17th century is full of contradictions and struggles transition period, which completed the history of European feudalism and opened up new capitalist relations.
Holland becomes the largest colonial and trading power in Europe. However, by the end of the XVII century. it concedes superiority to England and France. A deep economic and political crisis is engulfing Spain and Italy.
Artistic culture of the 17th century. characterized by the emergence and flourishing of national art schools Italy, Flanders, Spain, France, Holland, reflecting the features of historical development, character public life, local conditions. At the same time, the art of this time is characterized by the general artistic style of the Baroque (Baroque in Italian means strange, pretentious), which replaced the art of the Renaissance.
The Baroque style originated at the end of the 16th century. in Italy and spread to most European countries in architecture, painting, arts and crafts.
The baroque reflected new ideas about the unity, infinity and constant variability of the world, about its dramatic complexity. It is characterized by the opposition of earthly and heavenly, reality and fantasy, spiritual and bodily, refined and coarse, aristocratic and popular. From these oppositions, stormy dynamics, exciting passions, picturesqueness, illusory nature, contrasts of light and shadow, scales, rhythms, materials and textures, monumentality, decorativeness, splendor, splendor are born.
Luxurious palaces, villas, churches of the 17th century. with an abundance of multi-colored architectural and sculptural decorations, with mirrored walls and vaulted ceilings, heavy majestic furniture made of ebony and mahogany, inlaid with silver and bronze, created a certain background for a person, forming a single whole with his appearance, costume, demeanor.
This style most fully expressed the tastes of the aristocracy of that time. He was extremely ceremonial, decorative, prim.
The baroque palace was like Olympus brought down to earth. The interiors were dominated by bright, major colors, gilding. Painted ceilings, bright, shiny floors that reflected crystal chandeliers, walls trimmed with marble or covered with tapestries, a huge amount of stucco decoration - all created an impression of extraordinary splendor.
The heavy-weight furniture was richly decorated. It was made mainly of ebony and decorated with intricate inlays of tortoiseshell plates, and sometimes mother-of-pearl and gold. The impression of grandeur of the interior, brilliance, enchantment was complemented by a huge number of silver items, flickering in the light of candles. Sometimes even furniture was entirely made of silver.
The costume of the era, the baroque was entirely subordinated to the etiquette of the court and was distinguished by pomp, stiffness and a huge amount of jewelry. Lush costumes of this time were in harmony with the bright, colorful interiors of the Baroque.
The Baroque era gives rise to a huge amount of time for entertainment: promenades (walks in the park) and "carousels" (horseback rides, card games, theater, masquerade balls. You can also add the appearance of swings and "fiery fun". In the interiors, instead of icons, appeared portraits and landscapes, and the music turned from the spiritual into a pleasant play of sound.
The Baroque era rejects tradition and authority as superstition and prejudice. Everything that is "clear and distinct" is thought or has a mathematical expression is true. Therefore, the Baroque is still the age of Reason and Enlightenment. It is no coincidence that the word "baroque" is sometimes erected to designate one of the types of inferences in medieval logic - to baroco. In France, in Versailles, the first European park appears, where the idea of the forest is expressed extremely mathematically: linden alleys and canals seem to be drawn along a ruler, and the trees are trimmed in the manner of stereometric figures. For the first time dressed in the uniform of the army of the Baroque era, much attention is paid to the geometric correctness of constructions on the parade ground - "drill".
Today let's deal with the most interesting baroque art style. It was influenced by two important events Middle Ages. Firstly, this is a change in worldview ideas about the universe and man, associated with the epoch-making scientific discoveries of that time. And secondly, with the need for those in power to imitate their own greatness against the backdrop of material impoverishment. And the use of an artistic style that glorifies the power of the nobility and the church was most welcome. But against the background of mercantile tasks, the spirit of freedom, sensuality and self-awareness of a person as a doer and creator broke into the style itself.
- (Italian barocco - bizarre, strange, prone to excesses; port. perola barroca - a pearl with a vice) - a characteristic of European culture of the 17th-18th centuries, the center of which was Italy. The baroque style appeared in XVI-XVII centuries in Italian cities: Rome, Mantua, Venice, Florence. The Baroque era is considered to be the beginning of the triumphal procession " Western civilization". opposed to classicism and rationalism. 
In the 17th century, Italy lost its economic and political power. Foreigners, the Spaniards and the French, begin to manage on its territory. But exhausted Italy has not lost the height of its position - it still remains the cultural center of Europe. The nobility and the church needed everyone to see their strength and viability, but since there was no money for new buildings, they turned to art to create the illusion of power and wealth. This is how the baroque appeared in Italy. 
Baroque is characterized by contrast, tension, dynamism of images, the desire for grandeur and splendor, to combine reality and illusion. During this period, thanks to the discoveries of Copernicus, the idea of the world as a rational and constant unity, as well as of man as a most rational being, changed. In the words of Pascal, a person began to realize himself "something in between everything and nothing", "one who catches only the appearance of phenomena, but is not able to understand either their beginning or their end." 
The Baroque style in painting is characterized by the dynamism of compositions, the “flatness” and pomp of forms, the aristocracy and originality of subjects. The most characteristic features of the Baroque are catchy flamboyance and dynamism. A striking example- creativity and with their riot of feelings and naturalism in the depiction of people and events. 
Caravaggio is considered the most significant master among Italian artists who created at the end of the 16th century. new style in painting. His paintings, painted on religious subjects, resemble realistic scenes of the author's contemporary life, creating a contrast between late antiquity and modern times. The heroes are depicted in twilight, from which the rays of light snatch out the expressive gestures of the characters, contrastingly writing out their specificity. 
In Italian painting of the Baroque era developed different genres, but mostly they were allegories, mythological genre. Pietro da Cortona, Andrea del Pozzo, the Carracci brothers (Agostino and Lodovico) succeeded in this direction. became famous Venetian school, where the genre of veduta, or urban landscape, gained great popularity. The most famous author of such works is the artist. 
