MannerismFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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In Parmigianino's Madonna with the Long Neck (1534-40), Mannerism makes itself known by elongated proportions, affected poses, and unclear perspective.

Mannerism is a period of European painting, sculpture, architecture and decorative arts lasting from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520 until the arrival of the Baroque around 1600. Stylistically, it identifies a variety of individual approaches influenced by, and reacting to, the harmonious ideals associated with Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and early Michelangelo. Mannerism is notable for its intellectual as well as its artificial (as opposed to naturalistic) qualities.

The term is also applied to some Late Gothic painters working in northern Europe from about 1500 to 1530, especially the Antwerp Mannerists and some currents of seventeenth-century literature, especially poetry.

Contents

[hide] 1 Nomenclature

o 1.1 Anti-Classical o 1.2 Maniera o 1.3 Mannerisms

2 History o 2.1 Giorgio Vasari o 2.2 Gian Paolo Lomazzo

3 Some mannerist examples o 3.1 Jacopo da Pontormo o 3.2 Rosso Fiorentino o 3.3 School of Fontainebleau o 3.4 Agnolo Bronzino o 3.5 Alessandro Allori o 3.6 Jacopo Tintoretto o 3.7 El Greco o 3.8 Benvenuto Cellini

4 Mannerist architecture 5 Mannerism in literature and music 6 Notes

7 Further reading

[edit] Nomenclature

The word derives from the Italian maniera, or "style," which corresponds to an artist's characteristic "touch" or recognizable "manner". Artificiality, as opposed to Renaissance and Baroque naturalism, provides one of the common features of mannerist art. The lasting influence of the Italian Renaissance, as transformed by succeeding generations of artists, is another.

As a stylistic label, "Mannerism" is not easily pigeonholed. It was first popularized by German art historians in the early twentieth-century to categorize the seemingly uncategorizable art of the Italian sixteenth century—art that was no longer perceived to exhibit the harmonious and rational approaches associated with the High Renaissance.

The term is applied differently to a variety of different artists and styles.

[edit] Anti-Classical

The early Mannerists—especially Jacopo da Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino in Florence, Raphael's student in Rome Giulio Romano and Parmigianino in Parma—are notable for elongated forms, exaggerated, out-of-balance poses, manipulated irrational space, and unnatural lighting. These artists matured under the influence of the High Renaissance, and their style has been characterized as a reaction or exaggerated extension of it. Therefore, this style is often identified as "anti-classical" mannerism.[1]

Late Mannerism: fountain by Giambologna's successor, Pietro Tacca, 1629 (Piazza Santissima Annunziata, Florence)

[edit] Maniera

Subsequent mannerists stressed intellectual conceits and artistic ability, features that led early critics to accuse them of working in an unnatural and affected "manner" (maniera). These artists held their elder contemporary Michelangelo as their prime example. Giorgio Vasari, as artist and architect, exemplifies this strain of Mannerism lasting from about 1530 to 1580. Based largely at courts and in intellectual circles around Europe, it is often called the "stylish" style or the Maniera.[2]

[edit] Mannerisms

After 1580 in Italy, a new generation of artists, including the Carracci, Caravaggio and Cigoli, reemphasized naturalism. Walter Friedlaender identified this period as "anti-mannerism", just as the early mannerists were "anti-classical" in their reaction to the High Renaissance.[3] Outside of Italy, however, mannerism continued into the seventeenth century. Important centers include the court of Rudolf II in Prague, as well as Haarlem and Antwerp.

Mannerism as a stylistic category is less frequently applied to English visual and decorative arts, where local categories such as "Elizabethan" and "Jacobean" are more common. Eighteenth-century Artisan Mannerism is one exception.[4]

Historically regarded, Mannerism is a useful designation for sixteenth-century art that emphasizes artificiality over naturalism and reflects a growing self-consciousness of the artist.

[edit] History

The early Mannerists are usually set in stark contrast to High Renaissance conventions; the immediacy and balance achieved by Raphael's School of Athens, no longer seemed relevant or appropriate. Mannerism developed among the pupils of two masters of the classical approach, with Raphael's assistant Giulio Romano and among the students of Andrea del Sarto, whose studio produced the quintessentially Mannerist painters Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino. Michelangelo displayed tendencies towards Mannerism, notably in his vestibule to the Laurentian Library and the figures on his Medici tombs.

