Dutch Baroque (pt. 12)

This is another painting from a kind of closet view, called The Love Letter.  There are two women in a room: one is a servant, the other is receiving a letter.  The woman with the letter looks at the servant, who smiles back.  A story is being told here in a very creative way.  The paintings on the wall might hint to us that the writer of the letter is away at sea.  The woman's expression implies that it is an important letter being given, and the title denotes a sentimental interpretation of that.  The servant's expression also seems to say that it could be a letter from a lover, and the fact that the lady is playing the lute also demonstrates that she is a romantic woman.  But all of this is seen from afar.  The viewer (that's us) is in a dark closet, but the two women are well-lit in the room in front.  Here, nearly half of the painting is concealed in darkness.  Once again, the black and white tiles on the floor show linear perspective and lead us into the action of that room.  We are drawn to the event taking place, but we remain far away in this private chamber.  Perhaps it was to give us the sensation that what we are seeing is completely real and candid, not prearranged and staged like other portraits of the time.  Perhaps he wanted to go a step further from Hals and display the true human emotions of individuals when they know that no one else is watching.  Why do you think Vermeer chose to paint from this perspective?

Dutch Baroque (pt. 11)

Known to be the artist's own personal favorite of his works, this painting is enigmatically titled The Allegory of Painting, and it is a prime example of Vermeer's stylistic approach towards painting.  The room is the main attraction, with dramatic lighting coming from a window on the left-hand side, allowing the viewer to begin with light and read over, from left to right, the images to follow (the painter of which is last).  Props in the room such as chairs, tables, tapestries, books, cloths, a mask, and an overhanging chandelier create an interest in the viewer towards this mysterious setting.  The tiles on the floor further act to bring us into the painting because of their stark three-dimensionality.  The tiles represent textbook one-point linear perspective (which we learned about in the Renaissance).

The intriguing aspect of this painting is of course its elusive title.  We see a woman posing in Greek literary attire for the portrait artist, whose back is turned to the viewer.  We can see neither his face nor much of the painting he has begun.  Also, where are the paints?  The artist has no palate.  Is he, then, really painting?  What is actually going on?  Taking a step back—which the perspective of this distant work is quite a few steps back—we cannot ignore the draping tapestry that covers almost a third of the painting.  It has been pulled back, almost as if the audience were secretly peering into a private chamber from behind the curtain.  Some hidden reality, some deeper truth is being shown here by the curtain being pulled back, and the riddle goes unanswered.

Dutch Baroque (pt. 10)

The Astronomer.  This one is maybe my favorite.  Everything about this speaks philosophy and the work of the person—not the person himself.  Even his full face is hidden from view, turned towards his endeavors in studying the universe.  He reaches out toward the globe, the spherical representation of knowledge, with an opened book placed in front of him on the desk.  More books fill the shelf in the back, and pinned to the front of the shelf is a diagram of geometric lines of radial symmetry.  He is, as most of Vermeer's figures, near a window.  The lighting in the room is warm, and the glow from the outside sunlight falls onto the astronomer as a kind of symbolic display of God's radiant presence in his studies of the cosmos.  It was around this time that scientists Johannes Kepler, Galileo, and Sir Isaac Newton were making breakthrough discoveries in the study of nature and the order of the universe.  Even these scientists, and especially these scientists, believed in the existence of a Supreme Deity, God, a Creator and Sustainer of the heavens.  Recently Dr. Stephen C. Meyer spoke on this subject in an interview, stating, "The founders of early modern science…all not only believed in God but they thought that their belief in God actually made it easier to do science."

Dutch Baroque (pt. 9)

Next, let's look at Jan Vermeer.  It should be said that his are among the most coveted paintings in the world because they are so rare.  His style, too, however, is one of impeccable exactness.  I heard someone at an art museum lecturing a while back, and he was arguing to his class about the quality of touch in painting.  All other techniques, he said, can be copied and mimicked.  Colors can be reproduced, tone reused, shapes obviously can be refashioned on a flat canvas, the dimensions of a painting can be duplicated to an exact facsimile—the images are there to be painted again; however, he said, the one thing that cannot be replicated is the sense of personal touch in the artwork.  You may have Vermeer's colors and tools, but you do not have the exact lightness of fingers that he did in dabbing finite brushstrokes to his paintings with the delicacy of hair-splitting precision and, more importantly, you do not have the precise velocity of his brushstrokes to produce the tone of harshness conflicting with softness that is present in some of his most famous works.  This is the irreplaceability of Vermeer's work.

