The Baroque World (1600-1700 CE) PDF

THE BAROQUE C. 1600 – 1700 CE WORLD OVERVIEW The Baroque is a period of artistic style that started around 1600 in Rome, Italy, and spread throughout the majority of Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries In informal usage, the word baroque describes something that is elaborate and highl...

THE BAROQUE C. 1600 – 1700 CE WORLD OVERVIEW The Baroque is a period of artistic style that started around 1600 in Rome, Italy, and spread throughout the majority of Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries In informal usage, the word baroque describes something that is elaborate and highly detailed Named after barroco, a Portuguese term for an irregularly-shaped pearl, the Baroque period is defined by the grandeur and opulence of its art, architecture, and music Gianlorenzo Bernini’s decoration of the new St Peter’s, completed in 1653, was one of the greatest and most expensive undertakings of the baroque era The undulating columns and volutes of Bernini’s altar canopy, or baldacchino, provide a baroque counterpoint to the classical regularities of Romanesque domes and vaulting This is the spirit of baroque – the love of extravagant and monumental beauty THE BAROQUE SPIRIT  The chief agent of this new spirit was the Roman Catholic Church After its initial shock at the success of THE Protestantism, the Catholic Church decided that the best defense was a well-planned COUNTER attack Switching to the offensive, the church relied - in great measure on new religious orders like the Jesuits to lead the movement known as REFORMA the Counter-Reformation TION Putting behind them the anxieties of the past, the chief representatives of the Counter-Reformation gave voice to a renewed spirit of confidence in the universality of the church and the authority of its teachings  The official position of the church was newly stated at the Council of Trent, which met sporadically from 1545 to 1563 THE The Council redefined Catholic doctrines COUNTER and reaffirmed those dogmas that Protestantism had challenged: transubstantiation, the apostolic - succession of the priesthood, the belief in purgatory, the rule of celibacy for the REFORMA clergy, and the authority of the papacy TION At the same time, the Council tried to eliminate abuses by the clergy and tighten discipline  The Council of Trent also called on artists to remind Catholics of the power and splendor of their religion by commissioning a massive quantity of works of art dedicated to underlining the chief principles of Counter- Reformation teachings THE New emphasis was placed on clarity and directness COUNTER- The impression of the church’s triumphant resurgence was further reinforced by a new emphasis on material splendor and glory REFORMATION In Rome, the construction of lavish churches was crowned by the completion at last of St. Peter’s and the addition of Bernini’s spectacular piazza (square) in front of it Throughout Catholic Europe, there developed a rich and ornate art that could do justice to the new demands for expressive power and spectacle COUNTER REFORMA TION ART THE BAROQUE SPIRIT Strictly speaking, baroque is a term applied only to the visual arts But it is frequently used to describe the entire cultural achievement of the age To extend the use of the term to literature, music, and even intellectual developments of the same period implies that all the arts of the Baroque period had certain characteristics in common A close comparison between the visual arts, music, and literature does reveal some shared ideas and attitudes THE BAROQUE SPIRIT In this respect, the Baroque period marks a significant break with the Renaissance, when Italy had been the center of virtually all artistic development Despite the impact of the Counter-Reformation, the Reformation had begun an irreversible process of decentralization By the beginning of the 17th century, although Rome was still the artistic capital of Europe, important cultural changes were taking place elsewhere The economic growth of countries like Holland and England, and the increasing power of France, produced a series of artistic styles that developed locally rather than being imported wholesale from Italy THE BAROQUE SPIRIT Throughout Northern Europe, the rise of the middle class continued to create a new public for the arts, which in turn affected the development of painting, architecture, and music For the first time, European culture began to spread across the Atlantic, carried to the Americans by Counter-Reformation missionaries  In addition, the much greater geographic spread of artistic achievement was accompanied by the creation of new artistic forms in response to new religious and social pressures In music, for example, the 17th century saw THE the birth of opera and of new kinds of instrumental music, including works for BAROQU orchestra like the concerto grosso Painters continued to depict biblical scenes, E SPIRIT but they increasingly turned to other subjects including portraits, landscapes, and scenes from everyday life Architects constructed private townhouses and started to take an interest in civic planning instead of devoting themselves exclusively to churches and palaces CHARACTERISTICS OF BAROQUE It is typically unwise to look for broad general principles operating in an age of such dynamic and varied change Nevertheless, to understand and appreciate the Baroque spirit as it appears in the individual arts, it is helpful to bear in mind the primary assumptions and preoccupations shared by most of