Mannerism at the English court: Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, painted in 1546

Mannerist centers in Italy were Rome, Florence and Mantua. Venetian painting, in its separate "school," pursued a separate course, represented in the long career of Titian.

In the mid to late 1500s Mannerism flourished at European courts, where it appealed to knowledgeable audiences with its arcane iconographic programs and sense of an artistic "personality". It reflects a growing trend in which a noticeable purpose of art was to inspire awe and devotion, and to entertain and educate.

Giorgio Vasari, frontispiece to Lives of the Artists, 1568

[edit] Giorgio Vasari

Giorgio Vasari's opinions about the "art" of creating art come through in his praise of fellow artists in the great book that lay behind this frontispiece: he believed that excellence in painting demanded refinement, richness of invention (invenzione), expressed through virtuoso technique (maniera), and wit and study that appeared in the finished work, all criteria that emphasized the artist's intellect and the patron's sensibility. The artist was now no longer just a craftsman member of a local Guild of St Luke. Now he took his place at court with scholars, poets, and humanists, in a climate that fostered an appreciation for elegance and complexity. The coat-of-arms of Vasari's Medici patrons appear at the top of his portrait, quite as if they were the artist's own.

The framing of the engraved frontispiece to Mannerist artist Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists (illustration, left) would be called "Jacobean" in an English-speaking context. In it, Michelangelo's Medici tombs inspire the anti-architectural "architectural" features at the top, the papery pierced frame, the satyr nudes at the base. In the vignette of Florence at the base, papery or vellum-like material is cut and stretched and scrolled into a cartouche (cartoccia). The design is self-conscious, overcharged with rich, artificially "natural" detail in physically improbable juxtapositions of jarring scale changes, overwhelming as a mere frame: Mannerist.

[edit] Gian Paolo Lomazzo

Another literary source from the period is Gian Paolo Lomazzo, who produced two works—one practical and one metaphysical—that helped define the Mannerist artist's self-conscious relation to his art. His Trattato dell'arte della pittura, scoltura et architettura (Milan, 1584) is in part a guide to contemporary concepts of decorum, which the Renaissance inherited in part from Antiquity but Mannerism elaborated upon. Lomazzo's

systematic codification of esthetics, which typifies the more formalized and academic approaches typical of the later 16th century, controlled a consonance between the functions of interiors and the kinds of painted and sculpted decors that would be suitable. Iconography, often convoluted and abstruse, is a more prominent element in the Mannerist styles. His less practical and more metaphysical Idea del tempio della pittura ("The ideal temple of painting", Milan, 1590) offers a description along the lines of the "four temperaments" theory of the human nature and personality, containing the explanations of the role of individuality in judgment and artistic invention.

[edit] Some mannerist examples

Mannerist portraits by Bronzino are distinguished by chilly elegance, perfunctory realism, and meticulous attention to detail.

[edit] Jacopo da Pontormo

Jacopo da Pontormo's Joseph in Egypt stood in what would have been considered contradicting colors and disunified time and space in the Renaissance. Neither the clothing, nor the buildings— not even the colors— accurately represented the Bible story of Joseph. It was wrong, but it stood out as an accurate representation of society's feelings.

[edit] Rosso Fiorentino

Rosso Fiorentino, who had been a fellow-pupil of Pontormo in the studio of Andrea del Sarto, brought Florentine mannerism to Fontainebleau in 1530, where he became one of the founders of the French 16th century Mannerism called the "School of Fontainebleau".

[edit] School of Fontainebleau

The examples of a rich and hectic decorative style at Fontainebleau transferred the Italian style, through the medium of engravings, to Antwerp and thence throughout Northern Europe, from London to Poland, and brought Mannerist design into luxury goods like

silver and carved furniture. A sense of tense controlled emotion expressed in elaborate symbolism and allegory, and elongated proportions of female beauty are characteristics of his style.

[edit] Agnolo Bronzino

Alessandro Allori, Susanna and the elders

Agnolo Bronzino's somewhat icy portraits (illustrated, to the left) put an uncommunicative abyss between sitter and viewer, concentrating on rendering of the precise pattern and sheen of rich textiles.

[edit] Alessandro Allori

Alessandro Allori's (1535 - 1607) Susanna and the Elders (illustrated, right) uses artificial, waxy eroticism and consciously brilliant still life detail, in a crowded contorted composition.

