Author: Zoe Hoang (Page 2 of 3)

La Fronde marked a turbulent period in France from 1648 to 1652, as nobles sought to curb the king’s power, leaving a young Louis deeply affected. This era highlighted the feudal structure of France, where reciprocal obligations tied each layer of society together. To assert control over the nobility, Louis XIV transformed a small hunting lodge into the grand palace of Versailles. Its architecture initially followed Renaissance principles but its immense size leaned more towards the Baroque style. The palace was strategically designed to compel nobles to rotate their residences, ensuring the king’s authority over them. Surrounding the palace were vast French gardens with ornate fountains, emphasizing the grandeur of the complex.

The design of Versailles was centered around a strong axis, symbolizing the sun with Louis XIV as its focal point. This axis led directly to the king’s bedroom, which boasted two salons representing war and peace, serving to glorify his reign. The Hall of Mirrors, adorned with costly Venetian mirrors, further enhanced the opulence of Versailles.

In the artistic realm, Charles le Brun played a significant role in establishing the French Academy of Art and Sculpture, while Claude Lorrain, despite humble beginnings and limited education, became renowned for his landscape paintings. His works, executed during his time in Rome, often depicted similar scenes, showcasing his remarkable talent. Louis XIV’s portrait, another symbol of his power and grandeur, depicted him in a commanding pose, with elaborate decor emphasizing his authority. His life-size depiction, standing on a step, reinforced his dominance, while his proud display of his legs hinted at his renowned dancing abilities.

Within the vastly changing political landscape that is 17th century Europe, between countries choosing (or not) to convert to Protestantism, there exists the Netherlands, a country that, as it stood, does not belong to either group: While northern Holland went for a militaristic form of Catholicism, the south chose Protestantism. This ended up creating a very interesting environment  for the making of artworks in this era. 

No one is more suitable for the explanation of this time than Peter Paul Rubens, who, while he himself is undecided in his religion, had gone through multiple conversion of beliefs (along with his family). Being especially well-versed in language and well-educated, Rubens brought into the art scene a new and fresh perspective, as he also worked as a diplomat. A work that best represents his ability to adapt to the needs of his customers (belief-wise) is The Elevation of the Cross. With the portrayed instantaneous scene of God’s cross being raised, the clear distinction between those who are on Jesus’ side and those who are not, the distinctively Caravaggisti manner of using the contrast between light and dark as tool of expression, we see here a snapshot of both the moment depicted as the intention of the artist, as well as an unintentional snapshot of the time it was created in, and the malleable, unstable nature of the liturgical system. We could also see the influence that Rubens had on his surrounding artists, especially those who were chosen to be his assistants. One of these people was Anthony van Dyke, an artist who would go on to create various portraits for the aristocrats of the time.

Another important figure of this period is Rembrant van Rjin, the creator of The Night Watch and various printings, including The Hundred Guilders. By innovating and trying new techniques of printworks, combining different tools to create a diverse range of texture, he still stood out amongst the wide, saturated stream of ‘Little Masters‘ with their specific specializations.

To prepare for the in-class readings about prints of the Baroque period, as well as revisiting our knowledge of printmaking as a medium, we went to Colby’s Museum of Arts for this class session. We learnt about the foundational methods of printmaking as well as observing the results of what different techniques could achieve, including both relief and intaglio ones. By closely examining the artworks and seeing clearly the differences, albeit minor, between different ways of producing prints, and how these methods are then utilized to create works of art. 

Surprisingly enough, it was not easy to distinguish between different intaglio techniques. While woodcuts have a sense of simplification within its depiction of figures and depictions of events, engravings allow its creator for a pleasant, realistic rendering of the world, through the use of cross-hatching lines and a wide range of lines’ weight. This is shown quite clearly in Hendrick Goltzius’ The Roman Heroes, wherein the value of the scene hinges on the believability of the depiction itself. One distinctive feature of engravings is the variability of weight within the same continuous line, as well as the clean curvature that wouldn’t have been possible for woodcuts, or most relief prints in general. Moving forward to the 17th century, we looked at works by Rembrandt van Rijn and his usage of etching and/ or drypoint. The slight shakiness of the line weight is apparent in etching prints, despite some artists trying to imitate the look of an engraving – like Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s Vedutta Della Bascilica, E Piazza Di S.Pietro in Vaticano. There are still ways in which these techniques can be limiting, especially in areas of large blocks of color. To deal with this,  some artists settled with creating areas with tightly-crossed, close lines, while some developed and utilized a new technique, aquatint, which allows for variation of tones within these large areas of color.

Continuing from our previous class, we looked at some of Gianlorenzo Bernini’s works. Being a sort of renaissance man who was interested in a variety of mediums, Bernini was the person who was trusted with the ongoing, seemingly eternal St.Peter basilica by Pope Paul V, who was a member of the Borghese family. His most impressive work, to me, is without a doubt The Ecstasy of St. Theresa. Not only is this a wonderful proof of Bernini’s skills as both an architect and a sculptor, but also one of, if not the most representative work of the Baroque period. He managed to integrate the viewers into the scene as a way of creating coexistence in the display setting by using natural lights and illumination through the glass ceiling, on top of the already expressive, exquisitely sculpted scene of Saint Theresa getting punctured by the love of God. This work bridges the elements that would come to be known as that of this era: The expressiveness, the coexistence, the ephemeral, snap-shot, somewhat theatrical nature of the scene.

