Things to learn about the Baroque period (Packet 3 of 12)

1.  Baroque   

A period  of  artistic  history  and the style that dominated it. It started in 1600  in  Rome  and  quickly  spread  to  the  rest of  Europe.  It  used  exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama,  tension,  exuberance  and  grandeur.  The name  is  a  French  adaptation  of  a  Portuguese word for an irregularly shaped pearl.

2. Caravaggio

One of the founders of the Baroque movement, he was exceedingly famous in his lifetime, only to have become unknown almost immediately after his death until his rediscovery in the 20th century.  Though his work was too controversial to hang in most churches, it was much sought after by wealthy patrons. He lived all over Italy from 1573-1610. His large religious paintings  typically  had  pedestrian  Romans as darkly lit saints or biblical figures amid darkened  backgrounds.  He  led a tumultuous life. He was notorious for brawling, even in a time and place when such behavior was commonplace, and the transcripts of his police records and trial proceedings fill several pages. Many believe that lead poisoning, caused by lead-based paints, contributed to his erratic behavior and early death.

3. Calling of St. Matthew

The most famous work by Italian painter Caravaggio depicting the moment at which Jesus Christ inspires his tax-collector disciple to follow him. It was completed in 1599–1600 for the Contarelli Chapel in the church of the French congregation, San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, where it remains today, alongside two other paintings depicting different moments in the life of that saint. The work is known for its use of light and shadow. It has Jesus and St. Peter standing on the right, having just burst into a back room that contains a group of seedy tax collectors. Jesus is pointing at one of the them, the saint from the title of the work, and the light from the window follows his hand to the face of his new disciple, a face that looks completely baffled that Jesus is choosing him for anything.

4.  The Carracci brothers  

Named Annibale and Agostino, their Baroque depictions of ideal nature stood in contrast to  the more gritty  portrayals  of  Caravaggio. They  founded the School for the Eclectics amid other
schools. The worked together in Bologna,  
completing the Palazzo Fava. Later Annibale,  
who was the most famous, was called to Rome
to work on the Palazzo Farnese in 1595.

5.  Federico Barocci

An  important  artist  of  the  counter  Reformation,  a  bridge  between the Renaissance artist Correggio and the Baroque  artist  Caravaggio.  He  lived  from 1528-1612  and his works like the Beata Michelina were described  as  proto-Baroque, though he was a Renaissance artist.
 
6. chiaroscuro

The use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. It is also a technical term used by artists and art historians for the use of contrasts of light to achieve a sense of volume in modeling three-dimensional objects and figures.

7. Correggio

The foremost painter of the Parma school of the Italian Renaissance, who was responsible for some of the most vigorous and sensuous works of the 16th century. He lived from 1489-1534. In his use of dynamic composition, illusionistic perspective and dramatic foreshortening, he foreshadowed the Rococo art of the 18th century. He is considered a master of chiaroscuro.

8. transubstantiation

The Catholic belief  that when the elements of Communion (the bread and the wine) are blessed, they change into the body and blood of Christ. This is one of the concepts that troubled Protestant reformers, but it was upheld by the Counter Reformation.
 
9. Absolutism  

A belief that one person should hold power in a country, such as a king. This philosophy is often called "The divine right of kings" in a belief that is saying that  the ruler of a country is destined to rule or even appointed by God. St. Augustine, St. Paul and Thomas Hobbes all held this belief. It is  also strongly tied to the Baroque movement in art.

10. Rembrandt  van  Rijn
One  of  the  greatest artists  of  the  Baroque  period,  he  lived  from 1606-1609. He painted 600 paintings, 300 etchings  and  2000  drawings  over  his  life, including  nearly  100  self  portraits that helped show his changes through the years. His most famous paintings The Night Watch and The Jewish Bride  are
both in the Rijksmuseum - the most important museum in his Dutch homeland.

