Spanish Baroque Painting

The seventeenth century is in all respects the golden age of Spanish painting. Italian influence was largely rejected in favor of Mannerist formulas and a severe and noble style which used chiaroscuro not for the sake of a theatrical aestheticism, but to create a more urgent sense of drama. Though undoubtedly Baroque, this was a profoundly realistic art, preferring a broad visual synthesis, with a predominance of pictorial over tactile values, to the analytical approach of the sixteenth-century primitivists. Interest in the faithful reproduction of materials encouraged virtuosity. Artists grew more fastidious in their choice of colors and more intimately concerned with tonal values. Light served not only to lend brightness to external forms but acquired a transcendental function. Spatial values became more subtle and more numerous; tonal gradation gained in importance and the conventional mode of observation gradually gave way to one so penetrating that no other age or style has been able to equal it in truthfulness. It was, in fact, the great Spanish masters who guided European painting along the paths of naturalistic realism.

The new art remained faithful to the themes of the preceding century: pictures of religious subjects continued to predominate, but the patronage extended by the Hapsburgs to the more famous artists resulted in the execution of numerous royal portraits, as well as paintings of historical events and scenes from private and court life. In the best work of this period a superb elegance of gesture and a psychological profundity are combined with a splendid harmony of tones and colors. It is a style that strikes a perfect balance between the graphic and the pictorial, between the representation of detail and a suggestion of the imperfections of human vision. The principal schools of this period were those of Seville and Madrid, the latter enjoying the patronage of the court. Initially, there were other important schools at Valencia, which maintained contact with Italy, and at Toledo, a training center for painters who later worked elsewhere.

Tenebrism
In the transition between the 16th and 17th centuries there was a spate of tenebrism that produced some of the most characteristic works of the golden age of Spanish painting. (Tenebrism is a term describing predominantly dark tonality in a painting. It derives from the Italian 'tenebroso', meaning obscure, and is applied mainly to the 17th century followers of Caravaggio in Italy and elsewhere.)

The first painter to abandon Mannerism for the new realistic style was Francisco Ribalta (1555-1628), a Catalan who, after receiving his early training in Toledo, spent the years of his maturity in Valencia. It is not known whether Ribalta was acquainted with the work of Caravaggio or whether he arrived independently at results parallel to those achieved by the Italian Tenebrists. At all events, his style is remarkable for its virile naturalism. The brushwork is increasingly bold and free, so different from the polished smoothness of the previous age. Ribalta sought expressiveness as well as beauty and accentuated the sculptural modeling of his forms by contrasting light and shade.

It is with José de Ribera, however, that Tenebrism really triumphs. Ribera (1591-1652) was trained in Valencia, but in about 1616 he moved to Italy, settling in Naples. A clever draftsman and a master of composition, his numerous paintings are more varied than the legends concerning him might lead one to suppose. In his better work the dominant colors, browns and reds, contrast with cruel lighting, which sometimes appears to do violence to the forms.

Velazquez
The culmination of Spanish seventeenth-century painting, and one of the climaxes of world art in general, is reached in the work of Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velázquez (1599-1660), an artist whose mastery of space and light was admirably served by an impeccable technique. Born in Seville, he received his first lessons from the daring Francisco de Herrera the Elder, but soon became apprenticed to Pacheco, with whom he worked for five years, eventually marrying his daughter. In his writings Pacheco recalls how Velázquez was always extremely exacting in his technique and eager to work directly from life, preferring figure studies and genre scenes. Even the earliest works of the master are characterized by relatively dense impasto, objectivity of vision, restraint in the use of color, mainly ochers and browns, and simplicity and naturalness of conception.

The art of Velázquez developed irresistibly in the direction of ever greater synthesis. He painted the reflection of light in forms and colors rather than the forms and colors themselves; his drawing, such is its perfection, appears to illuminate his figures and details from within. This precision of outline, this subtle blending of tones and colors, this intervention of atmosphere between the eye and its object do as much to define the style of the artist as his simple and profound respect for everything in nature. A free and comprehensive vision of all the elements of reality, men, things, landscape, and, not least, the spirit, blazes forth in one of the masterpieces of his middle period.

