The Baroque in Italy and Spain

The Baroque in Italy and Spain

The period called “Baroque” cannot easily be classified. The work that distinguishes this period is stylistically complex and even contradictory. While Baroque was born in Rome during the final years of the sixteenth century, it was not specifically Italian. Nor was it confined to religious art. While Baroque did have ties to the Counter-Reformation, it quickly entered the Protestant North where it was applied primarily to secular subjects. It would also be difficult to claim that Baroque is “the style of absolutism,” because Baroque flourished in the bourgeois Holland no less than in the absolutist monarchies. Nor do we see the turbulent history of the era reflected in Baroque art. While the seventeenth century was one of almost continuous warfare, these wars had practically no effect on Baroque imagery. It is equally difficult to relate Baroque art to the science and philosophy of the period. While a direct link did exist in the Early and High Renaissance, when an artist could also be a humanist and scientist, this changed in the seventeenth century. During this time, scientific and philosophical thought became too complex, abstract, and systematic for the artists to share. Still, there is a subtle but an important relationship between Baroque art and science. The complex metaphysics of the humanists, which gave everything religious, meaning, was replaced by a new physics. Human awareness of the world was continuously expanding and the cosmology of such men as Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo broke the ties between sensory perception and science. By placing the sun, not the earth at the center of the universe, it contradicted what our eyes told us: that the sun revolves around the earth. The world...

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...r more subtle. Velazquez explored the optical qualities of light more fully than any other painter of his time. Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664) stands out among the painters of Seville for his quiet intensity. Zurbarán worked almost exclusively for monastic orders and his most impressive baroque compositions are deeply moving for their direct and realistic approach to religious subject matter. The work of Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1617-1682) is the most cosmopolitan, as well as accessible, of any Spanish Baroque artist. His “Virgin and Child” (1675-1680) unites the influence of the Northern artists and Italians in an image that nevertheless retains an unmistakably Spanish character.

Religion, politics, and philosophy all played a part in Baroque art. This interplay of passion, intellect, and spirituality make it one of the most compelling periods of Western art.