SESSION 5 (Tuesday 5th February 2019) 17th Century Baroque

1. Michelangelo da Caravaggio [MA] 1.1. The Calling of St Matthew 1598-1601 1.2. The Madonna of Lereto 1604 2. Peter Paul Rubens [FB] 2.1. Sampson & Delilah 2.2. The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus 1618 Oil on canvas (224 x 209cm) 3. Van Dyck [FB] 3.1. Charles I of England 1636 4. Artemesia Gentileschi 4.1. Judith Slaying Holofernes 1612 5. Diego de Velazquez [BA]. 5.1. Las Meninas 1656 canvas (323 x 276cm) Prado, Madrid 6. Nicolas Poussin [BA] 6.1. Landscape with Orpheus and Euridice 1650 Louvre, Oil on canvas (124 x 200cm) 6.2. Et in Arcadia Ego 1638 Oil on canvas (87 x 120cm) Louvre. Also see Arcadian Shepherds 1627 Chatsworth House 7. Claude Lorrain 7.1. The Judgement of Paris 7.2. Seaport at Sunset , 1648, Louvre Also see Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire 1839 National Gallery

Title page: Artemisia Gentileschi ‘Self Portrait as the Allegory of Painting’ 1638 Royal Collection

Baroque paintings tend to privilege emotional intensity over rationality and frequently use rich colours and intense contrasts of light and dark (tenebrism). Often the paintings catch a moment in the action, and the observer’s perspective is so close to the events they might almost feel a participant.

The Council of Trent (1545-63) was set up by Pope Paul III to counter the influence of the Protestant churches. The Council called for Church commissioned paintings to have emotional appeal and a clear religious narrative and message, rejecting the more stylistic affectations of Mannerism, so Baroque paintings fitted that brief well. European monarchs and aristocrats recognised that the style could bolster their own position, as well as religious faith, and artists were commissioned to produce appropriate portraits.

The paintings of Caravaggio will always be noted for both his frequent use of tenebrism and the naturalism of even his religious paintings. The Calling of St Matthew is typical at portraying religious figures in a non-idealised way. It seems a brave decision to portray Christ so dimly in shadow, but typical for his paintings there is a strong out of frame light source which gives the effect of a modern spotlight

The subject of The Madonna of Loretto depends on the miraculous transposition of the Madonna’s house near Nazareth to the Adriatic town around 1290CE. Pilgrims to the house might be fortunate enough to meet the Virgin mother. The figures and setting are not glamorous and the artist was sometimes criticised for the grubby naturalism of his religious paintings.

Ruben’s Samson & Delilah was painted for a private house in Antwerp, to hang above the fireplace. The lighting of the room influenced the lighting of the painting. The artist had lived in Italy, and I think we can see the influence of classical statues and the sculptural figurative style of Michelangelo in the prostrate Samson. The setting seems to be a brothel, and Samson’s vulnerability seems the result of sex rather than drink. The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus has typical Rubenesque female figures and has a strong sense of movement.

Artemesia Gentileschi was an Italian Easel painter, seen as a follower of the style of Caravaggio. She exploited the dramatic effect of chiaroscuro in Judith Slaying Holofernes For an understandable reason, women in her paintings were either heroic or exploited; when the art teacher who raped her was brought to court, she was the one tortured with the thumb screw to ascertain the truth.

Diego de Velazquez (1599-1660) was a favourite of Philip IV of Spain. Las Meninas (Maids of Honour) has as its central figure the five-year-old Infanta Margarita with two of her maids and behind a large dog are two dwarves. Her father and his second wife can be seen reflected in the mirror. The artist stands by a gigantic canvas with his palette & brushes, wearing the badges of a court official. As spectator we are drawn into the space the King & Queen occupy. The picture portrays painting as an admirable liberal art – at a time Velazquez was seeking to become a knight; the copies of paintings on the far wall are by Rubens – who had already been knighted by Charles the First. There are three light sources: the open door, the window on right, & the space we/the King are standing in; these illuminate the group without harsh shadows yet maintain an intimate, domestic feeling.

French painting was much influenced by the Baroque Classicism of Italian artists. Two prominent French artists, working in Rome, were Claude Lorrain (or simply Claude) and Nicolas Poussin. Neither recorded nature as observed, but ordered the elements into idealised, historicist compositions (such as Landscape with Orpheus and Euridice). Poussin tended towards a grandiose, architectural ordering of his landscapes while (in my opinion) Claude gave his a more realistic atmospheric perspective. It is worth noting their influence (especially Poussin’s) on the Academy grand style and later English landscape architects.

Et in Arcadia Ego is usually translated as ‘Even in Arcadia, there I am’ with the ‘I’ referring to ‘death’ – so the painting is a momento mori ; (Is the female figure the ‘spirit of death’?). One of the shepherds is tracing his shadow with his finger (for Pliny this was the origin of painting). In the arts generally, there was a contemporary fascination with the ‘pastoral’, an idyllic rural life, which I think we can perceive as a thread in many paintings through to at least Victorian times. In his earlier treatment of the subject, Arcadian Shepherds, Poussin presents a sexually provocative shepherdess – another feature of pastoral art.

In Claude’s The Judgement of Paris figures are relegated to the left-hand corner of the composition leaving the landscape as the major focus. The viewer's eye slowly moves from the tree in the extreme right foreground to the massive green trees in the middle ground. A winding river leads through the background until the mountains disappear in an atmospheric haze. Claude has ordered nature through carefully arranged planes of space.

Claude’s Seaport at Sunset is one of several copies completed by the artist; only later did an ‘original’ artworks have a particular value. He explores the effects of an effulgent sun in ways that pre-figure the work of Romantic artists over a century later. © Patrick Imrie 2019