Vermeer often liked to paint pictures of everyday life, akin to the now established Protestant tradition of genre painting.  He painted portraits in which the interiors seemed to have greater importance over the figures, and he is known today for his lush interiors more so than for his actual portraits (with the exception of the above, the celebrated Girl with a Pearl Earring).  Most of his paintings are of the same room, actually, which presents an interesting microcosm to the viewer.  "All the world's a stage" was penned by Shakespeare some sixty years earlier.  "And all the men and women merely players:" the people in Vermeer's works are often presented as less important than the light and textures of the stage picture he displays.  In order to see the consistency of his approach to his subject matter, it is beneficial to look at several of his works.  In the spirit of true, hardworking diligence, we'll just look at a few.

Dutch Baroque (pt. 8)

And thus we come to the late works of Rembrandt before his death, where his style changed from specific attention to detail to less and less fully developed, concrete forms.  A kind of social outcast, financially bankrupt, and alone, Rembrandt's later self-portraits display him as the saintly martyr to society which he viewed himself as.  When given his last public commission, then, to paint a work for the newly constructed city hall, the artist let his disdain and bitterness towards society come out in The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, which was rejected and sent back to Rembrandt, who then destroyed most of it for resale (the image we see today is only a fraction of the original painting).  Soon after, the artist grew so desperate for money that he was forced to sell his wife's grave.

Here we see a chapter from the account of Tacitus' Histories being portrayed: the meeting of the lower-class conspirators, led by Claudius Civilis, in forming the Batavian rebellion (ancient Dutch) against the Romans in 69-70A.D.  This is how the Dutch civilization was born; every citizen in Amsterdam would know it.  What could be more appropriate for city hall, remodeled to celebrate Dutch society?  But look at the painting's composition.  It looks more like a rough sketch than a finished painting; the glorious rebels look like barbaric and haggard old ghosts—or are not given clearly distinguishable faces at all.  The lighting of the work is impossibly contrived, and the color scheme is a bland blob of browns spilling with repressed reds and sickly yellows.  The lines deviate and the shading varies in splotches.  The individuals' faces look like cartoon drawings, and the leader, Claudius himself, comes across as a deformed figure of feigned political and military authority.  His facial wound from battle is cast in full view; he is a one-eyed Cyclops of a man, ugly and animalistic.  Why did the artist choose to paint it like this?  It was his last chance to impress his Dutch audience, but Rembrandt didn't care about that.  He had always painted his own face with his nasal wart and unattractive wrinkles showing.  How much more, then, would he exploit the lesser qualities of his peers who had lowered him in their minds to such meager social standing?  This, in turn, is Rembrandt's scathing review of his peers.  By painting the founding of the Dutch civilization, he attempts a comprehensive portrait of the Dutch people themselves.  In a way, this is Rembrandt's final portrait, and it is a portrait of his fellow townsfolk in all their broad imperfection.  A bitter old artist gets his revenge against a society that had cast him out and left him alone, like the windmill on the hilltop from the painting he had done twenty years earlier.  And that is how Rembrandt died.

Dutch Baroque (pt. 7)

In 1642, Rembrandt lost his wife (presumably to tuberculosis), and in the following months the artist began the practice of taking long walks in the country alone to help overcome his grief.  During this time he painted The Mill.

This painting once again carries out the invisible emotions in a very visibly symbolic way.  Solitude and loneliness are themes of this work.  A solitary, old windmill stands totally alone in the center of the painting, facing the light but haunted from behind by enveloping dark clouds that foretell death and devastation.  The people in the painting are all weary travelers stopping by the lake to gain refreshment from the water; but is anyone truly ever rejuvenated?  (This is certainly no Fountain of Youth.)  But for all its brooding drama of light and dark shadow and sky, the setting is quite calm and quiet, peaceful and tranquil in a transcendent way that only a person who has ever gone through such deep sentiments of sorrow can understand.

Rembrandt was widely known during this time to be a poor manager of his money.  He was a prodigious spender and collector; he would collect prints, portraits, clothing, and the like for his work, but it eventually led him to becoming broke.  There are stories of his students painting guilders (coins) and putting them on the floor to see if Rembrandt would pick them up.  His first wife—his only wife, I should say—was rather a well-to-do woman, but the only way he could maintain an entitlement to her fortune after she died was to never remarry.  So Rembrandt went on to take mistresses without marrying.  It was known that he was having an affair with his maid in the years following his wife's death because they were having children together before long.  The maid was excommunicated from the Dutch Reformed Church; Rembrandt was not.  This is because Rembrandt had never become a member of the Reformed Church and therefore maintained immunity from the practice of church discipline.  He attended but never joined the church, and it has been argued that this was because Rembrandt was an Arminian.  At first widely successful, the artist's high reputation gradually diminished for these reasons—kind of like how nobody really cares about Tiger Woods anymore because of the recent scandal involving his more disreputable personal life.