baroque artists Whatever the medium in which they worked, baroque artists were united in their commitment to strong emotional statements, psychological exploration, and the invention of new and daring techniques CHARACTERISTICS OF BAROQUE Perhaps the most striking is the expression of intense emotions During the Renaissance, artists had generally tried to achieve the calm balance and order they thought of as characteristically classical During the Baroque period, artists were attracted by extremes of feeling —sometimes these strong emotions were personal Painters and poets alike tried to look into their own souls and reveal by color or word the depths of their own psychic and spiritual experience Rather than avoiding painful or extremely emotional states, their works intentionally sought out and explored them CHARACTERISTICS OF BAROQUE This concern with emotion produced in its turn an interest in what came to be called psychology Baroque artists attempted to explain how and why their subjects felt as strongly as they did by representing their emotional states as vividly and analytically as possible This is particularly apparent in 17th-century opera and drama, where music in the one case and words in the other were used to depict the precise state of mind of the characters CHARACTERISTICS OF BAROQUE The desire to express the inexpressible required the invention of new techniques As a result, baroque art places great emphasis on virtuosity Sculptors and painters achieved astonishing realism in the way they handled their media Stone was carved in a way such as to give the effect of thin, flowing drapery, while 17th-century painters found ways to reproduce complex effects of light and shade Baroque writers often used elaborate imagery and complicated grammatical structure to express intense emotional states In music, both composers and performers began to develop new virtuoso skills, like toccatas (free-form rhapsodies for keyboard) which allowed virtuoso instrumentalists to demonstrate their technique  In general, the baroque style is characterized by exaggerated motion and clear detail used to produce drama, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, architecture, literature, dance, and music Baroque iconography was direct, obvious, “over-the-top,” and dramatic, intending to THE BAROQUE appeal above all to the senses and the emotions STYLE THE BAROQUE IN ITALY THE BAROQUE STYLE Jesuits believed that the purpose of religious art was to teach and inspire the faithful, that it should be intelligible and realistic, and that it should be an emotional stimulus to piety In Pozzo's ceiling fresco, the faithful are invited to see not Hell, as Loyola outlines in his Spiritual Exercises, but Heaven The figure in the dark robe sitting on a cloud at the lower right of the opening into the sky is Saint Francis Xavier, co-founder of the Jesuits Ignatius’s last words to Francis Xavier as he set out on his mission, “Go and set the world aflame,” are inscribed on one end of the ceiling BAROQUE SCULPTURE: BERNINI The work of Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) played a major part in defining Baroque art Probably no image sums up the Baroque movement better than Bernini's sculptural program for the Cornaro Chapel  The Cornaro Chapel is high drama, the stage space of not merely religious vision, but visionary spectacle  It represents art designed to draw viewers emotionally into the theatrical space of the work BAROQUE SCULPTURE: BERNINI Bernini’s theme is a pivotal moment in the life of Teresa of Avila Teresa was steeped in the mystical tradition of the Jewish Kabbalah, the brand of mystical Jewish thought that seeks to attain the perfection of heaven while still living in this world by transcending the boundaries of times and space Bernini illustrates the vision she described In Saint Teresa’s vision, a properly religious context is found which unites the physical and the spiritual Thus, the sculptural centerpiece of his chapel decoration is Teresa’s ecstatic swoon, the angel standing over her, having just withdrawn his penetrating arrow from her “entrails,” as Teresa throws her head back in the throes of spiritual passion  It pleased the Lord that I should sometimes see the following vision. I would see beside me, on my left hand, an angel in bodily form … He was not tall, but short, and very beautiful, his face so aflame that he appeared to be one of the highest types of angel who FROM seem to be afire. They must be those who are called the cherubim; they do not tell me their names but I am well aware that there is a great distance between TERESA certain angels and others …. In his hands I saw a long golden spear and at the end of the iron tip, I seemed to see a point of fire. With this he seemed to pierce my OF AVILA, heart several times so that it penetrated to my entrails. When he drew it out, I thought he was drawing them out with it and he left me completely afire with great “VISIONS love for God. The pain was so sharp that it made me utter several moans; and so excessive was the sweetness caused me by this intense pain that one can ” never wish to lose it, not will one’s soul be content with anything less than God. It is not a bodily pain, but spiritual, though the body has a share in it—indeed, a great share. So sweet are the colloquies of love which pass between the soul and God that if anyone thinks I am lying I beseech God … to give him the same experience. GIANLORENZ O BERNINI, DAVID, 1623 Bernini's David appears to be an intentional contrast to Michelangelo's