Moving on the artworks in Spain created during this era – we could see the appearance of a new genre of painting that’s emerging: hyper-organized, intricate, meaningful still-lifes. Those like Juan Sánchez Cotán’s Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber, which utilizes a Caravaggistic manner of shading (with the sharp contrast and deep, dark background), as well as a very harmonious composition, making for an interesting, unlikely image that exceeds one’s belief of the physical realm. And humans are also, as ever, depicted with great innovation and a completely new, intriguing manner. In Jusepe de Ribera’s The Club-Footed Boy, where a beggar boy is used as an allegory for the role of each individual in the contemporary religious context; or in Las Meninas (widely recognized as one of the greatest painting ever made), where the varied subjects and ambiguous points of view is highly contended, and of which composition is so stacked and crowded, yet still managed somehow to create a sense of movement and harmony within movements.

In our exploration of Italian Baroque art, we examined the origins and factors that molded this captivating style. Emerging as a reaction to Mannerism, Italian Baroque was a result of the Counter-Reformation movement and the Church Council of Trent (1545-63), coinciding with a turbulent period where nations aligned themselves with either the Catholic Church or Protestantism. The establishment of the Jesuits, a religious order combating Protestantism, further marked this era. 

Artworks created during the Counter-Reformation aimed to counter Protestant criticisms, addressing issues like hierarchy and iconography. Annibale Carracci, along with his brother and cousin, founded the Accademia degli Incamminati, emphasizing drawing and drawing inspiration from nature. Noteworthy Carracci artworks, such as Landscape with the Flight to Egypt and Love of the Gods, showcased compositional brilliance and techniques reminiscent of Michelangelo’s influence. Meanwhile, Caravaggio’s distinctive style, characterized by tenebrism and a realistic approach, was evident in masterpieces like The Calling of Matthew, where he portrayed Christ as the “light of the world.” Artemisia Gentileschi, a Caravaggist, overcame personal adversity to produce powerful artworks, one being Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting and Judith and her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes, expressing female empowerment and revenge, echoing Caravaggio’s profound impact on the era. Today’s exploration illuminated the dynamic interplay of religious, artistic, and societal influences that defined the captivating epoch of Italian Baroque art.

With the rise of the Reformation movement, there was an apparent shift in the art industry, both in the portrayal of its subject matter and the process of artwork creation in and of itself. Martin Luther’s conflicting viewpoints regarding art as both a teaching tool and a vanity also helps define the polarity of arts of this era. One stand-out figure of Northern Europe in this time is Albrecht Dürer, the great painter/printmaker that has created some definitive artworks throughout his career.

One of these prints is The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a wood-cut print based on the Book of Revelation, depicting four armored figures of Death, Famine, War and Conquest. With highly intricate rendering of the scene and its character, along with a great grasp of human expression and psychology, Dürer was able to capture the imminent wariness of a new century, the condition which had also popularized the rise in interest with apocalyptic themes. 

By examining Adam and Eve, his engraving print, we saw Dürer’s capacity for realism and exploration of familiar themes, in this case the moment before the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden. In the very choice of subject not being the expulsion itself, we could see somewhat the general overlapping themes with his previously mentioned woodcut, that being impending calamity. In this case, however, the artist chose to depicts some extra theme players, that being the representation of different human temperaments: that of the choleric (the cat), the phlegmatic (the ox), the sanguine (the rabbit) and the melancholic (the elk). This serves as proof of the artist’s capacity to discover the relationship between symbolism and abstract concepts, as well as an interest in the psychology underlying the depicted scene.

Along with his impressive catalogs of prints, the artist was also the creator of several influential portraits, including one of himself, which was loosely modeled after the image of Christ. This is partly due to his own growing ego, and the increasing awareness of artists of their own importance, paralleling God’s creation of the universe and the artists’ ability to create lives via depicting them with their virtuosity.

Through tracing the evolution of one artist through the 15th century, we were able to see the change that had occurred throughout his career, of his own artistic and philosophical worldviews as well as the historical elements that had influenced these changes. Being the epitome of the image of the uomo universale (the Universal Man), an artist that embodies the neo-Platonist ideal, Michelangelo is the one artist through whose work this is possible. We started with his sculptural works during the High Renaissance period. While Pietà, without a doubt, is a mind-bogglingly powerful work, I was most struck by his abandoned project – the unfinished Awakening Prisoner sculpture. It’s fascinating to witness a work of art that’s both intentionally and accidentally expressing the liberation of the figure as well as the very essence of the act of marble carving, a way of creating animation from the rigid, of shaping the ideal human, of a sort of non-human virtuosity.

