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Baroque and
Rococo
In this popular account the author
shows the reader how the uses of
vivid color, dramatic light, line
and illusion were achieved and
helped to transform two centuries
of European painting.

We begin with Caravaggio in 17th

century Italy and see how his dark
drama influenced the court
painting of Velasquez and Goya in

Spain, Rembrandt and Rubens in

the North, and Poussin and
Le Brun in France. Rococo
emerged from late Baroque as a
French phenomenon. Its curving,
playful eroticism and gay color can
be seen here in the works of
Boucher and Watteau, and later in
the work of Hogarth in England.

Baroque to Rococo : A Golden

Period is sumptuously illustrated

with 40 color plates and many

black and white drawings. A book
for art enthusiasts to share among
themselves or with their whole
family

From cover illustration

Jean-Honore Fragonard
The swing, 1767

Back cover illustration

Alexander Roslin
Lady with a fan Marie Suzanne Roslin
:

^4.95
PAINTING OFTHEWESTERN WORLD

MROQUE
ANDIK)(X)CO

by Ian Barras Hill

Galley Press
Copyright 1980 by Roto Smeets B.V.,
Amsterdam, the Netherlands

AH rights reserved under International

and Pan American Copyright
Convention. First published in the
World English Language Edition by
Galley Press, 575 Lexington Avenue,
New York City 10022.

No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or
by any means, without prior written
permission ot the publishers. Inquiries
should be addressed to Galley Press.

Library of Congress Catalog Card No.

79-5368
ISBN 0-8317 0690 2
Manufactured in the Netherlands
 2

Contents

page 6 List of color illustrations

page 7 Chapter I
A time for change

page 9 Chapter II
Early Baroque

page 1 Chapter III

The High Baroque in Italy and Holland

page 18 Chapter IV
The High Baroque in France and Spain

page 21 Color illustrations

page 62 Chapter V
Late Baroque and Rococo in Italy

page 65 Chapter VI
Late Baroque and Rococo in France and England

page 71 Chapter VII

Rococo decoration

page 72 Bibliography
 Color illustrations
Cristofano AUori 25 Judith with the head of Holofernes, I6l3
Cosnias Damian Asam 49 Glorification of Mary, 1736
Francois Boucher 16 Miss Louise O'Murphy, 1745-48
Canaletto 27 The Doge returning to Venice, 1729
Caravaggio 22 The vocation of St. Matthew, c. 1600
Annibale Carracci 23 Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne, 1595-1605
Jean Baptiste Chardin 12 Auguste-Gabriel Godefroy, c. 1738
14 Lady sealing a letter, 1733
Pietro da Cortona 26 Allegory of Peace, 1633-39
Sir Anthony van Dyck 40 Portrait of Charles I, King of England, 1635-38
Jean Honorc Fragonard 17 Invocation a 1' Amour, 1780-88
18 Small cascade at Tivoli, c. 1760
Thomas Gainsborough 37 The morning walk, 1785
Orazio Gentiieschi 20 The luteplayer, c. 1626
Goya 33 Blindman's buff, c. 1787
Frans Hals 41 Portrait of Catharina Hoeft and her nurse, 1619-20
William Hogarth 34 Marriage a laMode, Nr. 2, 1743
Nicolas de Largilli^re 10 The family of Louis XIV, 1709
Georges de La Tour 2 The Newborn Child, 1646-48
M. Quentin de La Tour 15 c. 1760
Self portrait,
Charles Le Brun 11 Chancellor Seguier, 1660
Sir Peter Lely 36 Two ladies of the Lake family, c. 1660
Antoine Le Nain, attr. 3 Family reunion, 1642
Mathieu Le Nain 4 The gardener, 1655-60
Jean-Etienne Liotard 50 Portrait of a woman in Turkish costume, c. 1749
Pietro Longhi 29 The rhinoceros, 1751
Louis Michel van Loo 19 Denis Diderot, 1767
Franz Anton Maulpertsch 48 The Holy Family, 1752-53
Jean Marc Nattier 13 Madame Bouret as Diana, 1745
Adriaen van Ostade 42 The violinist, 1673

Giovanni Batt. Piazzetta 24 Rebecca at the well, c. 1740

Nicolas Poussin 1 The poet's inspiration, c. 1630
Rembrandt van Rijn 44 Danae, 1636
45 The Night Watch, 1642
SirJoshua Reynolds 35 Age of Innocence, 1788
Jusepe de Ribera 30 Boy with a club-foot, 1652
Hyacinth Rigaud 6 The artist's mother in two poses, 1695
Hubert Robert 21 Garden of Versailles, 1775
Peter Paul Rubens 38 Rubens and Isabella Brant in the honeysuckle bower, 1609
39 The litde fur, c. 1638
Jan Steen 43 Prince's Day, l4th November 1660, c. 1668
Gerard Ter Borch 47 The letter, c. 1660
Giovanni Batt. Tiepolo 28 America (Continental allegory), 1750-53
Moise Valentin 5 Concert at the bas-relief, 1620-22
Diego Velasquez 31 The Infanta Dona Margarita of Austria, c. 1660
32 The Rokeby Venus, 1649-50
Jan Vermeer 46 The glass of wine, 1660-61
Simon Vouet 7 Psyche and Amor, 1626
Antoine Watteau 8 The embarkation for Cythera, 1718
9 Gilles, 1719-21
 CHAPTER I

A time for change

Great art; a fusion of classical and romantic impulses tempered

by perspective design and harmony - The atrophy of Renaissance
styles and the advent of Mannerism (1520-1600) - The Counter
Reformation and the spread of Catholicism in Europe - The
influence of Venetian painters, Tintoretto and Titian and the
new feeling for colour.

We learn from the history of the arts that the soul of man is in
competition with itself For each generation of artists one of two
impulses is in ascendency: it rises up and colours man's creative
vision. Will it be toward a formal, classical style (the design full of
conventional realism), or will it be personal, passionate and
expressive (full of the eccentricities of its creator) ? The best art is
often produced in times of equilibrium. The High Renaissance,
the years 1495-1520, was such a time. The great painters, Leonardo
da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael balanced their genius against
the formal Renaissance techniques of perspective, design and
harmony which they had learned as apprentices in the Florentine
artworkshops. Only Michelangelo in his later years lost his
balance and allowed personal, expressive feelings to override the
formal design.
Following the Renaissance decline the new generation developed a
style called Mannerism which flourished in the years 1520-1600,
and had international influence. The figures in Mannerist painting
became agitated, and were rendered in disturbingly bright colours.
Statues on the colonnades of
The subject of painting became less important than the experimen-
tal way in which it was handled. It all seemed a chilling, logical
St Peter's Square, Rome
by Gianlorenzo Bernini conclusion to Michelangelo's last paintings in which realism was
rejected in favour of distortion. Perspective, balance and harmony
were deliberately flouted in favour of ostentation, drama and a
kind of melancholic savagery. Though it did produce a few master-
pieces, Mannerism was not a distinguished period of painting.
Throughout the Mannerist era all of Europe was under the
pressure of intense religious debates. The Catholic Church in
Rome was reasserting its authority over the Protestant ideas of
northern Europe. The Church looked in horror at the liberties
taken by the Renaissance artists. It ordered the nude pictures in
churches to have clothes painted on them, and it took a hard line
on the position and duties of the artist in society, insisting that art
should Decome religious propaganda once more.
In Rome, where this Counter Reformation pressure was the
strongest, there was a sharp decline in the quality of art produced.
It is claimed by some that the changes in Church patronage gave

