Bernini 's Sculpture, The Ecstasy Of St. Teresa And Caravaggio 's Painting

Answer: Baroque culture grew out of an effort by the Catholic Church in order to attract more followers. Architecture was important because it was used by kings in order to enhance their images to try to appear glorious. The baroque architecture was the dominate style of absolutism, it was a dramatic and emotional style. The royal palace was a favorite architectural expression of absolute power. Peter the Great wanted his form of baroque architecture to be in the form of a city. Therefore a new city was created by peasants.

The Third ideal that helped create the Baroque style was a counter reformation of religion. Baroque churches were dramatic creations for this movement.

After the idealism of the Renaissance (c.1400-1530), Baroque art above all reflected the religious tensions of the age - notably the desire of the Catholic Church in Rome (as annunciated at the Council of Trent, 1545-63) to reassert itself in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. Thus it is almost synonymous with Catholic Counter-Reformation Art of the period. This period is often thought of as a period of artistic style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, architecture, literature, dance, theater, and music. The style began around 1600 in Rome, Italy, and spread to most of

The Reformation was a religious movement that divided the church between the Catholics and Protestants. The Counter-Reformation was a reaction movement that followed this originally crusade, and was lead by the Catholics as a response to the wide spread of Protestantism. The purpose of the Counter-Reformation was to spawn internal reforms. This movement was focused on the renewal of the church in the form of the use of images, focus on the church as the house of God, and the veneration of the Virgin Mary and Saints. The Counter-Reformation was responsible for the start of major change in the Catholic Church and with regard to the role of art; the importance of art was heightened and the movement sought out to restore Catholicism and make is more attractive, thus emerged the Baroque style.

Italy can be looked at as the home of the renaissance and consequently the immergence of great art. Artists such as Michelangelo, Botticelli, Da Vinci, and Raphael are some of the greats and are looked at for standards. But what about the artists whose lives are mysteries, and their works that were influenced by the greats? These artists hold just as much importance in the history of art as do the artist’s whose names can be recalled off the top of an average person’s head. During the sixteenth century things began to change in the art world, and that change was the Baroque. This new style of art brought a revolution to how subject matter was painted, it brought upon “… a radical reconsideration of art and its purposes…” (249) and how artists of all ranks could learn to paint the up and coming style of Baroque.

One of the artists, who highly influenced this movement and would later influence Gentileschi, is Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Despite being a great artist, Caravaggio had a terrible temper and quickly grew unsuccessful. Something important to note about Baroque art is that art, as has nearly always been the case, is highly influenced by the events of the world around the artist; such as the Counter Reformation that occurred from approximately 1545 to 1648 (Kumin, Beat). The Counter Reformation, also referred to as the Catholic Reformation, was in response to the Protestant reformation, and had four major elements to the reformation. The first constituent of the reformation was ecclesiastical configurations. Basically, the Catholics wanted to rearrange things in their

During the Baroque period, religion, politics and socioeconomic were influenced by the Reformation and Counter-Reformation movements. The reformation revolution took place at the Western Church and was led by Martin Luther during the 16th century (1517). The revolution resulted in the founding of Protestantism, which is today one of the major branches of Christianity. During the revolution, chaos aroused between the Catholic and the Protestant church because the Protestants are against some practices of the Catholic Church like the selling of indulgences and relics. The Reformation forced the masses to create a choice of religion ‒ to be Catholic or to be Protestant. It was a choice that had to be made and there were no alternatives. The revolutionaries noticed the corruption and the misused authority of the leaders of the church and they believed that things had to be changed and be put back in the proper order of the bible.

Before the purity of Neoclassicism, even before the carefree artists of the Rococo era, there was the dramatic and emotive Baroque. The term "baroque" is said to have been derived from the Portuguese word for an irregular pearl, and is certainly an adequate description. In the wake of what has become known as the Protest Reformation, the Catholic Church held the infamous Council of Trent. This eighteen year deliberation addressed several aspects of Catholicism under scrutiny and led to the requirements that new art depicting religious notions should reach the illiterate masses. Up until this point most religious forms of art were designated for the highly educated and sophisticated. This led to the

The great thing about art, is that there are multiple portrayals of one idea but, the artist’s own personal style allows one to feel something that another may not. Early Renaissance painters, Giotto di Bondone and Duccio di Buoninsegna established their own unique style to depict a biblical scene known as, The Betrayal of Christ. Through a close analysis of each artist’s representation of, The Betrayal of Christ, one is able to compare and contrast the artists own understanding of the scene through their attention to detail, character, and space throughout the painting. When examining these two works, one will have a stronger emotional response towards Giotto’s interpretation rather Duccio’s, due to his methods of handling organization, figures, and space.

•The creation of the baroque style—an art style full of emotion, flamboyancy, symbolism, vigor, and subtlety—largely as a product of the Catholic Church patronage of the arts

The most interesting piece of artwork that I had the chance to come across in this course was Bernini’s sculpture of St. Teresa De Avila. I have taken many art classes throughout my time as a college student, but I enjoyed this sculpture immensely because it is a piece that had the ability to touch my heart, mind, and soul. The three elements that inhibited me to choose this painting was the emotions displayed by the figures, the intricate details, and the overall message innocence and beauty that the art depicts.

During this assignment I will talk about three types of Work of Art from three different artists from the Baroque period through the postmodern era. 1). Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio; 2) Rembrandt van Rijn; and 3) Peter Paul Rubens, these three artists were known for their religious theme in their art work. The naturalism that was visibly demonstrated in each of the artist work with high contrast of lighting that noticeably appeared in these paintings. Each artist was well known and respected for their work.

A number of modern artists have focused on reflecting personal perception of the world through a contemporary Baroque style in art. The increasing popularity of Baroque nowadays is due to the complex processes that took place in society and the solutions the modern culture has to offer to resolve them. Truly, through the history, the emergence of Baroque elements has always reflected the complexity of human life, followed by technological progress and cultural exchange. Eventually, Baroque, the style characterized by extravagance and drama, has been defined as anti-classical, innovative and experimental, intended to touch directly the beholder, individual of diverse and pluralistic society.

It is hard to believe that what began during the Renaissance would be followed by what we refer to as the Baroque period beginning in the 1600’s and later the Rococo. The term Baroque was first used in the eighteenth-century by critics in a negative way. “To the eyes of these critics, who favored the restraint and order of Neoclassicism, the works of Bernini, Borromini, and Pietro da Cortona appeared bizarre, absurd, even diseased—in other words, misshapen, like an imperfect pearl” (Camara, E., n.d. para. 12). Stylistic style differs in the Baroque period with the use of interrupted contours, dynamism, and instability. In addition, artists were moving toward a more realistic subject matter and not the idealized portrayals we saw in the Renaissance period.

To understand the characteristics of Baroque style is to truly understand artistic measures of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Baroque, a single word describing an entire period of art, can be broken down into more than one actual form of art. The new European age birthed this developing style of architecture, coming from ideas on religion and politics. Set apart in three different countries, visitors of St. Peter’s Basilica, Versailles, and Hampton Court Palace, engulf themselves in historic Baroque styles and beauty. The international style “was reinterpreted in different regions so that three distinct manifestations of the style emerged” (Matthews 392). The florid, classical, and restrained baroque design of the three different buildings gives us a historic lesson on the reasoning behind its purpose.