Rubens combined in his canvases the natural and the supernatural, reality and fantasy, learning and spirituality. In addition to Rubens, another master of the Flemish Baroque achieved international recognition -. With the work of Rubens, a new style came to Holland, where it was picked up and. In Spain, Diego Velasquez worked in the style of Caravaggio, and in France, Nicolas Poussin, in Russia, Ivan Nikitin and Alexei Antropov. 
Baroque artists discovered new techniques for the spatial interpretation of form in its ever-changing life dynamics, activated life position. The unity of life in the sensual-bodily joy of being, in tragic conflicts forms the basis of beauty in baroque art. The idealization of images is combined with turbulent dynamics, reality with fantasy, and religious affectation with emphasized sensuality. 
Closely associated with the monarchy, the aristocracy and the church, baroque art was intended to glorify and promote their power. At the same time, it reflected new ideas about the unity, infinity and diversity of the world, about its dramatic complexity and eternal variability, interest in the environment, in the human environment, in the natural elements. Man no longer appears as the center of the Universe, but as a multifaceted personality, with a complex world of experiences, involved in the circulation and conflicts of the environment. 
In Russia, the development of the Baroque falls in the first half of the 18th century. The Russian baroque was free from the exaltation and mysticism characteristic of Catholic countries, and possessed a number of national features, such as a sense of pride in the successes of the state and people. In architecture, baroque reached majestic proportions in the city and estate ensembles of St. Petersburg, Peterhof, Tsarskoye Selo. In the visual arts, freed from medieval religious fetters, they turned to secular social themes, to the image of a human figure. Baroque everywhere evolves towards the graceful lightness of the Rococo style, coexists and intertwines with it, and from the 1760s. superseded by classicism. 
Baroque art (Baroque art.), a style of European art and architecture of the 17th and 18th centuries. At different times, different content was put into the term "baroque". At first, he wore an offensive connotation, implying absurdity, absurdity. At present, it is used in art criticism to determine the style that dominated European art between Mannerism and Rococo, that is, from about 1600 to the beginning of the 18th century. From the mannerism of the Baroque, art inherited dynamism and deep emotionality, and from the Renaissance - solidity and splendor: the features of both styles harmoniously merged into one single whole.
In the 17th century Italy - the first link in the art of the Renaissance, lost its economic and political power. Foreigners - the Spaniards and the French - begin to manage in Italy, they dictate the terms of politics, etc. Exhausted Italy has not lost the height of its cultural positions - it remains the cultural center of Europe.
Power in culture manifested itself in adapting to new conditions - the nobility and the church need everyone to see their strength and viability, but since there was no money for the construction of the palazzo, the nobility turned to art to create the illusion of power and wealth. A style that can elevate is becoming popular, and this is how baroque appeared in Italy in the 16th century.
The origin of the word baroque is more controversial than the names of all other styles. There are several versions of the origin.
The Portuguese barroco is an irregularly shaped pearl that does not have an axis of rotation; such pearls were popular in the 17th century.
In Italian baroco, a false syllogism, an Asian form of logic, a sophistry technique based on metaphor. Like pearls of irregular shape, baroque syllogisms, the falsity of which was hidden by their metaphor.
The use of the term by critics and art historians dates back to the 2nd half of XVIII and refers, at first, to figurative art and, consequently, also to literature. At first, the term acquired a negative connotation. Ernst Gombrich wrote: “The word “baroque”, meaning “bizarre”, “absurd”, “strange”, also arose later as a caustic mockery. The word "Baroque" was used to brand masterful deviations from the strict norms of the classics, which for them was tantamount to bad taste. And only in late XIX century there was a re-evaluation of the baroque, thanks to the European cultural context from impressionism to symbolism, which highlights the links with the baroque era.
One controversial theory suggests that all of these European words come from the Latin bis-roca, twisted stone. Another theory is from the Latin verruca, steep high place, a flaw in a gem.
Finally, another theory suggests that this word in all the languages mentioned is parodic from the point of view of linguistics, and its word formation can be explained by its meaning: unusual, unnatural, ambiguous and deceptive.
The ambiguity of the Baroque style is explained by its origin. According to some researchers, it was borrowed from the architecture of the Seljuk Turks.
The most characteristic features of the Baroque - catchy flamboyance and dynamism - corresponded to the self-confidence and aplomb of the newly regained strength of the Roman Catholic Church. Outside of Italy, the Baroque style has its deepest roots in Catholic countries. At the origins of the tradition of Baroque art in painting are two great Italian artists - Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci, who created the most significant works in the last decade of the 16th century - the first decade of the 17th century. Italian painting of the late 16th century is characterized by unnaturalness and stylistic uncertainty. Caravaggio and Carracci, with their art, restored her integrity and expressiveness. In Italian architecture, the most prominent representative of Baroque art was Carlo Maderna (1556-1629), who broke with Mannerism and created his own style. His main creation is the façade of the Roman church of Santa Susanna (1603). The main figure in the development of Baroque sculpture was Lorenzo Bernini, whose first masterpieces executed in the new style date back to around 1620. The quintessence of the Baroque, an impressive fusion of painting, sculpture and architecture, is the Coranaro Chapel in the church of Santa Maria della Victoria (1645-1652). .
