Monday Morning Museum: Baroque Art

Baroque Art – Europe in the Seventeenth Century

The Baroque (US /bəˈroʊk/ or UK /bəˈrɒk/) is a period of artistic style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, architecture, literature, dance and music. The style began around 1600 in Rome, Italy and spread to most of Europe. – Wikipedia.org

In addition to Gianlorenzo Bernini (see art example below), other artists of the Baroque are Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt Van Rijn, Johannes Vermeer and Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez.

The Chair of Saint Peter, circa 1647-1653, by Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680)

Symbolically, the chair Bernini designed had no earthly counterpart in actual contemporary furnishings: it is formed entirely of scrolling members, enclosing a coved panel where the upholstery pattern is rendered as a low relief of Christ giving the keys to Peter. Large angelic figures flank an openwork panel beneath a highly realistic bronze seat cushion, vividly empty: the relic is encased within.[2] The cathedra is lofted on splayed scrolling bars that appear to be effortlessly supported by four over-lifesize bronze Doctors of the Church. The cathedra appears to hover over the altar in the basilica's apse, lit by a central tinted window through which light streams, illuminating the gilded glory of sunrays and sculpted clouds that surrounds the window. – Wikipedia.org

Last Monday’s Art – The Barbizon School
Next Monday’s Art – Byzantine Art

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Monday Morning Museum: Peter Paul Rubens

Self-Portrait, 1623 by Peter Paul Rubens

Peter Paul Rubens – Friday 28 June 1577 Siegen, Germany to Saturday 30 May 1640 Antwerp, Belgium

Flemish Baroque Era Painter

Rubens, His Wife Helena Fourment (1614-1673), and One of Their Children, Mid-1630s

"This magnificent portrait of Rubens, his second wife, Helena Fourment, and one of their five children has usually been dated on stylistic grounds to the late 1630s. The child's blue sash, heavy shoes, and plain collar resemble adult male attire and suggest that he is either Frans Rubens, born in 1633, or, more likely, Peter Paul, born March 1, 1637.

Rubens married Helena Fourment on December 6, 1630, when he was fifty-three and she was sixteen. Helena became the model and the inspiration for many paintings by Rubens dating from the 1630s, particularly those dealing with themes of ideal beauty or love. The present composition was considerably revised during execution to shift the emphasis from Rubens, as the dominant half of a courtly couple, to Helena, as ideal wife and mother. The parrot, long a symbol of the Virgin Mary, suggests ideal motherhood, while the fountain, caryatid, and garden setting imply fertility and recall Rubens's own garden in Antwerp, where he frequently escorted Helena." – Metropolitan Museum of Art

Last Monday’s Artist – Jean-Antoine Houdon
Next Monday’s Artist – Filippo Lippi

“Monday Morning Museum” logo created by Adrean Darce Brent