[edit] Jacopo Tintoretto

Jacopo Tintoretto's Last Supper (left) epitomizes Mannerism by taking Jesus and the table out of the middle of the room.

Tintoretto, Last Supper

He showed all that was happening. In sickly, disorienting colors he painted a scene of confusion that somehow separated the angels from the real world. He had removed the world from God's reach.

[edit] El Greco

Baptism, by El Greco

Town Hall of Zamość by Bernardo Morando

El Greco attempted to express the religious tension with exaggerated Mannerism. This exaggeration would serve to cross over the Mannerist line and be applied to Classicism. After the realistic depiction of the human form and the mastery of perspective achieved in high Renaissance Classicism, some artists started to deliberately distort proportions in disjointed, irrational space for emotional and artistic effect. There are aspects of Mannerism in El Greco (illustration, right), such as the jarring "acid" color sense, elongated and tortured anatomy, irrational perspective and light of his crowded composition, and obscure and troubling iconography.

[edit] Benvenuto Cellini

Benvenuto Cellini created a salt cellar of gold and ebony in 1540 featuring Poseidon and Amphitrite (earth and water) in elongated form and uncomfortable positions. It is considered a masterpiece of Mannerist sculpture.

[edit] Mannerist architecture

The porphyry portal of the "church house" at Colditz Castle, Saxony, designed by Andreas Walther II (1584), is a clear example of the exuberance of "Antwerp Mannerism".

An example of mannerist architecture is the Villa Farnese at Caprarola in the rugged country side outside of Rome. The proliferation of engravers during the 16th century spread Mannerist styles more quickly than any previous styles. A center of Mannerist design was Antwerp during its 16th century boom. Through Antwerp, Renaissance and Mannerist styles were widely introduced in England, Germany, and northern and eastern Europe in general. Dense with ornament of "Roman" detailing, the display doorway at Colditz Castle (illustration, left) exemplifies this northern style, characteristically applied as an isolated "set piece" against unpretentious vernacular walling.

[edit] Mannerism in literature and music

Main article: Metaphysical poetsMain article: Ars subtilior

In English literature, Mannerism is commonly identified with the qualities of the "Metaphysical" poets of whom the most famous is John Donne. The witty sally of a Baroque writer, John Dryden, against the verse of Donne in the previous generation, affords a concise contrast between Baroque and Mannerist aims in the arts:

"He affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice[5] speculations of philosophy when he should engage their hearts and entertain them with the softnesses of love" (italics added).

The word Mannerism has also been used to describe the style of highly florid and contrapuntally complex polyphonic music made in France in the late 14th century. This period is now usually referred to as the ars subtilior.

[edit] Notes

1. ̂ W. Friedlaender, Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting, New York, 1957.

2. ̂ John Shearman, Mannerism, Harmondsworth, 1967 3. ̂ W. Friedlaender, Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting, New

York, 1957. 4. ̂ John Summerson, Architecture in Britain, New York, 1983, pp. 157-72. 5. ̂ 'Nice' in the sense of 'finely reasoned.'

[edit] Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Mannerism

John Shearman, 1967. Mannerism A classic summation. Franzsepp Würtenberger, 1963. Mannerism: The European Style of the Sixteenth

Century (Originally published in German, 1962). Giuliano Briganti, 1962. Italian Mannerism (Originally published in Italian,

1961). Wylie Sypher, Four Stages of Renaissance Style: Transformations in Art and

Literature, 1400-1700, 1955. A classic analysis of Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque, and Late Baroque.

Helen Gardner, Metaphysical Poets, Selected and Edited. Introduction. Essays on High Renaissance art and Mannerism by John Haber.

El Greco

General: The Artist | Chronology | Technique and style | Posthumous fame | Cretan School | Spanish Renaissance | Mannerism

Paintings: List of notable works | The Dormition of the Virgin | The Disrobing of Christ (El Espolio) | The Burial of the Count of Orgaz | View of Toledo | Opening of the Fifth Seal | The Adoration of the Shepherds

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BaroqueFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, searchFor other uses, see Baroque (disambiguation).

Baroque art redirects here. Please disambiguate such links to Baroque painting, Baroque sculpture, etc. For the 2007 video game, please see Baroque (video game).

