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Baroque style in art. Characteristic works of the Baroque Baroque as an artistic style

Baroque style in art. Characteristic works of the Baroque Baroque as an artistic style

17.07.2019

The main themes of baroque art. FEATURES OF THE EPOCH OF “LUXURY AND CONFUSION” The Baroque conveyed the conflict of the era, the spirit of contradictions, a person in the art of the Baroque is a person with a complex world of experiences and feelings, in a whirlpool of events, in a constantly changing world. Man was constantly faced with the problem of choice (the boundlessness of life, danger, the inevitability of death). The Renaissance heritage gave a life-affirming character, optimism. Drama, conflict between good and evil, mysticism. Transfer of emotions, intensity of passions, Exaggerated detailing, complexity of form, contrast, illusions. Dynamism, rapid movement. The themes of human suffering and suffering are popular. Vigor Consistent development of all types of art, synthesis (mannerism is a crisis, and baroque is a new life).

Picture 7 from the presentation "Baroque in Italy" to the lessons of the Moscow Art Theater on the theme "Baroque"

Dimensions: 960 x 720 pixels, format: jpg. To download a picture for the MHK lesson for free, right-click on the image and click "Save Image As ...". To show pictures in the lesson, you can also download the presentation "Baroque in Italy.ppt" for free with all the pictures in a zip archive. Archive size - 3098 KB.

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Baroque

"Lorenzo Bernini" - Stairs of the Palazzo Barberini (Rome, 1633). Bacchanalia (1617; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art). FOUNTAIN OF FOUR RIVERS (1651; Rome, Piazza Navona). Bacchante. mid-4th century BC sculptor Skopas. Lorenzo Bernini. Baroque sculpture. SQUARE OF SAINT PETER'S CATHEDRAL (1663; Rome). Ecstasy of SAINT TERESA (1652; 350 cm; Rome, Santa Maria della Vittoria).

"Baroque style in art" - Rubens never closed himself within the framework of any one genre. Rubens is the king of painting. Sculptural masterpieces by Lorenzo Bernini. Early sculptures by Bernini. Ancient mythology. Self-portrait with Isabella Brant. Bean King. Frans Snyders. allegorical figures. Master of sculptural portrait. Gravestone of Pope Alexander.

"Baroque era" - Historical background. Fire, plague and death... And the heart freezes in the body. Author: Vedyagina Olga Instructor: Muravyova Elena Alexandrovna. Baroque. Music of the Baroque. Rise of absolute monarchies in Europe. Martin Opitz, translated by L.V. Ginzburg. How to protect women? Poetic images. Crystallization of genres: landscape portrait still life.

"Baroque in architecture" - Rich decorations in the form of scrolls. Columns, capitals, pilasters and arcades You will see everywhere you do not throw your eyes, ... But before the beauty of both the building and the facade, the fountain, and the marble, and the fence have faded. Not pilasters, but columns and semi-columns. ... In the twisted ornament you will see here and there The victorious helmet and vases of incense, In the patterns and carvings, the cornice under the very roof.

"Baroque" - Lined with marble slabs. In the center of the cathedral rises an altar with inextinguishable lamps. At different times, different content was put into the term “baroque”. The layout clearly respects the principle of symmetry. One of the four patriarchal basilicas in Rome and the ceremonial center of the Roman Catholic Church. At the end of the jubilee year, the door is closed again and walled up for the next 25 years.

"Baroque in Rome" - Church of Santa Maria Novella (Florence). David. 1635-1667; Francesco Borromini. The element of water and baroque: a fountain as an object of baroque architecture. Features of sculptural sculptures Comparison of the sculpture of David performed by Michelangelo and the baroque sculptor Lorenzo Bernini. Church of Sant'Andrea della Valle.

There are 25 presentations in total in the topic

Irina Elfond.

Online Encyclopedia "Circumnavigation"

BAROQUE, LITERATURE - literature of the ideological and cultural movement, known as baroque, which affected various spheres of spiritual life and developed into a special artistic system.

The transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque was a long and ambiguous process, and many features of the Baroque were already maturing in Mannerism (the stylistic trend of the late Renaissance). The origin of the term is not entirely clear. Sometimes it is raised to the Portuguese term, which means "pearl of a bizarre shape", sometimes to a concept denoting one of the types of logical syllogism. There is no consensus on the content of this concept, the interpretation remains ambiguous: it is defined as a cultural era, but often limited to the concept of "artistic style". In domestic science, the interpretation of the baroque as a cultural trend, characterized by the presence of a certain worldview and artistic system, is affirmed.

The emergence of the Baroque was determined by a new worldview, the crisis of the Renaissance worldview, the rejection of its great idea of a harmonious and grandiose universal personality. By virtue of this alone, the emergence of the Baroque could not be associated only with the forms of religion or the nature of power. At the heart of the new ideas that determined the essence of the Baroque, there was an understanding of the complexity of the world, its deep inconsistency, the drama of being and the destiny of man, to some extent these ideas were also influenced by the strengthening of the religious quest of the era. The features of the Baroque determined the differences in the attitude and artistic activity of a number of its representatives, and within the existing artistic system, artistic movements that were very little similar to each other coexisted.

Baroque literature, like the whole movement, is characterized by a tendency towards complexity of forms and a desire for stateliness and pomp. In baroque literature, the disharmony of the world and man, their tragic confrontation, as well as internal struggles in the soul of an individual, are comprehended. Because of this, the vision of the world and man is most often pessimistic. At the same time, the baroque in general and its literature in particular are permeated by faith in the reality of the spiritual principle, the greatness of God.

Doubt about the strength and steadfastness of the world led to its rethinking, and in the culture of the Baroque, the medieval doctrine of the frailty of the world and man was intricately combined with the achievements of the new science. The idea of the infinity of space has led to a radical change in the vision of the picture of the world, which is acquiring grandiose cosmic proportions. In the baroque, the world is understood as eternal and majestic nature, and man - an insignificant grain of sand - is simultaneously merged with it and opposes it. He seems to dissolve in the world and becomes a particle, subject to the laws of the world and society. At the same time, a person in the representation of the figures of the Baroque is subject to unbridled passions that lead him to evil.

Exaggerated affectation, extreme exaltation of feelings, the desire to know the beyond, elements of fantasy - all this is intricately intertwined in the worldview and artistic practice. The world, in the understanding of the artists of the era, is torn and disordered, a person is just a miserable toy in the hands of inaccessible forces, his life is a chain of accidents and, by virtue of this, is chaos. Therefore, the world is in a state of instability, an immanent state of change is inherent in it, and its laws are difficult to grasp, if at all comprehensible. Baroque, as it were, splits the world: in it, next to the heavenly, the earthly coexists, next to the sublime, the lowly. This dynamic, rapidly changing world is characterized not only by inconstancy and transience, but also by the extraordinary intensity of being and the intensity of disturbing passions, the combination of polar phenomena - the grandeur of evil and the greatness of good. Baroque was also characterized by another feature - it sought to identify and generalize the patterns of being. In addition to recognizing the tragedy and inconsistency of life, representatives of the Baroque believed that there was some higher divine intelligence and that there was a hidden meaning in everything. Therefore, we must come to terms with the world order.

In this culture, and especially in literature, in addition to focusing on the problem of evil and the frailty of the world, there was also a desire to overcome the crisis, to comprehend the highest rationality, combining both good and evil principles. Thus, an attempt was made to remove contradictions, the place of man in the vast expanses of the universe was determined by the creative power of his thought and the possibility of a miracle. With such an approach, God appeared as the embodiment of the idea of justice, mercy and higher reason.

These features were more clearly manifested in literature and fine arts. Artistic creativity gravitated towards monumentality, it strongly expresses not only the tragic beginning, but also religious motives, themes of death and doom. Many artists were characterized by doubts, a sense of the frailty of being and skepticism. Arguments are characteristic that the afterlife is preferable to suffering on sinful earth. These features of literature (and of the entire baroque culture) for a long time made it possible to interpret this phenomenon as a manifestation of the counter-reformation, to associate it with the feudal-Catholic reaction. Now this interpretation has been decisively rejected.