David Michelangelo's David seems to turn his mind inward; Bernini's turns his mind outward, into the viewer's space The sculpture's active relationship with the space surrounding it—its invisible complement—is an important feature of Baroque art Bernini carved this work when he was 25 years old, but he was already carving sculptures of remarkable quality by age 8 THE DRAMA OF PAINTING: CARAVAGGIO The foundations of baroque style, which was to dominate much of European painting for 150 years, was laid in Rome around 1600 by one artist—Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Caravaggio, the name of his hometown in northern Italy Caravaggio used the play of light and dark to create paintings of drama and energy that reveal the new Baroque taste for vividly realistic detail  His paintings dramatize the moment of conversion through use of tenebrism  Tenebrism ("dark, gloomy, mysterious") is a style of painting using especially pronounced chiaroscuro, where there are violent contrasts of light and dark, and where darkness becomes a dominating feature of the image  He transformed the religious paintings for which he  He explored the darker aspects of life and death in some of the most naturalistic and dramatic pictures ever painted Caravaggio’s temperament and PAINTING IN lifestyle did little to recommend him to the aristocratic and ROME: ecclesiastical patrons on whom he depended CARAVAGGIO From his first arrival in Rome (around 1590), Caravaggio seems to have lived an unconventional and violent life He was in continual trouble with the police and alienated potential friends with his savage temper PAINTING IN ROME: CARAVAGGIO In 1606, he quarreled violently with an opponent in a tennis match and stabbed the opponent to death He avoided punishment only by fleeing to Naples and then to Malta, where he was thrown into prison for attacking a police officer Escaping, he made his way to Sicily and then back to Naples, where he again got involved in a violent quarrel Seriously wounded, he headed back to Rome in hopes of a pardon He died of a fever on the journey back to Rome  The spirit of rebellion that governed Caravaggio’s life can be seen in his art In his depiction of religious scenes, he refused to accept either the PAINTING IN traditional idealizing versions of earlier artists or the Counter- ROME: Reformation demands for magnificent display CARAVAGGIO And instead of placing his figures in an elaborate setting in accordance with Counter-Reformation principles, Caravaggio surrounded them with shadows, a device that emphasizes the drama of the scene and the poverty of the participants  Caravaggio’s preference for chiaroscuro (extreme contrasts between light and dark) was one of the aspects of his style most imitated by later painters When not handled by a master, the use of heavy shadows surrounding brightly lit CHIAROS figures in the foreground tends to become artificial and over-theatrical, but in Caravaggio’s work, it always serves a true CURO dramatic purpose In The Calling of Saint Matthew, the stern hand of Jesus summoning the future apostle is emphasized by the beam of light that reveals the card players at the table Matthew, awed and fearful, tries to shrink back into the darkness This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY- PAINTING IN ROME: CARAVAGGIO In his painting, The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, Caravaggio used his own experience of suffering to portray the scene with painful realism The painting tells us as much about the reactions of the onlookers as about Matthew They range from the sadistic violence of the executioner to the apparent indifference of the figures in shadow on the left Only the angel swooping down with the palm of martyrdom relieves the brutality and pessimism of the scene CARAVAGGIO, CONVERSION OF SAINT PAUL, CA. 1601 This painting was designed to fill the right wall of the narrow Cerasi family chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo. Caravaggio had to paint it to be seen at an angle of about 45 degrees The resulting space is even more dramatic and dynamic PAINTING IN ROME: CARAVAGGIO There is a tenderness, though, in Caravaggio’s Madonna of Loreto Here, he paints a simple Roman mother As she stands gravely on the doorstep of her backstreet house where the plaster is falling away from the walls, two humble pilgrims fall to their knees in confident prayer They raise their loving faces to the Virgin and Christ child while turning toward us their muddy, travel-stained feet For Caravaggio’s aristocratic contemporaries, this was disrespectful and lacking in devotion ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI Born in Rome, Artemisia Gentileschi became one of Caravaggio's most important followers In her Judith and Maidservant with Head of Holofernes, Gentileschi lights the scene by a single candle, dramatically accentuating the Caravaggesque tenebrism of the presentation As is often the case in Baroque painting, the space of the drama is larger than the space of the frame Judith is a traditional symbol of fortitude, a virtue with which Gentileschi surely identified MUSIC IN ITALY: OPERA Italy’s greatest musical invention of this era was opera – a stage drama set to music, with virtuoso singers, orchestral accompaniment, and elaborate staging Opera grew from musical roots in the Renaissance, when Italians had begun adapting the lyricism of the madrigal to dramatic poetry In Renaissance Florence, a group of humanist intellectuals called the Camerata tried to re-create Greek