Baroque Painting: Characteristics and Italian Masters

Posted on Jan 31, 2025 in Arts and Humanities

General Characteristics of Baroque Painting

  • Baroque paintings, released from the geometry of Renaissance paintings, are characterized by a radial composition in which characters and objects seem to shoot out from the center point to the diagonals, crossing indefinitely in different planes, creating the feeling that the characters will escape the frame.
  • The shapes are voluptuous, exaggerated figures with expressive charge, and morbidly wrapped in cloth, hugging each other in pathetic and dramatic attitudes, sometimes even impossible.
  • It seeks to represent reality through a heightened naturalism, even resorting to the ugly or old.
  • Color becomes the main protagonist of the painting, finally leaving the drawing in the background. The contours disappear quickly into brush strokes.
  • Hegemony of light in the compositions, creating space through the end of chiaroscuro contrast, the dark.
  • The domain of the third dimension, volume, and depth is absolute.
  • During the Baroque, the protagonist is oil paint on canvas.
  • But it was of paramount importance the development of decorative fresco painting, which covered monumental and grandiose architecture, especially the vaults.
  • Favorite topics are found in the Bible or Greco-Roman mythology. It is also the heyday of the portrait. Other topics are also carried out, such as the landscape as a genre now completely independent, marinas, still lifes, and still lifes.
  • It is the time of Rubens’ hedonism, with his allegorical pictures of chubby, nude women fighting between robust and expressive, fierce warriors; the sublime portraits of Velázquez; the absolute realism and naturalism of Caravaggio and Murillo; the drama of Rembrandt, etc.
  • The Baroque, in short, had masters that, although working under different formulas and the search for different purposes, agreed on one point: free of symmetry and geometric compositions above, for the expression and movement.

Baroque Painting in Italy

Caravaggio:

Tenebrism
  • The dark, consisting of exaggerated light contrasts through the use of chiaroscuro, using all the expressive possibilities of light, was initiated by him.
  • It is also characterized by its extreme naturalism, reflecting even the most unpleasant aspects of reality in his work.
  • Also, include your tunes with glimpses and violent low views.
  • His main works are:
    • Bacchus: Work that shows a clear palette, even the shadowy far characterized it.
    • The Calling of St. Matthew: The work of the painter is more clearly tenebrist; the light crosses a diagonal, theatrically lit, to the figures. It can also be seen in the rest of their compositional characteristics.
    • Conversion of St. Paul: In this case, besides the naturalism and tenebrism characteristic of Caravaggio, it highlights accentuated foreshortening and figures beyond the scope of the composition.
    • Crucifixion of Saint Peter: As above, painted for the Cerasi chapel of Santa Maria del Popolo, they are works dominated by an intense drama, well-studied from a compositional point of view.
    • David and Goliath: Another example of realism and darkness as signatures of his work.
    • The Burial of the Virgin: Subject treated with a strong religious naturalism, especially the completely realistic representation of the Virgin dead.