At the same time, in the Baroque, and above all in literature, various stylistic trends clearly manifested themselves, and individual trends diverged quite far. The rethinking of the nature of baroque literature (as well as baroque culture itself) in the latest literary criticism has led to the fact that two main stylistic lines stand out in it. First of all, an aristocratic baroque appears in literature, in which a tendency to elitism, to create works for the “chosen ones” manifested itself. There was another, democratic, so-called. "grassroots" baroque, which reflected the emotional shock of the broad masses of the population in the era under consideration. It is in the grassroots baroque that life is depicted in all its tragic contradictions, this trend is characterized by rudeness and often playing with base plots and motives, which often led to parody.

Of particular importance is descriptiveness: the artists sought to depict and set forth in detail not only the contradictions of the world and man, but also the contradictory nature of human nature itself and even abstract ideas.

The idea of the variability of the world gave rise to an extraordinary expressiveness of artistic means. A characteristic feature of baroque literature is the mixing of genres. Internal inconsistency determined the nature of the image of the world: its contrasts were revealed, instead of the Renaissance harmony, asymmetry appeared. Emphasized attentiveness to the mental structure of a person revealed such a trait as exaltation of feelings, emphasized expressiveness, a display of the deepest suffering. Baroque art and literature are characterized by extreme emotional tension. Another important technique is the dynamics that followed from the understanding of the variability of the world. Baroque literature knows no rest and static, the world and all its elements are constantly changing. For her, the baroque becomes typical of a suffering hero, in a state of disharmony, a martyr of duty or honor, suffering turns out to be almost his main property, there is a feeling of the futility of earthly struggle and a sense of doom: a person becomes a toy in the hands of forces unknown and inaccessible to his understanding.

In literature, one can often find an expression of fear of fate and the unknown, an anxious expectation of death, a feeling of omnipotence of malice and cruelty. Characteristic is the expression of the idea of the existence of a divine universal law, and human arbitrariness is ultimately restrained by its establishment. Because of this, the dramatic conflict also changes in comparison with the literature of the Renaissance and Mannerism: it is not so much the struggle of the hero with the outside world as an attempt to comprehend divine plans in a collision with life. The hero turns out to be reflective, turned to his own inner world.

Baroque literature insisted on freedom of expression in creativity, it is characterized by an unbridled flight of fantasy. Baroque strove for excess in everything. Because of this, there is an accentuated, deliberate complexity of images and language, combined with the desire for beauty and affectation of feelings. The Baroque language is extremely complicated, unusual and even deliberate techniques are used, pretentiousness and even pomposity appear. The feeling of the illusory nature of life and the unreliability of knowledge led to the widespread use of symbols, complex metaphor, decorativeness and theatricality, and determined the appearance of allegories. Baroque literature constantly confronts the real and the imaginary, the desired and the real, the problem of "to be or to seem" becomes one of the most important. The intensity of passions led to the fact that feelings pressed the mind in culture and art. Finally, baroque is characterized by a mixture of very different feelings and the appearance of irony, "there is no phenomenon either so serious or so sad that it cannot turn into a joke." A pessimistic worldview gave rise not only to irony, but also to caustic sarcasm, grotesque and hyperbole.

The desire to generalize the world pushed the boundaries of artistic creativity: baroque literature, like fine art, gravitated towards grandiose ensembles, at the same time, one can notice a tendency towards the process of “cultivating” the natural principle in man and nature itself, subordinating it to the will of the artist.

The typological features of the Baroque also determined the genre system, which was characterized by mobility. Characteristic is the advancement, on the one hand, of the novel and dramaturgy (especially the genre of tragedy), on the other hand, the cultivation of poetry that is complex in concept and language. Pastoral, tragicomedy, novel (heroic, comic, philosophical) become predominant. A special genre is burlesque - a comedy parodying high genres, roughly grounding the images, conflict and plot moves of these plays. In general, a “mosaic” picture of the world was built in all genres, and imagination played a special role in this picture, and incompatible phenomena were often combined, metaphorical and allegory were used.

Baroque literature had its own national specifics. It largely determined the emergence of individual literary schools and trends - Marinism in Italy, Concepsionism and Cultism in Spain, the Metaphysical School in England, Preciosity, Libertinage in France.

First of all, the baroque arose in those countries where the power of the Catholic Church increased most: Italy and Spain.

With regard to the literature of Italy, one can speak of the origin and development of Baroque literature. Italian baroque found its expression first of all in poetry. Its ancestor in Italy was Gianbatista Marino (1569–1625). A native of Naples, he lived a turbulent, adventurous life and gained European fame. His worldview was inherent in a fundamentally different vision of the world compared to the Renaissance: he was quite indifferent in matters of religion, he believed that the world consists of contradictions, which create unity. Man is born and doomed to suffering and death. Marino used the usual literary forms of the Renaissance, primarily the sonnet, but filled it with other content, at the same time he searched for new linguistic means in order to amaze and stun the reader. His poetry used unexpected metaphors, comparisons and images. A special technique - a combination of contradictory concepts such as "a learned ignoramus" or "a rich beggar", is inherent in Marino and such a feature of the Baroque as an understanding of the grandeur of the natural world, the desire to combine the cosmic principle with the human (Lear's collection). His largest works are the poem Adonis (1623) and the Massacre of the Innocents. Both mythological and biblical subjects were interpreted by the author in an emphatically dynamic way, were complicated by psychological collisions and were dramatic. As a baroque theorist, Marino promoted the idea of unity and consubstantiality of all arts. His poetry brought to life the school of Marinism and received a wide response beyond the Alps. Marino connected Italian and French cultures, and his influence on French literature was such that he was experienced not only by the followers of the Baroque in France, but even by one of the founders of French classicism, F. Malherbe.

Baroque acquires special significance in Spain, where baroque culture manifested itself in almost all areas of artistic creativity and touched all artists. Spain, in the 17th century. in decline, under the rule not so much of the king as of the church, gave a special mood to baroque literature: here the baroque acquired not only a religious, but also a fanatical character, the desire for the otherworldly, emphasized asceticism, was actively manifested. However, it is here that the influence of folk culture is felt.

The Spanish Baroque turned out to be an unusually powerful trend in Spanish culture due to the special artistic and cultural ties between Italy and Spain, specific internal conditions, and features of the historical path in the 16th–17th centuries. The golden age of Spanish culture was associated primarily with the Baroque, and it manifested itself to the maximum extent in literature, oriented towards the intellectual elite (see SPANISH LITERATURE). Some techniques were already used by artists of the late Renaissance. In Spanish literature, the Baroque found its expression in poetry, prose, and dramaturgy. Spanish poetry of the 17th century Baroque gave rise to two currents that fought among themselves - cultism and conceptualism. Proponents of the first opposed the disgusting and unacceptable real world to the perfect and beautiful world created by the human imagination, which is given to only a few to comprehend. Adherents of cultism turned to Italian, the so-called. The "dark style", which is characterized by complex metaphors and syntax, referred to the mythological system. The followers of conceptism used the same complex language, and complex thought was clothed in this form, hence the ambiguity of each word, hence the play on words and use of puns characteristic of conceptists. If Gongora belonged to the first, then Quevedo belonged to the second.

Baroque first manifested itself in the work of Luis de Gongora y Argote, whose works were published only after his death (Works in verse by the Spanish Homer, 1627) and brought him fame as the greatest poet of Spain. The largest master of the Spanish Baroque, he is the founder of "cultism" with its learned Latin words and the complexity of forms with very simple plots. Gongora's poetics was distinguished by the desire for polysemy, his style is replete with metaphors and hyperbole. He achieves exceptional virtuosity, and his themes are usually simple, but revealed in an extremely complicated way, complexity, according to the poet, is an artistic means of enhancing the impact of poetry on the reader, not only on his feelings, but also on the intellect. In his works (The Tale of Polyphemus and Galatea, Loneliness) he created the Spanish baroque style. Gongora's poetry quickly acquired new supporters, although Lope de Vega was in opposition to it. No less significant for the development of the Spanish Baroque is the prose heritage of F. Quevedo (1580–1645), who left a large number of satirical works, which show a disgusting ugly world that acquires a distorted character through the use of the grotesque. This world is in a state of motion, fantastic, unreal and miserable. Dramaturgy is of particular importance in the Spanish Baroque. Mostly Baroque masters worked in the genre of tragedy or drama. A significant contribution to the development of Spanish dramaturgy was made by Tirso de Molina (Frey Gabriel Telles). He created about 300 plays (86 have survived), mostly religious dramas (auto) and comedies of manners. A master of masterfully designed intrigue, Tirso de Molina became the first author to process the image of Don Juan in world literature. His Seville mischievous or stone guest is not only the first development of this plot, but also sustained in the spirit of baroque with the utmost naturalism in the last scene. The work of Tirso de Molina, as it were, threw a bridge from Mannerism to Baroque, in many ways he opened the path that the playwrights of the Calderon school went along, building their artistic system, the synthesis of Mannerism and Baroque.