tragedy Beginning in the 1570s, Camerata members devised a style of solo singing, called recitative style, to express the serious emotions of tragic poetry  The Council of Trent rejected the use of secular music, which it deemed lascivious and impure, as a model for sacred compositions. This division between secular and sacred was less pronounced in Venice, where composers VENICE experimented in a variety of forms. Giovanni Gabrieli was the principal organist at St. AND Mark’s Cathedral. BAROQU He created canzonas in which he carefully controlled the dynamics (loud/soft) of the composition and its tempo. E MUSIC He designated a specific voice or instrument for each part of his composition, a practice we have come to call orchestration. He organized his compositions around a central note, called the tonic note (usually referred to as the tonality or key of the composition). CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI AND THE BIRTH OF OPERA In 1607, Montverde produced the first operatic masterpiece, Orfeo which dramatized the myth of Orpheus’ journey to the underworld in hopes of recovering his beloved Eurydice Orfeo was not the first opera, but it is generally accepted as the first to successfully integrate music and drama An instrumental line, known as the basso continuo, or "continuous bass," was conceived as supporting accompaniment and not the harmonic equivalent to the vocal line CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI AND THE BIRTH OF OPERA The combination of solo voice and basso continuo came to be known as monody The libretto ("little book") for Monteverdi's Orfeo was based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Euridice Two particular musical forms stand out— the recitative (a style of singing that imitates closely the rhythms of speech) and the aria (a song that expresses the singer's emotions and feelings) MUSIC IN ITALY: OPERA In baroque Rome and Venice especially, opera developed in form and grew in popularity In 1637, a troupe in Venice gave the first operatic performance before a paying public Increasingly, the singing was divided between speech-like recitative and more song-like aria With the aria, the dramatic action halted temporarily while the character revealed his or her feelings in song Gradually opera matured into two forms:  Opera seria – based on the lofty mythological themes favored by courtly aristocrats  Opera buffa – comic opera with broader appeal to the urban middle class ANTONIO VIVALDI AND THE CONCERTO Baroque composition is characterized by modulation, or beginning in the tonic key, moving to different keys, and returning back to the tonic key Antonio Vivaldi perfected the concerto as a genre Many of his concertos were performed by the girls and women at the Ospedale della Pietà (one of four orphanages in Venice), where he was musical director ANTONIO VIVALDI AND THE CONCERTO He was a master of the baroque concerto grosso, a musical form in which a small group of instruments plays in concert with a larger orchestra Vivaldi’s most famous work is The Four Seasons (1725), a suite of four concertos still widely performed today The Four Seasons is an example of what later became to be known as program music, or purely instrumental music in some way connected to a story or idea THE BAROQUE IN SPAIN AND FRANCE ARCHITECTURE IN SPAIN: ESCORIAL PALACE Baroque Spain was flush with wealth from its New World possessions and shaped by two decisive forces: the Catholic Counter- Reformation and absolutism The Hapsburg kings, especially Philip II and Philip IV, patronized major building projects and talented artists, fostering a “Golden Age” of Spanish art and architecture In architecture, King Philip II built a palace at El Escorial outside the royal city of Madrid—it functioned as a palace for the king, a tomb for the king’s father, and a monastery DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ IN SPAIN The greatest painter of Spain’s Golden Age was Diego Velázquez, a young painter in the court of King Philip IV His Triumph of Bacchus (1628) illustrated the scholarly belief that pagan mythology reflected historical fact or popular custom Velázquez charged his subjects with a psychological complexity DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ IN SPAIN Deeply influenced by Caravaggio, Velázquez's Las Meninas is a life-size group portrait and his last great royal commission It elevates the portrait to a level of complexity almost unmatched in the history of art No other Velázquez painting is as tall as Las Meninas, which suggests that the back of the canvas in the foreground is, in fact, Las Meninas itself. Velázquez thus paints himself painting this painting LITERATURE IN SPAIN: CERVANTES Miguel de Cervantes was an impoverished veteran of foreign wars, slavery, and debtor’s prison Desperate to overcome the poverty of his own prosaic world, he created one of the great utopian heroes of Western literature: Don Quixote Don Quixote was the idealistic knight who constantly confuses the real world with his chivalric fantasy Yet he draws others into his idealized world and ennobles them  Don Quixote is the first modern European novel and a stellar example of a picaresque novel—a genre of prose fiction that depicts the adventures of a roguish, but "appealing hero", of low social class, LITERATU who lives by his wits in a corrupt society (in Spanish, picaro means “rogue” or “knave”) RE IN Cervantes set out to satirize medieval tales of chivalry and romance by inventing a character—Don SPAIN: Quixote—who is