Art, Music, and Intellectual History: Renaissance to Modernity
Catholic Reformation (Counter-Reformation)
The Church undertook this program of internal reform and reorganization. In an effort to win back to Catholicism those who had strayed to Protestantism, the Church launched the evangelical campaign known as the Counter-Reformation. These two interdependent movements introduced a more militant Catholicism.
Jesuits
Also known as the Society of Jesus, it was founded by Ignatius Loyola. His followers called for a militant return to fundamental Catholic dogma and the strict enforcement of traditional Church teachings.
Characteristics of Baroque Art
Visual drama and theatricality were hallmarks of Italian Baroque painting. Realistic detail and illusionist effects lured the eye of the viewer into the action of the scene.
Caravaggio
This proponent of Baroque illusionism and leading Italian painter of the seventeenth century copied nature faithfully and without idealization. He renounced the Grand Style of noble figures and dignified settings.
Tenebrism
Painting in the “shadowy manner,” using violent contrasts of light and dark, as in the work of Caravaggio.
Louis XIV
The most notable of Europe’s absolute monarchs was the king of France. During the nearly three-quarters of a century that Louis occupied the French throne, he dictated the political, economic, and cultural policies of the country. By the end of his reign, he had brought France to a position of political and military leadership in Western Europe and the arts to an unparalleled level of grandeur.
Versailles
In order to exercise greater control over the French nobility, Louis moved his capital from Paris to Versailles, renovating his father’s hunting lodge into a magnificent, unfortified chateau. It was the symbol of Louis’ majesty.
Diego Velasquez
In Spain, this court painter to King Philip IV became the country’s most prestigious artist. He excelled at modeling forms so that they conveyed the powerful presence of real objects in atmospheric space. He painted Las Meninas.
Rococo
The definitive finale of the Baroque era, rich in ornamentation, it provided an atmosphere of delicate refinement among the members of the French nobility who had outlived Louis XIV.
Neoclassicism
The revival of the classical Greco-Roman style or treatment in art, literature, architecture, or music.
Monticello
Thomas Jefferson’s stately, self-designed home in Virginia that became a model of American architecture.
Opera
A dramatic work in one or more acts, set to music for singers and instrumentalists. It emerged out of the Renaissance effort to revive the music-drama of ancient Greek theater.
Bach
Organ master and choir director of the Church of Saint Thomas, he composed music for the Sunday services and for holy days.
Vivaldi
The leading Italian composer of Baroque instrumental music, a Roman Catholic priest and an accomplished violinist, he is best known for his 456 concertos.
Program Music
Instrumental music endowed with specific literary or pictorial content that is indicated by the composer.
Handel
Frequently called England’s greatest composer and the developer of the oratorio. He had a childhood musical talent that he was determined to pursue. He proved himself a successful composer.
Oratorio
(Latin, oratorium, “church chapel”) A musical setting of a religious or epic text, for soloists, chorus, and orchestra. Usually performed without scenery, costumes, or dramatic action.
Enlightenment
A movement in the 18th century that advocated the use of reason in the reappraisal of accepted ideas and social institutions.
Copernicus
This Polish physician and astronomer published the landmark treatise On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres. He discarded the traditional geocentric model of the universe in favor of the heliocentric theory.
Galileo
He advanced Kepler’s model of the universe, imperiling his life by doing so. His inquiries into motion and gravity resulted in his formulation of the law of falling bodies, which proclaims that the Earth’s gravity attracts all objects. His perfection of a telescope turned heliocentric theory into fact.
Newton
The English astronomer and mathematician wrote the monumental treatise Principia Mathematica, linking terrestrial and celestial physics under one set of laws: the laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation. These mathematical equations would become the basis of modern physics.
Diderot
He published and edited the Encyclopédie, which was the largest compendium of contemporary social, philosophic, artistic, scientific, and technological knowledge ever produced in the West.
Mary Wollstonecraft
This self-educated British intellectual applied Enlightenment principles of natural law, liberty, and equality to forge a radical rethinking of the roles and responsibilities of women.
French Revolution
Taking place in 1789, this was the product of two major problems: class inequality and a financial crisis brought on by 500 years of royal extravagance and costly wars. No sooner had the Third Estate declared itself an independent body than the great masses of peasants and laborers rioted throughout France.
Hogarth
An English artist, a contemporary of Swift and Voltaire, he produced a telling visual record of the ills of eighteenth-century British society. He made and sold his prints by subscription, similar to magazines.
String Quartet
A composition for two violins, viola, and cello, with each playing its own part. A group of four such instrumentalists.
Mozart
The foremost genius of eighteenth-century music. A child prodigy, Mozart wrote his first original composition at the age of six and his first symphony at the age of eight. His ability to sight-read, improvise, and transpose music, to identify the pitch of any sound, and to transcribe flawlessly whole compositions that he had heard only once, remains unequaled in the history of music.
Romantic Sublime
Aspects of nature and its mysterious grandeur that inspire feelings of awe and terror.
Industrial Revolution
A series of improvements in industrial technology that transformed the process of manufacturing goods.
Robert Fulton
American inventor who designed the first commercially successful steamboat and the first steam warship.
Frederick Douglass
Born a slave on the east coast of Maryland, this crusader for black freedom taught himself to read and write at an early age. He escaped bondage in Baltimore in 1838 and went to New England, where he joined the Massachusetts Antislavery Society.
John Constable
He painted The Hay Wain. This painter’s landscapes celebrate the physical beauty of the rivers, trees, and cottages of his native Suffolk countryside. He found inspiration in ordinary subjects, as he described them.
Eugene Delacroix
A melancholic and an intellectual, he prized the imagination as paramount in the life of the artist. He was the painter of Liberty Leading the People.
Beethoven
The leading composer of the early nineteenth century and one of the greatest musicians of all time. A skillful pianist, organist, and violinist, he wrote much of his greatest music when he was functionally deaf.
Terms
- Franz Schubert: His art songs aptly reflect the
- Hector Berlioz: French composer and conductor. Wrote the symphony Symphonie
- Frederick Chopin: Polish-born composer who gave his first concert in Warsaw at age seven. He became the acclaimed pianist of the Paris
- The Nutcracker: Tchaikovsky lavishly produced this full-length Russian ballet. It became a landmark in the history of dance.
- Giuseppe Verdi: A nineteenth-century Italian composer, a master of Italian grand opera. Among his best-known operas are Aida, Otello, Rigoletto, and La Traviata.
Photography
The art, process, or job of taking pictures with a camera. Named after the original process that used light to expose an image on special paper.
Courbet
The leading French Realist painter. A farmer’s son, he became a self-taught painter and a staunch defender of the Realist cause. He was the painter of Burial at Ornans.
Monet
Painter of the landmark painting Impression: Sunrise, considered to be the first modern painting.
Van Gogh
This Dutch artist was a passionate idealist whose life was marred by loneliness, poverty, depression, and a hereditary mental illness that ultimately drove him to suicide.
Rodin
He was a master sculptor in the late nineteenth century. He sculpted The Age of Bronze and The Thinker.
Puccini
The foremost “verist” in music was this Italian composer, who wrote La Bohème.
Debussy
French contemporary to Puccini. He was a musical impressionist.