Dutch Baroque (pt. 6)

An early painting by Rembrandt (and arguably one of his most enigmatic works) is titled The Artist in His Studio and features Rembrandt himself staring into a large canvas.  This autobiographical piece brings in the stark realism I described earlier.  The room is far from an elegant royal court.  The wood floor is old and has sustained water damage; the paint on the walls is chipping off; the room itself is poorly lit and scantily furnished.  This is hardly an abode, hardly a "studio" at all.  Yet Rembrandt titles it "The Artist…"—not "An Artist…"—"…in His Studio," as if to imply the simple lifestyle and ultimately minimalist technique of not just one artist but in fact all artists.  In this painting the artist himself is mostly hidden in the corner and obscured by shadow.  The most interesting feature (and also the biggest object) of the painting is the canvas.  In a tantalizingly mysterious call, Rembrandt has chosen to turn the canvas from the viewer.  This massive object that takes up the bulk of the frame is turned around so that we cannot see what is painted on it.  Is it a self-portrait? a genre painting? something else?  We don't know, and we'll never know.  So we can never really know what "the artist" (again, representative of all artists) is painting when he produces a work from his studio.  Art has an exclusive relationship with the artist, as intimate and personal as the private life of a married couple.  Outside viewers, the art critics of the day, can never fully enter into the conversation.

Dutch Baroque (pt. 5)

While flattering, Rembrandt's portraits also exhibited a stark realism relatively new to the art world of grandiose, saintly images of idealized bodies in perfect poses.  Rembrandt's self-portraits show him as an awkward-looking weasel of a man with wrinkles on his face and a wart on his nose.  The honesty of such rendering speaks to the values of a man who wanted to paint people as they really are: flawed.  Art will only begin to fully accept this vision of flawed humanity two centuries later with the advent of Modernism.  But early spokesmen, like Rembrandt, Goya, and others who painted non-idealized images (some even downright grotesque) were the precursors to the ensuing trend of the second half of the nineteenth century into the twentieth century.  In that sense these artists were very literally ahead of their time.

The thing I personally appreciate the most about Rembrandt's portraiture style is his ability to visibly capture the invisible.  A portrait, if you think about it, is largely a secularized image of an individual.  We are presented with the person's fleshly body, their outer image and appearance; but in such a two-dimensional rendering we certainly cannot tap into the person himself, his thoughts, beliefs, aspirations, and feelings, can we?  Rembrandt is somehow able to.  In his portraits we connect with the individual on a much deeper, emotional, and spiritual sense than other portraitists of previous artistic periods (perhaps with exceptions like da Vinci).  Rembrandt is able to tell us something personal about the sitter in addition to presenting the viewer with that individual's physical qualities.  Like Hals' Laughing Cavalier, emotion and expression of inner thoughts begins to come out more in portrait painting at this time—thanks to the Protestants.

This is the idea in art of the authoritative sincerity of the painter.  I heard this concept lectured on in a certain museum about a year ago, and it may be hard to grasp; however, we must tackle it now.  When Rembrandt paints a self-portrait, we believe that what we see is the reality of Rembrandt's image, whether it be an accurate likeness or not in the terms we would qualify as accuracy—i.e., whether the clef in his chin was really so large, the dimple on his cheek so measured in length, and so forth.  We can forsake this image of Rembrandt as he would appear in the flesh and substitute it with his canvas creation because, under the authoritative, autographed name of the artist himself, his self-portrait is published to be Rembrandt.  It's a step further from mere suspension of disbelief because it becomes the reality itself.  Where one might say that by painting Rembrandt, Rembrandt has "put a little of himself" into the painting, a true art critic might say, "No, no, the painting is Rembrandt."  The abstract soul of the artist is totally infused into the work, having been painted on a literal canvas, making the imaginary real.  Now, the ideas of Rembrandt's portrait, of his intangible character traits and spiritual personality, are transferred from immateriality to physicality in the form of oil paints applied to a tangible canvas.  This painted rendering of Rembrandt has become Rembrandt, the true version of the man (art succeeding the artist).  So, when we look at a Rembrandt self-portrait, we completely believe that we are looking at the true face of the artist as he actually existed in the deeper, hitherto-imperceptible, philosophical vision of Rembrandt as the true soul he was and is evermore.  We look at his soul when we look into the framed painting hanging on the wall in the gallery: it's not just a painting.  At any rate, that is the idea.

Dutch Baroque (pt. 4)

Now we come to Rembrandt.  Rembrandt van Rijn was an enormously successful Dutch painter who specialized in the study of light, shadow, and atmosphere.  He produced a wealth of paintings conducive to a study of the artist's lifelong development into style.  Throughout his entire career, Rembrandt painted portraits of himself as he grew older and more accomplished.  His self-portraits total around 40 paintings and almost as many etchings.