an amiable elderly gentleman looking for the chivalry of storybooks in real life CERVANT This apparently simple idea takes on almost infinite levels of meaning, as Don Quixote pursues his ES ideals, in general without much success, in a world with little time for romance or honor In his adventures, which bring him into contact with all levels of Spanish society, he is accompanied by his squire Sancho Panza, whose shrewd practicality serves as a foil for his own unworldliness LITERATURE IN SPAIN: CERVANTES The structure of the novel is as leisurely and seemingly as rambling as the Don’s wanderings Yet the various episodes are linked by the constant confrontation between reality and illusion, the real world and the world of imagination Thus at one level, the book becomes as meditation on the relationship between art and life By the end of his life, Don Quixote has learned painfully that his noble aspirations cannot be reconciled with the realities of the world, and he dies disillusioned  The power of spectacle was never better understood than at the court of Louis XIV of France In 1660, Louis took personal control of the French government with the words, “Now the theater changes” Planning to make France a grand stage for his majesty and power, within a year, he began the construction of his palace at Versailles ARCHITECTURE IN Louis XIV proved to be a master in the guises of FRANCE: absolutist power VERSAILLES ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE: VERSAILLES THEATER AND DANCE IN FRANCE: THE ACADEMIES King Louis XIV generously patronized the theater and dance of France, while enforcing strict control over them He granted dictatorial power over the performing arts to the academies The influence of the academies dates back to 1636, when a royal minister asked a scholarly group called the Académe Française to judge a popular tragedy The Academy quickly became the official judge in matters of literary form and taste, imposing strict neo-classical rules on theater and dance The Academy declared that plays performed by Paris’ emerging professional theater must be divided into five acts, obey the unities of time and place, and provide an uplifting moral THEATER AND DANCE IN FRANCE: THE ACADEMIES Only an exceptional playwright could thrive under these restrictions The age of Louis XIV could boast of two playwrights: Jean Racine and the comedian Molière Racine’s tragedies were strictly governed by the neoclassical unities, concentrating the plot in a single main action and locale The characters spoke in an exalted rhymed verse, as dictated by the Academy His themes were usually drawn from ancient Greek tragedy, though Racine’s noble characters were often subject to ordinary human weaknesses and passions Despite academic restrictions, Racine’s tragedies presented a compelling drama of characters driven by their own desires and foolishness THEATER AND DANCE IN FRANCE: THE ACADEMIES Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known as Molière, used biting wit to attack the hypocrisy and vice of French society He was a playwright, actor, and part-owner of his own theatrical company He was a favorite of Louis XIV, who had granted Molière’s company a theater inside the Louvre in Paris His plays were exceptional in their relentless wit and consistent moral attitude THEATER AND DANCE IN FRANCE: THE ACADEMIES In music and dance, the French Court’s most important figure was Jean-Baptist Lully He was an innovator in both French opera and the French court ballet, or ballet de cour In 1653, Lully was a dancer in the ballet de cour that gave young Louis XIV his name “the Sun King” Louis danced the role of the god Apollo, wearing a sun-ray headdress and a solar emblem on his chest Establishing himself first as a ballet composer at court, by 1661, the Italian-born Lully headed the court’s Royal Academy of Music From this position, Lully ruled as a virtual dictator over French music, opera, and dance THEATER AND DANCE IN FRANCE: THE ACADEMIES Under Lully’s rule, French dance was professionalized and the ballet de cour evolved into a flexible and unified art form Court ballets were typically featured at breaks during the performance of a comedy or an opera However, Molière incorporated ballet directly into the plot of his comedies, collaborating with the royal dance master and choreographer, Charles-Louis Beauchamp To train professional dancers, Lully established a dance school at the Academy, where Beauchamp developed the formalized foot and leg positions still used in ballet today  The European nobility’s favorite Baroque painter was the Flemish Peter Paul Rubens, PAINTING who served patrons from Spain to Rome to England IN The artist traveled frequently from FRANCE: Flanders (now Belgium) to the royal courts, earning a fortune from artistic commissions and his service as a diplomat PETER Rubens excelled in the favorite themes, PAUL both sacred and secular, of his aristocratic patrons RUBENS He produced a lot of great art: tapestry designs, altarpieces, ceiling paintings as well as easel paintings PAINTING IN FRANCE: PETER PAUL RUBENS Scenes such as his Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus permitted the patron to identify with figures of mythological and romantic prowess Here, the two gods Castor and Pollux visit earth to take two mortal women as wives The two sisters’ energetic resistance to their violent kidnapping is emphasized in the twisted forms of their bodies The furious motion of the painting leads upward, one sister being lifted awkwardly but inevitably