Bernini's most prominent Italian contemporaries during this mature Baroque period were the architect Borromini and the painter and architect Pietro da Cortona. Somewhat later, Andrea del Pozzo (1642-1709) worked; the ceiling painted by him in the church of Sant'Ignazio in Rome (the Apotheosis of St. Ignatius of Loyola) is the culmination of the baroque trend towards pompous magnificence. In the 17th century, Rome was the art capital of the world, attracting artists from all over Europe, and Baroque art soon spread beyond the "eternal city". In every country of the Baroque, art was fueled local traditions. In some countries it became more extravagant, as, for example, in Spain and Latin America, where a style of architectural embellishment called churrigueresco developed; in others it was toned down to suit more conservative tastes. In Catholic Flanders, Baroque art flourished in the work of Rubens; it had a less noticeable influence on Protestant Holland. True, the mature works of Rembrandt, extremely lively and dynamic, are clearly marked by the influence of Baroque art. In France it expressed itself most clearly in the service of the monarchy, and not of the church. Louis XIV understood the importance of art as a means of glorifying royalty. His adviser in this area was Charles Lebrun, who directed the painters and decorators who worked at Louis's palace at Versailles. Versailles, with its grandiose combination of opulent architecture, sculpture, painting, decorative and landscape art, was one of the most impressive examples of the fusion of the arts.
Baroque art contributed to the creation of theatrical effects achieved by lighting, false perspective and spectacular stage scenery. However, it did little to meet the restrained British taste. In English architecture, the influence of the Baroque was noticeable only at the beginning of the 18th century in the peculiar work of Vanbrugh and Hawksmore. This style is approached by some of the more late works Wren. The pull of Baroque art for scale is felt in the majestic projects of St. Paul's Cathedral (1675-1710) and the Greenwich Hospital (early 1696). Baroque was replaced by a more calm Palladian. In all art forms, the Baroque merged with the more lightweight Rococo style. This merger was very fruitful in Central Europe, especially in Dresden, Vienna and Prague.
The Baroque era gives rise to a huge amount of entertainment for the sake of entertainment: instead of pilgrimages - the promenade (walks in the park); instead of jousting tournaments - "carousels" (horseback rides) and card games; instead of mysteries, theater and masquerade balls. You can add the appearance of swings and "fiery fun" (fireworks). In the interiors, portraits and landscapes took the place of icons, and music turned from spiritual into a pleasant play of sound.
The Baroque era rejects tradition and authority as superstition and prejudice. Everything that is “clear and distinct” is thought or has a mathematical expression is true, declares the philosopher Descartes. Therefore, the baroque is still the age of Reason and Enlightenment. The first European park appears in Versailles, where the idea of the forest is expressed in the utmost mathematical way: linden alleys and canals seem to be drawn along a ruler, and the trees are trimmed in the manner of stereometric figures. For the first time dressed in the uniform of the army of the Baroque era, much attention is paid to the "drill" - the geometric correctness of constructions on the parade ground.
Baroque man.
Baroque man rejects naturalness, which is identified with savagery, arrogance, tyranny, brutality and ignorance - all that in the era of romanticism will become a virtue. The Baroque woman cherishes the pallor of her skin, she wears an unnatural, frilly hairstyle, a corset and an artificially extended skirt on a whalebone frame. She is in heels.
And the gentleman becomes the ideal of a man in the Baroque era - from the English. gentle: “soft”, “gentle”, “calm”. Initially, he preferred to shave his mustache and beard, wear perfume and wear powdered wigs. Why force, if now they kill by pulling the trigger of a musket. In the Baroque era, naturalness is synonymous with brutality, savagery, vulgarity and extravagance. For the philosopher Hobbes, the state of nature is characterized by anarchy and wars of all against all.
Baroque is characterized by the idea of ennobling nature on the basis of reason. The need is not tolerated, but “it is good to offer in pleasant and courteous words” (Youth, an honest mirror, 1717). According to the philosopher Spinoza, instincts no longer constitute the content of sin, but "the very essence of man." Therefore, the appetite is formalized in exquisite table etiquette (it was in the Baroque era that forks and napkins appeared); interest in the opposite sex - in courteous flirting, quarrels - in a refined duel.
The baroque is characterized by the idea of a sleeping God - deism. God is conceived not as a Savior, but as a Great Architect who created the world just as a watchmaker creates a mechanism. Hence such a characteristic of the Baroque worldview as mechanism. The law of conservation of energy, the absoluteness of space and time are guaranteed by the word of God. However, having created the world, God rested from his labors and does not interfere in the affairs of the Universe in any way. It is useless to pray to such a God - one can only learn from Him. Therefore, the true guardians of the Enlightenment are not prophets and priests, but natural scientists. Isaac Newton discovers the law of universal gravitation and writes the fundamental work The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1689), and Carl Linnaeus systematizes biology in The System of Nature (1735). Academies of Sciences and scientific societies are being established everywhere in European capitals.
Thus, baroque is a style of European art and architecture of the 17th and 18th centuries. Baroque is characterized by contrast, tension, dynamism of images, affectation, the desire for grandeur and splendor, for the combination of reality and illusion, for the fusion of arts; at the same time - a tendency towards autonomy of individual genres.
The ideological foundations of the style were formed as a result of a shock, which for the 16th century was the Reformation and the teachings of Copernicus.
Baroque style in the architecture of Italy in the 17th century. Part 1The monumental architecture of Italy in the 17th century satisfied almost exclusively the needs of the Catholic Church and the highest secular aristocracy. During this period, mainly church buildings, palaces and country villas were built.
Church of St. Priscilla at Taxco de Alarcon - an example of colonial ultra-baroque
Mannerism also made its contribution to Baroque architecture. Despite all the shortcomings and whims, the masters of mannerism picked up the baton of intellectual searches, high erudition, virtuosity, scientificity and passed it on to the architects of the early baroque (Giacomo Della Porta, Domenico Fontana, Carlo Maderna).
Palazzo Carignano (architect Gvarino Guarini)
It was at this time (according to the needs of society) that the types of a majestic city palace, a Baroque monastery, a country villa with a palace and a Baroque garden arose. The facade of the Church of Il Gesu in Rome (architect Giacomo della Porta) became a model for the construction of many churches both in Italy and far beyond its borders (Paris, Grodno, Lvov, etc.)
Stupinigi near Turin
The difficult economic situation in Italy made it impossible to build very large structures. At the same time, the church and the highest aristocracy needed to strengthen their prestige, their influence. Hence - the desire for unusual, extravagant, ceremonial and sharp architectural solutions, the desire for increased decorativeness and sonority of forms.
