ART216: Spanish, Dutch and Flemish Baroque

Spain loses hegemony over parts of northern Europe in the 16th century the northern part of this region, the Dutch Republic (today, the Netherlands), is the part which becomes fully independent a Protestant culture with a growing middle class and a strong market economy

Flanders, today known as Belgium, retains ties to the Catholic church, a factor which may suggest closer ties between Spanish art and Flemish art than between Flemish and Dutch

Spain was always strongly committed to Catholicism as the center of the Habsburg empire, it was also something of an alternative center of art, the more so under Kings Philip III and IV who cultivated extraordinary and international collections of art

Spanish Baroque Zurburan: St. Serapion, 1628 Velazquez: The Water Carrier of Seville, 1619 Surrender of Breda, ca. 1635 Philip IV, 1644 Las Meninas, 1656

Flemish Baroque: Rubens Rubens is perhaps the most “international” of the artists on this sheet Elevation of the Cross triptych, 1610 Arrival (Debarkation) of Marie de’ Medici at Marseilles, 16222-25 Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, 1618-20 Allegory of the Outbreak of War, 1637-8 The Garden of Love (A Stylish Conversation), 1638

Clara Peeters (a Flemish artist but lives in the Dutch Republic): Flowers and Gold Goblets, 1612

Dutch Baroque Franz Hals: portraits and group portraits Laughing Cavalier, 1624 Governesses of the Old Men’s Almshouse, 1664 Regents of the St. Elizabeth Hospital, 1641 Archers of the St. Hadrian Civic Guard Company, 1633

Judith Leyster: student of Hals; independent workshop career until she married Self-Portrait, 1630 Young Boy Playing a Flute, 1631 (c/w: Hals: Singing Boy with Flute, 1627 and Dirck van Baburen, Flutist, 1590/5) Proposition, 1631 (moral genre?) Carousing Couple, 1630 (example of the “merry company” genre: c/w Honthorst: Merry Company, 1622)

Gerrit van Honthorst: Dentist, 1622 Rembrandt: the material reality of painting portraits: Artist in his Studio, ca. 1627 Self-Portrait at the Easel, 1660 The Jewish Bride, 1665 the group portrait: The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp, 1632 The Night Watch (The Military Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq), 1642 religious and allegorical paintings: The Blinding of Samson, 1636 Lucretia’s Suicide, 1664 and 1666 Return of the Prodigal Son, ca. 1665-9

Painting the artist in his studio: Vermeer Vermeer: The Allegory of Painting (The Artist’s Studio), ca 1665-70 Young Woman with a Water Jug, ca. 1660-67 The Geographer, c. 1669 Girl in a Turban (Girl with a Pearl Earring), 1660-65 The Music Lesson, 1662-5

“nova descriptio”

David Hockney and the optics/camera debate: the camera obscura and the camera lucida This was a part of the Baroque exam I gave last spring and summer. It’s not hard if you practice. For the artists, you should check only one column. For the style characteristics, you should rank them in order of 1: most appropriate or most likely, to 3: least appropriate or likely. I won’t give you an exact duplicate of this but I might make something similar to it on your next exam.

Flemish baroque Dutch baroque Italian baroque

ARTIST

Vermeer

Caravaggio

Rubens

Hals

van Honthorst

Rembrandt

Gentileschi

Leyster

Style

Use of tenebrism: very likely or very unlikely

Subject matter: check the column which is most appropriate

religious history

tavern scenes

the group portrait

mythological allegory

social life of the aristocracy

market scenes

merry company scenes