rise to Mannerism, and by others that they hastened the decline of

Mannerism and gave birth to Baroque styles.
 Venetian art was little affected by Mannerism and by the Counter
Reformation. The workshops ot Veronese and Tintoretto
continued to produce characteristically Venetian works with a
feeling tor colour and light. Venice was often visited by German,
Flemish and Dutch painters who were so impressed by the
Venetian feel for atmospheric lighting and colouring that they
copied the style most successfully. A conscious revolt against
Mannerism began in Florence and was growing stronger towards
the final decade of the l6th century, but it was in Rome that the
new style was to develop, a style that came to be known as
Baroque.
Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio (c. 1571-1610) was born
in Milan but travelled through northern Italy to settle in Rome.
He was first employed by a cardinal at the Vatican who recognized
his precocious talent. His harshly realistic work was a move away
from the self-indulgent expressive style of the Mannerist school, it
was a move toward classicism, toward the feeling that a deeper
truth lies behind the appearance of things. Using a dramatic
contrast between light and dark (characteristically, streams of
Deposition, 1602-04
bright sunlight cut diagonally through a dark room lighting up the
painting by Caravaggio
Rome, Pinacoteca Vaticana faces and figures in action), Caravaggio drew upon the styles of
the Renaissance, and began a whole new era of painting.
A family of painters from Bologna, the brothers Agostino and
Annibale Carracci and their cousin, Lodovico (born 1557, 1560 and
1555) formed the other corner stone of the Baroque. The two
brothers went on tours throughout northern Italy, and gained a
Venetian feeling for colour and light from Veronese and
Tintoretto and a sense of action struggling out of an atmosphere
of gloom from Jacopo Bassano.
It is sometimes argued that Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci (the
Portrait of the lute-player,
most important of the family) founded just another brief era of
Mascheroni
Classicism which quickly developed into the Baroque, and that
drawing by Annibale Carracci
Vienna, Graphische Sammiung Mannerism tempered by Classicism is the essence of the Baroque
Albertina style. During the 17th and 18th centuries the national styles of
painting showed great contradiction, some moving toward a classi-
cal approach and others toward personal expression. Most
currents, however, had something of the Baroque, with each
country and each painter adapting the Baroque inspiration to his
own personal style.
Baroque emerged as a vigorous new style in painting, architecture
and sculpture, as all three were often gathered together and
integrated to strive towards "the grand effect" - majestic, imagina-
tive and daring. Painting kept to the ground rules of accurate
perspective, balanced design and realistic colour, but the
astonishing use of light and internal illumination became the start-
ling and expressive factor in each picture. Light was used to
achieve illusions. The flicker or broadside of light suggested move-
ment; the portrait, coming out of the gloom into light, added
^^^x^
mood and character to the features of the subject. These changes
happened over a period we can conveniently divide into Early
Baroque (1585-1625), High Baroque (1625-1675) and Late Baroque
(1675-1715).
CHAPTER II

Early Baroque 1595-1625

Art as religious propaganda - The Vatican City as chiefpatron

- Rome, the nucleus of activity - Arrival ofCaravaggio, the
eternal fugitive - The Carracci brothers and ceiling frescoes - The
Academy of Bologna - Valentin de Boulogne - Domenichino
and the development of landscape painting - Guercino.

After the sack of Rome in 1527, when the artists of the

Renaissance had fled to the northern city-states of Italy, the
Catholic Church was restored stronger than ever before. As if

in an attempt to consolidate its Roman centre of St. Peter's and to

engender Church, a new respect for
a greater confidence in the
Church paintings of devotion was signalled by the
as objects
production of official guidebooks to Church art and museums.
This respect for painting was echoed in Florence where the
Academy of Fine Art was appointed to prevent the export or
destruction of its works of art. At the close of the l6th century the
Vatican's willingness to spend money on propagandist religious
painting once more attracted artists from all over Italy and Europe.
Undoubtedly the most important painters to arrive were
Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci.
Caravaggio had distinguished himself with collectors' paintings
such as The Basket of Fruit before beginning three large canvasses
on the life of St. Matthew for the Church. Whereas the Renais-
sance painters of a century before had found that tricks of perspec-
tive gave a greater sense of realism to a flat painting, so Caravaggio
discovered that the creative use of internal lighting could give a
painting an intense, almost tangible sense of reality. The figures
emerge from gloom by the fall of unnatural light not natural light
;

and diffused sunlight, but a forced and abstract deluge of

illumination from no known source.
The paintings of Caravaggio were not readily accepted by the
Church on account of another innovation - his use of the
colloquial : the image of common man and familiar street scenes to
complement paintings of the saints. The features of holy men
were not idealized but were drawn from men in the streets. The
Madonna with the Pilgrims caused a sensation on account of the
dirty feet and torn clothing of figures kneeling in the foreground.
The Death of the Virgiti was refused by the Carmelites because the
Virgin was shown with bare limbs, a swollen belly and pro-
nounced features.
There is something more starkly Classical than Baroque in
Caravaggio's paintings. Ironically, they deny the orthodox
religious view which they attempt to illustrate. The painter was
reputed to be a fiery and erratic character who quarrelled with the
authorities, was thrown into jail several times, killed a man in a
 duel and was forced to flee through Naples, Malta, Sicily and back
to Naples, painting considerable masterpieces in churches at these
places, before dying himself aged 37. Caravaggio had no
distinguished students, but he did have a considerable following,
called Caravaggists, who continued his techniques, and dominated
the styles of the Early Baroque.
Annibale began his career in Rome at the same time as
Caravaggio. In order to remind his family of his humble
beginnings in Bologna he painted Tht Butcher's Shop, an early
depiction of low-life culture which shows tradesmen killing,
weighing, cutting and hanging lurid sides of pork. He was credited
with rediscovering the work of Correggio, a Renaissance painter
ot a century before whose painted ceilings and technique of
internal illumination make him a great prophet of the Baroque
style. Itwas a painted ceiling, that of the Farnese Palace, which
brought enormous fame to Annibale Carracci and his brother,
Agostino. On a barrelshaped ceiling, divided into panels with the
panels separated by sculpture, they painted in fresco (paint applied
to wet plaster) some love scenes from the classical poet, Ovid. The
paintings are a beautiful blend of classicism and humanity. They
made the same kind of impact on other artists as Masaccio's
frescoes did nearly two centuries earlier. Annibale was called the
best frescoist since Raphael, and for centuries after painters would
come to see the work.
If Caravaggio introduced drama into painting then the Carracci
brothers brought joy and enchantment. There is the same
exuberance brought down to a human scale which we can see in
the earlier works of the Venetians, Titian and Giorgione, when
they attempted mythological subjects a century before.
Despite the pagan and erotic subject-matter, this group of frescoes
found rapid favour with the authorities. They were so admired
that they prompted decorative painting of walls and ceilings of
palaces in Rome and all over Europe. But there was another
Study for a figure in the ceiling
reason for the spread of the Carracci style. Back in their
fresco of the Farnese Gallery, c. 1598
drawing by Annibale Carracci hometown of Bologna, the Carracci had founded, in 1585, the
Paris, Mus6e National du Louvre Accademia degli Incamminati for students of art. They taught
anatomy, drawing from living models, and a study of the great
masters of the past. Among their celebrated pupils were
Domenichino and Guido Reni. Bologna flourished as a centre of
art, and close liaisons were formed with Rome.