Adoration, by Peter Paul Rubens. Dynamic figures spiral down around a void: draperies blow: a whirl of movement lit in a shaft of light, rendered in a free bravura handling of paint.

The Church of Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, is a very good example of Baroque architecture with its domed roof and curved contours, and is also a fine example of Baroque painting with the shown altar, which portrays a very dramatized painting of Saint Andrew being crucified.

In the arts, the Baroque was a Western cultural epoch, commencing roughly at the turn of the 17th century in Rome. It was exemplified by drama and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music [1] .[citation needed] In music, the term 'Baroque' applies to the final period of dominance of imitative counterpoint, where different voices and instruments echo each other but at different pitches, sometimes inverting the echo, and even reversing thematic material.

The popularity and success of the Baroque style was encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church which had decided at the time of the Council of Trent that the arts should communicate religious themes in direct and emotional involvement.[citation needed] The aristocracy also saw the dramatic style of Baroque architecture and art as a means of impressing visitors and expressing triumphant power and control. Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence. In similar profusions of detail, art, music, architecture, and literature inspired each other in the Baroque cultural movement[citation needed] as artists explored what they could create from repeated and varied patterns. Some traits and aspects of Baroque paintings that differentiate this style from others are the abundant amount of details, often bright polychromy, less realistic faces of subjects, and an overall sense of awe, which was one of the goals in Baroque art.

The word baroque probably derives from the ancient Portuguese noun "barroco"[citation

needed] which is a pearl that is not round but of unpredictable and elaborate shape. Hence, in informal usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is "elaborate", with many details, without reference to the Baroque styles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Contents

[hide] 1 Evolution of the Baroque 2 Baroque painting 3 Baroque sculpture

o 3.1 Bernini's Cornaro chapel: the complete work of art 4 Baroque architecture 5 Baroque theater 6 Baroque literature and philosophy 7 Baroque music

o 7.1 Baroque composers and examples 8 Etymology 9 Modern usage 10 See also 11 References 12 External links

13 Further reading

[edit] Evolution of the Baroque

Beginning around the year 1600, the demands for new art resulted in what is now known as the Baroque. The canon promulgated at the Council of Trent (1545–63) by which the Roman Catholic Church addressed the representational arts by demanding that paintings and sculptures in church contexts should speak to the illiterate rather than to the well-informed, is customarily offered as an inspiration of the Baroque, which appeared, however, a generation later. This turn toward a populist conception of the function of ecclesiastical art is seen by many art historians as driving the innovations of Caravaggio and the Carracci brothers, all of whom were working in Rome at that time.

Aeneas flees burning Troy, Federico Barocci, 1598: a moment caught in a dramatic action from a classical source, bursting from the picture plane in a sweeping diagonal perspective.

The appeal of Baroque style turned consciously from the witty, intellectual qualities of 16th century Mannerist art to a visceral appeal aimed at the senses. It employed an

iconography that was direct, simple, obvious, and dramatic. Baroque art drew on certain broad and heroic tendencies in Annibale Carracci and his circle, and found inspiration in other artists such as Caravaggio, and Federico Barocci nowadays sometimes termed 'proto-Baroque'.

Germinal ideas of the Baroque can also be found in the work of Michelangelo and Correggio.

Some general parallels in music make the expression "Baroque music" useful. Contrasting phrase lengths, harmony and counterpoint ousted polyphony, and orchestral color made a stronger appearance. (See Baroque music.) Similar fascination with simple, strong, dramatic expression in poetry, where clear, broad syncopated rhythms replaced the enknotted elaborated metaphysical similes employed by Mannerists such as John Donne and imagery that was strongly influenced by visual developments in painting, can be sensed in John Milton's Paradise Lost, a Baroque epic.

Though Baroque was superseded in many centers by the Rococo style, beginning in France in the late 1720s, especially for interiors, paintings and the decorative arts, Baroque architecture remained a viable style until the advent of Neoclassicism in the later 18th century. A prominent example, the Neapolitan palace of Caserta, a Baroque palace (though in a chaste exterior) that was not even begun until 1752. Critics have given up talking about a "Baroque period."