San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane is an example of Borromini's radical interpretation of style.
The construction of imposing, although not so large structures contributed to the creation of the illusion of the social and political well-being of the state.
Church of the Gesu - "Church of the Holy Name of Jesus" - Cathedral Church of the Jesuit Order in Rome
Nave of the church
Ceiling of the church
Project
Baroque reaches its greatest tension and expression in religious, church buildings; its architectural forms perfectly corresponded to the religious principles and ritual side of militant Catholicism. By building numerous churches, the Catholic Church sought to strengthen and strengthen its prestige and influence in the country.
Facade of the church of St. Susanna, Carlo Maderna
The Baroque style developed in the architecture of that time is characterized, on the one hand, by the desire for monumentality, and, on the other hand, by the predominance of the decorative and pictorial beginning over the tectonic.
Facade of St. Peter's Basilica Facade of Maderna.
Like the works visual arts, Baroque architectural monuments (especially church buildings) were designed to enhance the emotional impact on the viewer. The rational principle, which underlay the art and architecture of the Renaissance, gave way to the irrational principle, static, calm - dynamics, tension.
Santa Maria della Vittoria by Carlo Maderna
The roots of the Baroque go back to the architecture of the Renaissance. The first really large and majestic ensemble was created in the Vatican by Bramante. This is the Belvedere courtyard, 300 meters long, which was built in the same style while maintaining the various functions of the buildings (Belvedere with antique sculptures, a regular garden, the Vatican Library and a theater under open sky.) But all forms of architecture are quite calm, balanced. This is not baroque.
Engraved by Piranesi. Palazzo Barberini
Baroque is a style of contrasts and uneven distribution of compositional elements. Of particular importance in it are large and juicy curvilinear, arched forms. Baroque structures are characterized by frontality, façade construction. Buildings are perceived in many cases from one side - from the side of the main facade, often obscuring the volume of the structure.
Villa Aldobrandini a Frascati Teatro delle Acque
Baroque pays great attention to architectural ensembles - urban and park, but the ensembles of this time are based on other principles than the ensembles of the Renaissance. Baroque ensembles in Italy are built on decorative principles. They are characterized by isolation, comparative independence from common system urban area plans. An example is the largest ensemble of Rome - Square in front of St. Peter.
St. Peter's Square
The colonnades and decorative walls that closed the space in front of the entrance to the cathedral covered the disorderly, random buildings behind them.
Project Sangallo
St. Peter's Basilica, view from Castel Sant'Angelo showing the dome rising behind the Maderna façade.
There is no connection between the square and the complex network of lanes and random houses adjoining it. Separate buildings that are part of the Baroque ensembles, as it were, lose their independence, completely submitting to the general compositional design.
Baroque posed the problem of art synthesis in a new way.
Sculpture and painting, which played a very important role in the buildings of that time, intertwined with each other and often obscured or illusoryly deformed architectural forms, contributed to the creation of that impression of richness, splendor and splendor that Baroque monuments invariably produce.
Of great importance for the formation of a new style was the work of Michelangelo. In his works, he developed a number of forms and techniques that were later used in Baroque architecture.
The architect Vignola can also be described as one of the immediate forerunners of the Baroque; in his works one can note a number of early signs of this style.
Santa Maria degli Angeli (Assisi) Mignola
A new style- the Baroque style in Italian architecture - replaces the Renaissance in the 80s of the 16th century and develops throughout the 17th and the first half of the 18th century.
Fountains of Mignola
Conventionally, within the architecture of this time, three stages can be distinguished: early baroque - from the 1580s to the end of the 1620s, high, or mature, baroque - until the end of the 17th century and later - the first half of the 18th century.
Church Santa Maria ai Monti in Rome.D.Porta
The architects Giacomo della Porta and Domenico Fontana are considered to be the first Baroque masters. They belonged to the next generation in relation to Vignola, Alessi, Ammanati, Vasari and ended their activity at the beginning of the 17th century. At the same time, as noted earlier, the traditions of the late Renaissance continued to live in the work of these masters.
Vignola, the first courtyard of the Villa Giulia in Rome
Bramante's idea of creating an ensemble of several buildings was picked up by Vignola (1507-1573). He did not have such opportunities as Bramante in the use of many building materials and areas. Therefore, his ensemble of Villa Giulia for Pope Julius III (Pontiff in 1550-1555) was small. The villa already has all the features of the Baroque - a single ensemble with pavilions, a garden, a fountain, steps of various types, connecting terraces of different levels. The villa is still strongly separated from the environment, closed in on itself, like most Renaissance buildings, and its architecture is also balanced, like most Renaissance buildings.
Sant "Atanasio, afternoon sun on via del Babuino.. D. Porta
Giacomo della Porta. Giacomo della Porta (1541-1608) was a student of Vignola. Its early construction - the church of Site Katarina in Funari (1564) - in its style belongs to the Renaissance.
Sculptures in the Cappella di San Giovanni (San Lorenzo, Genoa).D.Porta
Sculptures in the Cappella di San Giovanni (San Lorenzo, Genoa) Giacomo della Porta
"Christ delivering the keys of Heaven to St. Peter" (1594) by the architect and sculptor Giacomo della Porta; St. Peter chapel in the church of Santa Pudenziana, Rome, Italy
However Facade of the Church of the Gesù, which this architect completed after the death of Vignola (since 1573), is much more baroque than the original project of his teacher. The facade of this church with a characteristic division into two tiers and side volutes, the plan of construction was a model for a number of Catholic churches in Italy and other countries.
Giacomo della Porta completed the construction after the death of Michelangelo the great dome of the Cathedral of St. Peter. This master was also the author of the famous Villa Aldobrandini (see above) in Frascati near Rome (1598-1603).