For most of the period of Rembrandt's career in major artistic development his works specialized in the study of light, shadow, and atmosphere.  In this famous painting, titled The Night Watch, a small group of volunteers from the town militia are painted as royal military heroes and aristocrats of only the highest noble rank.  The light falls on certain figures in the middle of the painting but is generally scattered abroad in random rays.  Some figures are plainly visible while others are in shadow.

This painting was produced in 1642, during the period when the artist had peaked as one of the most successful and most sought-after portraitists of his time.  And apart from the biblical and historical paintings that has since earned him the high-class reputation associated with Rembrandt in modern times, in his own day this was what he was most widely known for: portraits.

Dutch Baroque (pt. 3)

Jan Steen, another Dutch painter, produced a prime, exemplary painting of the Protestant Genre painting style in his painting of St. Nicholas Day.  Genre paintings, remember, are scenes from everyday life; so this painting presents a kind of stage picture of a normal event which Dutch viewers of the painting would be familiar with.  "St. Nicholas Day" is Christmas.

In the painting, a Dutch family celebrates Christmas.  A woman on the right points to something outside the frame, perhaps St. Nicholas.  Another boy, who has evidently been naughty this year instead of nice, is unhappy for receiving a switch.  For those of you who don't know, a switch is what the parents used to do before they invented the "spanker"; you'd have to go outside and choose the branch or stick you would be reprimanded with.  Here it's in his shoe.  I was interested to see this tradition going so far back in history, because on Christmas morning my parents still put presents inside our shoes.  The little girl who takes center stage in the painting has emptied her shoe of all its presents and left it on the floor at the bottom.  The grandmother signaling the boy in back of the scene is either issuing him to come out and receive his punishment or else (it has been suggested) has some other gift to cheer up the poor lad.  Interestingly enough, the lines of the chair, the table, and the canopy point to the unhappy boy.  The long cake at the bottom left points to the center.  This painting carries what appears on first look a dizzying construct that causes our eye to look here and there to get the full picture of everything that's going on.

This is a typical Genre painting.  Like real life, the scene is muddled in some confusion, but the situations are not so out-of-the-ordinary that we can't see, with careful inspection, what is going on.  We can identify with easily-conveyed emotions: the girl is happy because she got a present; the boy is crying because he's going to be spanked; etc.  This is the beauty of everyday life that can be enjoyed and celebrated now that Lutheranism has provided a system for belief that allows all men to be saved, even common people and peasants.  Jan Steen seems to almost be suggesting that these people could be saints, they could be believers; and that this is the new face of "religious" art (even though there's nothing religious about it).  In Protestantism, normal people, too, are part of the body of Christ and "the Elect."  This, therefore, is a celebration of the lives of ordinary individuals, with a focus on the somewhat sentimental connections of family and communal affection.  Other than that, it's just a big mess of people all in the same room and probably being very loud.  (Is this what Christmas looks like at your house?  Some things never change, right?)

Dutch Baroque (pt. 2)

Franz Hals was a Dutch portrait painter who reflected the Dutch interest of secular, non-religious images in his artwork; he did not paint saints or biblical figures.  These portraits of "common people" and peasants became more common until the time of the American and French Revolution.  In his portrait paintings he added interest and emotion along with lifelike detail to make the image of an individual look as much like a candid photo as possible.  He used quick, dashing brush strokes to give his works a fresh, just-finished look.  His illusion is to catch an instantaneous expression of character.  His famous work of the Young Man and Woman in an Inn, painted in 1623, beautifully expresses this.  This dashing portrait here is called The Laughing Cavalier, painted in 1624.

This is fun to examine more closely as an optical illusion as well as simply a great painting.  The title can be deceptive.  Is the man really laughing or even smiling?  The ambitious moustache above his lips causes our eye to transfer the curvature of the line to the bottom lip, but if you have a thin pencil, cover the moustache, and look at the painting again you may see a different expression on his face than a smile.  But the cheekbones also have to be taken into account.  The way my teacher described her impression of it was that it is capturing the moment right before someone bursts into a smile or a laugh—you know that nasal noise one makes under a restrained giggle that precedes an open smile.  Hals' paintings often deal with specific human emotions and expressions like that; his interest is in people, everyday common people, not saints or religious figures.  This is the Protestant perspective.

Judith Leyster was also a famous Dutch portrait painter at the time.  Here is a Self-Portrait of her from 1635.