    11. The Night Watch

The adopted title of Rembrandt's most famous painting, which is actually named Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq. It features a band of civic guards at work in the street. When it was cleaned in the 1940s, it was discovered that it was not a night scene at all. It had acquired a layer of soot through the years since its completion in 1642 by hanging behind the altar.

    12. Rijksmuseum

A Dutch national museum dedicated to arts and history in Amsterdam. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and the Concertgebouw. It was founded in The Hague in 1800 and moved to Amsterdam in 1808. The museum has on display 8,000 objects of art and history, from their total collection of 1 million objects from the years 1200–2000, among which are some masterpieces by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Johannes Vermeer.

    12. Johannes Vermeer

This Dutch artist lived from 1632-1675 and painted alongside Rembrandt in the Dutch Golden Age. He was known chiefly for his brilliant use of light and his transparent colors.
View of Delft and Milkmaid are two of his better known works. Less than 40 of his works survive, holding stark contrast to the prolific work of Rembrandt.

    13. Woman Holding a Balance

An oil on canvas work from the Baroque artist Johannes Vermeer painted in 1664. Like most Vermeer’s it shows a scene of everyday life, imbued with greater meaning by the way Vermeer paints them. In this work, a woman stands in front of an empty balance, with pearls and other objects of material wealth on the table in front of her. On the wall behind her is a painting of the last judgment. Vermeer uses this juxtaposition between earthly and supernatural values to add symbolic meaning to his painting.

    14. Franz Hals
 
Like Rembrandt and Vermeer, he painted in the Dutch Golden Age in Holland. He was actually born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1582 or 1583, but his family moved to Holland  while he was young. He specialized in portraits, including the very famous Laughing Cavalier. Unlike many artists of the time, he rarely sketched out his paintings with what is known as an underpainting.

    15. Laughing Cavalier

A portrait by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals from 1624 which is in the Wallace Collection in London. It has been described as one of the most brilliant of all Baroque portraits. The title is an invention of the Victorian public and press, dating from its exhibition in the opening display at the Bethnal Green Museum in 1872–75, just after its arrival in England, after which it was regularly reproduced as a print, and became among of the best known old master paintings in Britain. The unknown subject is in fact not laughing, but can be said to have an enigmatic smile, much amplified by his upturned moustache.

    16. Schonbrunn Palace

Built by the Habsburgs in the late 17th century, this stunning  structure  has  been  one  of  the  chief tourist attractions of Austria since the
1860s. It was originally built in the Baroque
style but it was quickly adapted in the next century with Rococo additions.
 
    17. Peter Paul Rubens

After Rembrandt, likely the most important artist of the Baroque period. This Flemish artist lived from 1577-1640. His father had been a Protestant, but he returned to Antwerp and became a Catholic shortly after his father's death. He cites Titian as one of his chief influences. He painted a series of allegorical painting for Marie de Medici, which brought him great acclaim.

    18.  counterpoint

A  style  of  composing  music that involves the simultaneous sounding of separate musical lines. It is very prominent in Western music up to and through the Baroque period. After the Baroque period, the concept of harmony took over. While harmony is the melody working together for one sound, this is focuses on melodic cross interaction.
    19.  fugue   


A type  of  music  from the height  of  the Baroque  period,  written  in  counterpoint  for
several independent musical voices. It begins with a subject (brief musical theme) played by one voice (or instrument). The next voice enters and plays the same subject while the first continues to play in counterpuntal fashion. The additional voices enter one by one, then the music develops further using all the voices.

    20. Johann Sebastian Bach

The greatest of all the Baroque musicians, the master of counterpoint and the supreme arranger of the fugue. He lived from 1685-1750. His most famous compositions include the
Brandenburg Concertos, A Musical Offering, The Art of the Fugue and St. Matthew Passion,
However, the most played work attributed to him – Toccata and Fugue in D Minor #565 – may not have been composed by him at all.

