going to spare you the details but when you take a look here Saint Teresa is really appearing ecstatic you know kids usually think about drugs when you mention ecstasy this is before drugs or at least before that drug I suppose and but she is experiencing something like being on a drug when people say their how and why she is she is experiencing God very very direct and a love for God which is going into the erotic going into the emotional as you see here that the angel is lifting up her clothing the angel has this this spear here and there's all kinds of you know metaphorical stuff that you know is discussed in Saint Teresa's journal but when it comes down to it the message that's communicated here is that people think that when somebody joins a monastic order they're missing out on stuff Saint Theresa doesn't look like she's missing out on anything and again you see the grandeur you see the intense emotion that is present here that is present in Baroque art there is no restraint here he wants to depict this very emotional moment exactly as Saint Theresa described it and I think he did a great job now on the other side speaking of emotion this is a sculpture of the head of a damned soul by Bernini somebody who has been condemned to hell and we see here just the agony of someone who is condemned to hell so it's an interesting contrast from this spiritual marriage that st. Teresa is experiencing well what is somebody who is going to endure eternal separation from God going to experience well there you go another very famous sculpture of Bernie knees was Bernie knees David which serves as an excellent point of contrast when we think about Renaissance art if we were to compare Michelangelo's David with Bernie knees David now first of all you see how Renaissance art tended to depict someone before a moment of action tended to employ restraint we see the contrapposto stance which is very much employed in Renaissance art but then when you look at Bernie knees David Bernie knees David is in a moment of action so he is actually hurling the projectile at Goliath so when we take a closer look here a few things to note are first of all the faces whereas Michelangelo's David is very he composed you look at Bernie knees David and he's very emotional this is a man who is in the middle of an act of committing murder or if you've got another word for that on the battlefield yeah he's about to kill a guy all right he is in the in the middle of the act of killing a guy and so we see the movement here the imbalance and also note that Bernie knees David is not completely nude that's one difference between Baroque art and Renaissance art is that Baroque art is you know with its association with the counter-reformation it is a bit more modest whereas Renaissance art was often commissioned by yo secular individuals like the Medici who had money and didn't really care as much about modesty they wanted to model this classical art but we see here this very Christian influence in Baroque art and here is Bernie knees Jesus which you see that even Jesus saw is depicted with this grandeur Jesus a simple fisherman but at the same time I tell you what I got here to make anyone jealous check out those curls but we see this very very grand style in Bernie knees work now the grandeur here I've mentioned how it was employed by the Catholic Church but remember that it was also appropriated by the absolutist that the absolutist were out to project majesty and glory and this is an art form that helped out very much in that pursuit this is a bust of louis xiv by Bernini now Bernini also made an equestrian statue of louis xiv but the funny thing is beggars can't be choosers it's like if Bernini were going to make an equestrian statue of me I would love it but then again louis xiv was no beggar louis xiv didn't like it and so there was another sculptor who actually amended the work and said that this is actually of a roman hero instead of louis xiv that he this is a copy of the statue that is I presume somewhere in France but this was original he's supposed to go I'm in the city where everybody could see it and then loui because he didn't like it he put it in a corner of the gardens where nobody would see it so you know louis xiv had a very discriminating eye for art evidently so much that he didn't even like Bernini's work very picky about how he was portrayed on top of being a sculptor Bernini was an architect st. Peter's Square which is a very iconic depiction of the Vatican it's something everybody is seen it's where people gather when a new pope is going to be announced Bernini designed this Square and so when you look at Bernini as architect if we look at this panoramic here and you see now of course the ladder and obelisk was already there but Bernini designed all of this stuff around the square and as you look here you can see the four columns set up here and it's there's much more here than what you would normally need okay there there's no restraint here you don't have the sense of classical restraint it is all about projecting