The greatest of the Carracci, Annibale, died in Rome in 1609; he

incurred a misleading reputation as a copier of the great masters,
whilst his brilliant innovations were the result of detailed obser-
vations of nature and of live models. It was Annibale who evolved
the heroic landscape style which preoccupied so many Baroque
painters. His cousin Ludovico continued to run the Bologna
Academy till his death in 1619.
Caravaggio and the Carracci gave rise to a second generation who
developed the divergent and often contradictory possibilities of
their master's work. A great many painters from northern Europe
came to Rome and took off from Caravaggio. Bartolomeo
Manfredi (c. 1580-1620/1) from Mantua began by forging

10
 Caravaggio pictures, but went on to originate a style called genre
painting in which street characters in dimly lit rooms drank,
g;unbled and brawled. It is said that this style found great favour
with painters from Utrecht, France and Germany. A Frenchman,
Moise Valentin (c. 1591-1632), called Valentin de Boulogne, was a
clever exponent of this genre.
Orazio Gentileschi (c. 1562-1647) from Pisa knew Caravaggio,
learned his style and carried it and London where he was
to Paris
the court painter to Charles His best painting, Danae (1621-2),
I.

shows an orange-hued nude reaching up to a shower of gold. She

lays upon crushed white sheets, against a dark background. It
surpasses anything Caravaggio could have done. But Orazio is said
I^*\ ;1^^^
to have been surpassed himself by an energetic daughter,
Artemisia (1593-1652). Her painting o{Judith beheading Holofernes
(c.1620) is a particularly savage work in bright colours. She was
involved in a famous rape case five or six years before, and it may
Judith beheading Holofernes, c. 1620
have influenced her choice of subject matter.
painting by Artemisia Gentileschi
Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi
Domenichino (l581-l64l) trained under Lodovico Carracci in
Bologna and worked under Annibale Carracci at the Farnese
Palace. He picked up the Carracci interest in Raphael and classical
masters, and his landscape painting had an enormous influence on
Poussin and Claude Lorraine. Due to his neurotic and
temperamental character he was unable to work easily with other
artists. His paintings show a certain classical restraint and move

toward the central Baroque style of many small figures scattered

through a convoluted landscape. Domenichino's reputation has
waned over the centuries, his work being overshadowed by that of
Pietro da Cortona and Lanfranco.
Francesco Barbieri (l 591-1661), known as Guercino or Squint-Eye,
also trained under Lodovico Carracci 3t the Bolognese Academy,
St William of Aquitania receives the
but he blended the style of Caravaggio with that of the Carracci.
monastic habit, 1620
painting by Guercino His early works contain crude and hastily painted figures in poor
Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale designs, and lit in patches. It was after his journey to Rome in
1621 that he took up the techniques of using light to create
illusions. He turned to painting ceilings and the effects he
achieved had an impact on Baroque decoration in general. Like
many of these early imitators of Caravaggio and Carracci, he was
swept aside by a new generation who carried the techniques very
much further.
Toward the close of the Early Baroque period, 1625, there appears
to be a certain dilution of the hard and contrasted style of
Caravaggio. Orazio Riminaldi from Pisa with his Martyrdom of St.
Cecilia (l6l5-20), moves away from Caravaggio to a desultory
classicism. Carlo Saraceni (1579-1620), with his Miracle of St. Zeno
(I6I8) regressed to a Renaissance form of classicism.
The of classical Early Baroque were shared
faltering principles
between the followers of Carracci in Bologna and the followers of
Caravaggio in Rome. A third movement was emerging in
Florence, so long silent since it had fielded the great names of
Renaissance painting a century before. Florentine artists struggled
against the old styles of Mannerism without coming across the
new styles operating in Rome and Bologna.

11
 CHAPTER 111

The High Baroque in Italy and

Holland, 1625-75

Bernini, unhitect, sculptor and central figure - Pietro da

-
Cortona Lanfranco - Neapolitan painting -
Guido Reni -

Jusepe de Rihera Frans Hals and solid burghers - Rubens,

-

painter, diplomat and giant of the Flemish Barocfue - Dutch

painters in Fngland - Van Dyck, the gentleman courtier - Lely
and the International style - Rembrandt's spirituality and
humanity - The wooded scenes ofJacob van Ruisdael and
Hohbema - Aelbert Cuyp - The Ostade brothers: frozen lakes
and smoky taverns -Jan Steen, storybook fun and games - Ter
Borch, domestic portraiture - Vermeer, a mystery wrapped in an
enigma - De Hooch, shafts of sunlight through doors and
courtyards.

Until the 19th century the word "Baroque" was a term of dis-
missive contempt for a style that was considered decorous,
exaggerated and artificial. The German art historian Heinrich
Wolfflin in his book Renaissance und Barock (1888) was among the
first to attempt an identification and appreciation of the style. The

Early Baroque saw the change from the contortions of Mannerism

to more realistic human figures, often set in a tavern or against a
landscape, usually part of a narrative; and the whole given
Baldacchino, 1624-33
dramatic effect by the illusionary use of lighting. The period of the
by Gianlorenzo Bernini
Rome, St Peter High Baroque was the rise of painting as a complement to the
new, audacious and decorative architecture.
Gianlorenzo Bernini (l598-l680), sculptor and architect of Rome,
was the outstanding innovator of the High Baroque style. He was
to his century what Michelangelo was to the century before. His
early years were given to sculpture and a little painting, but he was
encouraged to apply his creative imagination to architecture, to the
internal design of churches, including the greatest of them all, St.
Peter's at the Vatican; to fountains, staircases, tombs and
monuments and to theatre design. He wholly embraced the
decorative styles of the Baroque, invested them with great
authority by his confident designs, and then took the styles to
I-rance, to the court of Louis XIV.
The Baroque period was churches, paintings and sculpture
gathered into a more decorative ensemble. Not only the buildings,
but the streets and squares, and even the man-made landscape
gardens became part of the overall plan. Whereas Renaissance art
provided us with a static and ideal viewpoint, the Baroaue style
invited our participation; encouraged us to walk around and
through its architecture and sculpture, so that we may enjoy the
many pleasing views.

12
 The High Baroque opened with the exceptional equestrian statues
of Francesco Mochi in the city of Piacenza, and moved forward
upon Bernini's statuary which reproduced the fine texture of skin
and hair, and even caught fleeting expressions on stone faces.
Bernini designed the statue of Santa Bibiana in the church of that
name in Rome. He also designed the modest facade, and Pietro da
Cortona (1595-1669) painted frescoes inside that same church. This
collaboration, albeit on an insignificant church, sparked the High
Baroque into life.
Originally from Florence, Pietro invested vigorous theatricality and
illusionism into fresco painting. His celebrated ceilings for the
Barberini Palace are a marvel. We seem to look through the
ceiling into an open sky figures float in the air and appear to
:

descend into the hall. Pietro's work became the forerunner to

grand ceiling painting throughout Europe, including the French
Palace of Versailles.
If Pietro da Cortona and Bernini brought the flamboyant and
decorative side of the Baroque style to its climax, then Giovanni
Lanfranco (1582-1647) achieved the classical balance. Lanfranco was
St Bibiana, 1624-26
from the northern city of Parma where he must have been
marble by Gianlorenzo Bernini familiar with the work of his townsman Correggio of a century
Rome, S. Bibiana earlier. It was said that the individual figures of Lanfranco's
painted ceilings blend to form a harmonious whole, just as the
voices of a choir blend in the music of Palestrina or Monteverdi.
His mastery of ceiling illusions is so complete that centuries
afterwards, and even allowing for the discolouring of paint, it is
impossible to tell whether we are looking through the ceiling, or
merely at a clever painting of the sky.
During the period of the High Baroque, Rome was attracting
painters from all over Europe, and Kings were sending for Roman
painters to decorate new palaces designed by Roman architects.
John the Baptist, c. 1640
Bologna, once the equal of Rome, began to fade in importance. A
painting by Guido Reni
London, Dulwich College, Bolognese painter with a considerable reputation (until savaged by
Picture Gallery the influential Victorian critic, John Ruskin) was Guido Reni
(1575-1642). The Bolognese admirers of Reni continued to praise
local painters and consider them superior to their Roman rivals.
Reni produced rather wooden religious scenes, and with
Domenichino, he began that sentimental tradition of painting the
faces of saints with their eyes raised in holy ecstasy. Besides
swooning saints, Reni developed a kind of romanticism such as
Atalanta and Hippomenes (l6l5-25) which has a distinctive
Mannerist feel about it. He is reputed to have been a virgin all his
life with a neurotic fear of being poisoned, approached by an old

woman or tricked with witchcraft. No doubt his unstable

character accounts for the hint of dark mystery which make many
of his paintings oddly popular.
By the period of the High Baroque, these various styles had been
carried all over Europe and adapted to the individual artists or
local tastes. Southern Italy was under Spanish domination, and so,
through the Italian part of Naples, the Italian Baroque was taken
up by visiting Spanish painters such as Jusepe de Ribera (l591-
1652). Spanish painters generally have an eye for unpalatable

