BAROQUE ART

BAROQUE ART

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Mannerism

Puritanism and Baroque

Art History

Abstract Art

Art Nouveau

The Lives of Great Artists

It is customary to start any discussion of Baroque with a definition of the term and some account of the ramifications of its use in criticism. This, while inevitable and necessary at some point in the discussion, has often the effect of creating an initial bewilderment in the reader. We shall therefore begin in a simpler if more hazardous manner by adopting a limited concept of Baroque, as close to the historical centre of the phenomenon as possible. It is neatly contained in the opening sentences of the definition given in A Dictionary of Art and Artists: BAROQUE. This is the style that succeeded MANNERISM and lasted, though with profound modifications, until well into the 18th c. The style is seen at its purest in the so-called "High Baroque", which is virtually confined to Italy (to Rome even) and to the period covered by the years c. 1630-80, that is, roughly the maturity of its greatest exponent, BERNINI.

The chronological view taken by Wittkower is very similar. From c. 1625 to c. 1675 he regards as the age of High Baroque.

The period receives its imprint from the overpowering figure of Bernini, who for more than half a century dominated Italian artistic life at the focal point, Rome.

The works without peer are Bernini's statuary, Cortona's architecture and decoration, and Borromini's buildings as well as those by Guarini, Juvarra, and Vittone. But it was Bernini, the greatest artist of the period, who with his poetical and visionary, masterpieces created perhaps the most sublime realization of the longings of his age. . . . I consider the Roman High Baroque of Bernini, Borromini, and Pietro da Cortona the most exciting years of the century and a half under review [ 1600-1750] and one of the most creative periods of the whole history of Italian art.

Similar views are expressed by Pevsner, who argues that Baroque appeared as a reaction against Mannerism and that "the style thus introduced culminated in Rome between 1630 and 1670. . . . Maderna was the leading architect of his generation in Rome. He died in 1629. His successors in fame were Gianlorenzo Bernini ( 1598-1680), Francesco Borromini ( 1599-1667), and Pietro da Cortona ( 15961669)."

Before going further, we should remind ourselves of some of the landmarks of the exploration of Baroque. Jakob Burckhardt Die Kultur der Renaissance projected a view which met the needs of the reader of 1860. The group of painters now referred to as the Mannerists were, as one would expect, quite distressing to Burckhardt's sensibilities. In the next generation Heinrich Wölfflin gathered the results of a quarter-century of research in Renaissance and Baroque art into his Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe, which appeared in 1915. This book, the source of the famous five categories, was again timely and appealed to a generation of readers who had learned to accept, say, Monet. Wölfflin's theory of style changes in the seventeenth century has been modified, particulary by reassignment into the category of Mannerism of many phenomena which he had denominated Baroque, but no one interested in the field can fail to render him both homage and gratitude.

The employment of the term Baroque in literary criticism, which came about after Wölfflin's concepts had become established, is briefly reviewed later in these pages. If at the moment we try to simplify rather than complicate our concept, by limiting it to Rome and the second and third quarters of the seventeenth century, it is not difficult to accept the dictum that architecture, sculpture, and painting are the arts most worthy of attention and that their importance is in the order given. Fokker, in connexion with the critical recognition now accorded to Bernini, Borromini, and Cortona, remarks that "a hasty inference (which, as it happens, is perfectly right) may be drawn; as the three most important men of the Baroque were architects, architecture was by far the most prominent of the arts concerned, and as the most famous of the three architects was, at the same time, the greatest sculptor, and the least known of them the best painter, contemporary painting was the least important of the three."

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