As usual, the main building of the villa is located on the side of the mountain; a double-sided rounding ramp leads to the main entrance. On the opposite side of the building adjoins the garden. At the foot of the mountain there is a semicircular grotto with arches, above it there is a water cascade framed by stairs. The building itself is of a very simple prismatic form, completed by a huge torn pediment.
In the composition of the villa, in the park structures that make it up and in the nature of the plastic details, the desire for deliberate beauty, the refinement of architecture, so characteristic of the Baroque in Italy, is clearly manifested.
Fountains by D. Port
At the time under consideration, the system of the Italian park is finally taking shape. It is characterized by the presence of a single axis of the park, located on the slope of the mountain with numerous slopes and terraces. The main building is located on the same axis. A typical example of such a complex is Villa Aldobrandini.
Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati
Roma, palazzo Maffei Marescotti oggi del Vicariato, cortile
Domenico Fontana. Another major architect of the early Baroque was Domenico Fontana (1543-1607), who belonged to the Roman successors of Michelangelo and Vignola.
Lateran Palace and Basilica
His most important work is the Lateran Palace in Rome. The palace, in the form that Fontana gave it, is an almost regular square with a square courtyard enclosed inside. The facade solution of the palace is completely based on the architecture of the Palazzo Farnese by Antonio Sangallo the Younger. In general, the palace construction of Italy in the 17th century is based on further development of that compositional type of palace-palazzo, which was developed by the architecture of the Renaissance.
Together with his brother Giovanni Fontana, Domenico built in Rome in 1585-1590 the Aqua Paolo fountain (without the attic, later made by Carlo Maderna). Its architecture is based on the reworking of antique triumphal arches.
Carlo Maderna. The student and nephew of Domenico Fontana - Carlo Maderna (1556-1629) finally strengthened the new style. His work is transitional to the period of developed baroque.
Ceiling of the Sale Sistine (detail) - Hall of Papal Archives - Domenico Fontana.
Ceiling designed by Carlo Maderno (1556 - 1629) who created the facade of St. Peter's Basilica. This church is off the beaten track but fabulous inside.
Madern's early work - Facade of the early Christian Basilica of Susanna in Rome(c. 1601). Created on the basis of the scheme of the facade of the Church of the Gesù, the facade of the Church of Susanna is clearly divided into orders, decorated with statues in niches and numerous ornamental decorations.
Roma - Cupola di Dan "Andrea della Valle
In 1604, Maderna was appointed chief architect of the Cathedral of St. Peter.
By order of Pope Paul V, Maderna drew up a project for expanding the cathedral by adding a front, entrance part. The clergy insisted on lengthening the Greek cross to the Latin form, which was in line with the tradition of church architecture. In addition, the dimensions of the Michelangelo Cathedral did not fully cover the place where the ancient basilica was located, which was unacceptable from the point of view of the ministers of the church.
As a result, during the construction of a new front facade of the cathedral
Roma, palazzo del Monte di Pietà: lapide dedicatoria con stemmi dei papi che lo stabilirono (Clemente VIII Aldobrandini (a sinistra) e Paolo III Farnese (a destra)) e Cristo in Pietà (1604)
Maderna completely changed the original plan of Michelangelo. The latter conceived the cathedral as standing in the center of a large square, which would allow one to walk around the building and see it from all sides. Maderna, with his extension, closed the sides of the cathedral from the viewer: the width of the facade exceeds the width of the longitudinal part of the temple. The lengthening of the building led to the fact that the dome of the Cathedral of St. Petra is perceived completely only at a very great distance, as he approaches the building, he gradually disappears behind the facade wall.
Roma, fontana nel cortile del Monte di Pietà
Galeerenbrunnen am Piazzale della Galera in der Vatikanstadt
Le Palais Barberini
To be continued...
Baroque in culture XVII century
The difference in understanding of the place, role and capabilities of a person distinguishes, first of all, art XVII century from the Renaissance. This different attitude towards man is expressed with extraordinary clarity and precision by the great French thinker Pascal: "Man is just a reed, the weakest of the creatures of nature, but he is a thinking reed." This "thinking reed" was created in the 17th century. the most powerful absolutist states in Europe, formed the worldview of the bourgeois, who was to become one of the main customers and connoisseurs of art in subsequent times. The complexity and inconsistency of the era of intensive formation of absolutist nation-states in Europe determined the nature of the new culture, which is usually associated in history with the Baroque style, but which is not limited to this style.
So, at the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries. in European art, a new style of artistic development of reality appears - baroque. Initially, the word "baroque" (port. "barocco" - an irregularly shaped pearl) denoted an architectural style that arose in Rome at the beginning of the 17th century. and spread to the countries of the Old and New Worlds. Later, this term began to be applied to other arts: sculpture, painting, music and poetry of the 17th-18th centuries. But, despite the disagreements of a temporary and regional nature, in the art history literature, the Baroque style is usually defined as the beginning of the 16th - the middle of the 17th century. From mannerism through baroque to rococo or rocaille, the style of the French king Louis XV - this is the path of baroque art and a special form of worldview associated with it.
The Baroque style was predominantly spread in Catholic countries affected by the processes of the Counter-Reformation. The Protestant church that arose in the Reformation was very undemanding to the external spectacular side of the cult. Spectacle was turned into the main lure of Catholicism, religious piety itself was sacrificed to it. As well as possible, the goals of returning the flock to the bosom of the Catholic Church were answered by the Baroque style with its gracefulness, sometimes exaggerated expressiveness, pathos, attention to the sensual, bodily beginning, which comes through very clearly even when depicting miracles, visions, religious ecstasies.
The essence of the Baroque is wider than the tastes of the Catholic Church and the feudal aristocracy, which sought to use the grandiose and blinding effects inherent in the Baroque to glorify the power, splendor and splendor of the state and the habitats of persons close to the throne. The Baroque style expresses with particular poignancy the crisis of humanism, a sense of the disharmony of life, aimless impulses towards the unknown. In fact, he discovers the world in the state of becoming, and the world of the bourgeoisie was then becoming. And in this open world, the bourgeois are looking for stability and order. For him, luxury and wealth are synonymous with the stability of his place in the world.