In paintings, Baroque gestures are broader than Mannerist gestures: less ambiguous, less arcane and mysterious, more like the stage gestures of opera, a major Baroque artform. Baroque poses depend on contrapposto ("counterpoise"), the tension within the figures that moves the planes of shoulders and hips in counterdirections. It made the sculptures almost seem like they were about to move. See Bernini's David (below, left).

The dryer, chastened, less dramatic and coloristic, later stages of 18th century Baroque architectural style are often seen as a separate Late Baroque manifestation. (See Claude Perrault.) Academic characteristics in the neo-Palladian architectural style, epitomized by William Kent, are a parallel development in Britain and the British colonies: within doors, Kent's furniture designs are vividly influenced by the Baroque furniture of Rome and Genoa, hieratic tectonic sculptural elements meant never to be moved from their positions completing the wall elevation. Baroque is a style of unity imposed upon rich and massy detail.

The Baroque was defined by Heinrich Wölfflin as the age where the oval replaced the circle as the center of composition, balance replaced organization around a central axis, and coloristic and "painterly" effects began to become more prominent. Art historians, often Protestant ones, have traditionally emphasized that the Baroque style evolved during a time in which the Roman Catholic Church had to react against the many revolutionary cultural movements that produced a new science and new forms of religion—the Reformation. It has been said that the monumental Baroque is a style that could give the Papacy, like secular absolute monarchies, a formal, imposing way of expression

that could restore its prestige, at the point of becoming somehow symbolic of the Catholic Reformation. Whether this is the case or not, it was successfully developed in Rome, where Baroque architecture widely renewed the central areas with perhaps the most important urbanistic revision during this period of time.

[edit] Baroque painting

Still-life, by Portuguese painter Josefa de Óbidos, c.1679, Santarém, Portugal, Municipal Library

Main article: Baroque painting

A defining statement of what Baroque signifies in painting is provided by the series of paintings executed by Peter Paul Rubens for Marie de Medici at the Luxembourg Palace in Paris (now at the Louvre) [1], in which a Catholic painter satisfied a Catholic patron: Baroque-era conceptions of monarchy, iconography, handling of paint, and compositions as well as the depiction of space and movement.

There were highly diverse strands of Italian baroque painting, from Caravaggio to Cortona; both approaching emotive dynamism with different styles. Another frequently cited work of Baroque art is Bernini's Saint Theresa in Ecstasy for the Cornaro chapel in Saint Maria della Vittoria, which brings together architecture, sculpture, and theater into one grand conceit [2].

The later Baroque style gradually gave way to a more decorative Rococo, which, through contrast, further defines Baroque.

The intensity and immediacy of baroque art and its individualism and detail—observed in such things as the convincing rendering of cloth and skin textures—make it one of the most compelling periods of Western art.

[edit] Baroque sculpture

Main article: Baroque sculpture

In Baroque sculpture, groups of figures assumed new importance, and there was a dynamic movement and energy of human forms— they spiralled around an empty central vortex, or reached outwards into the surrounding space. For the first time, Baroque sculpture often had multiple ideal viewing angles. The characteristic Baroque sculpture added extra-sculptural elements, for example, concealed lighting, or water fountains.

Aleijadinho in Brazil was also one of the great names of baroque sculpture, and his master work is the set of statues of the Santuário de Bom Jesus de Matosinhos in Congonhas. The soapstone sculptures of old testament prophets around the terrace are considered amongst his finest work.

The architecture, sculpture and fountains of Bernini (1598–1680) give highly charged characteristics of Baroque style. Bernini was undoubtedly the most important sculptor of the Baroque period. He approached Michelangelo in his omnicompetence: Bernini sculpted, worked as an architect, painted, wrote plays, and staged spectacles. In the late 20th century Bernini was most valued for his sculpture, both for his virtuosity in carving marble and his ability to create figures that combine the physical and the spiritual. He was also a fine sculptor of bust portraits in high demand among the powerful.

[edit] Bernini's Cornaro chapel: the complete work of art

A good example of Bernini's work that helps us understand the Baroque is his St. Theresa in Ecstasy (1645–52), created for the Cornaro Chapel of the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome. Bernini designed the entire chapel, a subsidiary space along the side of the church, for the Cornaro family.

Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Teresa.

