Baroque Period

Religion is a common element to the Baroque Style and its dominance in Western Europe in the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth century. Everywhere you looked in Western Europe a reformation was occurring. The Catholic Reformation in its respective right brought life to the Baroque Style. The many churches and chapels of Europe became a blank template for the various types of artists.

The paintings, music and architecture of the time were that of a Baroque style. "The word Baroque is derived from the Portuguese word barocco, which describes the irregularly shaped pearls often featured in ornamental European decoration, the term baroque is associated with such features as ornateness, spatial grandeur, and theatrical flamboyance (Fiero 46)."

Italy claims the birth rights to the amazing artistic development of the Baroque Style. The style was seen in the paintings, sculptures, architectural designs, and the music of the time. The Baroque period officially 1600-1750, was a very pivotal time in Western Europe. The infusion of life that the Baroque style brought to the time was part of a self and personal expression that had not been seen ever before.

"In painting, the Baroque is characterized by asymmetric compositions, strong contrasts of light and dark, vigorous brushwork, and bold illusionistic effects (Fiero 46)."

There are many religious paintings and we are all familiar with the painting of the Last Supper, of Jesus Christ. The most famous being that of a rendition by Leonardo Da Vinci. The Baroque style of painting brought other artists interpretations and feelings of what was happening that night with Jesus and his 12 disciples. A baroque style artist Jacopo Tintoretto paints his impression of what the last supper would have been like to him.

"Jacopo Tintoretto renounces the symmetry and geometric clarity of Leonardo's composition. The receding lines of the table and the floor in Tintoretto's painting place the viewer above the scene and draw the eye toward a vanishing point that lies in a distant and uncertain space beyond the canvas". (Fiero 45)

Another artist of the time was that of Michelangelo Merisi, he was better known as Caravaggio. The interesting thing to me about the baroque style or the baroque movement is that is driven by the reformation of the Catholic Church, however Caravaggio was less than a law abiding church going person. He had a style unique to his own.

Caravaggio flouted Renaissance artistic conventions; even as he flouted the law he was arrested for violent acts that ranged from throwing a plate of artichokes in the face of a tavern keeper to armed assault and murder. Having killed a tennis opponent in 1606, he was forced to flee Rome. In his paintings, Caravaggio renounced the grand style of High Renaissance, which called for dignity, decorum, and the idealization of figures and setting. (Fiero 47)

The Baroque style is captured in the houses of worship of Italy. The Catholic Reformation