Reflecting the complex atmosphere of the time, baroque united seemingly incompatible elements. Features of mysticism, fantasy, irrationality, heightened expression surprisingly coexist in it with sobriety and earthiness, with truly burgher efficiency. For all its inconsistency, baroque at the same time has a well-expressed system of visual means, certain specific features.
Baroque is characterized by pictorial illusoryness, the desire to deceive the eye, to get out of the depicted space into the real space. The Baroque gravitates towards the ensemble, towards the organization of space: city squares, palaces, staircases, park terraces, parterres, pools, bosquets; urban and suburban residences are built on the principle of synthesis of architecture and sculpture, subordination to the general decorative design. The artistic culture of the Baroque allowed symbolism and mysticism, the fantastic and the grotesque, the ugly along with the beautiful into the sphere of aesthetic. The new style was an ideological and aesthetic search for a holistic and harmonious worldview, lost due to the crisis of the Renaissance and the Counter-Reformation. The Baroque artist sought to influence the feelings and imagination of the viewer, and not only through lines and colors to convey a visual image.
The theorists of baroque art focused not on clarity and rationality, but on the ability of art to amaze, to unite the incompatible thanks to wit. In search of a new pictorialism, poetry is filled with neologism, the architectural space merges with the picturesque, sculpture approaches painting, and poetry approaches music, giving rise to such a genre as opera. E. Tesauro, the leading theorist of the Italian Baroque, believed that it is not enough for an artist to imitate nature, but relying on wit, insight, conjecture, one can create a kind of super-reality, create “existing” from the “immaterial”.
Baroque was an aesthetic reaction of European culture to the changes that took place at the turn of the 16th-17th centuries. in ideas about nature, the structure of the Universe, about time and space, about the essence of man and his relationship with God. Discoveries in the natural sciences have shown that knowledge is infinite. Man no longer acts as an absolute measure of all things, and in order to know his fate, artists and writers turn to the search for objective contradictions and patterns that rule the world. It is from here that such ideological features of the Baroque as the assimilation of life to a theater with the awareness of the inexorably current time ending in death, pessimism and disappointment in the world around us, and a sense of its illusory nature, come from. Theatricality is a special feature of the Baroque. Theater is a metaphor for life. Above the entrance to the city theater of Amsterdam, opened in 1683, the words of the Dutch poet Vondel were inscribed: “Our world is a stage, everyone here has their own role and everyone is rewarded according to their deserts.”
Architecture, inscribed in the landscape, created the image of a sacred landscape, everywhere reminding a person of true faith. The obviously theatrical architecture of Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini also serves as a frame for religious scenes depicted by means of painting and sculpture, in which illusionistic effects occupy a special place. Francesco Borromini saturates the architectural space with undulating movement.
The emergence of Baroque should be associated with the last third of the 16th century, the period of implementation of the decisions of the Council of Trent, which divided Europe into the Catholic world and the Protestant world. It is no coincidence that Baroque art is also called the “art of the Counter-Reformation” or the “Jesuit style”. Baroque art was a religiously given system, it was supposed to instruct the post-Renaissance person in the faith. The decision of the Council of Trent stated: "Bishops should take into account that the depiction of the sacraments leading to salvation, by means of painting and other arts, contributes to the enlightenment of the people and teaches them to remember and constantly reflect on faith." The Council of Triden strengthened the organizational, dogmatic and moral foundations Roman Catholic Church, condemned pagan images, approved the Eucharist, the veneration of the Holy Virgin and the Pope, the veneration of saints, and established canons according to which saints had to be depicted either at the moment of martyrdom or in a state of religious ecstasy. Later, these decrees were supplemented by regulation in the field of iconography: for each saint, the degree of nakedness of the body, age and pose in which he was to be depicted were established.
The place of development of the Baroque is, first of all, those countries where the feudal forces and the Catholic Church triumphed. This is first Italy, where the Baroque found its brightest development in architecture, then Spain, Portugal, Flanders, which remained under the rule of Spain. A little later - Germany, Austria, England, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, New World. In the XVIII century. Baroque found a unique and brilliant development in Russia.
Baroque masters break with many artistic traditions of the Renaissance, with its harmonious, balanced volumes. Baroque architects include not only individual buildings and squares, but also streets in an integral architectural ensemble. The beginning and end of the streets are certainly marked by some architectural or sculptural accents. For the first time in the history of urban planning, Domenico Fontana uses a three-beam system of streets radiating from Piazza del Popolo, which ensures the connection of the main entrance to the city with the main ensembles of Rome. The statue is replaced by an obelisk with its dynamic purposefulness upwards, and even more often - a fountain richly decorated with sculpture. The obelisks and fountains placed at the vanishing points of the ray avenues and at their ends create an almost theatrical effect of a perspective receding into the distance. The Fontana principle was of great importance for all subsequent urban planning.
In the early Baroque era, new types of palaces, villas, and churches were not so much created as the decorative element was strengthened: the interior of many Renaissance palazzos turned into a suite of lush chambers, the decoration of portals became more complicated, Baroque masters began to pay much attention to the courtyard, the palace garden. The architecture of villas with their rich garden and park ensemble reached a special scale. Here, the same principles of axial construction were developed as in urban planning: the central access road, the front hall of the villa and the main alley of the park on the other side of the facade run along the same axis. Grottoes, balustrades, sculptures, fountains richly decorate the park, and the decorative effect is further enhanced by the location of the entire ensemble in terraces on a steep terrain.