Calderon became the classical master of baroque dramaturgy. In all his dramas, he used a logically coherent and well-thought-out composition to the smallest detail, maximally intensified the intensity of the action, concentrating it around one of the characters, an expressive language. His legacy is connected with baroque dramaturgy. In his work, the pessimistic beginning found its ultimate expression, primarily in religious and moral-philosophical writings. The pinnacle is the play Life is a dream, where the baroque worldview received the most complete expression. Calderon showed the tragic contradictions of human life, from which there is no way out, except for turning to God. Life is portrayed as a painful suffering, any earthly blessings are illusory, the boundaries of the real world and sleep are blurred. Human passions are transitory, and only the awareness of this transitoryness gives knowledge to a person.

The Spanish 17th century in literature was completely baroque, as in Italy. To a certain extent, it summarizes, enhances and emphasizes the experience of the whole Baroque Europe.

In the Netherlands, the baroque is asserted almost completely, but here there is almost no feature characteristic of Italy and Spain: aspiration to God, religious frenzy. The Flemish baroque is more bodily and rough, permeated with impressions of the surrounding everyday material world or is turned to the contradictory and complex spiritual world of man.

The baroque touched German culture and literature much more deeply. Artistic techniques, the Baroque attitude spread in Germany under the influence of two factors. 1) The atmosphere of the princely courts of the 17th century, in everything following the elite fashion of Italy. Baroque was conditioned by the tastes, needs and moods of the German nobility. 2) The tragic situation of the Thirty Years' War influenced the German Baroque. Because of this, an aristocratic baroque existed in Germany along with a folk baroque (the poets Logau and Gryphius, the prose writer Grimmelshausen). The greatest German poet was Martin Opitz (1597–1639), whose poetry is quite close to the poetic forms of the Baroque, and Andreas Griphius (1616–1664), whose work reflected both the tragic upheavals of the war and the theme of frailty and futility of all earthly things, typical of Baroque literature. joys. His poetry was ambiguous, used metaphors, it reflected the deep religiosity of the author. The largest German novel of the 17th century is associated with the Baroque. Simplicissimus of H. Grimmelshausen, where the suffering of the people during the war years was captured with tremendous force and tragedy. Baroque features are fully reflected in it. The world in the novel is not just a realm of evil, it is disorderly and changeable, and the changes only take place for the worse. The chaos of the world determines the destiny of man. The fate of man is tragic, man is the embodiment of the variability of the world and being. To an even greater extent, the Baroque attitude manifested itself in German dramaturgy, where the tragedy is bloody and depicts the wildest crimes. Life here is seen as a vale of sorrow and suffering, where any human undertakings are in vain.

Much less baroque was inherent in the literature of England, France, the Dutch Republic. In France, elements of the Baroque clearly manifested themselves in the first half of the 17th century, but after the Fronde, the Baroque was supplanted in French literature by classicism, and as a result, the so-called “grand style” was created. Baroque in France took such specific forms that there is still debate about whether it existed there at all. Its elements are already inherent in the work of Agrippa d'Aubigné, who in the Tragic Poems expressed horror and protest against the cruelty of the world around him and in the Adventures of Baron Fenest posed the problem of "to be or to seem." Later in the French Baroque, admiration is almost completely absent and even the image of cruelty and tragedy The baroque in France turned out to be connected, first of all, with such a common feature (inherited from Mannerism) as the desire for illusory nature. to the novel by O.d "Yurfe Astrea (1610). Precise literature arose, which demanded the maximum distraction from everything vile and rude in real life, was estranged from prosaic reality. The principles of the pastoral were affirmed in the precise novel, as was the emphatically refined, complicated and flowery speech. The language of precision literature made extensive use of metaphors, hyperbole, antitheses, and paraphrases. This language was clearly formed under the influence of Marino, who visited the French court. Literary salons became the conductor of a precise, lofty language. The representatives of this trend include, first of all, M. de Scuderi, the author of the novels Artamen or the great Cyrus (1649) and Clelia. Baroque gets a different life during the Fronde, in the work of the so-called freethinking poets, in which the features of mannerism and baroque are intertwined (Cyrano de Bergerac, Theophile de Vio). The burlesque poem is widely spread, where there is a dissonance of style and content (exalted heroes under base, rude circumstances). Baroque tendencies manifested themselves in the dramaturgy of the first half of the 17th century, where pastorals and tragicomedies triumphed, which reflected ideas about the diversity and variability of being and an appeal to dramatic conflicts (A. Ardi).

In France, the baroque found its expression in the work of one of the greatest philosophers of the 17th century, the thinker and stylist B. Pascal. He expressed in France the whole tragedy of the Baroque worldview and its sublime pathos. Pascal - a brilliant natural scientist - in 1646 turned to Jansenism (a trend in Catholicism condemned by the church) and published a series of pamphlets, Letters of a Provincial. In 1670, his Thoughts were published, where he spoke of the dual nature of man, manifested both in glimpses of greatness and in insignificance, the blatant contradiction of his nature. The greatness of a man is created by his thought. Pascal's worldview is tragic, he speaks of the boundless spaces of the world, firmly believes in the expediency of the world order and contrasts the greatness of the world with the weakness of man. It is he who owns the famous baroque image - "Man is a reed, but this is a thinking reed."

In England, baroque tendencies were most clearly manifested in the theater after Shakespeare and in literature. A special variant has developed here, which combines elements of baroque and classicism literature. Baroque motifs and elements most affected poetry and dramaturgy. English theater 17th century did not give the world baroque playwrights who could be compared with Spanish ones, and even in England their work is incomparable in scale with the talents of the poet J. Donne or R. Burton. In dramaturgy, the Renaissance ideals were gradually combined with the ideas of mannerism, and the last playwrights of the pre-revolutionary era were closely connected with the aesthetics of the Baroque. Baroque features can be found in late dramaturgy, especially in Fr. Beaumont and J. Fletcher, J. Ford (Heartbreak, Perkin Warbeck), F. Massinger (Duke of Milan), in individual playwrights of the Restoration era, in particular in Saved Venice T .Otway, where the exaltation of passion is found, and the characters have the features of baroque martyrs. In the poetic heritage, under the influence of the Baroque, the so-called “metaphysical school” took shape. Its founder was one of the greatest poets of the era, J. Donn. He and his followers were characterized by a penchant for mysticism and subtly refined complex language. For greater expressiveness of paradoxical and pretentious images, not only metaphors were used, but also a specific technique of versification (the use of dissonances, etc.). Intellectual complexity, along with inner turmoil and dramatic feelings, determined the rejection of social problems and the elitism of this poetry. After the revolution in the era of the Restoration, both baroque and classicism coexist in English literature, and elements of both artistic systems are often combined in the work of individual authors. This is typical, for example, for the most important work of the greatest of the English poets of the 17th century. - Paradise Lost J. Milton. The epic poem Paradise Lost (1667) was distinguished by grandiosity unprecedented in the literature of the era both in time and space, and the image of Satan as a rebel against the established world order was characterized by gigantic passion, rebelliousness and pride. Emphasized drama, extraordinary emotional expressiveness, allegorism of the poem, dynamism, wide use of contrasts and oppositions - all these features of Paradise Lost brought the poem closer to the Baroque.