    21. Toccata and Fugue in D Minor

The name of two works attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach. The second of the two (known as
#565) is one of the most played and copied pieces of organ music ever. The catch is, it may not have been composed by Bach at all. Parts or the whole of the song have been used in The
Phantom of the Opera, Fantasia, Rollerball,  Sunset  Boulevard and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. For a century after its creation the only certainty about this Toccata and Fugue is that it survived in a manuscript written by Johannes Ringk, a student of one of Bach’s students. If it is a work  of  Bach, it would one of  his earliest.

    22. The Brandenburg Concertos  
-
Six mostly unrelated pieces written by Johann Sebastian Bach. He presented them to the Margrave of the title town in order to apply for a job and basically work his way out of the small town he was in. As such, the six pieces feature a great variety because he was trying to show everything that he can do. He presented them to
the Margrave in 1721, but he probably wrote  them  earlier. Although they are some of the most beloved pieces of the Baroque period, the  Margrave did not hire him after being presented with them.

    23.  Claudio  Monteverdi   

One of the last composers  of  the  Renaissance  and the first composers of the Baroque period. He lived from 1567-1643, Born in Italy, his name
means “green  mountain” in Italian. He was somewhat of a child prodigy. He began to bend counterpoint from the strict interpretation that had been held in the Renaissance to the more flowing style of the Baroque. This brought him much criticism, but he stood up to it, proposing that there was room for both styles. History agrees with him. Amongst his famous compositions are his first opera L’Orfeo, The Coronation of Poppea and the Vespers of 1610.

    24. Diedrich Buxtehude

Known as much for his influence on the other great artists of the Baroque period as for his own works that have largely been lost other than selections from larger works. He became the organist in Lubeck in the mid  17th century. Bach once traveled over 200 miles on foot just to hear  
him play.

25. Henry Purcell
 
Living from 1659-1695, he was an English composer of the middle Baroque period most remembered for his more than 100 songs, the miniature opera Dido and Aeneas, and his incidental music to a version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, called The Fairy Queen. The most important English composer of his time, he composed music covering a wide field: the church, the stage, the court, and private entertainment. In all these branches of composition he showed an obvious admiration for the past combined with a willingness to learn from the present, particularly from his contemporaries in Italy.

26, George Frederic Handel

One of the greatest composers of London, though he was born in Germany in 1685. He did die in London in 1759. He is noted particularly for his operas, oratorios, and instrumental compositions. He wrote the most famous of all oratorios, Messiah (1741), which is known for its Hallelujah chorus, and is also known for such occasional pieces as Water Music (1717) and Music for the Royal Fireworks (1749).

    27. Water  Music

A composition composed  by Handel, largely to regain the favor King George I of England. The king requested a concert on the river Thames. Handel and his orchestra joined King George on his barge in 1717 and played this piece of music consisting of three suites. The barge made it a challenge because it meant you couldn’t use a harpsichord to play the music, because it would be too heavy to have on the barge. George is said to have  liked the composition so much that he requested  it be played three times on the trip.

28.  Jacopo  Peri

One  of  the  first  Baroque artists, but more famous for being the inventor  of  opera.  He  created  the  first  opera, Dafne, in 1597. That opera has been lost through  the  years,  but  his  opera Eurydice has survived until the present day.

    29. Antonio Vivaldi  

He was a Baroque composer and a priest who lived from 1678-1741. His nickname was Il Prete Rosso, which translates to “Red Priest”. His  
adaptations of the Baroque style helped lead  
to the later impressionist and romantic styles  
of music. His great work, The Four Seasons
is one of the most important compositions of  the Baroque period. He was given a pauper's grave upon his death and his music disappeared until the 20th century.

    30. The Four Seasons

A set of four violin concertos composed by Antonio Vivaldi in 1723. They remain one of the most popular concertos in all of music. Each of the four pieces is in three movements with a slow movement  in  between  two  faster  ones.  Each piece  reflects  the  time  of  year  it  represents and Vivaldi wrote four sonnets to be read  along with the music.