Saint Theresa, the focal point of the chapel, is a soft white marble statue surrounded by a polychromatic marble architectural framing. This structure works to conceal a window which lights the statue from above. In shallow relief, sculpted figure-groups of the Cornaro family inhabit in opera boxes along the two side walls of the chapel. The setting places the viewer as a spectator in front of the statue with the Cornaro family leaning out of their box seats and craning forward to see the mystical ecstasy of the saint. St. Theresa is highly idealized and in an imaginary setting. St. Theresa of Avila, a popular saint of the Catholic Reformation, wrote of her mystical experiences aimed at the nuns of her Carmelite Order; these writings had become popular reading among lay people interested in pursuing spirituality. In her writings, she described the love of God as piercing her

heart like a burning arrow. Bernini literalizes this image by placing St. Theresa on a cloud while a Cupid figure holds a golden arrow (the arrow is made of metal) and smiles down at her. The angelic figure is not preparing to plunge the arrow into her heart— rather, he has withdrawn it. St. Theresa's face reflects not the anticipation of ecstasy, but her current fulfillment.

This is widely considered the genius of Baroque although this mix of religious and erotic imagery was extremely offensive in the context of neoclassical restraint. However, Bernini was a devout Catholic and was not attempting to satirize the experience of a chaste nun. Rather, he aimed to portray religious experience as an intensely physical one. Theresa described her bodily reaction to spiritual enlightenment in a language of ecstasy used by many mystics, and Bernini's depiction is earnest.

The Cornaro family promotes itself discreetly in this chapel; they are represented visually, but are placed on the sides of the chapel, witnessing the event from balconies. As in an opera house, the Cornaro have a privileged position in respect to the viewer, in their private reserve, closer to the saint; the viewer, however, has a better view from the front. They attach their name to the chapel, but St. Theresa is the focus. It is a private chapel in the sense that no one could say mass on the altar beneath the statue (in 17th century and probably through the 19th) without permission from the family, but the only thing that divides the viewer from the image is the altar rail. The spectacle functions both as a demonstration of mysticism and as a piece of family pride.

[edit] Baroque architecture

Castle of Trier (Germany)

Ludwigsburg Palace near Stuttgart, Germany's largest Baroque Palace

Melk Abbey, in Austria near the Wachau valley (architect Jakob Prandtauer)Main article: Baroque architecture

In Baroque architecture, new emphasis was placed on bold massing, colonnades, domes, light-and-shade (chiaroscuro), 'painterly' color effects, and the bold play of volume and void. In interiors, Baroque movement around and through a void informed monumental staircases that had no parallel in previous architecture. The other Baroque innovation in worldly interiors was the state apartment, a processional sequence of increasingly rich interiors that culminated in a presence chamber or throne room or a state bedroom. The sequence of monumental stairs followed by a state apartment was copied in smaller scale everywhere in aristocratic dwellings of any pretensions.

Baroque architecture was taken up with enthusiasm in central Germany (see e.g. Ludwigsburg Palace and Zwinger Dresden), Austria and Russia (see e.g. Peterhof). In England the culmination of Baroque architecture was embodied in work by Sir Christopher Wren, Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor, from ca. 1660 to ca. 1725. Many examples of Baroque architecture and town planning are found in other European towns, and in Latin America. Town planning of this period featured radiating avenues intersecting in squares, which took cues from Baroque garden plans.In Sicily, Baroque developed new shapes and themes as in Noto, Ragusa and Acireale "Basilica di San Sebastiano"

[edit] Baroque theater

In theater, the elaborate conceits, multiplicity of plot turns, and variety of situations characteristic of Mannerism (Shakespeare's tragedies, for instance) were superseded by opera, which drew together all the arts into a unified whole.

Theater evolved in the Baroque era and became a multimedia experience, starting with the actual architectural space. In fact, much of the technology used in current Broadway or commercial plays was invented and developed during this era. The stage could change from a romantic garden to the interior of a palace in a matter of seconds. The entire space

became a framed selected area that only allows the users to see a specific action, hiding all the machinery and technology - mostly ropes and pulleys.

This technology affected the content of the narrated or performed pieces, practicing at its best the Deus ex Machina solution. Gods were finally able to come down - literally - from the heavens and rescue the hero in the most extreme and dangerous, even absurd situations.

The term Theatrum Mundi - the world is a stage - was also created. The social and political realm in the real world is manipulated in exactly the same way the actor and the machines are presenting/limiting what is being presented on stage, hiding selectively all the machinery that makes the actions happen. There is a wonderful German documentary called Theatrum Mundi that clearly portrays the political extents of the Baroque and its main representative, Louis XIV.