Baroque literature created its own aesthetic and literary theory, which summarized the already existing artistic experience. The most famous works of B. Grasian are Wit or the Art of a Sophisticated Mind (1642) and Aristotle's Spyglass by E. Tesauro (1655). In the latter, in particular, the exceptional role of metaphor, theatricality and brightness, symbolism, and the ability to combine polar phenomena are noted.

LITERATURE

Golenishchev-Kutuzov I.N. Literature of Spain and Italy of the Baroque. In the book: - Romance Literature. M., 1975

Stein A.L. Literature of the Spanish Baroque. M., 1983

Vipper Yu.B. Baroque in Western European literature of the 17th century. – In the book: Creative Fates and History. M., 1990

17th century in European literary development. St. Petersburg, 1996

Foreign Literature of the Renaissance, Baroque, Classicism. M., 1998

History of foreign literature in the 17th century. M., 1999

Silyunas V.Yu. Lifestyle and Art Styles (Spanish Mannerist and Baroque Theatre). St. Petersburg, 2000

Pakhsaryan N.T. History of foreign literature of the 17th–18th centuries. M., 2001

Baroque and classicism in the history of world culture. M., 2001

Chekalov K.A. Mannerism in French and Italian Literature. M., 2001

BAROQUE, LITERATURE- literature of the ideological and cultural movement, known as the baroque, which affected various spheres of spiritual life and developed into a special artistic system.

The typological features of the Baroque also determined the genre system, which was characterized by mobility. Characteristic is the advancement, on the one hand, of the novel and dramaturgy (especially the genre of tragedy), on the other hand, the cultivation of poetry that is complex in concept and language. Pastoral, tragicomedy, novel (heroic, comic, philosophical) become predominant. A special genre is burlesque - comedy, parodying high genres, roughly grounding the images, conflict and plot moves of these plays. In general, a “mosaic” picture of the world was built in all genres, and imagination played a special role in this picture, and incompatible phenomena were often combined, metaphorical and allegory were used.

First of all, the baroque arose in those countries where the power of the Catholic Church increased most: Italy and Spain.

With regard to the literature of Italy, one can speak of the origin and development of Baroque literature. Italian baroque found its expression first of all in poetry. Its ancestor in Italy was Gianbatista Marino (1569–1625). A native of Naples, he lived a turbulent, adventurous life and gained European fame. His worldview was inherent in a fundamentally different vision of the world compared to the Renaissance: he was quite indifferent in matters of religion, he believed that the world consists of contradictions, which create unity. Man is born and doomed to suffering and death. Marino used the usual literary forms of the Renaissance, primarily the sonnet, but filled it with other content, at the same time he searched for new linguistic means in order to amaze and stun the reader. His poetry used unexpected metaphors, comparisons and images. A special technique - a combination of contradictory concepts such as "scientific ignoramus" or "rich beggar", is inherent in Marino and such a Baroque feature as an understanding of the grandeur of the natural world, the desire to combine the cosmic principle with the human (collection Lyra). His most important work is a poem Adonis(1623) and Massacre of the innocents. Both mythological and biblical subjects were interpreted by the author in an emphatically dynamic way, were complicated by psychological collisions and were dramatic. As a baroque theorist, Marino promoted the idea of unity and consubstantiality of all arts. His poetry brought to life the school of Marinism and received a wide response beyond the Alps. Marino connected Italian and French cultures, and his influence on French literature was such that he was experienced not only by the followers of the Baroque in France, but even by one of the founders of French classicism, F. Malherbe.

The Spanish Baroque turned out to be an unusually powerful trend in Spanish culture due to the special artistic and cultural ties between Italy and Spain, specific internal conditions, and features of the historical path in the 16th–17th centuries. The golden age of Spanish culture was associated primarily with the Baroque, and to the maximum extent it manifested itself in literature, focused on the intellectual elite ( cm. SPANISH LITERATURE). Some techniques were already used by artists of the late Renaissance. In Spanish literature, the Baroque found its expression in poetry, prose, and dramaturgy. Spanish poetry of the 17th century Baroque gave rise to two currents that fought among themselves - cultism and conceptualism. Proponents of the first opposed the disgusting and unacceptable real world to the perfect and beautiful world created by the human imagination, which is given to only a few to comprehend. Adherents of cultism turned to Italian, the so-called. The "dark style", which is characterized by complex metaphors and syntax, referred to the mythological system. The followers of conceptism used the same complex language, and complex thought was clothed in this form, hence the ambiguity of each word, hence the play on words and use of puns characteristic of conceptists. If Gongora belonged to the first, then Quevedo belonged to the second.

Baroque first manifested itself in the work of Luis de Gongora y Argote, whose writings were published only after his death ( Works in verse by Spanish Homer, 1627) and brought him fame as the greatest poet of Spain. The largest master of the Spanish Baroque, he is the founder of "cultism" with its learned Latin words and the complexity of forms with very simple plots. . Gongora's poetics was distinguished by the desire for polysemy, his style is replete with metaphors and hyperbole. He achieves exceptional virtuosity, and his themes are usually simple, but revealed in an extremely complicated way, complexity, according to the poet, is an artistic means of enhancing the impact of poetry on the reader, not only on his feelings, but also on the intellect. In his works ( The Tale of Polyphemus and Galatea, Loneliness) he created the Spanish Baroque style. Gongora's poetry quickly gained new supporters, although Lope de Vega was in opposition to it. No less significant for the development of the Spanish Baroque is the prose heritage of F. Quevedo (1580–1645), who left a large number of satirical works, which show a disgusting ugly world that acquires a distorted character through the use of the grotesque. This world is in a state of motion, fantastic, unreal and miserable. Dramaturgy is of particular importance in the Spanish Baroque. Mostly Baroque masters worked in the genre of tragedy or drama. A significant contribution to the development of Spanish dramaturgy was made by Tirso de Molina (Frey Gabriel Telles). He created about 300 plays (86 have survived), mostly religious dramas (auto) and comedies of manners. A master of masterfully designed intrigue, Tirso de Molina became the first author to process the image of Don Juan in world literature. His Seville mischievous or stone guest is not only the first development of this plot, but also sustained in the spirit of baroque with the utmost naturalism in the last scene. The work of Tirso de Molina, as it were, threw a bridge from Mannerism to Baroque, in many ways he opened the path that the playwrights of the Calderon school took, building their artistic system, the synthesis of Mannerism and Baroque.

Calderon became the classical master of baroque dramaturgy. In all his dramas, he used a logically coherent and well-thought-out composition to the smallest detail, maximally intensified the intensity of the action, concentrating it around one of the characters, an expressive language. His legacy is connected with baroque dramaturgy. In his work, the pessimistic beginning found its ultimate expression, primarily in religious and moral-philosophical writings. The pinnacle is the play Life is a dream, where the baroque worldview received the most complete expression. Calderon showed the tragic contradictions of human life, from which there is no way out, except for turning to God. Life is portrayed as a painful suffering, any earthly blessings are illusory, the boundaries of the real world and sleep are blurred. Human passions are transitory, and only the awareness of this transitoryness gives knowledge to a person.

The Spanish 17th century in literature was completely baroque, as in Italy. To a certain extent, it summarizes, enhances and emphasizes the experience of the whole Baroque Europe.

The baroque touched German culture and literature much more deeply. Artistic techniques, the Baroque attitude spread in Germany under the influence of two factors. 1) The atmosphere of the princely courts of the 17th century, in everything following the elite fashion of Italy. Baroque was conditioned by the tastes, needs and moods of the German nobility. 2) The tragic situation of the Thirty Years' War influenced the German Baroque. Because of this, an aristocratic baroque existed in Germany along with a folk baroque (the poets Logau and Gryphius, the prose writer Grimmelshausen). The greatest German poet was Martin Opitz (1597–1639), whose poetry is quite close to the poetic forms of the Baroque, and Andreas Griphius (1616–1664), whose work reflected both the tragic upheavals of the war and the theme of frailty and futility of all earthly things, typical of Baroque literature. joys. His poetry was ambiguous, used metaphors, it reflected the deep religiosity of the author. The largest German novel of the 17th century is associated with the Baroque. Simplicissimus H. Grimmelshausen, where the suffering of the people during the war years was captured with tremendous force and tragedy. Baroque features are fully reflected in it. The world in the novel is not just a realm of evil, it is disorderly and changeable, and the changes only take place for the worse. The chaos of the world determines the destiny of man. The fate of man is tragic, man is the embodiment of the variability of the world and being. To an even greater extent, the Baroque attitude manifested itself in German dramaturgy, where the tragedy is bloody and depicts the wildest crimes. Life here is seen as a vale of sorrow and suffering, where any human undertakings are in vain.