    31. oratorio

A large  musical  composition  for orchestra, vocal soloists and chorus, made popular by George Frederic Handel during the Baroque period. It differs from opera in that it does not have settings, scenery or acting. It is common practice for the pieces to have Biblical themes. The plot is often minimal if there is a plot at all.

    32. Georg Phillip Telemann

A contemporary of Bach and a friend of Handel, he lived from 1681-1767 and is the most prolific composer of all  time. This German was considered the greatest composer in the world while he was alive, though Bach has passed him in reputation through the years. He was known
for combining instruments in odd combinations and incorporating what he saw in his wide travel into his music.

    33. Domenico Scarlatti

The  foremost Italian composer of the Baroque era. He studied under his father Alessandro, himself a minor Baroque composer. Most of his work was published after his death. His work The Essercizi or The Exercises greatly influenced Bach and other Baroque artists. His fame in his lifetime was hurt because he composed instrumental music when Italians were known  
for  opera. Ironically, most of his work was far
more bold than The Essercizi. His sonatas were  far more influential on future artists such as Brahms and Chopin, but they are not performed as often.  

    34. El Greco

Born in Greece and trained in Spain (his name literally translates as The Greek). He was trained as an icon painter. Despite living from 1541-1614, he was not really  Baroque or Renaissance, though he is 'sometimes classified in one or the other category just because of when he painted. His work fell until obscurity from his death until the 19th century when the expressionists discovered him. His 'real name was Domenikos Theotokopoulos.

    35. Diego Velazquez

He lived from 1599-1660 in the middle of 'the Baroque period, but he was an individual painter and not Baroque. He mostly painted in the court of Phillip IV of Spain. He was a great portrait artist, who was also known for historical scenes. His masterpiece is Las Meninas.

    36. Las  Meninas
 
The  most  important painting by the Spanish artist Diego Velazquez. The title translates loosely to Maids of Honor. The picture depicts the young daughter of the queen, Infanta
Margarita, surrounded by her ladies in waiting. Despite being the smallest person in the painting, the Infanta is clearly the focus. There is also a dwarf on the right side of the painting, whose ugliness draws out the beauty of the Infanta.
 
    37. Gian Lorenzo Bernini

The preeminent architect and sculptor of the Baroque period. He lived from 1598-1680 and worked  largely in Rome. He did the most famous Baroque sculpture of David, which not only has him posed, but has him depicted in motion, preparing to throw a rock with his slingshot. He also designed a number of important fountains in Rome.

    38. Miguel de Cervantes

A Spanish writer who lived from 1547-1616 and is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-eminent novelists. His great novel, Don Quixote, is oft considered the greatest  work  of  literature of the period and perhaps ever in Spain. It is evident that Shakespeare had read his  great works, but there is no indication that he had ever heard of Shakespeare. He has also been dubbed El príncipe de los ingenios ("The Prince of Wits")
 
    39. The Gregorian Calendar

The calendar that we all use today, it was a modification of the earlier Julian Calendar. It was decreed to be the new calendar by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. The goal of the new calendar was to fix the problem the Julian Calendar was having in being slightly too long and thus slowly moving away from the same dates. Fixing that issue is the reason leap years were created. England, which was no longer Catholic in 1582, did not accept the new calendar until 1752. Interestingly, since they were using different calendars, Cervantes and Shakespeare appear to have died on consecutive days in 1616, with Cervantes dying on April 22, and Shakespeare passing a day later. In actuality, Cervantes died 11 days before Shakespeare because the calendars were so off by then.

40. Don Quixote

The masterwork of Spain by Miguel de Cervantes and the title character in the work. The title character, whose real name is Alonso Quijano, is of the lowest order of Spanish nobility, but he is obsessed with knights errant of the classical Medieval period. As he gets a bit senile, he begins to roam the countryside, believing himself to be a knight errant, attacking  windmills that he believes to be dragons. The novel is the basis for the modern musical The
Man of La Mancha. The main character is accompanied by his loyal squire Sancho Panza, and a stable whole named Aldonza, who sees as the idle object of courtly love named Dulcinea (which literally means sweetness).