13
 ^ subjects, the grotesque, the freakish circus performer;
traJition which has come down to Picasso in
Ribcra initiated a style of Italo-Spanish painting which
called Neapolitan.
The Baroque
painters
more

style was carried to northern Europe by the Dutch

Honthorst and Terbrugghen when they went back from
it is

is
a
recent times.
often

Rome to their Catholic town of Utrecht in Holland. Utrecht

became active in gloomy Caravaggist paintings of tavern and

^ ya/^ brothel scenes. Frans Hals (1581/5-1666),

not
who lived in Haarlem,
from Utrecht, adopted this style, but turned it to
far

commercial use. He obtained many commissions to paint groups

of soldiers who were all over Holland preparing to fight in the
wars against Spain. All the soldiers had to share equal positions of
importance, which gave these group portraits an artificial look.
But HaJs' individual portraits are more deserving of our attention,
for he worked at capturing rather obvious expressions, particularly
Rubens's son Nicolaas, 1625-27
moods such as laughter.
drawing by Peter Paul Rubens
Vienna, Graphische Sammlung Dutch and Flemish (Belgian) painting became distinctive and
Albertina internationally important in the hands of a succession of masters.
Peter Paul Rubens (l577-l640) took the Venetian style off the wall
and put it on canvas, where he pursued a dynamic form of realism
with industrious determination. Rubens went straight to his
sources and travelled to Venice and Rome to learn from the
Renaissance and Early Baroque masters. On his return to Antwerp
in 1608 he embarked upon a celebrated career, not only as a
painter but as a diplomat and man of letters. He ran a huge
workshop where he and his apprentices dashed-off canvasses with
commercial bravado. He had an eye to public appetites, and pain-
ted rather too many suggestive rape scenes involving fleshy
women, or portraits with sentimental, over-large eyes. His land-
scapes have not the mood and perfection of his Flemish
contemporaries; they would seem to indicate excessive haste both
in the choice of subject and in its execution. Rubens' work is said
to be vulgar and insincere: it is widely admired, but rarely liked.
He is be the Painters' painter, for the influence his quick,
said to
daring compositions had on later generations.
One of Rubens' many pupils was Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-
l64l), known as a court painter, but more recendy admired for his
early work and his watercolours. He seems to have been a careful
and diplomatic painter who lived well by producing cleverly
idealized portraits of powerful people, which always retained some
of the character of the sitter. He spent much time travelling
between Holland, Paris and London, cultivating his patrons and
trying to advance his own reputation while under the shadow of
Rubens. Among Van Dyck's followers was Sir Peter Leiy (1618-
80) who, like Van Dyck, came from Holland to London where he
lived sumptuously as a court painter. His work is often confused
with Van Dyck's, though Lely moved with the times. His austere
Commonwealth portraits gave way to more sensuous paintings of
Restoration ladies of the court.
The great name of Dutch painting was Rembrandt (1606-69). He
adapted the fashion of strong light and dark contrasts and applied

14
 :

this technique to his many studies of domestic and social life. Our
perception of Rembrandt's work is not always accurate owing to
the varnishes used by him and by later generations, which have
darkened many of his paintings out of recognition. His
biographical details, his rise to wealth and reputation, the early
death of his wife and children, and his bankruptcy, are the stuff of
legend, but in truth he seems a remote and inaccessible
personality. By contrast with Rubens' flamboyance and love of
melodrama Rembrandt seems a very cerebral painter with a high
technical skill somewhat wasted upon his posed and rather
bloodless subjects. He painted over sixty self-portraits through
which we can see his rise to success, and his fall to a time of
mellow introspection.
Rembrandt's painting The Nigkwalch, though a masterpiece of
design and technique, is more an historic illustration, than a work
of art. It is not in any way an illumination of life, an insight into
Self portrait, 1640, detail
painting by Rembrandt van Rijn
human values or a comment upon the folly of the times. It is an
London, National Gallery impartial record, almost a photograph of a daily event. This
uncontroversial style accompanied a general change in fashion on
Dutch painting. The dramatic aspects of Baroque were abandoned
for a quieter, classical approach and for less demanding subjects
still-life, landscapes and historical subjects. Rembrandt was

perhaps the greatest etcher of his time. He picked up from Diircr

and Lucas van Leyden, and learned to mix varying techniques in
one composition. His etchings have a free and imaginative style
which proved a great influence on later generations.
Though Rembrandt's studied realism was a move away from
earlier, flamboyant styles, his reputation became victim of an
increasing classicism in painting fashion. After his death, his work
was dismissed as vulgar, naturalist painting and for a century the
classicist rejection of his manner influenced his biographers, so
that they wrote of him as a vain and greedy man. The English
painter Joshua Reynolds is credited with starting a revival of
English interest in Rembrandt, and by the 19th century his work
was attracting the attention it deserves.
Return of the prodigal son, 1636
Mid-century Dutch and Flemish painting, in the hands of scores of
etching by Rembrandt van Rijn
Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum
competent draughtsmen, slowly abandoned the familiar themes
and narratives and moved toward a style of photographic realism.
Here were stormy skies, trees crowding over a ruin, ships upon an
estuary, windmills, feasts in houses, peasant cottages, portraits of
dignitaries and all manner of subjects upon the general principle
that life is not a harmony of simple, elusive forces, as the Renais-
sance painters believed, but rather a matter of irreconcilable diver-
sities. All colour was drained out of paintings, which became

imbued with a monochromatic contrast in addition to the internal

contrasts of the subject matter, where deliberately low horizons
provided the opportunity for a great deal of angry cloud.
Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-82) is often considered the greatest
Dutch landscape painter. He was influenced by the Haarlem
landscapist Cornelisz Vroom but became preoccupied with trees
which he clad with personality and promoted to the centre piece
of his paintings. He moved from thick, dark colours to brighter

15
Avenue at Middelharnis, c. 1689 complexions and took to more distant views of Haarlem and
painting by Meindert Hobbema
panoramas of the Dutch countryside over which clouds rage. His
London, National Gallery
close friend Meindert Hobbema (1638-1709) often painted the
same views but preferred watermills and less demanding
landscapes without the cloud. His ^nntxng Avenue at Middelharnis
is an arresting and unforgettable painting.

Aelbert Cuyp (l620-9l) painted more poetic landscapes,

remarkable for their luminous quality. His pictures of resting cattle
silhouetted against the sky bring a rare note of tranquillity to an
Cuyp, was a notable portraitist. The
agitated age. His father, Jacob
brothers Adriaen van Ostade (1610-85) and Isack van Ostade (l621-
49) were known for their "genre" painting: scenes of Dutch
peasant life.Adriaen painted over a thousand small works, mostly
on wood, and watercolours. It is thought that
as well as sketches
along with A. Brouwer, he was a student of Frans Hals. His
paintings of peasants tend toward caricature and yet they are very
engaging. Isack was known for his winter scenes and for cottage
or tavern scenes with horses. His pictures of skaters and sleigh
riders attract deserving attention. Many of his works show a
mastery of smoky or misty atmospheres.
Willem Kalf (1619-93) absorbed the chiaroscuro of Rembrandt
and the satisfying colouring of Vermeer, which he applied to his
still-life compositions. His work was in great demand, and it

brings home to us the sumptuous banquets and possessions

enjoyed by the 17th-century Dutch middle-classes.
With a reputation a little inferior to that of Frans Hals and
Rembrandt, the Dutch painter Jan Steen (1626-79) introduced the
neglected element of humour into Dutch painting. Steen married
the daughter of the painter Jan van Goyen and lived at the Hague
for some years, then in turn at Delft, Haarlem and Leiden. His
landscapes with winter and tavern scenes seem to owe something
to the Ostade brothers, but he diversified and captured many
aspects of Dutch daily life, as in The Doctor's Visit or The Village