The films Vatel, Farinelli, and the staging of Monteverdi's Orpheus at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, give a good idea of the style of productions of the Baroque period. The American musician William Christie and Les Arts Florissants have performed extensive research on all the French Baroque Opera, performing pieces from Charpentier and Lully, among others that are extremely faithful to the original 17th century creations.

[edit] Baroque literature and philosophy

Further information: 17th century in literature, 17th century philosophy, and Early Modern literature

Baroque actually expressed new values, which often are summarized in the use of metaphor and allegory, widely found in Baroque literature, and in the research for the "maraviglia" (wonder, astonishment — as in Marinism), the use of artifices. If Mannerism was a first breach with Renaissance, Baroque was an opposed language.[citation

needed] The psychological pain of Man -- a theme disbanded after the Copernican and the Lutheran revolutions in search of solid anchors, a proof of an "ultimate human power" -- was to be found in both the art and architecture of the Baroque period. A relevant part of works was made on religious themes, since the Roman Catholic Church was the main "customer."[citation needed]

Virtuosity was researched by artists (and the virtuoso became a common figure in any art) together with realism and care for details (some talk of a typical "intricacy").

The privilege given to external forms had to compensate and balance the lack of content that has been observed in many Baroque works: Marino's "Maraviglia", for example, is practically made of the pure, mere form. Fantasy and imagination should be evoked in the spectator, in the reader, in the listener. All was focused around the individual Man, as a straight relationship between the artist, or directly the art and its user, its client. Art is then less distant from user, more directly approaching him, solving the cultural gap that used to keep art and user reciprocally far, by Maraviglia. But the increased attention to

the individual, also created in these schemes some important genres like the Romanzo (novel) and allowed popular or local forms of art, especially dialectal literature, to be put into evidence. In Italy this movement toward the single individual (that some define a "cultural descent", while others indicate it as a possible cause for the classical opposition to Baroque) caused Latin to be definitely replaced by Italian.

In Spain, the baroque writers are framed in the Siglo de Oro. Naturalism and sharply critical points of view on Spanish society are common among such conceptista writers as Quevedo, while culterano authors emphasize the importance of form with complicated images and the use of hyperbaton. In Catalonia the baroque took hold as well in Catalan language, with representatives including poets and dramaturgs such as Francesc Fontanella and Francesc Vicenç Garcia as well as the unique emblem book Atheneo de Grandesa by Josep Romaguera. In Colonial Spanish America some of the best-known baroque writers were Sor Juana and Bernardo de Balbuena, in Mexico, and Juan de Espinosa Medrano and Juan del Valle Caviedes, in Peru.

In the Portuguese Empire the most famous baroque writer of the time was Father António Vieira, a Jesuit who lived in Brazil during the 18th century. Secondary writers are Gregório de Matos and Francisco Rodrigues Lobo.

In English literature, the metaphysical poets represent a closely related movement; their poetry likewise sought unusual metaphors, which they then examined in often extensive detail. Their verse also manifests a taste for paradox, and deliberately inventive and unusual turns of phrase.

For German Baroque literature, see German literature of the Baroque period.

[edit] Baroque music

Main article: Baroque music

George Frideric Handel, 1733

The term Baroque is also used to designate the style of music composed during a period that overlaps with that of Baroque art, but usually encompasses a slightly later period. J.S. Bach and G.F. Handel are often considered its culminating figures.

It is a still-debated question as to what extent Baroque music shares aesthetic principles with the visual and literary arts of the Baroque period. A fairly clear, shared element is a love of ornamentation, and it is perhaps significant that the role of ornament was greatly diminished in both music and architecture as the Baroque gave way to the Classical period.

It should be noted that the application of the term "Baroque" to music is a relatively recent development. The first use of the word "Baroque" in music was only in 1919, by Curt Sachs, and it was not until 1940 that it was first used in English (in an article published by Manfred Bukofzer). Even as late as 1960 there was still considerable dispute in academic circles over whether music as diverse as that by Jacopo Peri, François Couperin and J.S. Bach could be meaningfully bundled together under a single stylistic term.