When Louvre officials cleaned a painting thought to be done by Franz Hals, they found the signature of Judith Leyster.  The misconception owes itself to the fact that Leyster's paintings are very similar to Hals'; in fact, she was friends with the artist.  She studied the techniques of many artists and allowed their styles to impact her own.  She implemented Caravaggio's dramatic use of light and dark.  She obviously took inspiration from Hals' portrait of human emotions and expressions as can be seen in such paintings as this famous one by her of the Young Flute Player.

Dutch Baroque (pt. 1)

From the Catholic art of the South we will now transition to the Dutch Baroque art of the North.  It is important to remember that this is the same time period as El Greco, Velàzquez, and Caravaggio, but artists in the North did things differently because of religious distinction.  Flanders in the South was Catholic, while Holland in the North was Protestant after the Reformation.  So, what does Protestant art look like?

Protestant art is naturally going to flow out of Protestant theology.  John Calvin said that Nature and the whole world is the theater for God's glory.  Martin Luther had established the fallibility of the Roman Catholic Church's practice of selling indulgences for salvation.  Anybody, he argued, could be saved according to the promises in Scripture.  The Christian-faith Protestantism focused on a personal relationship with God.  No priest was required, no works, and certainly no money was required for a person's salvation but only the staple Lutheran "five solae": salvation was through grace alone by faith alone in Christ alone through Scripture alone to the glory of God alone (sola gratia, sola fide, solus Christus, sola scriptura, soli Deo Gloria).  The anyman of Europe could be saved and brought into the Kingdom of God through Lutheranism; and, as Calvin said, all of Creation would act as the stage for this divine play of salvation.  This led the Dutch to paint differently than the Flemish and Italian Baroque painters.  The Dutch usually painted secular scenes, whereas the Catholics, as we saw, dealt heavily (and somewhat overbearingly) in religious topics.  In truth, religious paintings were going out of fashion during this time.  The secular scenes that Protestants of the North painted were of their comfortable homes and profitable businesses.  These are often called genre paintings, which are paintings of scenes from everyday life.  The transition is critical: we go from the lives of saints to the lives of ordinary people.  This is secular art.  And, by the way, the word "secular" today has come to earn some very negative connotations towards sinful worldliness or carnality; that is not the meaning of the word in this context.  By secular I mean that the paintings presented nonreligious scenes of contemporary, earthly, day-to-day normality.  Make sense?

Italian Baroque (pt. 6)

I feel as though I have already provided sufficient depth of inquiry (at least for the time being) on the subject of paganism as an artistic element in Westernized or Christian art, literature, and especially poetry.  C. S. Lewis has written most extensively on the topic of Myth's power to encompass both the "sacred and profane," the divine and base, the Christian and pagan.  However, much of this writing was done in my other, literary blog, and so I shall allude quickly to it again here now with this next artist, Titian.  Let us observe the Bacchanal.

Remember Titian?  He was the artist who painted The Concert and the Venus of Urbino.  He alludes often to Greco-Roman ideals in his paintings, but that does not make them pagan, as is the case here with the Bacchanal of the Andrians.

A bacchanal denotes a raucous party held by Bacchus, who was the pagan god of wine in Ancient Greek mythology.  As tradition follows, these pagan celebrations were of the wildest nature in perhaps all literary history, almost always including drunken orgies and other rowdy "romps," as C. S. Lewis famously termed them in his Chronicles of Narnia.  In his time the professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, Lewis saw prevalently in his studies of Malory, Chaucer, and other subjects of Medieval study the infusion of pagan aspects into Christian stories.  Perhaps most notably this begins with Beowulf and continues on to this day with books like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  Lewis believed that paganism and Christianity were in a way connected.  How else does one explain the prevalence of pagan elements in otherwise predominantly Christian texts and paintings during this time?  Western literature has often borrowed from the pagan as a sort of foundational, ancestral root-point from which could stem the holier, more definitive doctrines of Christendom.  Lewis suggested that the idea of Bacchus, the god of wine, was "the first, faint whisper" of something that Christianity later became literally.  Bacchus represents wine in a mythical sense where Christ turned water into wine in a literal sense.  The connections spring from this line of thought.  With this view in mind, we ought not be surprised to see paintings like Titian's Bacchanal here appearing during the Counter Reformation (the Catholics' response to the Protestant Reformation).