Much less baroque was inherent in the literature of England, France, the Dutch Republic. In France, elements of the Baroque clearly manifested themselves in the first half of the 17th century, but after the Fronde, the Baroque was supplanted in French literature by classicism, and as a result, the so-called “grand style” was created. Baroque in France took such specific forms that there is still debate about whether it existed there at all. Its elements are already inherent in the work of Agrippa d "Aubigne, who in tragic poems expressed horror and protest against the cruelty of the surrounding world and in The Adventures of Baron Fenest posed the problem of "to be or to seem." In the future, in the French Baroque, admiration and even the image of the cruelty and tragedy of the world are almost completely absent. In practice, the baroque in France turned out to be connected, first of all, with such a common feature (inherited from mannerism) as the desire for illusoryness. French authors sought to create a fictional world, far from the rudeness and absurdity of reality. Baroque literature turned out to be associated with mannerism and goes back to the novel by O. d "Yurfe astrea(1610). Precise literature arose, which demanded the maximum distraction from everything vile and rude in real life, was estranged from prosaic reality. The principles of the pastoral were affirmed in the precise novel, as was the emphatically refined, complicated and flowery speech. The language of precision literature made extensive use of metaphors, hyperbole, antitheses, and paraphrases. This language was clearly formed under the influence of Marino, who visited the French court. Literary salons became the conductor of a precise, lofty language. The representatives of this trend include, first of all, M. de Scuderi, the author of novels Artamen or the great Cyrus(1649) and Clelia. Baroque gets a different life during the Fronde, in the work of the so-called freethinking poets, in which the features of mannerism and baroque are intertwined (Cyrano de Bergerac, Theophile de Vio). The burlesque poem is widely spread, where there is a dissonance of style and content (exalted heroes under base, rude circumstances). Baroque tendencies manifested themselves in the dramaturgy of the first half of the 17th century, where pastorals and tragicomedies triumphed, which reflected ideas about the diversity and variability of being and an appeal to dramatic conflicts (A. Ardi).

In France, the baroque found its expression in the work of one of the greatest philosophers of the 17th century, the thinker and stylist B. Pascal. He expressed in France the whole tragedy of the Baroque worldview and its sublime pathos. Pascal - a brilliant natural scientist - in 1646 turned to Jansenism (a trend in Catholicism condemned by the church) and published a series of pamphlets Letters from a provincial. In 1670 his Thoughts, where he spoke of the dual nature of man, manifested both in glimpses of greatness and in insignificance, the blatant contradiction of his nature. The greatness of a man is created by his thought. Pascal's worldview is tragic, he speaks of the boundless spaces of the world, firmly believes in the expediency of the world order and contrasts the greatness of the world with the weakness of man. It is he who owns the famous baroque image - "Man is a reed, but this is a thinking reed."

In England, baroque tendencies were most clearly manifested in the theater after Shakespeare and in literature. A special variant has developed here, which combines elements of baroque and classicism literature. Baroque motifs and elements most affected poetry and dramaturgy. English theater 17th century did not give the world baroque playwrights who could be compared with Spanish ones, and even in England their work is incomparable in scale with the talents of the poet J. Donne or R. Burton. In dramaturgy, the Renaissance ideals were gradually combined with the ideas of mannerism, and the last playwrights of the pre-revolutionary era were closely connected with the aesthetics of the Baroque. Baroque features can be found in late dramaturgy, especially in Fr. Beaumont and J. Fletcher, J. Ford ( Broken heart, Perkin Warbeck), F. Massinger ( Duke of Milan), among individual playwrights of the Restoration era, in particular in Saved Venice T. Otway, where the exaltation of passion is found, and the characters have the features of baroque martyrs. In the poetic heritage, under the influence of the Baroque, the so-called “metaphysical school” took shape. Its founder was one of the greatest poets of the era, J. Donn. He and his followers were characterized by a penchant for mysticism and subtly refined complex language. For greater expressiveness of paradoxical and pretentious images, not only metaphors were used, but also a specific technique of versification (the use of dissonances, etc.). Intellectual complexity, along with inner turmoil and dramatic feelings, determined the rejection of social problems and the elitism of this poetry. After the revolution in the era of the Restoration, both baroque and classicism coexist in English literature, and elements of both artistic systems are often combined in the work of individual authors. This is typical, for example, for the most important work of the greatest of the English poets of the 17th century. - Paradise Lost J. Milton. Epic poem Lost heaven(1667) was distinguished by grandiosity unprecedented for the literature of the era both in time and space, and the image of Satan, a rebel against the established world order, was characterized by gigantic passion, rebelliousness and pride. Emphasized drama, extraordinary emotional expressiveness, allegorism of the poem, dynamism, wide use of contrasts and oppositions - all these features Paradise Lost brought the poem closer to the Baroque.

Baroque literature created its own aesthetic and literary theory, which summarized the already existing artistic experience. The most famous works of B. Grasian Wit or the Art of the Sophisticated Mind(1642) and Aristotle's spyglass E.Tesauro (1655). In the latter, in particular, the exceptional role of metaphor, theatricality and brightness, symbolism, and the ability to combine polar phenomena are noted.

Irina Elfond

Literature:

Golenishchev-Kutuzov I.N. Spanish and Italian Literature of the Baroque. In the book: - Romance Literature . M., 1975
Stein A.L. Spanish Baroque literature. M., 1983
Vipper Yu.B. Baroque in Western European literature of the 17th century. – In the book: Creative Fates and History. M., 1990
17th century in European literary development. St. Petersburg, 1996
Foreign Literature of the Renaissance, Baroque, Classicism. M., 1998
History of foreign literature in the 17th century. M., 1999
Silyunas V.Yu. Lifestyle and art styles (Spanish Mannerist and Baroque theater). St. Petersburg, 2000
Pakhsaryan N.T. History of foreign literature of the 17th–18th centuries. M., 2001
Baroque and classicism in the history of world culture. M., 2001
Chekalov K.A. Mannerism in French and Italian Literature. M., 2001

Definition of baroque as a literary movement.

There is beauty based on incomplete perception, on mystery. She never fully reveals her face, she is always mysterious and takes on a different look every second.

Baroque as the first pan-European artistic movement.

The 17th century was an extremely important milestone in the cultural and historical development of mankind. On the one hand, it can be considered a kind of outcome of the previous major historical era - the Renaissance, and on the other hand, a period when new paths and prospects for the development of human society, consonant with the historical conditions of that time, were formed, those socio-economic, political, cultural traditions and moral ethical values that laid the foundations of a new European civilization. Let us recall the main features of the Renaissance. The era of the Renaissance (Renaissance) is the beginning of the XIV - the end of the XVI century.

The name comes from the general tendency of the artists of this era to revive the foundations of that secular humanistic culture that was created in the era of antiquity. Renaissance artists put forward a new, humanistic (from Latin Humanus - human) worldview system. its center was proclaimed a person, in whom they saw the highest value and the main meaning of being. In contrast to the artists of the Middle Ages, humanists rehabilitated the material-sensual, physical nature of man and, accordingly, promoted it as a subject of artistic representation. In the Renaissance, the intensive development of humanistic education and book printing began, book culture and traditions of individual reading were born.

The crisis of the Renaissance worldview or the beginning of the Baroque.

From the end of the 16th century the ideology of the Renaissance begins to embrace a deep crisis,it first gave rise to a crisis of faith in man in his ability to build a life on the basis of justice and reason.