The painter's interest in portraying light was not the result of a preoccupation with technique, an attitude foreign to the aesthetics and even the optics of the seventeenth century, but developed out of a profound, inner religiosity, which had always been part of the Spanish tradition and was now to find new and vigorous expression.

School of Seville
Born in 1598 in Estremadura, Francisco de Zurbarán received his training in Seville with the painter Diaz de Villanueva. In spite of his wholehearted adherence to the Andalusian school, he remained Estremaduran by temperament, superimposing a natural asceticism and a certain rustic simplicity on southern grace and elegance. Although completely faithful to his own emotions, in his naturalism and intense chiaroscuro Zurbarán clung to a certain archaism that made him the most restrained and purest of the artists of the Spanish Baroque. Shortly afterward he signed a contract to paint series of compositions for several of the monastic orders of Seville who were his most important patrons. Another important series was painted for the Jeronymites of the monastery of Guadalupe (1638-1639). Here the mood varies from a vein of realism to visions of miracles and scenes of contemplation in which the mysticism of the great Estremaduran artist has mingled with his colors. Zurbarán was also a master of simple themes, solitary figures, static and somewhat tense, saints with their eyes raised to heaven, and genre paintings in which everyday objects are clothed in mystery, as in the still life of 1633.

In Spanish painting, and within the Andalusian school to which he also belonged, Murillo represents the height of elegance and delicacy, and, it must be added, the greatest surrender to popular sentiment. His art was always at the service of his theme, and the theme, in turn, was relived with fervor. In the fervor, however, profundity was often ignored in favor of more brilliant, but aesthetically less satisfying qualities. Murillo was as sensitive to feminine beauty and the beauty of children as to the subtleties of color and tonal gradation made possible by the advanced technique of the Baroque. Lyrical rather than dramatic, Murillo was by no means unaware of the prevalence of social unrest, reflected in literature in the picaresque novel, and his whole approach to religious painting was based on a realistic point of view.

Spanish Baroque Sculpture.

While in Italy and France the big baroque sculpture is developed following Bernini, using marble and bronze, with a wide range of subjects from mythology and allegory, in Spain the most common is the sculpture in polychrome wood, exclusively religious, that is, completely, to the service of the counter-Reform piteous sensibility. The images of Christ, the Virgin and Saints, especially Spanish, are dominant as subjects. In addition to this, the artists were able of depict feelings in the images: pain, anguish, death, and ecstasy.

Sculptors tend to approach reality to the religious fact depicted to provoke the emotion of the person who assists to the Easter parades. In them the saint appear as alive characters, near to their daily routine. This influence of the religious multiplies the demand for religious images. The popular piety of the comrades originates the Parade Paso (from the Latin passus=sufferance). The Easter parades became the maximum expression of popular faith. The altarpieces are decorated with freestanding images that can be used for the parades.

The pessimism and the attitude of a society in crisis limit the development of funerary sculpture.

The desire of depicting reality multiplies the effects. Firstly, images are polychrome, putting apart the stuffed or use of gold, in order to create more realistic images with plain colours in the clothes, and even wearing them with real clothes, in the case of the “images to dress”, that have only carved the head, hands and feet. This interest reach to use natural hair, nails, teeth or even eyes and glass eyes and tears, animal skin to depict open injuries. It is the peak of the hyper realistic baroque theatrical effects.

At the beginning Spanish sculpture did not follow the dynamism and theatrality of the Italian models and was directly linked to the Renaissance and Mannerism, with the only advance of the naturalism. From mid 17th century and on, in the Court and in Andalusia it started the Berninian baroque that was fully incorporated at the end of the century.

