Throughout the Modern Age, many artistic movements had wide prominence when establishing a style accentuated in several different artistic modalities, such as music, painting, sculpture and architecture. O baroque, or Artbaroque, as it is also known, constituted one of these movements.
The Barrota Art developed between the second half of the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century, but the word “baroque” was coined after that period by art critics who wanted to attribute to it a derogatory character (since baroque meant “deformed”, “crooked” etc.). Despite later criticism, the context in which baroque flourished was characterized by the political and social impacts caused by the Protestant Reformations and, above all, by the Counter-ReformCatholic.
We know that the Protestant Reformations unleashed a wave of civil wars across the continent European, a fact that gave rise to the Absolutist State (which was in charge of putting order in the conflicts). The Catholic Church, in turn, elaborated a set of measures to reaffirm the dogmas of Catholicism and shield its faithful from the Protestant advance. The Council of Trent (1545-1563), for example, was convened for this purpose. One of the measures taken was the investment, by the Church, in artistic production with religious themes (with an emphasis on the Catholic tradition). Therefore, the Catholic Church became the main institution to commission the service of the Baroque artists, mainly Italians, who had inherited elements of the classical school Renaissance.
One of the most famous of these artists was the painter Michelangelo Marise de Caravaggio. However, unlike the search for softness and sober and clear beauty of the paintings of the Rebirth, Caravaggio's canvases impress for their naturalism (strong expressions of horror, fear, amazement), as is the case from the representation of the Gospel passage in which Christ shows his wounds to the apostle Thomas (see image at the top of the text).
In addition to naturalism, it can be seen in the canvases of Caravaggio (as well as the canvases of other great names in baroque painting, such as the Spanish Velásquez and the Dutch Peter Paul Rubens and Rembrandt) another important characteristic of Baroque art: the treatment of colors that emphasized the play between light and shadow. Baroque painters took great care in this technique. In the previous elaboration, still in the draft phase, the trace of the points where the light would penetrate and the space that would be taken by the dark was already applied. In addition to this contrast between light and dark, Baroque painting also emphasized movement, the impression of a scene in action; quite unlike Renaissance painting, which traced a fixed, static plane.
However, the artists of the Baroque period were not restricted to themes of the Catholic tradition. Many of the themes of classical culture (Greek and Roman) were also worked on. Continuing with the example of Caravaggio, this painter has canvases that portray from the myth of Narcissus to the myth from Medusa, passing through representations of pagan gods such as Bacchus (for the Romans) or Dionysus (for the Greeks).
Like Baroque painting, architecture and sculpture, they also sought to develop these elements (both formal and thematic). An example are the Italian sculpture sets GianlourenzoBernini, famous for sculpting the dramatic statue of the Spanish mystic SantaTeresaof Avila in ecstasy. Below, you can see a statue from Bernini's “The Fountain of Triton”, located in Piazza Berberini square, in Rome.
Above, one of the sculptures from the group “A Fonte de Tritão”, by the Italian Gianlourenzo Bernini
Baroque still had prominence in literature, such as the Spanish mystical literature of SantaTeresa and They areJoãogivesCross, and the unmystical poetry of gongora, between others.
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