Europe was torn apart by aggressive and religious wars and revolutions, of which the most bloody were the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) and the English Revolution of 1648. At the same time, the process of strengthening European monarchies and the absolutization of royal power, further deepened the crisis of humanism. The process of reviving the authority and power of the Catholic Church, which was called the counter-reformation, that is, a milestone of ideological counterbalance to the previous system, intensified; the revival of the Reformation Protestant movements. The Counter-Reformation marked a partial return to the Middle Ages, in particular to its ideology and worldview system with the cult of God, not man.

A new picture of the world led by the baroque

It was in the 17th century. New time begins: a new picture of the world is being formed, which will determine the development of mankind almost until the end of the 19th century.It was in modern times that the historical and cultural concept of "Europe" was finally formed. It was in the 17th century. such an important phenomenon as public opinion is emerging - a special ideological and psychological phenomenon, possible only in civil society, is aware of both its connection with the state and relative independence from it.

At the end of the XVII century. in Western Europe, the first professional writers appear. The atmosphere of public discussion of problems of public life and literature contributes to the flourishing of journalism and periodicals. 17th century also characterized as the age of science. There is a new, more familiar to modern man classification of branches of science and their new hierarchy. All this determined the main vector of the development of human thought in the 17th and subsequent centuries of the development of human civilization. The literary era dates from about the 90s of the 16th century. until the 80-90s of the XVII century.

The main literary trends of the XVII century. became baroque and classicism, which, each in its own way, reflected the dominant trends in the attitude of a person of that era. Baroque artists portrayed a person who was completely entrusted to irrational forces, a predetermined share, whose soul, as a result of the loss of harmony with the world, was torn apart by the tragic contradictions of being, uncertainty and constant doubts. On the contrary, in the works of representatives of classicism, a person's attitude becomes more definite, purposeful, full of faith in the ability of the human mind to overcome the difficult obstacles of fate, to comprehend the secrets of nature and the problems of society, to improve human nature and the world around.

Baroque- this is the name of the first pan-European direction, which replaced the artistic style produced in the Renaissance.

The origin of the term baroque is derived from the Portuguese perola barroca (pearl of irregular shape) and the Latin word barroco (strange, bizarre), which denoted one of the syllogisms (logical judgments) in medieval philosophy and which was distinguished by its complexity and strangeness.

The meaning of the term baroque would reflect various aspects of this artistic movement: on the one hand, the refined, artistic and aristocratic element, the passion for the exotic, colorful style, and, on the other hand, the connection with the old religious worldview. And this is true, since the baroque surprisingly combined the asceticism of medieval thinking with the elegant luxury of poetic fantasy.

Like the previous ideological and artistic movement, known as the Renaissance, the Baroque embraced all spheres of spiritual, including artistic, human activity, clearly manifesting itself in architecture, sculpture, painting, music and literature.

The historical and ideological prerequisites for the emergence of the Baroque are more often associated with the crisis of the Renaissance.

Ideological background of the Baroque

The ideological and artistic premise of the Baroque was the Counter-Reformation, and the Baroque was its aesthetic expression. In 1540, the Pope founded the Jesuit Order, the main and most active promoters of the Baroque in art. During the XVI-XVII centuries. the Jesuit order is spreading throughout all the countries of Catholic Europe and with it the baroque is spreading. But at the same time, a complete return to the Middle Ages, as the Catholic Church wanted, still did not happen.

As a result, the baroque became a kind of synthesis of the cultures of the Middle Ages and antiquity. Therefore, baroque artists are characterized by the reconciliation of contradictions: earthly and heavenly, spiritual and secular, antiquity and Christianity. Baroque tried to combine sensuality and asceticism, the abstractness of the idea with the concreteness and even naturalism of the image, fantasy, mysticism and plausibility.

Themes and artistic features of the Baroque

The most striking were the signs of baroque in the subject matter of the works. Baroque is characterized by allegory, mysticism, interest in tragic contradictory beings: life and death, mortal and eternal, in general, a combination of the incongruous - funny with sad, tragic with comic, high with low (“joyful sad”, “rich beggar”, “mute speaking ", and so on.). Wit, paradox, contrast - these are the features of the work most appreciated by baroque artists.

Favorite themes of Baroque artists are the illusory nature and transience of human life, metaphorically comprehended in the images of life as a dream, life as a theater or a labyrinth; the tragic disorder of the world; the fatal subordination of human destiny to the divine will; the sinfulness of human nature.

A variety of natural disasters (storms, floods, earthquakes) and social upheavals (wars, uprisings, civil unrest), tragic contradictions in the human soul as a reflection of the contradictions between heavenly and earthly, rational and irrational, passion and moral duty, motives despair, despondency and doom.

In baroque works, gloomy, pessimistic pathos often dominates. The tense emotional atmosphere of baroque works is designed to impress and excite the reader as much as possible.

Artistic techniques of the Baroque

Baroque artistic techniques are excessive metaphor, sophistication, complexity of language, various stylistic experiments with the form of a work of art, elements of fantasy, the use of various emblems, allegories and symbols through which Baroque artists tried to comprehend the innermost meaning of everyday things (for example, human life was associated with " a rabid beast chasing its own shadow, or a rose quickly losing its petals, leaving instead a dry stem and sharp thorns, etc.). The plot of a baroque work, as a rule, is based on the story of a person's spiritual ordeal.

Baroque genres

The most common baroque genres were pastoral poetry and drama, pastoral romance, philosophical and didactic lyrics, satirical burlesque poetry, comic novel, tragicomedy, philosophical drama. Baroque is sometimes divided into high, which reflected the ideology and aesthetic tastes of the aristocracy, and low, which reflected the problems of the life of the democratic strata of society.

The term "baroque" was first used to characterize the style of architectural structures. Subsequently, it began to be used to refer to other artistic phenomena: in the XVIII century. - Before musical works, in the 19th century. - Sculpture and painting.
At the end of the XIX century. begin to talk about baroque in literature. The first term "baroque" in 1878 was used to characterize literary phenomena by Friedrich Nietzsche.
The term entered into a wide literary circulation after the appearance in 1888 of the book by the Swiss philologist Heinrich Wölfflin "Renaissance and Baroque".
At the beginning of the XX century. there were discussions about baroque in East Slavic literatures. After a lively discussion on the pages of our periodicals, an opinion was formed that baroque is a vivid manifestation of style in art.
Baroque traditions found their further development in the literature of the XIX-XX centuries.
Literary phenomena related to the Baroque of this era are usually denoted by the term Neo-Baroque.
Various experiments with the form of verse became a kind of hallmark of the Baroque. Such forms as acrostic and mesostich were widespread (in the first, the initial letters of each line formed the name of the author, in the second, the necessary words consisted of letters that were in the center of the poem), Kabbalistic verses (the numerical value of the letters of the Slavic alphabet made it possible to calculate the year the work was written ), curly poems (printed in the form of a cross, eggs, glasses, etc.).

The results of the article or the main arguments in favor of the Baroque

There is a beauty that is quite clear, quite acceptable form, and next to it is a beauty based precisely on incomplete perception, on a mystery that never fully reveals its face, on a mystery that every second takes on a different look (Heinrich Wölfflin on the differences between Renaissance and Baroque art) .

Baroque was an attempt at a new synthesis of ideas about the world and man, deepened and complicated by the crisis of the Renaissance.

Baroque- a characteristic of European culture of the 17th-18th centuries, in the era of the Late Renaissance, the center of which was Italy. The Baroque style appeared in the XVI-XVII centuries in Italian cities: Rome, Mantua, Venice, Florence. The Baroque era is considered to be the beginning of the triumphal procession of "Western civilization". Baroque opposed classicism and rationalism.

Baroque features

Baroque is characterized by contrast, tension, dynamism of images, affectation, the desire for grandeur and pomp, for the combination of reality and illusion, for the fusion of arts (city and palace and park ensembles, opera, cult music, oratorio); at the same time - a tendency towards autonomy of individual genres (concerto grosso, sonata, suites in instrumental music). The ideological foundations of the style were formed as a result of a shock, such as the Reformation and the teachings of Copernicus became for the 16th century. The notion of the world, established in antiquity, as a rational and permanent unity, as well as the Renaissance idea of man as a most rational being, has changed. According to 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."