the wealth and power of the Catholic Church and Bernini does a great job of that and then this is also present in Catholic altar pieces from the Baroque period you look at this altar here and it's like wow all gold everything all right that the more gold the better the more extra is the better and so that's really when we look at the Baroque they don't hold anything back someone should go into this place and behold the majesty of the church and we can even see where this is appropriated by the absolutist the French Court adapted the Baroque style to project an unprecedented sense of grandeur now note when you go to Versailles it's not the same as the Italian Baroque which is part of the reason why Louie didn't necessarily like Bernini's equestrian statue there was an Italian Baroque and then there was a French Baroque which maintained more of the classical style of the Renaissance but still projected this baroque grandeur so when you look at this Chapel you go in here and you're thinking wow not only is God great but Louie's pretty great too and here is the peterhof this is even going to st. Petersburg where Peter the Great was creating his capital from scratch and so you see all of this gold all of the fountains that nothing is held back here in this grand Baroque style Baroque music was also grand in its presentation artists like Handel and Bach when we think about Handel's Messiah you know ha yeah oh yeah yeah I'm not gonna keep singing that's gonna be torturous I can't sing alright just not my thing ladies and gentlemen but when we think about Baroque music it communicates that same grandeur as baroque painting Baroque sculpture and Baroque architecture and this lecture wouldn't be complete without at least mentioning rokoko or late Baroque now if I call baroque extra this is beyond extra the more the better alright we've got these angels in the sky here we've got uh some sort of Leviathan or big fish of some sort they're blowing a little trumpet over here we see stuff going on here oh let's add some horses and let's put a guy on a tree up here and you know have this sheet with these little cherubs dangling from it and once again the more the better the more extra the better it's going to be and so that is a great example of Rococo art also here is a rokoko interpretation of the death of Socrates and later on Jacques Louie de vide is going to present a more restrained neoclassical interpretation but here we see face palming we see the cup has been thrown down we see Socrates and pane or else maybe they're just dabbing on them haters I don't know what's going on here but whoever is painting this they are making the scene as extra as possible as emotional as possible socrates choking on that hemlock that dab is pretty iconic all right both of them together and yeah the this is this is rokoko and this is a rokoko mirror now if this mirror were in my house i would get rid of it okay because I'm a big symmetry person I love Renaissance art I love neoclassical art because I like for things to look the same on both sides now if you take a close look at this mirror you'll note the asymmetrical style of this mirror it would drive me crazy having that in there but remember at the Rococo is going even beyond the Baroque in challenging the idea of symmetry and restraint in art and here is a rokoko staircase now another thing to note about rokoko is it was a more playful style and so you see here there is a sense of grandeur but there's also a playfulness in the choice of colors this ring looks like a watermelon or something like that y'all feel look at that it's like you know watermelon green on the outside then you got the staircase in there I mean it's just it's it's a little little tacky if we were thinking about today it's just it's too much but then again people liked it at that time and it showed how wealthy someone was so it suited its purpose and there is Barack Obama reminding us that it is time to review and wrap up so first of all baroque artists rejected Renaissance conventions to create art that projected a greater sense of grandeur motion and emotion the Catholic Church used Baroque art and architecture to enhance its stature during the counter-reformation absolute monarchs use the grandeur of the Baroque style to show off their increasing wealth and power and finally rokoko art pushed the baroque to new limits of rejecting symmetry and restraint and that wraps up this lecture on the Baroque if you liked it remember to click that like button maybe comment subscribe to my channel if you feel so inclined I'll be back with more lectures on history and philosophy visit my web site look me up on social media it's always a pleasure [Music]

Channel: Tom Richey

Views: 41,076

Rating: 4.9135137 out of 5

Keywords: Baroque Sculpture, Baroque Architecture, Bernini, Rococo, Rococo Art, Baroque, Tom Richey Baroque, AP Euro Baroque, Tom Richey, AP Euro, AP European History, Art History, AP Art History

Id: vhY8EZhKuGU

Length: 13min 28sec (808 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 12 2017