There are two main sculpture regions in Spain. Both schools are hyper realistic:
-Castile, with Valladolid, where Gregorio Fernandez worked.
Images are injured, with pain or emotion always in surface; realism is violent, of dramatic gestures. Fernandez abandoned the golden effect to change them by plain colours.

-Andalusia, centred in Seville, with Juan Martínez Montañés, and in Granade with Alonso Cano and Pedro de Mena.
It is quiet, calm, looking for the correct beauty without forgetting the spiritual content. It is the classicist realism that drove to the mystic exaltation. They maintained largely the use of gold.

In the 18th century the Levantine group appeared, in Elche but mainly in Murcia, with Francisco Salzillo, the author who closes the baroque sculpture and opens the taste for the classicism.

Baroque Architecture in Spain

Baroque period in Spain is known as the Golden Century due to the splendour experienced by culture in this moment in which there was a general crisis in politics, society and economy. During the Baroque there is an evolution of the tastes and fashions that can be divided into three big periods:

· First period (mid 17th century): the beginnings. The influence of Herrera (Escorial) and the transition to the new models coming from Italy.
· Second period (last third of the 17th century and first of the 18th): plenitude. Churriguera brothers, Ribera, Tomé, Figueroa developed a decorative language; architecture becomes more dynamic.
· Third period (rest of the 18th century): continuity and change. Rococo style, with evident French and Italian influences developed thanks to the change of dynasty.

General characteristics.
Herrerian models lasted due to the great influence of the Escorial. The architecture of palaces is homogeneous. The kind called Austrian has towers on the sides of the façade, cover with chapitel and roof of slate (pizarra). There were severe buildings from the outside even when the inside was very comfortable.

The structures of the churches are very simple, with encamonades domes and Jesuitical plan (a nave and chapels in the buttresses), with austere decoration. The interiors are filled with golden altarpieces that are becoming more complicate with the time.

From mid 18th century the Italian influence is limited. In the outside the facades are conceived as the altarpieces. This style is more decorative and lasts until the first decade of the 18th century, under the direction of the courtesan architects who work for the Bourbons.

Worry about urbanism, with the development of major squares (Valladolid, Madrid, Salamanca). They tend to be rectangular, with porticos and balconies.

Architects of each period are:
-First half of 17th century:
·Juan Gomez de Mora: Madrid Square, Madrid Council House.
· Alonso de Carbonell: Palace of the Buen Retiro
-Mid 17th century:
· Alonso Cano: Granada’s cathedral
-Transition to 18th century:
· Churriguera: Altarpiece of Saint Esteban of Salamanca, Salamanca’s Square
· Pedro de Ribera: Façade of the Hospice in Madrid
· Narciso Tomé: Toledo’s cathedral transparent
· Sabatini: Aranjuez Palace · Juvara: Madrid’s Royal Palace.

Baroque Painting

The main quality of baroque painting is its link to reality. This is conditioned by the persuasive interest of the Catholic Church, the advertising and political interest of the absolute monarchies and the valuation the protestant bourgeoisie made of the individual and daily activity. This link is also the result of an stylistic evolution: when at the end of 16th century the artists are aware of the purely aesthetic and counter naturalism of the Mannerism, they resource to the new, choosing that refused by the Mannerism: reality and nature.

Due to the variety of nationalities and different schools there are just a few common characteristics:

Realism. Models are found in nature, without idealisation, even reaching to naturalism. The worries about of the psychological state, the feelings, is on line with the naturalistic depiction of reality.

Dominance of colour over drawing. The big masters use stains to define the shapes, as in the case of Velazquez and Rembrant. Things are painted as they are seen in the reality, with colour stains and light, loosing details and with imprecise contours.

Continuous deepness. Rigorous lineal perspective is abandoned and to obtain the sensation of deepness the resources used are convergent lines, series of scorzos , an enormous foreground, a dark foreground, plays of lights and shades, plasmation of atmospheric effects.