Baroque era

The Baroque era gives rise to a huge amount of time for entertainment: instead of pilgrimages, promenades (walks in the park); instead of knightly tournaments - "carousels" (horseback rides) and card games; instead of mysteries, theatrical masquerade. You can add the appearance of swings and "fiery fun" (fireworks). Portraits and landscapes took their place in the interiors, 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, declares the philosopher Descartes. Therefore, the baroque is still the age of Reason and Enlightenment. It is no coincidence that the word "baroque" is sometimes raised to designate one of the types of inferences in medieval logic - to baroco. The first European park appears in the Palace of Versailles, 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. In the armies of the Baroque era, which for the first time received uniforms, much attention is paid to the "drill" - the geometric correctness of constructions on the parade ground.

baroque man

The baroque man rejects naturalness, which is identified with savagery, arrogance, tyranny, brutality and ignorance - all that in the era of romanticism will become virtue. The baroque woman values the pallor of her skin, she has an unnatural, frilly hairstyle, corsets, an artificially expanded skirt on a whalebone frame. She is in heels.

And the gentleman becomes the ideal of a man in the Baroque era. 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 atrocity, savagery, vulgarity and extravagance. For the philosopher Hobbes, the state of nature state of nature) is a state characterized by anarchy and war 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, the instincts no longer constitute the content of sin, but "the very essence of man." Therefore, the appetite is made out in an exquisite table etiquette (it was in the Baroque era that forks and napkins appeared); interest in the opposite sex - in a courteous flirtation, 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 (The System of Nature, 1735). Academies of Science and scientific societies are being established everywhere in European capitals.

The diversity of perception increases the level of consciousness - something like the philosopher Leibniz says. Galileo for the first time directs a telescope to the stars and proves the rotation of the Earth around the Sun (1611), and Leeuwenhoek discovers tiny living organisms under a microscope (1675). Huge sailboats plow the expanses of the world's oceans, erasing white spots on the geographical maps of the world. Travelers and adventurers become literary symbols of the era: Robinson Crusoe, ship's doctor Gullivery Baron Munchausen.

“In the Baroque era, the formation of a fundamentally new, different from medieval allegorical thinking took place. A spectator capable of understanding the language of the emblem has formed. Allegory has become the norm of artistic vocabulary in all types of plastic and spectacular arts, including such synthetic forms as festivities.

Baroque in painting

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 is the work of Rubensai Caravaggio.

Michelangelo Merisi (1571-1610), whose birthplace near Milan was called Caravaggio, is considered the most significant master among the 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. The followers and imitators of Caravaggio, who were at first called caravaggists, and the very current of caravagism, such as Annibale Carracci (1560-1609) or Guido Reni (1575-1642), adopted the riot of feelings and the characteristic manner of Caravaggio, as well as his naturalism in depicting people and events.

Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) at the beginning of the 17th century. studied in Italy, where he learned the style of Caravaggio and Carraci, although he arrived there only after completing his course in Antwerp. He happily combined the best features of the painting schools of the North and the South, merging in his canvases the natural and the supernatural, reality and fantasy, learning and spirituality. In addition to Rubens, another master of the Flemish Baroque, Van Dyck (1599-1641), achieved international recognition. With the work of Rubens, the new style came to Holland, where it was picked up by Frans Hals (1580/85-1666), Rembrandt (1606-1669) and Vermeer (1632-1675). In Spain, Diego Velasquez (1599-1660) worked in the style of Caravaggio, and in France, Nicolas Poussin (1593-1665), who, not satisfied with the Baroque school, laid the foundations of a new trend - classicism in his work.

Architecture

Baroque architecture (L. Bernini, F. Borromin in Italy, B. F. Rastrelli in Russia, Jan Christoph Glaubits in the Commonwealth) is characterized by spatial scope, unity, fluidity of complex, usually curvilinear forms. Large-scaled colonnades are often found, an abundance of sculptures on facades and in interiors, volutes, a large number of rake-outs, arched facades with a rake in the middle, rusticated columns and pilasters. Domes take on complex forms, they are often multi-tiered, like the Cathedral of St. Characteristic details of the Baroque - telamon (atlas), caryatid, mascaron.

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 facade 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. Bernini is also an architect. He owns the design of the square of the Cathedral of St. Peter in Rome and the interiors, as well as other buildings. Significant contributions were made by Carlo Fontana, Carlo Rainaldi, Guarino Guarini, Baldassare Longena, Luigi Vanvitelli, Pietro da Cortona. In Sicily, after a major earthquake in 1693, a new late baroque style appeared - Sicilian baroque. Light acts as a fundamentally important element of the Baroque space, entering the churches through the naves.

The quintessence of the Baroque, an impressive fusion of painting, sculpture and architecture, is the Coranaro Chapel in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria (1645-1652).

The Baroque style is spreading in Spain, Germany, Belgium (then Flanders), the Netherlands, Russia, France, the Commonwealth. Spanish baroque, or local churrigueresque (in honor of the architect Churriguera), which also spread to Latin America. His most popular monument is the Cathedral of St. James, which is also one of the most revered churches in Spain. In Latin America, baroque mixed with local architectural traditions, this is its most pretentious version, and they call it ultrabaroque.

In France, the baroque style is expressed more modestly than in other countries. Previously, it was believed that the style did not develop here at all, and baroque monuments were considered monuments of classicism. Sometimes the term "baroque classicism" is used in relation to the French and English versions of the baroque. Now, the Palace of Versailles, along with a regular park, the Luxembourg Palace, the building of the French Academy in Paris, and other works are considered French Baroque. They really have some features of classicism. A characteristic feature of the Baroque style is the regular style in landscape art, an example of which is the Versailles Park.

Later, at the beginning of the 18th century, the French developed their own style, a kind of baroque-rococo. It manifested itself not in the external design of buildings, but only in interiors, as well as in the design of books, clothing, furniture, and painting. The style was distributed throughout Europe and in Russia.

In Belgium, the Grand Place in Brussels is an outstanding baroque monument. The Rubens house in Antwerp, built according to the artist's own design, has Baroque features.

Baroque appeared in Russia as early as the 17th century (“Naryshkin baroque”, “Golitsyn baroque”). In the 18th century, during the reign of Peter I, he developed in St. Petersburg and the suburbs in the work of D. Trezzini is the so-called "Peter's baroque" (more restrained), and reaches its peak in the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna in S. I. ChevakinskyiB. Rastrelli.

In Germany, the outstanding baroque monument is the New Palace in Sanssouci (authors - J. G. Bühring (German) Russian, H. L. Manter) and the Summer Palace in the same place (G. W. von Knobelsdorff).

The largest and most famous Baroque ensembles in the world: Versailles (France), Peterhof (Russia), Aranjuez (Spain), Zwinger (Germany), Schönbrunn (Austria).

In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Sarmatian baroque and Vilen baroque styles became widespread, the largest representative was Jan Christoph Glaubitz. Among his famous projects are the rebuilt Church of the Ascension of the Lord (Vilnius), St. Sophia Cathedral (Polotsk), etc.

Baroque in sculpture

Sculpture is an integral part of the Baroque style. The greatest sculptor and recognized architect of the 17th century was the Italian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680). Among his most famous sculptures are the mythological scenes of the abduction of Proserpina by the god of the underworld, Pluto, and the miraculous transformation into a tree of the nymph Daphne, pursued by the god of light, Apollo, as well as the altar group "The Ecstasy of St. Teresa" in one of the Roman churches. The last of them, with its clouds carved from marble and the clothes of the characters fluttering in the wind, theatrically exaggerated feelings, very accurately expresses the aspirations of the sculptors of this era.

In Spain, in the era of the Baroque style, wooden sculptures prevailed, for greater credibility they were made with glass eyes and even a crystal tear, real clothes were often put on the statue.