Passion for ornamentation and decorativeness was fully manifested in the interiors of Catholic churches. Wood, gypsum, metal, stone, majolica tiles were used here. The decor of various gilded altarpieces often moved onto the walls and ceilings of the transept, nave and side chapels, creating a bright, colorful and full of movement space. The rhythm of the interior corresponded appearance buildings decorated with volumetric carvings, sculptures, niches, pilasters with volutes.
Polygons, ovals, intersecting ovals are widely used in the plans of buildings, and dynamic upward aspiration is given to the facades of churches. The architectural principles of the Borromini school spread not only in Italy, but also in Austria, Germany, Spain, Portugal and the New World. Nevertheless, the dynamism of architectural forms is gradually giving way to a more static, classical concept of space towards mid-eighteenth V.
The illusory space in a church or palazzo as a continuation of the real space, with its "output" into the infinity of the celestial spheres filled with angels, saints and allegorical figures, was created by frescoes and plafonds by a number of artists. Illusionist artists combined architecture, sculpture and painting into a single theatrical and spectacular ensemble, taking the viewer into a world of fantasy, symbols and allegories, both impressing and overwhelming with visual effects. The line between art and reality was blurred. The colorful baroque interior in churches and palaces with sophisticated and inventive decoration of rooms, objects, furniture with colored marble, gilded bronze and wood carvings, tapestries and mirrors immersed a person in a theatrical object world.
During the mature baroque period, from the second third of the 17th century, the architectural decor becomes more magnificent. Decorated not only main facade but also the walls from the side of the garden; from the main vestibule you can go directly to the garden, which is a magnificent park ensemble; from the side of the main facade, the side wings of the building extend and form a court of honor. In the same period, plastic expressiveness and dynamism are enhanced. Numerous openings and ruptures of rods, cornices, pediments in sharp light and shade contrast create an extraordinary painting of the facade. Straight planes are replaced by concave ones, the alternation of convex and concave planes also enhances the plastic effect. The interior of the Baroque church, as a place for a magnificent theatrical ceremony of the Catholic service, is a synthesis of all types of fine art. The use of different materials, painting with its illusionistic effects - all this, together with the capriciousness of volumes, created a sense of the unreal, expanding the space of the temple to infinity.
Sculpture is closely associated with architecture. It decorates the facades and interiors of churches, villas, urban palazzos, gardens and parks, altars, gravestones, fountains. In the Baroque it is sometimes impossible to separate the work of the architect and the sculptor. The artist who combined the talent of both was Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini. As the court architect and sculptor of the popes, Bernini carried out commissions and headed all major architectural, sculptural and decorative works which were carried out to decorate the capital. To a greater extent, thanks to the churches built according to his project, the Catholic capital acquired a baroque character. In the Vatican Palace, Bernini designed the royal staircase that connected the papal palace with the cathedral. He owns the canopy in the Cathedral of St. Peter, as well as many statues, reliefs and tombstones of the cathedral. The main creation of Bernini is the grandiose colonnade of the Cathedral of St. Petra and decoration gigantic square at this cathedral. The depth of the area is 280 m; in the center of it stands an obelisk; the fountains on the sides emphasize the transverse axis, and the square itself is formed by a powerful colonnade of four rows of columns of the Tuscan order, 19 m high, constituting a strict, open circle, “like open arms,” as Bernini himself said.
In the painting of Italy at the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries. there are two main artistic directions: one is associated with the work of the Carracci brothers and received the name "Bologna academicism", the other - with the art of one of the most major artists Italy 17th century Caravaggio.
Annibale and Agostino Carracci and their cousin Lodovico in 1585 in Bologna founded the "Academy of those directed to the true path", in which artists were trained according to a specific program. Hence the name - "Bologna academism".
The principles of the Bologna Academy, which was the prototype of all European academies of the future, can be traced in the work of the most talented of the brothers - Annibale Carracci. Carracci carefully studied and studied nature. He believed that nature is imperfect and needs to be transformed, ennobled in order for it to become a worthy subject of depiction in accordance with classical norms. Hence the inevitable abstraction, rhetoric of Carracci's images, pathos instead of genuine heroism and beauty. The art of Carracci turned out to be very timely, corresponding to the spirit of the official ideology, and was quickly recognized and spread. The Carracci brothers are masters of monumental and decorative painting. Their most famous work - the painting of the gallery of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome on the subjects of Ovid's "Metamorphoses" (1597-1604) - is typical of Baroque painting. Annibale Carracci was also the creator of the so-called heroic landscape, i.e. an idealized, invented landscape, because nature, like man (according to the Bolognese), is imperfect, rude and requires refinement in order to be represented in art. This is a landscape deployed with the help of curtains in depth, with balanced masses of clumps of trees and an almost obligatory ruin, with small figures of people serving only as staffing to emphasize the greatness of nature. The color of the Bolognese is just as conditional: dark shadows, local colors clearly arranged according to the scheme, light sliding through the volumes. Carracci's ideas were developed by a number of his students (Guido Reni, Domenichino and others), in whose work the principles of academicism were almost canonized and spread throughout Europe.
Michelangelo Merisi, nicknamed Caravaggio, is an artist who gave the name to a powerful realistic trend in art (“caravagism”), which gained followers throughout Western Europe.
Baroque realism, sanctioned by the decisions of the Council of Trent, found its most complete expression in the artistic style Michelangelo Caravaggio(1573-1610), in whose painting, close-up and through contrasting light and shade plasticity, religious and mythological characters acquire features real person. Caravagism, which spread in European art, had a significant impact on the artistic style of Rubens, Velasquez, Frans Hals, Rembrandt and Poussin. Naturalism and everyday life of religious themes became a step in the further desacralization of mythological images, their modernization and democratization. Caravaggism gives rise to the genre of "bodegones" (scenes of everyday life of the lower classes), which spread in various variations in Europe from early bourgeois Holland to feudal-aristocratic Spain.