Though this painting features lewd images not literally promoted by the Catholic Church, this was nonetheless a painting to convey Catholic messages.  The allusion being made here is to something larger than the church itself.  It harkens back to the archetypal celebration held in tradition from the earliest ancestors of Ancient Greece.  The same idea is being communicated, just in different rites, through the passage of time.  No longer do people strip nude and get drunk on wine to party, but the partying still occurs, to put it simply.  Joy is felt through different means, but joy still exists, timeless joy that transcends contemporary custom.  Titian's painting is one of joy and celebration, hinting at the vivacious splendor and gaiety (…ha) of the Catholic Church at this time as well as the happy welcome home party awaiting any Catholic converts (recall Murillo's Return of the Prodigal Son).  Here we see some very strange things going on, but the core idea behind it is one that is still familiar to us today as it was during the 16^th century.  It is the timelessness of the Greek myth, the Greek culture, often held as utopian, which resonates most powerfully, being most ancient.  Being expressed in this painting is the fundamental concept of joy, joy which is implied to be available on a divine level for those who would join the Holy Roman Empire.

It's often a difficult connection to make.  One almost cannot imagine a painting like this one or Botticelli's Birth of Venus being put on display in such a celibate and legalistic place as the Vatican.  The reason is that the actual, physical practices of the paintings are not being regarded (i.e., the nudity, drunkenness, and…you know…whatever else is going on here…); rather, the age-old ideas being expressed by those practices is the core of these works of art.  C. S. Lewis did the same thing in The Chronicles of Narnia when he added such scenes of "romping" and partying, often including literal references to the Greek and Roman gods.  He is not suggesting we all participate in specifically pagan rituals.  It is to say that Christians experience joy as well—that joy is not a monopolized experience to be held by one people, but that someone else can come along, take that concept, and make it his own.  Lewis made the pagan bacchanal celebration almost Christian by placing it under the very Messianic character of Aslan.  The ancient myths of parties were fulfilled in Aslan, and the reference to the classical myths merely work to show the historical totality of the concept.  Here, too, joy is tacked under the name of the pope in the Vatican to assert the joys of embracing Catholicism.

If this doesn't make sense, don't worry; we will get more into it later on.  As we will see, there is some trend for whatever reason for art through the ages to consistently revert back to Greco-Roman ideals, as if to idolize that time period and that historical culture.  Greek myths, Roman architecture, etc. will appear again and again nearly as often as Keira Knightley appears in movies these days (seriously, she's in all of 'em).

Italian Baroque (pt. 5)

Bernini's other famous work is his more controversial sculpture of The Ecstasy of St. Theresa.

The story of St. Theresa was that, in a vision, an angel pierced her heart with a fire-tipped golden arrow, symbolizing God's love.  In the statue here, the angel and the saint are carved in white marble, and the background is golden rays coming from above.  The scene is lit overhead by a window built into the Vatican wall.  The figures appear to be floating freely in the space, don't they?

Much has been made of the artwork's sexual undertones.  The arrow is at first an obvious phallic symbol, targeting a swooning female whose facial expression indicates one of euphoria.  And although we cannot see inside of this cold, statuesque Theresa, Bernini put his sculpting genius on display with his treatment of this subject.  We do see the ecstasy of St. Theresa, not merely in her face, but in her entire form, covered as it is in wavy, flowing robes.  The drapery of the nun is surging with energy and motion that indicates the electric activity being felt on the inside.  Bernini takes a subject of spirituality and infuses it with more realistic, human, almost base descriptions, as if to convey the divine love of God as a very carnal, sensual phenomenon.  If you would ask how to interpret such a crossover, the resulting discussion would fill many more pages which I will not trouble to venture down at the moment.  It is possible, however, once finished with our overview of art history, to then go back, ask questions, discuss, and focus in on the specifics that were left behind.  For now, we should press on.

Italian Baroque (pt. 4)

But now for the definitive Italian artist of this period in art history: Bernini.  It was Bernini who, together with Boromini, defined Baroque art.  The two hated each other, but they found themselves needing to work together on occasion.  Bernini was skilled from youth.  When he was just eight years old he was brought before the pope to do a sketch.  His career flourished in his later life, but his personal happiness was questionable.  That Bernini's wife had an affair with his brother is one of the most scandalously famous of the artist's tribulations in life.

Bernini's David was perhaps his masterpiece.  We have already looked at two other famous David statues.  One took place before the action of killing Goliath (Michelangelo's), where the young boy is looking ahead at the giant, preparing to approach and kill the Philistine.  The second (Donatello's) showed the scene after the slaying of Goliath, with David casually resting on top of the Philistine's dismembered head.  Bernini's statue captures the action during the actual fight scene.  Doesn't get more dramatic than this.

The theme of the sculpture is movement.  David's body is twisting in space, ready to hurl the stone at Goliath.  His determined facial expression and flexed muscles demonstrate his intent on killing the enemy of Israel.  The dramatic action makes you visualize the scene.  The statue is also especially circumferential; the viewer can follow the action around the statue a full 360 degrees.  David's body is bent such, and the sling twists around with his flowing clothes.  Bernini's David is like the Discuss Thrower of Ancient Greece, emphasizing action and excitement.  And just look at the determination on David's face.