Hegemony of light. Leonardo’s sfumato is abandoned to pass to plans of light and shades where the shapes are defined with great precision. The baroque is the art of depicting pictorially the light and, consequently, the shade plays a role unknown until the moment, especially during the firs tenebrous experiments. In the baroque the shape is subordinated to the light and, sometimes, the shapes may disappear due to the feebleness of intensity of the light reflects.

Freedom of composition. Asymmetric and non tectonic compositions are dominant. The instinctive trend to put the main image in the centre and to paint to halves on the canvas (symmetry) is lost. Similarly, horizontal and vertical lines combinations are abandoned (tectonic composition). The artists prefer disequilibrium or something that suggests that the scene continues further than the limits of the frame. This non tectonic composition is achieved through diagonal lines that substitute the pyramidal compositions of the former century. Sometimes broken shapes are used to indicate that not everything ends on the canvas.

Worry to depict movement. Baroque painting is the painting of the life and this can not be represented under static forms. Turmoil is put before quietness. Images are instable and scorzos and waves multiply. Sometimes that movement does not exist and the excess of calm is due to the desire of filling the image of religious transcendence.

Techniques. The importance of the colour and the desire of showing it in all his splendour forces the authors to forget about the temple and oil painting and canvas are generalised, being sometimes of big proportions. Fresco continues being used to decorate walls and vaults.

Subjects. The variety of schools results in a wide range of subjects. Religious paintings are common, as the depictions of the Virgin (Immaculate, Piety), evangelical stories, charity, sacraments (mainly Penitence and Eucharist), series about saints’ lives and their religious experiences and images of death (vanitas). This repertoire is basic in Spanish painting. Nudes are forbidden in religious images, and they are limited to the allegories and mythologies. Pagan stories are common in France and Flanders. Dutch painters prefer group portrait and landscape with all its varieties: daily life images very realistic, interiors, sea-views, naval battles. Architecture can become a subject in itself, the same as still-life. In conclusion, the subject variety does not imply national specialization.

Although the great development of baroque painting all over Europe is evident, Italy is again the place where the first innovations take place. There are three great currents: Classicism represented by Carraci, where the tension between naturalist realism and idealised classicism is constant. The second current is the decorative painting, that continues producing frescoes, appropriated for ceilings and vaults, with amazing celestial perspective that break the ceilings and connect sky and land. Finally, the naturalist tenebrism represented by Caravaggio, the real revolutionary of baroque painting. This author has a radical and breaking use of light that becomes a key element in the work.

Baroque sculpture

It is one of the most popular arts. The clients are church and nobility, the same as during the Renaissance. Sculpture is the vehicle to express different religious believes and it can also be a way of showing and advertising power. Many works are located in public places such as squares and fountains.

Baroque images multiply the points of view from which they can be seen. In general, they tend to open structures, with complicated lines, being the diagonal the most commonly used. Artists demonstrate interest for the effects of light and in order to achieve this aim they give different treatment to the surfaces or even resource to breaking the wall in order to get the light they want for a deter effect.

Materials suffer a change too. Even when white marble continues being the most commonly extended, there are several works in which different materials are combined. Anything can be used in order to achieve spectacle. Gestures are grandiloquent and characters are depicted with human treatment. Even mythological and religious images are full of humanity and passions.

Technically, volumes are perfectly organised as to offer the desired effect. Other characteristics are: taste for tension and drama, that leads the authors to represent only moments of maximum tension. In addition to this, they include violent contrast of light and shadows.

Related to the typology, it is very varied, including relieves, portraits, equestrian portraits, allegories, mythological stories, religious, fountains, pantheons and, in the case of Spain, Easter sculptures.