16
 School. His figures, particularly his children, have delightful
expressions, and his paintings have a characteristic technical
excellence.
Gerard Ter Borch (l6l7-8l) was a precocious painter who travelled
through England, Italy and Spain where he must have become
acquainted with the more vigorous Baroque styles, but his
paintings show a Dutch moderation. He produced many portraits
and group scenes, and his works seem a subtle treatment of colour
and light, until compared to the work of Vermeer.
A brilliant diversion from the mainstream is represented by the
work of two painters from Delft, Pieter de Hooch and the
incomparable Jan or Johannes Vermeer (1632-75). Not till the last
hundred years was Vermeer known at all; his paintings were
formally attributed to others. Only 30 or 35 pictures are known to
be by this shadowy figure, so unforthcoming that his probable
self-portrait in Allegory of Painting is a back view. But his work
(and not De Hooch's) is giving rise to great excitement this
century. Because of its analytical detail it is often compared to
scientific investigations of the time, and on account of its
mysterious mood it is seen as an evocation of 17th century mysticism.
Vermeer painted indoor scenes often of middle-class life, usually
choosing a domestic setting which is not generalized, but is kept
very personal. We
feel that we are glimpsing into the family life of
the artist not as a stranger, but through his own eyes. The people
and furniture are deployed with telling significance, as if in tune
with hidden principles of decorum in the refined and enclosed
universe of Vermeer's society. The chief figure of each painting is
given a single prop with which to indicate their relationship with
their environment; it might be a musical instrument, a jug, a wine-
glass or commonly a letter. The paintings themselves are rendered
with a studied attention to textures and to the incidence of direct
and reflected light. He painted two known landscapes, probably
from a window. His celebrated townscape. View of Delft, with its
horizontal bands of sand, water, city and sky, is said to have set
the style for future landscape painting.
Allegory of Painting, c. 1665
painting by Jan Vermeer Pieter de Hooch (1629-84) painted streets and courtyards with a
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum developed sense of domestic order and atmospheric mood, and
has not impressed the contemporary imagination as much as his
fellow painter Vermeer. This great era of Dutch and Flemish
painting was extinguished by the French invasion of 1672. Many
painters moved to England and Germany, or, with the subsequent
collapse of the Dutch economy, stopped painting altogether.
The styles of the mid-century have been variously called heroic-
classical or Baroque. Faced with such individuality and diversity it
is difficult to demonstrate any stylistic affinities with Italian art of

this same period. Northern European painting was based on the

weaving of two or three incompatible threads: the bright,
sensuous mythologies of Rubens, the near black and white
paintings of city low-life, fishing boats on estuaries, poverty or
laughter in taverns and cottages, formal portraits, single portraits
of humourless dignitaries, and the domestic scenes of effortless
elegance by Vermeer.

17
 CHAPTER IV

The High Baroque in France and

Spain

Simon VQuel's theatrical scene-painting - Landscapes ofPoussin;

pathos tempered hy Classicism - Le B run's factoty of decorative
schemes - Claude Lotraine; antique palaces and the Roman
Campagna - The Le Nain brothers - Georges de la Tour;
penitent calm by candle light - The intense El Greco; elongated
distortions of a mystical visionary - The sentimentalized beggar
boys ofMurillo - Zurbaran -Juan Valdes Leal - Francisco
Pacheco - The objective realism of Velasquez at the Court of
Philip IV.

The Baroque style is said to have arrived in Paris with the return
of Simon Vouet (1590-1649) from Rome. He brought with him an
Italian Early Baroque style drawn from Lanfranco and Guido Reni,
and made himself a reputation painting huge altarpieces and
decorating the insides of palaces. His undeserved hold on French
painting was shaken, but not lost, upon the return of a brilliant
compatriot.
Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) was born in northern France but
spent most of his life in Rome which he knew to be the centre of
European painting. He was unimpressed by the Caravaggist style
of slanting illumination; his own painting had a more natural
distribution of light which goes back to the Renaissance painters.
His interest was in classical sculpture and in the painting of the
Holy Family with St Elizabeth great masters, particularly Raphael and the Venetian school of
and St John, c. 1640 Titian and Bellini. Whereas the Parisian painters like Vouet used
drawing by Nicolas Poussin
light undercoats which give a bright artificiality to painting,
Windsor Castle
Poussin used reddish undercoats, which are now beginning to
show through and darken his early pictures.
After fifteen years in Rome during which he developed a
*.,. contempt for French culture, his own reputation was so high that
Cardinal Richelieu invited him back to join the French Royal
Academy. It was a disaster. His own reputed arrogance could not
^^v^4 submit to the trivial commissions for palace tapestries and book-
covers. He was accustomed to choosing his own subjects, so he
left abruptly to go back to Rome. It was during this second and

final stay there that he developed a pagan philosophy, and, in the

French tradition, used his reputation as a painter to promulgate his
less acceptable personal views.
Poussin's work has a monumental gravity; all the drama and
authority of religious themes transferred to classical subjects. His
very innocent figures disport against landscapes of aquaducts,
inland cliffs and golden clouds. His style is placed clearly between
the Baroque and the French Classicism of a century later. In France

18
 he is regarded as the greatest painter of the 17th century, and
perhaps France's greatest. In the 19th century Cezanne announced
his intention to take up PouSvSin's style.
The period of the High Baroque was the slow transfer of the
artistic initiative from Rome towards Paris. Charles Le Brun (l6l9-

90) was largely responsible for this move. He studied with Simon
Vouet and went to Rome with Poussin, but developed a taste for
themes of imperialist grandeur which found him employment
with Louis XIV. Le Brun was awarded commissions to decorate
palaces, among them the Palace of Versailles.
For thirty years Le Brun supervised most of the art commissioned
by the French government. His influence drew all the styles
together to give French art its characteristic unity, which is said to
be academic and propagandist. The flamboyant and illusionist
tendencies of Baroque art were adapted to a classical grandeur
known as the Louis XIV style.
An even greater French classicist was Claude Lorraine (1600-82)
who affected a synthesis of Flemish landscape with Italian lighting.
The expressions, 1698, detail He put the sun upon canvas so that we are dazzled by His it.

from "Traite des passions" harbours of ships and palaces along the shore are saturated with
by Charles Le Brun
soft, golden light. This obvious positioning of the sun contributes
a powerful sense of dawn or duslc, of passing time, which in turn
gives the poetic scene a feeling of melancholy and of great
antiquity. Claude Lorraine had the greatest influence on Turner
and the English Romantic movement of the early 19th century.
Not all French painting followed the Poussin style of heroic
mythology there remained an active rural school of realists who
;

passed the tradition on to Millet in the 19th century. The brothers

Antoine, Louis and Mathieu Le Nain opened a workshop in Paris
where they painted peasant subjects. They seem to have
coUaborateci on many paintings and it is not worth the trouble to
life Mathieu
distinguish their individual contributions. In later
took to portraits and huge compositions. The acknowledged
genius of the family, Louis Le Nain (1593-1648), painted A
Blacksmith at his forge
painting by Louis Le Nain
Blacbmith at his Forge which hung in the Louvre to influence 19th
Paris, Musee National du Louvre century artists.