Italian Baroque (pt. 3)

Without a doubt the Flemish master of the time was Pieter Paul Rubens.  Just look at his famous painting The Raising of the Cross, painted in 1609-1610, which was in many ways an emblematic representation of the Catholic Counter Reformation.

The dramatic movement dominates the painting.  There is a stark diagonal line stretching across from the top left to the bottom right of the frame, and almost every character in the scene follows that diagonal, directing our eyes up and down through the scene to see everything that's going on.  I count nine burly, muscular men that it (apparently) takes to lift the cross.  Is this an exaggeration or do you think it would literally take nine of the strongest-looking men to lift Christ on the cross?  I personally believe it would fit in with the style of the time to assume this is an embellishment, a demonstration of the incredible weight of Christ—not physical weight, but the spiritual weight, the weight of the subject on Man's heart.  The Crucifixion is a subject not to be handled lightly, seems to be the message here.  Christ, the brightest and holiest figure in the painting, is shown here to have died a most dramatic death.  Attention and respect is owed to Him for what He did.  You can go to church to pay homage to the Crucifixion—the Catholic Church.  This is again almost advertisement for Catholicism.  Notice the dog, again the symbol of loyalty and faithfulness, on the bottom left-hand corner.  Be faithful to the Catholic Church.

And this is Daniel and the Lion's Den, another famous painting by Rubens.  The lions in the painting look absolutely ferocious, and the scattered bones of a presumably eaten human at the bottom of the picture add to the sense of danger and imminent death.  It is only people who remember the story of how the Lord shut the lions' mouths that remember Daniel's escape and survival through such an ordeal.  Daniel, however, looks less than confident in his God's ability to save, but he is praying, hands folded and looking up to Heaven for aid.  I always thought it looked funny that he has his legs crossed, like he's sitting casually on the sofa, reading the morning paper or something.

Italian Baroque (pt. 2)

Now let us examine the art of the artist Caravaggio—"an absurd name…of course."  When studying the works of Caravaggio, it is paramount to know the term chiaroscuro, which refers to the arrangement of dramatic contrasts of light and dark value, as it dominates this artist's body of work.    Caravaggio did not invent this element but made it his own through stylistic exaggeration to the point of tenebrism.  And what religious event better to paint that involves dramatic lighting than the Conversion of St. Paul (also the title of this next work)?

You will all remember, naturally, the story of Saul of Tarsus' conversion to Christianity, becoming the Apostle Paul, on the road to Damascus.  A bright light shone from the heavens that blinded Saul, and the Incarnate Christ appeared to him with that earth-shattering interrogative, "Saul, why are you persecuting Me?"  Caravaggio takes on this subject with startling (almost offensive) originality.  All we see are Paul, his horse, and the servant.  There is no backdrop to distract the viewer, giving the full attention to the scene at hand.  But how is this scene constructed?  The horse takes almost the full breadth of the work's scale, and Saul lies at the bottom, seemingly more in danger of being imminently crushed by a horse's hoof than anything else.  Saul's arms are lifted in the air in a helpless and dumbfounded gesture.  He is totally enwrapped in the moment, as I suspect anyone would be in the middle of a meeting with God.  However, perhaps one of the most puzzling aspects of the painting is that it contains no image of God…or does it?  Remember back to the Northern European Renaissance art that showcased candles and lights as symbols for God's presence.  Inasmuch as the lighting here is dramatically prevalent throughout the painting, so this painting overflows with divine presence.  We cannot even see the backdrop, it is so dark when compared to the illumination of the scene.  Caravaggio emphasized light in his paintings.  He would literally shed light on figures, display the details of their faces and expose their imperfections.  This demonstrated the painter's commitment to render a more realistic and life-like image.  Some paintings were refused by the church officials who commissioned them, since these officials did not like that Christ and the saints were shown in untraditional ways.  These saints were supposed to look supernatural and holy; they were not just anybody!  (Says the Catholic Church).

One other artist whose technique of employing chiaroscuro that, I think, matched Caravaggio's impressively is the artist Gentileschi, who was also the first woman to significantly impact Western art.  She painted Judith and Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes, a tale from the Apocrypha.

Once again, we can only barely see the scene.  Here it is quite literally taking place by candlelight, and only the figures, the desk, the back curtain, and the hideous, beheaded figure of Holofernes are discernible.  This is quintessential chiaroscuro at its most extreme.  Things become more dramatic in the dark, do they not?  The mind plays tricks on you in the dark.  The light, small and weak though it is, appears to shine brighter given the darker surrounding.  A ghostly aspect is applied to all objects at nightfall.  Hawthorne wrote about this much later.