There are regional differences, being the Italian Bernini the most reputed sculptor of the Baroque period. This artist was formed as a sculptor in his father workshop where he entered in contact with Michelangelo’s work and the collections of Greek-Hellenistic sculpture. He worked in Rome, under the patronage of different popes. His style evolved from the tormented images of the Mannerism to images in which he capsized the physical movement as a result of the action he was depicting. It is a style of great dynamism and dramatic intensity of great technical perfection. He produced all the possible subjects, ranging from the mythological to the religious, passing by the portrait, the allegory or the funeral monument. As an urbanist he also projected and produced ornamental fountains in Roman squares. Examples of his works are: Apollo and Daphne, David, Ludovica Albertoni, Sainte Therese Ecstasy, Fountain of the Four Rivers, Tomb of Urbano VII.

In France, there are two reputed authors. Girardon worked with a quite classical conception. He produced fountains, as Apollo Tended by Nymphs, and Pantheons, such as that of Richelieu. Puget made an impassioned work in which he expressed physical vigour and emotional intensity, as in Milon of Crotona.

Baroque Architecture

The word means imperfection. There is a new naturalism that reflect the scientific advances and a taste for dramatic action and emotion that is reflected in the contrast of light and colour, the use of rich textures, the creation of asymmetrical spaces and diagonal plans.

There is a geographical variety in the style and the art is at the service of power, being it that of the church or that of the monarchy. Due to this, there are two main centres: Rome with the Pope’s authority, and France, model of absolutist monarchy. In addition to this, the influence of Counter-Reform was evident. All these elements influence in the worry about plastic values.
Architecture is marked by the rich use of plan forms, in which circular and central dominate over the long narrow naves of the former styles. Ornamentation is essential and the dramatic use of light gains a plastic value. Ceilings appear decorated with large-scale frescoes depicting impossible perspective while façades are dominated by central projections and illusory effects. The forms are an evolution from the Renaissance’s ones but now movement dominates structure with flowing, curving shapes. Even landscape is incorporated and elements such as gardens, squares, courtyards and fountains become an architectonical element. In this period, the rebuilding of Saint Peter’s cathedral influenced largely the architecture.
Italy marked the most advanced style, while other countries such as France are going to be more classical. Architects working in Italy were Maderno, who finished the Vaticano’s façade, Longhena, author of Sainte Marie of the Salute in Venice, but, above all, there are two important masters: Bernini and Borromini.

Bernini, being an architect, sculptor and painter, created a fusion of these arts in his works. He resourced frequently to the use of false perspectives and trompe-l’oeil to impact in the spectator. With him façades became a model with massive pilasters above a rusticated base. Some of his works are the design of Saint Peter’s Square, the Baldaquin, Santa Andrea.

Borromini´s works spring from the contrast between convention and freedom. He used tradition as a basis but not as a law. His works are full of complicated structures, walls full of curves, wavy façades, dramatically broken pediments and impossible domes. Some of his works are San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, San Carlos Borromeo, Oratorio degli Fillipenses.

In France the Baroque style was elegant, ordered, rational and restricted. The models are rectilinear, closer to classicism. It aimed at showing the power of Louis XIVth monarchy. The most representative buildings are the Louvre, built by Le Vau and Perrault, and Versailles, where Le Brun and Le Vau built the palace that is accompanied by the gardens designed by Le Notre.

In Central Europe Baroque developed late due to the Thirty Years War. In Austria it are important the figures of Fischer von Erlach and Hildebrant. In Germany there is an important influence of the Jesuits in the South, while in the North, protestant, the style is not so important. Palace architecture was important in the whole area. In England the main architect was Wren and the Baroque style was used to design town planning. The Russian version of the style is very decorative, in quite traditional churches, sometimes made of brick; later on the plain Baroque was imported from the Low Countries to end by becoming an extravagant art.

In Spain there were important changes during the Baroque period. The style evolved from the influences of the Escorial to decorated styles. This decoration is centred on the façade, while the rest of the building is made in a more sober way. During the Rococo a new style developed. Name Churrigueresco, after the name of the architects family who created the style, it is characterised by the exaggerated decoration around the door.
Spanish Baroque influenced in America where Plateresque style (the last Spanish Renaissance) was largely imitated and afterwards Churrigueresco developed, mainly in Mexico.