Art History
The transition from the Baroque to the Rococo style in sculpture and painting was attended by a concurrent shift in European power relations, as the cultural and political hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church gave way to secular institutions of power. Comparing a work produced during the height of either style demonstrates this shift implicitly, because the Rococo style contains a playfulness in both theme and visual content hinting that its intended audience and patron were far less concerned with grandeur and religious imagery than they might have been a century before, during the Baroque era. Furthermore, comparing and contrasting Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa with Jean-Honore Fragonard's The Swing will make this implicit cultural shift stand out more dramatically, because although both works include some of the same stylistic features that link the Baroque and Rococo, the playful, almost deliberately blasphemous thematic and literal content of Fragonard's Swing stands in stark contrast to the explicitly religious milieu of Bernini's Teresa.
To begin, one may note the similarities between both works that reveal the Rococo style's Baroque ancestry. Although Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa is a marble sculpture completed in 1652 and intended to adorn the tomb of a Cardinal, and Fragonard's Swing is a circa 1767 painting featuring a pair of adulterous lovers hiding their affair from a cuckolded husband, both works focus on the central image of a woman in a kind of ecstasy, and the ecstasy of the woman translates visually into the lines and curves of either work (Coonin 666, Schroder 150). Both works exemplify their respective styles while presenting clear lines of continuity, and by tracing these lines of continuity one is able to appreciate the larger cultural impact of stylistic changes. Different ideological positions are rendered all the more stark when one realizes that they are traced in largely the same movements.
Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa focuses on the image of Teresa as she writhes in pain and ecstasy, based on the story of her supposed...
The rococo ethos symbolized this coming together of worldly knowledge and artistic accomplishment. It was a world of the few and the privileged, but in its promotion of careful inquiry and insightful debate, it was laying the groundwork for another era. The works of the philosophes quickly turned to an out and out criticism of the status quo. Men like Voltaire and woman like Madame de Stael, pursued avenues of
Baroque Period Annotated Bibliography Chaffee, Kevin. "Baroque sights, sounds at the gallery." The Washington Times, The National Gallery of Art set up a spectacular exhibit of the Baroque period that included scale models of baroque-era churches, palaces, military forts and grand public buildings. They had problems getting nearly 300 guests through the enormous exhibit. The huge exhibit took up the length of two entire corridors on the main and ground floors of the
Art of classical antiquity, in the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome, has been much revered, admired, and imitated. In fact, the arts of ancient Greece and Rome can be considered the first self-conscious and cohesive art movements in Europe. Style, form, execution, and media were standardized and honed to the point where aesthetic ideals were created and sustained over time. The art of classical antiquity in Greece and Rome
French Romantic painter, Eugene Delacroix, is well-known from this period. Delacroix often took his subjects from literature but added much more by using color to create an effect of pure energy and emotion that he compared to music. He also showed that paintings can be done about present-day historical events, not just those in the past (Wood, 217). He was at home with styles such as pen, watercolor, pastel, and
The most famous genre painting by David is undoubtedly the Death of Marat (1793) which depicts French radical Jean-Paul Marat slumped over in his bathtub while holding a letter which he obviously was writing just before being killed by Charlotte Corday. The overall narrative of this painting -- the knife/murder weapon lying on the floor, the entry wound just above Marat's heart, his right arm draped over the edge of
It was founded on the knowledge that spurred during the Renaissance and has placed significance on rational thought and cultural emphasis, which was not present before. Furthermore, with regards to the popularity of Baroque during this period, it is important to note that this style was able to combine the principles of science and the philosophies and doctrines of early Christianity, which has been very prominent in architectures built on
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