toward heaven  After his first wife’s death, he married the 16-year-old Helena Fourment In his later career, his affection for Helena and their children inspired a newly tender and heartfelt style In The Garden of Love, Rubens welcomes his young bride into the gallant conversation and flirtation of the group at center A second group of bon- vivants occupies the porch PAINTING IN FRANCE: at rear and a statue of Venus at upper right blesses the scene with elixir of love PETER PAUL RUBENS  THE PROTESTANT BAROQUE  The predominantly Protestant regions of northern Germany and the Netherlands nurtured a range of achievements that differed from that of the Catholic and absolutist THE nations The German principalities were PROTESTANT politically divided at this time, and suffered greatly from the Thirty BAROQUE Years’ War (1616-1648) German nobles often imitated French cultural styles Artists had to find patronage at small German courts or in Germany’s prosperous cities  By contrast, the Netherlands in this time period experienced an upsurge in nationalism, fueled by vigorous commerce and political independence THE Formed from the Protestant northern provinces of the Low Countries, the Netherlands had PROTEST fought and won their independence from the Spanish monarchy ANT Their war experience left the Dutch suspicious BAROQU of the extravagant absolutist courts and the Counter-Reformation Catholic Church E Their Calvinist churches were bare, but they decorated the walls of their town houses and public halls with paintings The vigorous market in painting nurtured a golden age of artistic genius THE PROTESTANT BAROQUE: BACH Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s most prolific musical geniuses Back excelled in the both secular and sacred musical forms His music typically exhibited two essential features of baroque concert music:  Elaborate counterpoint – the combination of two or more melodies of equal importance  The basso continuo – a prominent bass line that harmonically supports the polyphonic lines THE PROTESTANT BAROQUE: BACH Both counter point and basso continuo are prominent features of the six Brandenburg Concertos (1721), which Back composed for a friend of his noble patron In Brandenburg Concerto No. 2,an ensemble of recorder, oboe, trumpet, and violin engages in a polyphonic conversation THE PROTESTANT BAROQUE: BACH For each week’s religious service at St. Thomas’s church, Bach wrote cantata, a choral work that provided the principal music of Lutheran worship Typically, the cantata contained a recitative and aria-like forms, and served as a kind of sacred opera for the Lutherans Bach composed about 300 cantatas in all, enough for five complete cycles of the liturgical year Though he composed no operas, he was the author of a monumental masterpiece of musical storytelling, the St. Mathew Passion The St. Matthew Passion is a gigantic work, calling for two orchestras, two choruses, organs, and solo voices Bach renders the events of Christ’s last days and hours in music of containing significant emotional range THE PROTESTANT BAROQUE: BACH Bach also was involved in the development of a new system of composition in Baroque music As early as 1600, European composes had devised a system of musical keys to replace the traditional modes used by ancient and medieval musicians In a musical key, the seven intervals between the eight notes of an octave scale are arranged according to a specific formula of whole and half-tones A musical key’s principal pitch, called a tonic, serves as a tonal center to the entire composition For example, a melody written in the key of C usually begins and ends on the tonic C Baroque composers also learned to transpose a melody from one key to another without altering the tune, a technique called modulation Bach composed a set of musical exercises, called the Well- tempered Clavier to prove that a clavier (any stringed keyboard instrument) could be tuned to accommodate all 24 major and minor keys The sense of order and the possibilities for infinite variation in this modal system appealed to the baroque taste for mathematical complexity THE PROTESTANT BAROQUE: BACH DUTCH BAROQUE PAINTING Characterized by a free market that bypassed traditional channels of patronage Dutch artists offered individualized styles/subjects suited to modest interiors They could sell their art to anonymous buyers who shopped for paintings in galleries or market stalls Genre painting -- paintings depicting realistic scenes from everyday life  Domestic settings & interiors  Mealtimes  Celebrations  Tavern or peasant scenes  Markets. GENRE PAINTING GENRE PAINTING DUTCH BAROQUE PAINTING The market arrangement allowed women to enter the profession But the market could more easily than in force artists into countries where a poverty royal academy- controlled training & patronage DUTCH BAROQUE PAINTING Johannes Vermeer – he was virtually unknown in the period, but is generally regarded today as a master of light and color Known for domestic interiors The Allegory of Painting  Intricate blending of allegorical and visual patterns  Model is costumed as Clio, the muse of history, who holds a trumpet and a history book DUTCH BAROQUE PAINTING The Milkmaid Focus on simple objects and modest, but enduring truths -- bread, milk, and a maid’s coarse dress  An innovative and prolific master in three media: paintings, drawings and etching REMBRA Generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art and the most NDT important in Dutch art history His art depicts a wide range