Baroque Art: From Velazquez to Rembrandt
Diego Velázquez (1599-1660). First used aerial perspective, the technique that creates a feeling of depth from the translation of the atmosphere, what is possible with color and light as objects look more pale and hazy as they are at a greater distance. The first stage of his career takes place in Seville. He apprenticed in the studio of Francisco Pacheco, whom he joined when he married his daughter. At this time, his paintings are dark and use dark colors and opaque techniques. He also feels a special interest in representing the qualities of fabrics and objects. He was installed in the court, initiating the first stage in Madrid. He worked primarily as a portrait painter, making several of the Count Duke of Olivares. The portraits are reminiscent of Titian, although they have a lighter background. Now is when Velázquez leaves the dark colors of the Seville stage and clarifies his palette, which tends to pinks and whites. On his first trip to Italy, he undergoes a new palette processing: he leaves dark tones, is interested in studying the landscape and capturing the atmosphere, and becomes more fluid in his brushwork. Back to the Madrid court, he begins his longest and most fruitful stage. He portrays the members of the royal family and is involved in the decoration of the Buen Retiro Palace. Equestrian portraits appear. The most important work of these years is “The Surrender of Breda” or “Spears.” In his second trip to Italy, he takes there ideas for decorating the Alcazar. Velázquez was recognized as a great painter, and even Pope Innocent X commissioned his portrait. He returned to Spain and begins his final period in which he paints any subject, and his masterpieces include “The Spinners” or “Venus in the Mirror.” Shortly later, he made his most famous painting, “Las Meninas.”
NEOCLASSICISM. A mid-eighteenth century began to develop another style, which is closely linked to three phenomena: (1) The triumph of the Enlightenment, a cultural movement that seeks the predominance of reason. In art, the Baroque style was considered linked to the old regime for its decorative excess and a taste for the frivolous. (2) The admiration for classical art, especially after they discovered the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum. (3) This return to classic taste will be reinforced by the triumph of political revolutions in the United States and France, which later spread throughout much of Europe. The revolutionaries adopted classical forms as the official art of the new liberal political regime.
PAINTING IN FLANDERS. RUBENS. Peter Paul Rubens is the artist who best represents the Flemish Baroque school. He had great influence on the painters of his time. He tried every genre: portraits, religious paintings, mythological, historical… 1 – His compositions are characterized by diagonal lines, the strong contrasts of light influenced by Caravaggio, muscular and dramatic figures of Michelangelo-like, expressive attitudes and asymmetric groups. 2 – His work became more balanced and began to use cooler colors, but mostly won plasticity figures, imitating the Hellenistic school. This treatment is given to the mythological themes, in which he represented a limited number of figures in the foreground and gave the scenes a look of relief. 3 – He began to use silvery tones to represent the landscape open and warmer. This brings lyricism to his work. He dedicated himself especially after the landscape and the colors and the lines were lighter, so that his works take on a more impressionistic feel. 4 – The orders were so many that he had to get active and organized a workshop to meet his commitments. He had about 200 apprentices. The design was made by the master, who was making a sketch of the work, and enforcement, in large part, was made by aides and officials almost anonymous, which formed a few years to serve the master. Rubens’ work was considered an honor, given his immense prestige.
DUTCH PAINTING. REMBRANDT. Dutch Baroque painting is the prototype of what has been called or bourgeois Protestant Baroque. The development of Protestantism caused the almost total disappearance of religious images, reducing the religious theme to low representation of biblical scenes.
Holland became a Republic supported and directed by a company-merchant-bourgeois artisan. The clientele of artists is very different from that of other countries and it is not surprising that new themes dominated: realistic small-scale paintings to decorate the homes of the bourgeoisie, or larger for decorating the seats of the guilds. So sober individual portraits, group portraits in a dramatic tone, home interior domestic scenes that show the objects and decoration of the wealthy bourgeois houses, landscapes, scenes of rural life, still lifes which faithfully recreate everyday objects.
With Rembrandt, Dutch painting reaches its maximum height and brings the art of its greats. Unlike Rubens, he is a sedentary man, devoted to his job as a painter. In Amsterdam, he married Saskia, the youngest in a family of local gentry, with whom he has a son. Saskia’s death and the appearance in his life of another woman of humble origin, whom he had hired to care for his child, and that started a relationship without being able to marry, because it would lose the inheritance of his wife, increases the rejection of a puritanical society, rejection causes the ruin of their business. In recent years, the death of his partner and his son increased his loneliness, extreme poverty and disease plaguing a tired man, who only lives for his art. It is in those dark years when his reflection on aging and the fate of the man reaches his greatest depth and his works more personal profiles.
Rembrandt’s artistic legacy is amazed by their abundance, only self-portraits, more than 60. The portrait is his favorite genre, the next beings are constantly represented. However, his most ambitious works are the group portraits (Anatomy Lesson, Night Watch). In the preferred landscape scenes of autumn and winter, which distills the soft sadness in his usual mood when painting. The prints will become one of the greatest artists in this genre.
Rembrandt is one of the greatest masters of color and light. Of loose brush and large and thick impasto.
The color is applied in thick patches, until a crust forms porous.
In its themes are the night and dark, with figures thoughtful and lighting effects. Old age, which allows the theme draw attention to two areas of the human condition, poverty and experience. In the faces of his last self-portraits are expressed, emotions, sadness and misfortune. The looks, is the painting of the eyes, eyes looking earnestly on the audience. Before the portrait of faces, his is a portrait of souls, against the cult of the richness of Rubens, he prefers to dive into the helpless old age.
the helpless old age.