An almost forgotten painter, Georges de La Tour (1593-1652),

from eastern France, has been given a disproportionate coverage in
artbooks over recent years. He developed a style distinctly his own
in which familiar saints with glassy features like those of a doll are
caught in an enriching glow of candlelight. His secular figures,
beggars and peasants are often rendered as "characters" with wispy
hair and rugged faces. His better figures, with their slow gestures,
and half-caught in shadow, have a pleasing dignity about them
which put us in mind of Vermeer.
The influence of the Italian Baroque on Spain and Portugal was
very different. The Iberian Peninsula was little affected by the
Italian Renaissance of the l6th century; the Gothic and Moorish
styles prevailed through to the times of Mannerism and the
Baroque. The painter El Greco (I54l-l6l4), born in Crete which
then belonged to Venice, began to paint in the old Byzantine
styles but was impressed by the Mannerists, by Titian and by

19
 Michelangelo. He went to Spain and was commissioned to paint
great aJtarpieces, which he did with acid colours and a stylish
eccentricity which has made his work distinctive. He ignored the
chiaroscuro ot Caravaggio, and had little interest in the Baroque
concern for realism, but the dynamism and apparent action of his
figures are part of the Baroque inspiration. El Greco had few
imitators and was overshadowed by the genius of Velasquez.
Murillo (1617-82) began his career painting at fairgrounds but
moved to a more acceptable style after seeing the work of Titian,
Rubens and Velasquez. There remained in his work the tlaw of
excessive sentimentality, making sweet scenes out ot harsh
circumstances. His charming beggar-children found great favour
with the Spanish public but continue to offend the art historian.
The rise ot Murillo' s popular style eclipsed the mystical realism of
Francisco de Zurbaran (1598-1664), who was said to have derived
his style from sculpture. Whereas Murillo may put us in mind of
Raphael with paintings like Eliezir and Rebecca or the larger
Immaculate Conception, Zurbaran, with his Adoration of the Shepherds
hints at Michelangelo.
The most Baroque of painters was Juan Valdes Leal (l622-90). He
painted in the chiaroscuro style but used quick, impressionist
brushstrokes, and a manner called "temperamental painting". The
mainstream of Spanish painting was in the hands of Herrera the
Elder (c. 1590-1655) ana Francisco Pacheco (1564-1654). Herrera
The Annunciation, 1596-1600
and his son dabbed with an impressionistic spontaneity, but
painting by El Greco
Pacheco criticized this method of detached strokes. Pacheco's
Villanueva y Geltru, Museo Balaguer
pupil, Velasquez, who became his son-in-law, began painting,
under instruction, in the heavily contrasting chiaroscuro of the
time, but fortunately for the world, he ignored his master's
objections and took to the technique of quick, impressionistic
strokes.
Diego Velasquez (1599-1660) may well have studied under Herrera
the Elder before he went to Pacheco, and certainly has achieved a
heroic synthesis between the contrasting styles of these two
painters. Pacheco was only an indifferent painter of the Mannerist
school but he produced important biographical material on his
illustrious son-in-law as well as books on the theory of painting.
Jesus in the Temple, 1686
painting byjuan Valdes Leal His value as a teacher consisted in his setting the reluctant young
Madrid, Museo del Prado Diego to draw and paint from life models for five years.
Velasquez' early paintings of religious or domestic scenes in the
chiaroscuro and illusionistic style usually feature a prominent still-

life, a collection ot food or utensils thrown together in interesting

ways. He often used kitchen scenes, of which Old Woman Frying
Eggs isfamous example. The painting has a posed and static
a
quality and a flatness of perspective, but it is an arresting
composition of subtle and fascinating detail.
He was appointed a court painter and met Rubens, whose taste
for rich decoration he adopted. About this time he modified his
chiaroscuro and produced lighter backgrounds for his figures. A
visit to Italy seemed to have impressed him for he is known to

have admired Titian's work and copied Tintoretto's paintings in

Venice, and then sketched Michelangelo's figures off the walls of

20
1. Nicolas Poussin 2. Georges de La Tour
TIm pott's inspiration, c. 1630 The Nt'uhoni ChiU. 1646-48
Canvas, 94 x 70 cm Canvas, 76 x 91 cm
Hanover, Niedersachsische Rennes, Musee des Beaux-Arts
Landesgalerie 4. Mathieu Lc Nain (attributed)
The chiaroscuro (light and shadow)
The giirJoiir. 1655-60
was in Rome and under
initially techniques of Caravaggio were taken
It
Canvas, 93 x 120 cm
Domcnichino that the Frenchman, to Holland by two Dutch
travelling
Cologne, Wallraf-richartz-Museum
Poussin, developed a taste for land- artists. Cicorges de La Tour was a
scaped mythologies. He was Frenchman who exploited the possi-
The enigmatic brothers, Mathieu,
invited back to Paris where Vouet's bilities by producing many shadowy
Antoine and Louis Le Nain frequently
work was the fashion and he left in scenes, frequently lit by a single
worked on each other's canvases and
disgust. Most of his work shows candle. In his search for simplicity the
so it is scarcely possible to differen-
the influence of Raphael. It has figures lost all personality and became
tiate their individual work. They
Venetian colouring and borrows like dolls. Despite these short-
usually worked in the Dutch tradi-
from Veronese. Poussin has come comings, his reputation is in the peasant
tion, producing .scenes ot life.
down to us as one of the greatest ascendency and his work is of
This painting is almost a still-life
French masters of the High frequently reproduced.
figures. It has a gloomy and ritualistic
Baroque style.
mood - all eyes upon the gardener's
presentation of a flower. Perhaps it is

a declaration of love.
3. Antoine Le Nain (attributed)
rjmil) rattiinti. 1642
Copper, 40 x 32 cm
Paris, Musee National du Louvre

The gentlemen of Antoinc's family

group - red nosed and watery eyed -
are enjoying the occasion, but the
bored young woman with the song
book, her fingers in delicate display, is
not in the spirit.
There is something of Hals in the
portraits, and something Dutch about
this celebration of inebriation.
5.Moise Valentin (Valentin de 7. Simon Vouet
Boulogne) Ps)cheand Amor, 1626
Concert at the bas-relief, 1620-22 Canvas, 112 x 165 cm
Canvas, 173 x 214 cm Lyon, Musee des Beaux-Arts
Paris, Musee National du Louvre
The Early Baroque style is said to

Valentin was a French painter who have entered France upon Vouet's
established himself in Rome
and return from Rome to Paris. He was

became a friend of Poussin. His style hugely popular in his day for portraits
is after Caravaggio and Manfredi. A
and altarpieces, though his skills may
significant number of Baroque seem ordinary when compared with
paintings are of tavern and brothel the best of Italian painters at his time.
scenes. Scenes of public and domestic It all suggests that this fame rests

life are known genre paintings.

as upon his position as an importer of a
They spread to Holland through the new trend in painting. This classically
Catholic town of Utrecht, but the restrained canvas seems of a different

subjects had little appeal to English age and not consistent with the
painters. humanizing figures of the Baroque.
6. Hyacinth Rigaud
The artisl's mother in tuo poses, 1695
Canvas, 81 x 101 cm
Piiris, Musee National du Louvre

With its bull-neci< and sad eyes it is

not a flattering portrait and most

certainly must be a likeness. Rigaud
was the official court p;iinter to two
French Kings, Louis the XIV and
XV. His formal portraits are c;ireful
attempts at flattery but retain suffi-
cient elements of the original cha-
racter. We may appreciate that artists
in this time and beyond had little

choice in their subject matter and in

the use of free, interpretive expres-
sion. Rigaud is among the official
portrait painters whose duties were
like that of an official photographer.
8. Antoine >X'atteau
Tht Embarkiitioii for Cythtra. 1718
(second version)
Canvas, 128 x 193 cm
bcrlin, Schloss Charlottcnburg
9. Antoine Watteau
Gilles. 1719-21
It took the genius ot ^X attcau to Canvas, 184 x 149 cm
break the constraints ot academicism Paris, Musee National du Louvre
which was subjugating French art. He
was influenced by theatre so that his The Italian theatre tradition of the
figures disport against a backdrop
Commedia del' Arte with its stereoty-
which lorms a magical balance pical characters enabled painters to
between painted scenery and awesome attempt interpretations. Gilles was
landscape. The scene is inspired by believed to be a sensitive and melan-
outdoor pageants conducted by the choly clown. VC'atteau makes him a
French courtiers who would take guarded, hesitant personality, perhaps
instruments out into parks in order to waiting for applause at the end of an
enact romantic fantasies. NX atteau
act. His posture summarizes the uni-
created beautiful images ot a delicate versal characters of all clowns, actors
and ephemeral world, infusing them and performers, that of helpless
with delicious nostalgia. deference. He neglects to participate
in the humour ot his triends, but
stands respectfully for our attention.
There is a sad contrast between the
faintly ridiculous costume and the
sombre expression.
10. Nicolas de Largilliere

The family of Louis XIV, 1709

Canvas, 129 x 162 cm
London, Wallace Collection

A portrait painter who did not aspire

to the heights of Rigaud, Largillifere
was trained in Antwerp and brought
Flemish character to his work. He
served under Peter Lely in England
before going to Paris where he pain-
ted the families of the wealthy middle-
classes. This group portrait of the
King's family has a structured dispo-
sition ot figures which looks back to
Renaissance techniques. The eye is
carried from figure to figure by way of
stray gestures or glances. It is a consi-
dered painting and rewarded by a
little time and attention despite the

look of fixed distrust by the King.