of style and VAN subject matter, from portraits and self- portraits to landscapes, genre scenes, RIJN allegorical and historical scenes, biblical and mythological themes Spent most of his career in the Dutch capital of Amsterdam Contrast between public success and private misfortune His wife bore 4 children, but only the last survived DUTCH A year later, his wife died at the age of 30 BAROQU Despite his financial success as an artist, his extravagant, ostentatious E lifestyle eventually forced him to declare bankruptcy PAINTING These problems only served to enhance his artistry REMBRANDT VAN RIJN SELF-PORTRAIT More than 60 self-portraits Typically presented himself as a worldly, sophisticated man dressed in fashionable attire His later self-portraits served to promote his international renown as a painter In his last decade, he painted himself in humble painter’s clothes THE NEW SCIENCE THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION An intellectual movement that altered human history The scientific revolution was the historical process by which modern science became the authoritative method for investigating and describing the world Based on two principles:  The empirical observation of nature as the means for arriving at scientific truth  The verification of proposed truths through experiment and mathematical calculation Overthrew Aristotle’s natural philosophy which had long been the basis of Western science Had the effect of separating scientific truth from the doctrines of the Christian church A REVOLUTIONARY MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE Although backed by authority and common sense, the geocentric theory did not accurately explain the movements of the sun, moon and planets. Nicolaus Copernicus -- a Polish cleric & astronomer -- became interested in an old Greek idea that the sun stood at the center of the universe After studying planetary movements for more than 25 years, Copernicus reasoned that the stars, the earth, and other planets revolved around the sun – the Heliocentric theory – the sun stands stationary at the center of the universe with the planets (including the Earth) revolving around it THE REVOLUTION BEGINS Copernicus’ theory did not completely explain why the planets orbited the way they did He also knew that most scholars and the church would reject his theory because it contradicted their views Fearing ridicule or persecution, he did not publish his theory until 1543 He received a copy of his book-On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies-on his deathbed  Johannes Kepler – certain mathematical laws governed planetary motion One of these laws showed that the planets revolve around the sun in elliptical orbits instead of circles Kepler’s work showed that Copernicus’ basic ideas were true – and he demonstrated that THE REVOLUTION mathematically BEGINS GALILEO Built his own telescope & used it to study the heavens Published Starry Messenger which described his observations Galileo’s observations, and his laws of motion supported theories of Copernicus  His findings went against church teaching and authority -- if people believed the church could be wrong about this, they could question other church teachings as well The pope called Galileo to stand before the Inquisition -- under threat of torture, Galileo recanted, but he lived under house CONFLICT WITH arrest for the rest of his life THE CHURCH ISAAC NEWTON Newton studied mathematics and physics Believed that all objects-on earth or in space-were affected equally by the same forces Gravity -- a force that pulls objects toward each other Law of universal gravitation -- the force of gravity acts between all objects in the universe  Deductive Reasoning: Copernicus and Kepler Inferring particulars or TOOLS specifics by referring to a general law or principle OF THE Deduce – draw as a logical conclusion through reasoning NEW Inductive Reasoning: Brahe and Galileo SCIENCE Reasoning from particulars of fact and systematic observation of the world Making broad generalizations as conclusions drawn from the specific data THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD Make an observation that describes a problem Form a hypothesis Test the hypothesis in an experiment or based on data Draw conclusions and refine the hypothesis  1639, Discourse of Method --a philosophical manifesto of the new RENÉ science He describes the skepticism of his youth DESCAR -- he had found nothing he could believe with conviction TES He finally came to understand that logical deduction was the essential core of human thought IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARDS I BECAME AWARE THAT, WHILE I DECIDED THUS TO THINK THAT EVERYTHING WAS FALSE, IT FOLLOWED NECESSARILY THAT I WHO THOUGHT THUS MUST BE SOMETHING; AND OBSERVING THAT THIS TRUTH: I THINK, THEREFORE I AM WAS SO CERTAIN AND SO EVIDENT THAT ALL THE MOST EXTRAVAGANT SUPPOSITIONS OF THE SKEPTICS WERE NOT CAPABLE OF SHAKING IT, I JUDGED THAT I COULD ACCEPT IT WITHOUT SCRUPLE AS THE FIRST PRINCIPLE OF THE PHILOSOPHY I WAS SEEKING. RENÉ DESCARTES AND RATIONALISM Cogito ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”) From this principle, he could deduce other perfectly clear and distinct ideas Rationalism -- intellectual and deductive reason is the source of knowledge  Some propositions are knowable by intuition alone, while others are knowable by being deduced through valid arguments from intuited propositions JOHN LOCKE AND EMPIRICISM “Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished?” “Essay