Baroque in literature

Writers and poets in the Baroque era perceived the real world as an illusion and a dream. Realistic descriptions were often combined with their allegorical depiction. Symbols, metaphors, theatrical techniques, graphic images (lines of poetry form a picture), saturation with rhetorical figures, antitheses, parallelisms, gradations, oxymorons are widely used. There is a burlesque-satirical attitude to reality. Baroque literature is characterized by the desire for diversity, for the summation of knowledge about the world, inclusiveness, encyclopedism, which sometimes turns into chaos and collecting curiosities, the desire to study being in its contrasts (spirit and flesh, darkness and light, time and eternity). Baroque ethics is marked by a craving for the symbolism of the night, the theme of frailty and impermanence, life-dream (F. de Quevedo, P. Calderon). Calderon's play "Life is a dream" is well-known. Such genres as the gallant-heroic novel (J. de Scuderi, M. de Scuderi), the real-life and satirical novel (Furetière, Ch. Sorel, P. Scarron) are also developing. Within the framework of the Baroque style, its varieties are born, directions: marinism (Italy), gongorism (culteranism) and conceptism (Spain), eufuism and metaphysical school (England), precision literature (France), macaronism, i.e. mixed Polish-Latin versification (Poland).

The actions of the novels are often transferred to the fictional world of antiquity, to Greece, court cavaliers and ladies are depicted as shepherdesses and shepherdesses, which is called the pastoral (Honoré d'Urfe, "Astrea"). Poetry flourishes pretentiousness, the use of complex metaphors. Such forms as a sonnet, rondo, concetti (a short poem expressing some witty thought), madrigals are common.

In the west, in the field of the novel, an outstanding representative is G. Grimmelshausen (the novel "Simplicissimus"), in the field of drama - P. Calderon (Spain). They became famous in poetry. Voiture (France), D. Marino (Italy), Don Luis de Gongora i Argote (Spain), D. Donn (England). In France, "precious literature" flourished during this period. It was then cultivated mainly in the Salon-madame de Rambouillet, one of the aristocratic salons of Paris, the most fashionable and famous. In Spain, the baroque trend in literature was called "gongorism" after the name of the most prominent representative (see above).

Baroque in Polish literature is represented by the poetry of the heroic and epic direction of Zbigniew Morsztyn, Vaclav Potocki, Vespasian Kochowski (the theme of whose poetry is largely due to the eventful military biography of all three), the courtier (the so-called macaronic style, popular at the end of the 17th century) Jan Andrzej Morsztyn, philosophical Stanislav Herakliusz Lubomirsky; in prose - mainly memoir literature (the most significant work is "Memoirs" by Jan Chrysostom Pasek).

In Russia, Baroque literature includes S. Polotsky, F. Prokopovich.

In German literature, the traditions of the Baroque style are still maintained by members of the literary community "Blumenorden". They gather in the summer for literary festivals in the Irrhain grove near Nuremberg. The society was organized in 1646 by Georg Philipp Harsdörffer with the aim of restoring and maintaining the German language, which had been badly damaged during the Thirty Years' War.

Theoretically, Baroque poetics was developed in the treatises "Wit, or the Art of the Sophisticated Mind" by Baltasar Gracian (1648) and "Aristotle's Spyglass" by Emanuele Tesauro (1655).

baroque music

Baroque music appeared at the end of the Renaissance and preceded the music of the Classical era. Representatives - Vivaldi, Bach, Handel. The leading position of genres cantata, oratorio, opera. The opposition of chorus and soloists, voices and instruments, a combination of large-scale forms, a gravitation towards the synthesis of art, with a simultaneous tendency to isolate music and words (the emergence of instrumental genres) are characteristic.

Baroque fashion

The fashion of the Baroque era corresponds in France to the reign of Louis XIV, the second half of the XVII century. This is the age of absolutism. Strict etiquette and complex ceremonial reigned at the court. The costume was subject to etiquette. France was a trendsetter in Europe, so other countries quickly adopted French fashion. This was the century when a general fashion was established in Europe, and national characteristics receded into the background or were preserved in the folk peasant costume. Before Peter I, European costumes were also worn in Russia by some aristocrats, although not everywhere.

The costume was characterized by stiffness, splendor, an abundance of jewelry. The ideal of a man was Louis XIV, the "sun king", a skilled rider, dancer, shooter. He was short, so he wore high heels.

First, when he was still a child (he was crowned at the age of 5), short jackets called bracer, richly decorated with lace. Then trousers came into fashion, regraves, similar to a skirt, wide, also richly decorated with lace, which lasted a long time. Later appeared justocor(from French it can be translated: "exactly in the body"). This is a type of caftan, knee length, in this era it was worn buttoned up, a belt was worn over it. Under kaftannadevalikamzol, sleeveless. The caftan and camisole can be compared with the later jacket and waistcoat, which they will become after 200 years. The Justocor collar was first turned-down, with semicircular ends stretched down. Later he was replaced by a toad. In addition to lace, there were many bows on the clothes, on the shoulders, on the sleeves and pants - a whole series of bows. In the previous era, under Louis XIII, boots were popular ( over the knee boots). This is a field type of footwear, they were usually worn by the military class. But at that time there were frequent wars, and boots were worn everywhere, even at balls. They continued to be worn under Louis XIV, but only for their intended purpose - in the field, in military campaigns. In a civilian setting, shoes came out on top. Until 1670, they were decorated with buckles, then the buckles were replaced by bows. The intricately decorated buckles were called agraph.

The women's dress, unlike the dress of the previous period, was not on a frame, but on a whalebone lining. It gradually expanded to the bottom, a train was worn at the back. A full women's costume consisted of two skirts, lower ( freepon) and top ( modest). The first is light, the second is darker. The underskirt was visible, the top diverges to the sides from the bottom of the bodice. Draperies decorated the sides of the skirt. Draperies were also on the edge of the neckline. The neckline was wide and opened the shoulders. The waist is narrow, a corset was worn under the dress. If under Louis XIII women wore men's hats (they then borrowed many elements of the costume from men), now hairstyles, light scarves or caps have come into fashion. In the 1660s, hairstyles were fashionable mancini And sevigne, named after the niece of Cardinal Mazarin, with whom the king was in love in his youth, and by the name of the famous writer. Later, hairstyle came into fashion fountain(not to be confused with the fontange cap), named after one of the king's mistresses. This is a high hairstyle, from a lot of curls. In the history of costume, hairstyle is also called coufura.

Men wore puffy wigs that stuck up high and flowed low over their shoulders. Wigs came into use even under Louis XIII, who was bald. Now they have become much more magnificent. Hats in the 1660s were wide-brimmed with a high crown. At the end of the century, they were replaced by a cocked hat, which remained popular in the next 18th century.

Umbrellas also came into fashion, for women - clutches, fans. Cosmetics were used without measure. Flies appeared, faces and wigs were powdered for whiteness, and a black fly created contrast. Wigs were so heavily powdered that hats were then often carried in the hands. Both men and women carried walking sticks. Bandage ( banduliera), on which swords were worn, came into fashion in the previous era. Even earlier, swords were worn on a sword belt, a thin strap fastened to a waist belt. The baldric was formerly leather, now it was also made of moire. Materials of that time: wool, velvet, satin, brocade, taffeta, moire, camlot, cotton.

Baroque in the interior

The baroque style is characterized by ostentatious luxury, although it retains such an important feature of the classical style as symmetry.

Wall painting (one of the types of monumental painting) has been used in decorating European interiors since early Christian times. In the Baroque era, it was most widely used. The interiors used a lot of color and large, richly decorated details: a ceiling decorated with frescoes, marble walls and parts of the decor, gilding. Color contrasts were characteristic - for example, the marble floor, decorated with tiles in a checkerboard pattern. Abundant gilded jewelry was a characteristic feature of this style.

Furniture was a piece of art, and was intended almost exclusively for interior decoration. Chairs, sofas and armchairs were upholstered in expensive, richly colored fabric. Huge beds with canopy and flowing down bedspreads, giant wardrobes were widespread. Mirrors were decorated with sculptures and stucco moldings with floral patterns. Southern walnut ebony was often used as furniture material.

Baroque style is not suitable for small spaces, as massive furniture and decorations take up a large amount of space. Reproducing the atmosphere of the Baroque style is currently possible with the help of stylization and the use of baroque details such as:

figurines and vases with floral ornaments;

tapestries on the walls;

mirror in a gilded frame with stucco;

chairs with carved backs, etc.

The parts used must be combined with each other in an artistic and aesthetic plan.