11. Charles Lc Brun
Chancellor Segu'wr. 1660
Canvas, 295 x 357 cm
Paris, Musee National du Louvre

A pupil of Poussin and Vouet, Le

Brun rose to a position of dictatorial
power under the French King Louis
XIV. To support the King's political
programme, French art became
uniform and propagandist. We may
sense the prevailing mood of
hierarchy and authority in this
painting,where the subservient
and dehu-
figures are decorative
manized. Even the sensitive horse
seems nervous of the illustrious rider
whose black looks of smug disdain
areechoed by the dark clouds behind
him.
12. Jean Baptistc Chardin
AugmlfCJijbrie/ Goikjro). c. 1738
Canvas, 68 x 76 cm
Paris, Mus^ National du Louvre

(Chardin invested his still-life paintings

with a sense of harmonious formality
and achieved marvellous eltects with
colour. His paintings of bread and
wine are rich evocations of substance
and flavour. The young man of this
portrait has been caught at an inti-
mate moment. His hands rest natu-
rally on the desk and he watches his
spinning top with a look of child-like
absorption. There are depths to this
painting that are conspicuously
absent in similar portraits by the
Englishman, Joshua Reynolds. It is
instructive to compare Chardin's
sense of integrity with portraits by
Maurice de La Tour.

13. Jean Marc Nattier the Younger

Madame Bourel aj Diana, 1745
Canvas, 138 x 105 cm
Lugano, Collection Bornemisza-
Thyssen

The French court of Louis XV flirted

with mythological parallels. It was

Nattier's position to flatter the ladies
by portraying them as favoured
goddesses. A bow, a quiver and a
leopard-skin has trantormed the
redoubtable Madame Bouret to some-
thing a little less transitory, the Greek
Diana. We are acquainted with illu-

sions that mislead powerful people,

when pampered court beauties iden-
tify themselves with mythical huntres-
ses. Was this the French conceit
which gave rise to Napoleon ?
14. Jean Baptiste Chardin
Lady .u a ling a Ittlir. 1733
Canvas, 144 x 144 cm
Berlin, Schloss Charlottenburg

A French painter of still-life and

domestic scenes, Chardin was in the
tradition of the Dutch masters, and
Vermeer in particular, while his coun-
trymen were swept-up with the
fashion of French Rococo. He achie-
ved a restrained kind of naturalism,
always reluctant to display his own
feelings in a painting. The relaxed
concentration ot the couple here, as
they lern towards eachother to draw
wax off the candle, gives an intimate
proximity to the scene. It is typical of
Chardin's work that we sense an
intelligent and generous mind behind
the painting.
 When the English painter, Sir Joshua O'Murphy, a pretty Irish lass who
Reynolds visited Boucher in his became the mistress of Louis XV
studio, he was shocked to discover when she was only sixteen. A great
that Boucher painted from favourite of the court, chiefly through
imagination and without models. The pin-up poses such a this, her lissom
15. Francois Boucher painter explained that he found it form made popular and acceptable the
Miss Louise O'Murphy. (L'OJal'uque). necessary to work from models when depiction of backs and bottoms in
1745-48 a student but he had not needed Rococo boudoir painting. To an age
Canvas, 52 x 64 cm models since that time. But this girl still recovering from the Baroque
Paris, Musee National du Louvre was an exception. She was Louise assault of Rubens' fleshy nudes, such

-yt>.
 :

paintings had to be humcrous, playful

confections touchetl off by a powder-
sott erotism. Diderot, the essayist,
extolled the virtues ot N4iss
O'Murphy in a Salon review of 1767
"A completely naked woman
stretched out on pillows, legs astride,
offering the most voluptuous head,
the most beautiful back, the finest
buttocks...?

16. Maurice Quentin de La Tour

Self-portrait, c. 1760
Pastel, 64 X 53 cm
Amiens, Musee de Picardie

Painting with pastels achieved great

respectability in France. Maurice was
something of a society painter who
was moved to capture sweet carica-
tures. His portraits are lively but
somewhat disingenuous. Like the
pavement portraitists of the tourist
towns, he contrived the features to an
appropriate mood. He tends to flatter
his sitters with an excess of charm.
His self-portrait reveals humour and
affability in suspiciously large quan-
tities!
17. Jean Honore Fragonard 18. Jean Honore Fragonard
Invocation a I'Amour, 1780-88 Small cascade at Tivoli, c. 1760
Canvas Canvas, 73 x 60 cm
Orleans, Musee des Beaux-Arts Paris, Musee National du Louvre

Fragonard is remembered as the Fragonard spent five years in Rome

painter of romantic confections. Much viewing the ruins. Powerful classical
of his work was set around amorous inspiration was never far from his
intrigues and decorations. Like mind and he toyed with the melan-
Boucher he was obligated to a mis- cholic moods afforded by sights of
tress of the king, and his work shows antique grandeur, bclore his successes
a striving to please. His figures are in Paris. The puny figures contending

more dynamic than Boucher's; they with the vast indifference of nature
reach and leap and swing. The subject are the stuff of the later, romantic

matter is in keeping with Fragonard's movement in painting. The black

technique which was one of rapid abyss, the ageless rock walls, the roar
improvisation. of spilt water, all speak ot a deep
romantic sensibility which was sup-
pressed for a lifetime in the royal
court.
19. Louis-Michel van Loo 21. Hubert Robert
Denis Diderot, 1767 Garden of Versailles, 1775
Canvas Canvas, 124 x 191 cm
Paris, Musee National du Louvre Versailles, Musee National

One of the famous Van Loo family Robert was a friend of the Roman
which spanned the century, Louis painters of ruins, Pannini and
Michel, son of Jean Baptiste van Loo, Piranesi, but most of all he caught the

took French art to Spain, whereas his style of his friend Fragonard. He had

brother Charles-Amedee represented an interest in formal parks and gar-

the family in Prussia, settling finally in dens; he was a landscape gardener
Berlin. His portrait ot this influential himself This painting is permeated
man of French literature has imi- with neoclassical concerns of order
tations of Romantic sentiments, and disorder, of formal design and
where a sensitive man of letters is por- organic freedom.
trayed with an appropriate expression. A garden must be a balance of bridled
When the portrait painter aims for foliage set in geometric arrangements.
the anticipated expression it robs the The landscaping of a park was a crea-
portrait of depth. tive and entertainment, and
artistic as
this painting shows, was a time for
considerable public participation.
20. Orazio Gentileschi
The h/ttp/jyiT. c. 1626
Canvas, 108 x 87.8 cm
Washington D.C., National Gallery
of Art

Gentileschi was a friend of Caravaggio

and developed a style that was a deci-
ded improvement upon that ot his
friend. He travelled to Paris and to
London, and he is credited with
bringing the beautitul new styles of
the Early Baroque to the English
capital. He is said to have brought a
Tuscan poeticism to the Caravaggio
style of cold realism. He lightened the
colours and softened the gestures of
the figures. For all his skills this
painting has an awkward and
unbalanced feel about it. The
excess
of drapery carries unnecessary over-
tones of religious passion.
 -^-:<r