Concerning Human Understanding” (1690) -- the human mind is a tabula rasa The mind is “furnished” with ideas from two sources of experience  The observation of external objects (sensation)  Its own inner workings (reflection) CARTESIAN RATIONALISM V. LOCKEAN EMPIRICISM Locke dealt in Descartes relied ideas that were on “clear and “determined” by distinct ideas” the mind’s that were contact with intuitively true experience INQUISITIONS  Pope Paul III initiated a Roman Inquisition in 1542. When Veronese was called before the Inquisition in 1573 concerning his Last Supper, the tribunal gave him three months to "improve and correct" his painting. Veronese accommodated the tribunal by changing the title to Feast in the House of Levi. After his testimony before the Inquisition, Veronese made it clear that his “new” source VERONESE AND for the painting was the feast in the house of Levi by citing THE ITALIAN the biblical reference on the painting’s balustrade. INQUISITION  The alumbrados, or “illuminated ones,” including Carmelite nun Teresa of Ávila and Carmelite friar Juan de la Cruz, were charged with heresy. The moral strictures of the Inquisition THE SPANISH and the mysticism of the alumbrados are recognizable in the art of El Greco. INQUISITION El Greco used painting to convey an intensely expressive spirituality. His art united the Counter- Reformation and the inventiveness of the Mannerist styles as they would come to be in the Baroque art of the seventeenth century. EL GRECO, RESURRECTION, 1597–1604 Oil on canvas – the image was probably painted for the Colegio de Doña María, Madrid, and paired with a depiction of the Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles on the seventh Sunday after Easter. THE ENGLISH COMPROMISE THE COURT ARTS OF ENGLAND AND SPAIN The arts in England were dramatically affected by tensions between the absolutist monarchy of the English Stuarts and the conservative Protestant population. Throughout the seventeenth century, the English monarchy sought to assert its absolute authority, but ultimately did not manage to do so. After the Glorious Revolution in 1688, the English Parliament enacted a Bill of Rights endorsing religious tolerance and prohibiting the king from annulling parliamentary law. Constitutional monarchy was re-established in Britain, and the divine right of kings permanently suspended. ANTHONY VAN DYCK: COURT PAINTER The tension between the Catholic-leaning English monarchy and the Puritan-oriented Parliament was exacerbated by the flamboyant style of the court, which offended more austere Puritan tastes. The Flemish artist Anthony Van Dyck, who had worked in Rubens's workshop in Antwerp, embodies the court style. In his Portrait of Charles I Hunting, he portrays Charles as a Cavalier, as royalist supporters were known. Van Dyck's great talent was portraiture flattering his subjects by elongating their features and portraying them from below to increase their stature. ANTHONY VAN DYCK, PORTRAIT OF CHARLES I HUNTING, 1635 Oil on canvas – Charles’s posture, with his left hand on his hip and his right extended and supported by a cane, adopts the positions of the arms in court dance.  In 1666, fire destroyed virtually the whole city of London, including warehouses, private residences, and churches. This presented an opportunity for modernization and reflects the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment and the rationalist approach. The tower in the middle, Old St. Paul’s, would also be destroyed. In the words of John Evelyn, “The stones of St. Paules flew like grenados, the Lead mealting down the streetes in a streame and the very pavements of them glowing with fiery rednesse, so THE LONDON FIRE as no horse, nor man, was able to tread on them.” CHRISTOPHER WREN AND ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL Improvements to the city’s infrastructure were made – wood was banned, and brick and stone were required. Wren received the commission to rebuild 52 churches, including St. Paul’s. A statue of Saint Paul stands on top of the central portico, flanked by statues of Saint John (right) and Saint Peter (left). The sculptural detail in the portico pediment depicts the conversion of Paul following his vision on the road to Damascus. JOHN MILTON’S PARADISE LOST In 12 books, Milton composed a densely plotted epic poem with complex character development, rich theological reasoning, and long, wavelike sentences of blank verse. It is a fair-minded essay on the possibilities of liberty and justice. It is Milton's major work, and it helped solidify his reputation as one of the greatest English poets of his time. The poem concerns the biblical story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton's purpose, as stated in Book I, is to "justify the ways of God to men." ABSOLUTISM VERSUS LIBERALISM: THOMAS HOBBES AND JOHN LOCKE Hobbes’ publication Leviathan; or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiasticall and Civil was a view on government.  He argued that people are driven by two things—the fear of death at someone else’s hands and the desire for power—and that the government’s role is to check both of these instincts, which if uncontrolled would lead to anarchy.  Most people accept the social contract, giving power to a ruler. John Locke was opposed to Hobbes’ theory, believing that people could govern themselves.  The human mind at birth is a tabula rasa, or blank slate.  He refuted the divine right of kings – humans are not required to surrender their own sovereignty to their ruler.