    41. Louis XIV

Known as the Sun King, he may be the most important king in the history df France. He took the throne at age four' in 1643 and ruled until 1715. His reign is the longest in French history and longer than any English king. He ruled as an absolute monarch, and is credited with saying "I am the state." Though this was likely a quote invented by his political opponents to make him look more haughty. He moved the seat of French power  to Versailles, where it remained until 1789.

    42. Palace of Versailles

The seat of power under King Louis XIV of France and the two subsequent kings of France. It was grand and luxurious and cost the government tons of money to maintain. It allowed Louis XIV to lock the nobles in one place and retain absolute power. This magnificent piece of Baroque architecture, one of the great tourist attractions in France, has grown to a city in and of itself. One of the most stunning feature is the Hall of Mirrors (Galerie de Glaces in French)

    43.  Rococo

The artistic period that immediately followed Baroque and is seen by many as a subset of Baroque. It comes from a French word for an elaborate decoration of rocks and shells. It developed in the early 18th century in Paris, France as a reaction against the grandeur, symmetry, and strict regulations of the Baroque, especially of the Palace of Versailles. Its artists and architects used a more jocular, florid, and graceful approach to the Baroque. Their style was ornate and used light colors, asymmetrical designs, curves, and gold. Unlike the political Baroque, it had playful and witty themes. The interior decoration of its rooms was designed as a total work of art with elegant and ornate furniture, small sculptures, ornamental mirrors, and tapestry complementing architecture, reliefs, and wall paintings.

    44. Jean Antoine Watteau

A French painter (1684-1721) whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in color and movement, as seen in the tradition of Correggio and Rubens. He revitalized the waning Baroque style, shifting it to the less severe, more naturalistic, less formally classical Rococo. He is credited with inventing the genre of fêtes galantes, scenes of bucolic and idyllic charm, suffused with a theatrical air. Some of his best known subjects were drawn from the world of Italian comedy and ballet. His best known work is Pilgrimage to Cythera.

    45. Francois Boucher

A French painter, draughtsman and etcher (1703-1770), who worked in the Rococo style. He is known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories, and pastoral scenes. He was perhaps the most celebrated painter and decorative artist of the 18th century. He also painted several portraits of his patroness, Madame de Pompadour.  

    46. Jean Honore Fragonard

A Rococo artist who lived from 1732-1806, known for his exuberance of style, his skill, and a penchant for hedonism that may have helped end the Rococo period as a whole. His Love Letters surrounds a seemingly innocent flirting couple with a jungle of trees and bushes, and places them under a statue of Venus and Cupid to art a bit of foreboding to the air. His perhaps even more famous work The Swing sees a young woman being pushed by her older husband in a swing as her lover watches hidden in the bushes.

    47. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

One of the fathers of the Rococo art movement, he painted in Venice and lived from 1696-1770.  Fragonard studied his work.and incorporated many of his techniques. He was one of the few painters, to try and apply Rococo principles to religious subjects. His best-known works are paintings of ceilings of churches and palaces. He painted a palace at Wurzburg known as the New Residenz. It included a massive ceiling fresco called Allegory of the Planets and Continents, which depicts Apollo embarking on his daily course; deities around him symbolize the planets; allegorical figures (on the cornice) represent the four continents. He also painted a famous version of The Immaculate Conception.

    48. Thomas Gainsborough

The foremost English Rococo artist, he is actually more known for his portraits than anything else. He was able to continue painting in the Rococo style long after the impending revolution was pushing it to the background in France. Most of his portraits are set against the background of a landscape. His most famous works include The Blue Boy, Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, and Mary, Countess Howe.