Baroque Art (Tara Olivero)
Although (or perhaps because) the Baroque artistic movement was born from the European tensions between Catholicism and the Protestant Reformation, Baroque paintings became distinctly less focused on religion when compared to the previous period of Renaissance art, especially in England. European art in the Renaissance was often created for a purpose, to either teach a moral or tell a story, and Catholic countries especially encouraged art which had the sole purpose of stimulating piety. In the Baroque period, the Enlightenment’s spirit of independence began to allow artists the freedom to paint the images that interested them. These were often subjects more associated with ordinary life than any lofty religious ideals; landscapes, still lifes, and portraits became the common subjects for Baroque paintings. In some cases, these subjects were not chosen due to freedom, however; they were also popular in countries like the Netherlands where artists, because of Protestant discouragement of religious imagery, needed to turn to secular subjects in order to have anything to paint at all.
In terms of style, Baroque paintings became significantly more dramatic in their portrayal of subjects’ facial expressions. Chiaroscuro, the interplay between light and shadow, helped to make these paintings more theatrical in nature and convey much more vivid emotion. Renaissance painters were also much more engaged with portraying their images with a balanced, symmetrical composition, but Baroque painters imbued their art with more realism. Subjects were portrayed as they existed in the real world rather than appearing as idealized versions.
The Dutch painter Jacob van Ruisdael was one of the stars of landscape painting, and the Dutch painter Jan Vermeer is most renowned for his paintings of ordinary life. One of the most well-known still life artists was the French painter Jean Chardin. Rembrandt van Rijn, another Dutch painter, is also considered a master of the Baroque style of art. England, unfortunately, didn’t have many prestigious painters during the Baroque era, but the closest would be Peter Lely, a Dutch portrait painter who relocated to England. He became the Principal Painter of the English court in 1661 and essentially had no competition for years; some of his most famous subjects were James II and Charles II.
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