From the 1920s to the 1930s, the formation of the Baroque style began in Italy, which was based on the academic system of the Bolognese. Idealization and pathos were especially close to the official circles of Italian society - the main customer of works of art. But this style also took something from Caravaggio: the materiality of form, energy and drama, innovations in the understanding of light and shade modeling. As a result of the fusion of two different artistic systems, the art of the Italian Baroque was born: the monumental and decorative painting of Guercino with his realistic types and caravaggist chiaroscuro, Pietro di Cortona, Luca Giordano, the easel painting of the closest Caravaggio Bernardo Strozzi, the excellent colorist Domenico Feti, who was strongly influenced by Rubens (as, indeed, Strozzi); a little later, in the middle of the century, brilliant in their coloristic merits, darkly romantic compositions by Salvator Rosa appeared.
In the last third of the XVII century. certain changes are outlined in the art of the Italian Baroque: the decorative effect is intensified, the angles of the figures are becoming more complicated, as if “movements are speeding up”. Architecture and sculpture exist in synthesis with works created by the technique of pictorial illusionism. Perspective illusionism destroys the wall, which has always been against the rules of classical art. In compositions, both monumental and decorative, and easel, coldness, rhetoric, and false pathos more and more often win. However best artists nevertheless, they were able to overcome the pernicious features of the late baroque. Such are the romantic landscapes of Alessandro Magnasco, the monumental (plafonds, altarpieces) and easel (portraits) painting by Giuseppe Crespi – artists standing at the turn of the new century.
Spanish architecture in the 17th century primordially national features intertwined with elements of Moorish architecture and with traditions folk craft. If built in the second half of the XVI century. Escorial - a palace, a semi-fortress - a semi-monastery, a ponderous monument of Spanish absolutism, still faithful to the traditions of the Italian Renaissance, then the works of the 17th century. already full of the spirit of the baroque era.
The frank everydayization of aesthetic interests, reflected in the Dutch pictorial style, at first favorably distinguished the "Dutch baroque" from the Flemish with its pomp, pomposity, hypertrophied human forms, religious ideologization, whimsically combined with frank eroticism. By the second half of the XVII century. realism in Holland is losing its picturesqueness and naive rationalism: the baroque riot of forms, color, exotic aspects of life penetrate the still life, and the wealthy commercial and financial oligarchy of the Republic of the United Provinces prefers idyllic Italian landscapes with nymphs and antique ruins.
With Italian and Spanish Baroque Dutch painting brings together not only the perception of reality through the biblical myth, the compositional and coloristic techniques of caravaggism, but also the desire for illusionism. The semblance of reality was not created under the dome catholic cathedral, but on a small canvas with an illusory perspective and the visibility of plastically tangible objects. It is no coincidence that the poet Jan Vondel wrote: "He who deceives with the help of colors, he deceives honestly." Dutch realistic art not only opened up new ways in mastering the image of the visible world of things and nature, but for the first time presented in European artistic culture the fixation of a numerous series of “small ideas” about the world of a “private” person. The surrounding world becomes multidimensional, which Leibniz also noted: “Just as the same city, viewed from different sides, seems different every time, so the whole world gives the impression of many worlds, although in reality there are only different points of view, different perspectives one world."
Plots from the Holy Scriptures, ancient mythological scenes, portraits of eminent customers, hunting scenes, huge still lifes are the main genres of Flanders art of the 17th century. It mixed features of both Spanish and Italian Renaissance with proper Dutch traditions. And as a result, the Flemish Baroque art developed, nationally cheerful, emotionally upbeat, materially sensual, magnificent in its abundant forms. The Flemish Baroque showed little evidence of itself in architecture, but brightly and expressively - in decorative arts(in woodcarving, metal chasing), the art of engraving, but especially in painting.
central figure Flemish art XVII V. was Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640). The versatility of Rubens' talent, his amazing creative productivity make him related to the masters of the Renaissance.
The art of Rubens is a typical expression of the Baroque style, which acquires its own characteristics in his works. national characteristics. A huge life-affirming beginning, the predominance of feelings over rationality are characteristic of even the most dramatic works Rubens. They completely lack mysticism, exaltation inherent in German and even Italian baroque. Physical strength, passion, sometimes even unbridledness, intoxication with nature come to replace the spiritualistic, veiled erotica of Bernini's Teresa. Rubens glorifies the national type of beauty. The Virgin Mary, like Magdalene, appears as a fair-haired, blue-eyed Brabant with magnificent forms. Christ even on the cross looks like an athlete. Sebastian remains full of strength under a hail of arrows.
Baroque art had to convince. Hence the mystical spaces of architectural forms and the illusionism of the endless space of murals and plafonds, selfless attempts to achieve supernatural beauty, the desire for grace, dynamism, decorative elegance and tension of plastic and pictorial forms.
Baroque art overcomes the ordinary and everyday life with the expectation of a miracle and transforms the objective world, giving it unusual luxury and splendor. Theatricalization captured a person not only in art, but also in his living space, accompanied by a holistic and dynamic reorganization of urban and landscape gardening space. Spiritual exaltation, expressed in painting, sculpture and architecture, gave rise to drama, tension, mannerist gigantism of artistic forms.
A man of the Baroque era, who has known wealth and poverty, fame and dishonor, all sorts of ups and downs under the blows of fate, searches in vain for the lost harmony of the Renaissance time. In the artistic culture of the Baroque, "an attempt is made to reconstruct the medieval Christian unity", to combine impersonalism and subjectivism and ... to promote the individual to a superpersonal role."
Literature
1. History of art. Western European Art: Textbook / T.V. Ilyin. - 3rd ed., revised. and additional - M .: Higher. school, 2002. - 368 p.: ill.
2. Culturology: Textbook for higher students educational institutions/ Ed. A.I. Shapovalov. – M.: Humanit. ed. center VLADOS, 2003. - 320 p.: ill.
3. Culturology: Textbook for students of higher educational institutions. - Rostov n / D: Phoenix, 2003. - 576 p. (series " Higher education»)
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