Italian Baroque (pt. 1)

Now let us glide over to Italy and Flanders to study the art which was being produced there during this time.  Italy and Flanders remained Catholic after the schism of the Reformation, and they were a leading center for the Counter Reformation, which was an effort by the Catholic Church to lure people back to regain its former power.  We have already been seeing this.  Murillo's Return of the Prodigal Son as well as even Velàzquez's Surrender of Breda are works exemplifying the style and tone of the Catholic Church's Counter Reformation.  This type of artwork supported the Catholic Church and discouraged heresy.  The church sought the newest and best artists to bring people back.  Many artists were sent to Rome to create these works that would restore the religious spirit in the Western world.  And so we look to Rome, Italy, and Flanders to observe what was really the headquarters of the Counter Reformation.  We already looked at a couple or more works from there when we looked at Mannerism.

The art of this time, as we know, was characterized by more action, increased excitement, vivid, dramatic lighting effects of contrasting lights and darks, and motion and emotion; however, the architecture also underwent stylistic changes.  The Roman church Il Gesú features huge, sculptured scrolls which magnificently exemplify Baroque style.  The Baroque period had a distinct architectural style.  It introduced convex and concave push and pull.  The interests were in movement, contrast, and variety.  It contained great importance of feelings expressed, and it brilliantly captured drama.  It has been said that Baroque art did not so much focus on beauty.  In actuality, the artists overwhelmed and quite possibly confused their viewers with a blended world that mixed reality and imaginary imagery.  This is the façade of the building (a façade is simply the front of any cathedral structure).

Spanish Baroque (pt. 4)

Also appearing in Spain during this time were the works of Jusepe de Ribera, who also toured and worked in Italy.  This painting, if not his crown achievement, is at least well-regarded in the art history circle of scholars and art critics.  This is The Blind Old Beggar, a painting based on a Spanish novella that had been newly published at that time, called The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and of His Fortunes and Adversities (published in Spanish).  In the story, Lazarillo is told to have come from humble beginnings.  As a boy, he was given to a blind man for adoption.  Their relationship was not a good one, and the boy was unhappy.  He eventually adopted the old man's shrewd cynicism, despite his extreme dislike for his guardian while serving under him as a child.

In Ribera's painting, the background is dark, perhaps to signify the pair's unpleasant relationship.  The boy stares out from the painting with sharp eyes as if he is looking at the world cynically, like the old man.  The boy's eyes are probably the most moving aspect of the work.  The painting uses dramatic lighting and realism to paint an old man and a young boy standing together in the shadows.  They juxtapose their surroundings, and they juxtapose each other.  Their faces contrast against the darkness; the old man's wrinkles contrast to the young boy's smooth skin.  Everything, it would seem, is at disunity, two or more worlds clashing together in tension and unrest that makes the painting so dramatic.  Again, the boy's facial expression and the look in his eyes, while culminating the emotion in the painting, is, I would argue, one of the most profound images in the history of art.

Spanish Baroque (pt. 3)

As per usual to the style of Spanish Baroque art, Bartolome Esteban Murillo, an artist who worked in Seville, painted this biblical scene.  Murillo's Return of the Prodigal Son perfectly reflects the spirit of the time.  The religious war between Catholics and Protestants was at an all-time high, and both the Protestant North and the Catholic South would represent their ideological views in the paintings their artists produced.  Spain, as I said, frequently glorified saints, martyrdoms, and religious scenes in order to persuade Catholic defectors, as well as Protestant heretics, to stop rebelling and join the supposedly one, true church.

In this painting we see before us the moment of Jesus's well-known parable when the prodigal, or wasteful, son returns home after squandering his inheritance and spoiling his reputation with sinful and unwise decisions made out of youthful ignorance.  The most memorable aspect of the parable is not that the son returns home; that is to be expected, considering he has no place else to go.  The part of the parable that stays with us is the forgiveness of the father, the loving father who graciously welcomes back his son to his home and even celebrates the homecoming.  Well, likewise this painting demonstrated the subliminal message of the Catholic Church's willingness to forgive and forget the reckless past of any Catholics-turned-Lutherans who would come back and leave their foolish, Protestant ways.  In the painting we see the servants to the left ready to slaughter the fatted calf in celebration of the son's return, and we see a dog, white and pure, the symbol of loyalty, appropriately fitted into the story since the father remained loyal to the son.  A quick word about dogs as a symbol of loyalty.  Dogs are, of course, traditionally man's best friend.  The name Fito comes from the Latin fidelis, which means "faithful."  In art history, a dog almost always represents faithfulness and loyalty.  Here the Catholic Church is pictured to be loyal and forgiving to the Lutherans who had left.