Painting

A

Italian Baroque Painting

In Italy, many innovative artists worked during the baroque period. Splendid ceiling frescoes by Annibale Carracci, Guido Reni, Guercino, and Pietro da Cortona decorate various palaces in Rome, all to some extent inspired by Michelangelo's murals in the Sistine Chapel. Perhaps the most influential of the Italian baroque innovators was Caravaggio; his use of powerful chiaroscuro effects in religious and genre paintings had a profound influence on other Italian painters, such as Orazio Gentileschi and his daughter Artemisia, and, indeed, on European art in general. This style has been called tenebrism, from the Latin word for “darkness.”

B

French Baroque Painting

Two French painters in particular assimilated the Caravaggesque style. Georges de La Tour, primarily a painter of religious subjects, was a master of light and shadow, demonstrating his virtuosity at so illuminating faces and hands, by the light of a single candle, that flesh seems almost translucent. Louis Le Nain also used light and shadow dramatically in his monumental paintings of peasant life. In general, however, French baroque artists practiced a classical restraint that brought clarity, balance, and harmony to their pictures. This is seen both in the classical subjects painted by Nicolas Poussin and in the dreamlike landscapes of Claude Lorrain; significantly, both artists spent most of their careers in Italy.

C

Spanish Baroque Painting

In Spain, Jusepe de Ribera and Francisco de Zurbarán absorbed Caravaggio's Tenebrism, but each brought different interests and tendencies to his work. Ribera could be brutally realistic, as in the Clubfooted Boy (1652, Louvre, Paris). Zurbarán imbued his religious paintings with Spanish mysticism; like Caravaggio, he also excelled in still life. Diego Velázquez, court painter to Philip IV, was the greatest Spanish painter of the age and a consummate master of tone and color. He approached his subjects with detachment, dispassionately but realistically portraying members of the royal family. The royal entourage can be seen in his masterpiece, Las meninas (The Maids of Honor, 1656, Prado); as symbol of its veracity, it even includes a portrait of Velázquez himself at his easel.

D

Flemish Baroque Painting

Peter Paul Rubens, the Flemish baroque master, was also strongly influenced by Caravaggesque Tenebrism as well as by the work of the great Venetian colorists Titian and Veronese. Such was Rubens's popularity that he established a large workshop of assistants in Antwerp to help him carry out the great number of commissions he received from the city, the church, royalty, and private patrons. His enormous oeuvre includes portraits; a great outpouring of religious paintings; and treatments of mythological themes, classical legends, and history—all expressing the exuberance of the baroque style and attesting to the painter's own vitality of spirit. Large in scale, these paintings are charged with vibrant color and light, dramatic in composition and fluid of line. Rubens's way of contrasting light and shadow, as well as his wide range of themes, can be seen by considering just two of his paintings: The Descent from the Cross (1611-1614, Cathedral, Antwerp), with its great compositional sweep, and the tender portrait of a beautiful young woman in Le chapeau de paille (1620?, National Gallery, London).

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Anthony van Dyck, one of Rubens's assistants, became famous for his portraits of members of the court of Charles I of England. These paintings are imbued with an elegance and attention to detail characteristic of Rubens; they had enormous influence on the style of 18th-century English portraiture.

E

Dutch Baroque Painting

An extraordinary number of fine painters emerged in the Netherlands during the 17th century; all, however, were surpassed by Rembrandt. His early works, such as the Money-Changer (1627, Staatliche Museen, Berlin), were influenced by Caravaggio; his later paintings, for example the 1659 Self-Portrait (Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood House, London), display his incomparable chiaroscuro technique and psychological profundity. Other Dutch artists were Frans Hals, who, like Rembrandt, painted group portraits; and Jan van Goyen and Jacob van Ruisdael, who did magnificent landscapes. Numerous “little Dutch masters” excelled in genre scenes, portrayals of everyday life that delighted the newly rising middle classes, who were becoming art patrons. Foremost among these painters was Jan Vermeer, whose paintings—such as View of Delft (1660?, Mauritshuis, The Hague)—although small in actual size, give a sense of ordered space and are, above all, masterpieces of the effect of light.

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