Many musical forms were born in that era, like the concerto and sinfonia. Forms such as the sonata, cantata and oratorio flourished. Also, opera was born out of the experimentation of the Florentine Camerata, the creators of monody, who attempted to recreate the theatrical arts of the ancient Greeks. Indeed, it is exactly that development which is often used to denote the beginning of the musical Baroque, around 1600. An important technique used in baroque music was the use of ground bass, a repeated bass line. Dido's Lament by Henry Purcell is a famous example of this technique.

[edit] Baroque composers and examples

Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) Vespers (1610) Heinrich Schütz (1585–1672), Symphoniae Sacrae (1629, 1647, 1650) Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687) Armide (1686) Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706), Canon in D (1680) Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713), 12 concerti grossi Henry Purcell (1659–1695) Dido and Aeneas (1687) Tomaso Albinoni (1671–1751), Sonata a sei con tromba Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741), The four seasons Johann David Heinichen (1683–1729) Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) Dardanus (1739) George Frideric Handel (1685–1759), Water Music Suite (1717) Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757), Sonatas for Cembalo or Harpsichord Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), Brandenburg concertos (1721) Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767), Der Tag des Gerichts (1762) Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710–1734), Stabat Mater (1736)

[edit] Etymology

The word "Baroque", like most periodic or stylistic designations, was invented by later critics rather than practitioners of the arts in the 17th and early 18th centuries. It is a French transliteration of the Portuguese phrase "pérola barroca", which means "irregular pearl"—an ancient similar word, "Barlocco" or "Brillocco", is used in the Roman dialect

for the same meaning[citation needed]—and natural pearls that deviate from the usual, regular forms so they do not have an axis of rotation are known as "baroque pearls". Others derive it from the mnemonic term "Baroco" denoting, in logical Scholastica, a supposedly laboured form of syllogism.[2]

The term "Baroque" was initially used with a derogatory meaning, to underline the excesses of its emphasis. In particular, the term was used to describe its eccentric redundancy and noisy abundance of details, which sharply contrasted the clear and sober rationality of the Renaissance. It was first rehabilitated by the Swiss-born art historian, Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945) in his Renaissance und Barock (1888); Wölfflin identified the Baroque as "movement imported into mass," an art antithetic to Renaissance art. He did not make the distinctions between Mannerism and Baroque that modern writers do, and he ignored the later phase, the academic Baroque that lasted into the 18th century. Writers in French and English did not begin to treat Baroque as a respectable study until Wölfflin's influence had made German scholarship pre-eminent.

[edit] Modern usage

In modern usage, the term "Baroque" may still be used, usually pejoratively, to describe works of art, craft, or design that are thought to have excessive ornamentation or complexity of line, or, as a synonym for "Byzantine", to describe literature, computer programs, contracts, or laws that are thought to be excessively complex, indirect, or obscure in language, to the extent of concealing or confusing their meaning. A "Baroque fear" is deeply felt, but utterly beyond daily reality.

[edit] See also

Baroque architecture Baroque painting Baroque chess Baroque music Baroque in Portugal Neo-baroque Dutch Baroque English Baroque French Baroque Naryshkin Baroque Petrine Baroque Polish Baroque Sicilian Baroque Spanish Baroque Ukrainian Baroque

[edit] References

1. ̂ PALISCA, CLAUDE V.. "Baroque." Grove Music Online L Macy(2007) 13 Feb 2008 <http://www.grovemusic.com/shared/views/help.html?topic=H090>.

2. ̂ Panofsky, Erwin (1995), "What is Baroque?", Three Essays on Style, The MIT Press, pp. 19

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Baroque art

The baroque and rococo culture Dictionary of the History of Ideas : Baroque in literature The greatest works of Baroque literature Webmuseum Paris barocke in Val di Noto - Sizilien Baroque in the "History of Art" Essays on Baroque art by John Haber On Baroque Symbolism The Baroque style and Luis XIV influence Baroque Style Guide . British Galleries. Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved

on 2007-07-16.

[edit] Further reading

Heinrich Wölfflin , 1964. Renaissance and Baroque (Reprinted 1984; originally published in German, 1888) The classic study. ISBN 0-8014-9046-4

Michael Kitson , 1966. The Age of Baroque John Rupert Martin , 1977. Baroque A more detailed survey. Germain Bazin , 1964. Baroque and Rococo, (Originally published in French;

reprinted as Baroque and Rococo Art, 1974)