17th and 18th Century Baroque

Baroque



Moving on from the renaissance leads to the 17th and 18th centuries where the reformation of protestant faith and the reformation and clean up of the Catholic faith came about.
The aim of baroque art to my understanding, was almost to deal with the battle between the protestant and catholic churches after their reformations.

Where as renaissance art tended to look at depicting the 'before' of a scene, baroque artists much preferred to capture the most dramatic point of a scene. 

"...adopted a propagandistic stance in which art was to serve as a means of extending and stimulating the public’s faith in the church."

The art was all heavily based around dramatic scenes, using dramatic rich colours with heavy contrasts aimed to provoke true feelings of  emotion for the viewer.

"...Baroque church ceilings thus dissolved in painted scenes that presented vivid views of the infinite to the observer and directed the senses toward heavenly concerns."

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/53809/Baroque-period


Not all Baroque style paintings however were based heavily around religion, many of the famous artists who created these style paintings produced portraits of important people of that period and amazing landscape scenes. Despite this, the paintings, whether influenced by religion or not, all followed the similar criteria and style of crowded scenes, dramatic scenes and heavy, dramatic colours..

Rembrandt - 

"Unlike most Dutch artists, Rembrandt painted a wide variety of subjects - portraiture, mythology, religious scenes, history, and landscape"

"Baroque master's paintings
Portraits, biblical scenes, and historical subjects comprised many of this Baroque master's paintings. The exact imitation of form was being replaced by the suggestion of it. To some of his contemporaries his paintings began to look unfinished. It was from the Venetians that he had learned to use a brown ground so that his paintings emerged from dark to light, physically as well as spiritually."

http://www.absolutefacts.com/arts/baroque-period/rembrandt.htm



http://baroqueart.tumblr.com/

"Susanna by Rembrandt 1636"



"Portrait of an elderly man by Rembrandt 1667"



It is interesting to note the style of lighting used by the artist in both these paintings, you can see that in both paintings a shadow is cast down the right hand side of both subjects. something also to note here is the differences in style of painting along with the different dates. We can see here that the first painting presented is of much preciser detail in comparison to the second painting which was painting at a much later date. There is still that element of dark colours in the later painting which we can also see in the first one, however the style of the painting shows to have been painted in a much looser and less precise style.




Comparison..


Johannes Vermeer





"Girl with the pearl earring johannes vermeer 1665"



"Officer and laughing girl 1667"
http://www.tumblr.com/search/vermeer+baroque



"Girl interupted at her music 1658-61"
http://www.tumblr.com/search/vermeer+baroque



Once again in these three paintings, the choice of lighting follows that of the work by Rembrandt. We can clearly see here that again there are shadows cast down the right hand side of the subjects in the paintings. The continual use of same lighting is even more obvious in these painting by Vermeer. 
apart from the first images displayed by Rembrandt here, all the dates of the other paintings by both artists are a complete mixture, one would maybe try to assume one artist has copied another however it appears both artists seemed to be creating these paintings during overlapping times. However i does seem that Rembrandt was born almost 30 years before vermeer. The first painitng i presented in the post was apparently painted by rembrandt in 1636, this will have been just 4 years after vermeer was actually born. 

Johannes Vermeer

Born	Baptized 31 October 1632 Delft, Dutch Republic
Died	15 December 1675

Rembrandt van Rijn

Born	15 July 1606[1] Leiden, Dutch Republic (nowNetherlands)
Died	4 October 1669

More religion based Baroque

http://baroqueart.tumblr.com/

"The Holy Family with Saints Elizabeth, John the Baptist and Catherineby Simon Vouet

Date: 1614-1615"

-unkown



"Circumcision of Jesus by Francesco Curradi"



To think that these paitnings were aimed to encourage religion at the time and obviously reflected the beliefes of the faith at this time, it is interesting to note the way in which all the different artists depict the holy characters in the paintings in a very similar way. using very similar almost romantic colours. the way in which cherubs are included in almost every religous paintnign here. The paintings to me portray a very fairtail, romantic-like feel to the whole idea of the protestant faith.