What late Michelangelo works possess, other than what still remains of his ability to infuse his works with complex ideals and philosophical ventures, is a drastic change of stylistic depictions of his themes. His paintings in the Sistine Chapel showcases a style that has not yet been seen on paintings of the High Renaissance – less usage of saturated, primary colors, less compositionally harmonious, less narratively coherent. But what is added is more than enough for us to still marvel over his art: the exaggerated expression of the human figure and human psychology, the added nuances upon familiar religious narratives (e.g the sibyls, the naked figures). These elements would go on to characterize the next dominant artistic movement of the time – Mannerism. Mannerism, as described as a style of painting by Vasari, is distinguishable from the art of the Renaissance from its rejection of rigid harmony and its embrace of asymmetry, of elegance and chaos, of highly stylized proportions, and above all, of the overt, dynamic expression of its subject matters.

Nature is only a giant human being – Leonardo da Vinci expressed (and on his way there, discovered) the nature of the connection between man and nature, between the macrocosmic and the microcosmic. As an artist, engineer, scientist, and generally a highly curious human being, Leonardo is in a particularly unique position to depict the world around him. We could see this playing into his works: the pattern-detecting, research-heavy, highly technical, almost scientific manner of creating. 

This is showcased quite wonderfully through works like The Last Supper, which, on top of the impressive technicality that went into its composition, radiates another key feature of this artist’s creativity: the experimentation for problems and contemplation of complex ideas. Rather than merely recording the scene of Christ’s supper, Leonardo depicted the reaction, dynamic, and nuances of the narrative, exploring the psychological worlds of the players, using rational numbers and hyper-specific calculations to evoke emotions from its viewers. 

Another major figure in the art world at this time is Donato Bramante – his design of Tempietto, echoing Leonardo’s fascination with round churches. With structures of rounded buildings running around one another, as well as the call back to the structure of early Christian matyriums and Roman churches, we can see the general focus of artists of this period on harmony, balance, and the interactions between different parts of the overall structure.

Through looking at Masaccio’s The Tribute Money, we had managed to examine some influence of earlier artists such as Donatello and Brunelleschi on the usage of continuous narrative and different perspective-building techniques such as linear perspective as well as atmospheric rendering of fading colors the further the sceneries are from the focus of the work, thus proving that by learning from their predecessors, the younger generation of Italian artists was able to create works that both live up to their time’s standards and even go further than that, creating an identity and style for themselves. Not only was this narrative told in a completely unexpected and surprisingly effective sequence (not by a then-standardized left-to-right order, this was done using gestures of the most prominent characters (Christ and St. Peter) to guide the viewers as the story unfolds. 

This is made even more poignant as we go through his other works in the Brancacci Chapel, including Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, wherein the artist showcases his exceptional ability of depicting different vivid, different and visceral emotions, as well as using these emotions as a gateway to tell the deeper story within the frame. Despite borrowing the figure’s composition from an ancient Roman original, Masaccio managed to bring in his own artistry, through the way in which he rendered the human body as well as what surrounds it. 

The same could be said about Donatello’s David, which obviously use elements of the ancient Greek masters including the contrapposto composition as well as the nudity of the figure, which was used as a tool to express something beyond its own exterior image, an idea of Florentine’s civic virtues that aligns with the original intention of the commissioners themselves – the then in-charge Medici family.

As we move towards the 15th century, we continue to witness a surge in Humanism, characterized by a general trend of revisiting the study of works from ancient Greco-Roman times. This, paired with the newly introduced printing technology, have helped popularize this wave of acquiring knowledge and thus, affect the way in which Art as a discipline is then being perceived. At this point in time, Florence is still operating under a Republic system, with a group of bourgeoisie (bankers & merchants) in charge. This goes hand in hand as well with the development of guilds/ trade unions, dividing political power into even smaller sections and away from the central family.

Directly connected by a competition held by the guild of wool merchants, the two most prominent figures of the time, Filippo Brunelleschi and Lorenzo Ghiberti create two distinct work of arts that showcase clearly each of their own stylistic viewpoint and unique execution: While Brunelleschi focuses more on a single narrative frame and portrays it in the most compositionally satisfying way, Ghiberti places emphasis on the story being told and the movement infused into an inanimate structure. Despite losing to Ghiberti in this instance, Brunelleschi had then chosen to go into a medium that eventually proves to be much better at showcasing his prowess with proportion and perspective – architecture. Further than that, he had become somewhat of a leader in a new, rational approach to architecture, in which mathematical ratios are utilized to create balance and harmony within the structure.

With the integration of more mechanical techniques into art came the discovery of linear perspective, in which all shapes occupying the space of a painting are determined in relation to a horizon line and a collection of points where lines converge, known as vanishing points. An artist who masterfully integrate this technique, amongst many others, to represent depth and distance, is Donatello with “The feast of Herod”, in which the thinness of the relief and the amount of details in the further background works together with linear perspective to tell a complete story, a complete narrative of what is happening within the frame, as if we’re witnessing this incident happening in real time.