22. Caravaggio 23.Annibale Carracci 24. Giovanni Battista Piazzetta

The Vocation of St. Matthew, c. 1600 Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne, Rebecca at the well, c. 1740
Canvas, 328 x 348 cm 1595-1605 Canvas, 102 x 137 cm
Rome, S. Luigi dei Frances!, Cappella Fresco Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera
Contrarelli Rome, Palazzo Farnese
Piazzetta moved from Bologna to

This is one of three paintings com- Assisted by his brothers, Annibale Venice where he introduced a sponta-
missioned to illustrate the life of St. Carracci decorated the barrel-vaulted neous lighter and more decorative feel
Matthew. The techniaue of contrasts ceilingof the palace, illustrating to the Baroque style. Clearly he was
between light and dark called chiaro- mythological subjects from the love under the influence of Rembrandt and
scuro, which brings depth and solidity poems of Ovid. Dutch painting in general. He was a
to the scene, was a considerable Here we find a sympathy and an exu- wood-carver and ceiling painter, and
influence on a century of painting. berance with the living world. This he left a large number of drawings.
The painter's use of ordinary and decorated ceiling helped to launch the
sympathetic figures to represent saints style called Baroque. It led to a

was considered a scandal at the time fashion for painted ceilings all over
and led to the rejection of several Europe.
paintings for churches.
uj
 26. Pietro da Cortona
Allegory of Peace, 1633-39
Fresco ceiling, detail
Rome, Palazzo Barberini

Along with Bernini, Pietro was one of

the founders of the High Baroque. He
gave six years to painting the ceiling
of the Barberini Palace in a light vigo-
rous style which has earned him the
25. Cristofano Allori name of the Italian Rubens. Though
Judith uith the head ofHolofemes, 1613 the style of the Baroque is difficult to
Canvas, 139 x 116 cm define, the ceiling paintings in which
Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria foreshortened figures float up into an
Palatina imaginary sky, seem to be the very
essence of the Baroque sensibility.
Allori was from Florence, a citywhich
had little to contribute to the Baroque
era. It is an irony that it should have
been a Florentine who painted this
masterpiece in the Baroque style
which may well be the best Italian
painting of the century. We can only
guess at the fine paintings he would
have given the world if he had not
died in his early forties.
 ft *; ^' " # #

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 Jj

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29. Pietro Longlii
The rhinoceros. 1751
(ianvas, 62 x 30 cm
Venice, Ca'Rezzonico

Longhi was a popular and much

reproduced painter in his day but his
work seems to us a little obvious and
lacks the imagination ot Tiepolo. The
group ot masked figures do not sit
well together and seem like a collec-
tion of children's dolls. And yet we
cannot escape the looming and ambi-
guous symbolism ot the rhinoceros
itself, well to the foreground and
seeming like part ot another picture.
It is a hornless baby, chewing straw
with unconcern. The artist has drawn
our attention to it but otters no
explanations.

30. Jusepe de Ribera

Boy uith a club-foot. 1652
Canvas, 164 x 92 cm
Paris, Musee National du Louvre

The lower halt ot the Italian peninsula

was under the domination of Spain,
and Spanish painters who settled in
Naples took to the Baroque styles.
Jusepe married the rather brutal
Spanish realism to the graceful inven-
tiveness of the Carracci to produce his
own style. One would not expect a
crippled boy to be so cheerful. This
little paradox gives some psychologi-
cal depth to the painting, which has
made it very popular.
31. Diego Velasquez of impressionistic
early in his use
32. Diego Velasquez
The Infjnij Dona Margarita of Austria, brushstrokes with which he rendered The Rokeby Veniu. 1649-50
1660 on The princess Canvas, 123 x 177 cm
c. the highlights fabrics.
Canvas, 212 x 147 cm of this portrait looks so vulnerable in
London, National Gallery
Madrid, Museo del Prado her ridiculous gowns ot state, and a
nervous of the painter. Art historians have searched for the
little

So often in Spain a painter comes for- visual inspirationof the masterpiece

ward whose style is a significant
which was probably painted during a
departure from that of his contempo- trip to Italy,but it seems certain that

raries. Velasquez synthesized many

Velasquez painted from a model. The
flesh colouring and draped fabrics are
influences and produced a style of
His work court particularly convincing, though it is
fluid realism. as a
painter obliged him to do formal por- obvious that she would not be seeing
of uninteresting people. He was herself in the glass, she would be
traits
looking at us! This century has seen
a developing interest in the works of
Velasquez; his paintings are fetching
the highest prices at auctions, and he
is sometimes spoken of as the greatest

of all painters.

33. Goya
BlinJman's buff. c. 1787
Canvas (tapestry design), 269 x 330 cm
Madrid, Museo del Prado

Goya began his career in the shadow

of the great Italian, had
Tiepolo, who
lived his last years in Spain.His early
years as a designer of tapestries and as
a court painter were not
distinguished, but he was deeply
affected by the experiences of the
savage wars which swept Spain, and
he turned later to a declamatory,
propagandist style. This early tapestry
design with its bright colours and
studied elegance was done at a time in
Goya's life when he was moving
towards a Neo- Classical style. His
famous portrait of the Duchess of
Alba from around this time is typical
of the stiff and formal sense of ele-
gance in the Spanish court.
"^^mw-
34. William Hogarth
Manage a la Mode N 2 (Shortly after
the marriage), 1743
Canvas, 70 x 91 cm
London, National Gallery

Hogarth's reputation rests upon his 36. SirPeter Lely

canvasses of moral subjects, or rather Two Lake family,
ladies of the c. 1660
the published engravings taken from Canvas, 127 x 181 cm
the paintings. The most famous series London, Tate Gallery
were the Harlot's Progress, The
Rake's Progress, Mariage a la Mode Born in Germany, of Dutch parents,
and the Election. They all demon- Lely went to work in England where
strate, in farcical detail, the merry du- he distinguished himself painting aus-
plicity inherent in avowedly moral tere portraits at the court of Charles I.

and Christian civilization. Hogarth In the more hedonistic court of

falls short of generalising his theme; Charles II, Lely was appointed princi-
we are invited to laugh at a particular pal painter and turned his hand to
individual whose weaknesses or mis- heroic admirals who had succeeded in
fortunes lead him through the calami- the wars against his own country of
ties. The subject matter was taken up Holland, and to the beautiful women
by Ouikshank and Daumier in the of the court preening and swooning
next century. in affecting poses, as was the fashion.
35. Sir Joshua Reynolds
Age of Innocence, 1788
Canvas, 76 x 64 cm
London, Tate Gallery

One of the first to elevate painting to

a respectable profession in England,
Reynolds produced justifications for
his ideas in the form ot lectures on
aesthetic theory. He mixes freely with
the great writers and statemen ot his
time and enjoyed great acclaim for his
portraits, which have paled over the
years, and seem to us rather sentimen-
tal. His paintings are technically im-

pressive but tend to leave an impres-

sion of emotional sterility. Can we
doubt the sincerity of an artist who
painted the wealthy classes as deser-
ving and inoffensive beneficiaries of a
nation's heritage?

|>*^#^

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#'
37. Thomas Gainsborough
The moniiii^ u\ilk. 1783
Canvas, 236 x 178 cm
London, National Gallery

Gainsborough was renowned tor his

stylish character-revealing portraits in
which he chronicled the many faces of
18th century England - aristocrats,
soldiers, statesmen, landowners,
musicians and theatre folk. He
painted over 700 in his lifetime. His
best portraits are ot women, and have
a real French Rococo about them
feel

in their light, delicate graceand subtle

nuances ot colour and light. This
elegant, upper class couple out tor a
stroll, are the newlyweds. Squire

VC'illiam Hallett and his bride, both

aged 21. This painting demonstrates
Gainsborough's technique ot tluidly
merging brushstrokes. The soft hair,
glowing skin and tashionable dress of
the couple is captured with the same
skill as the dog and the hazy mass of

trees behind.

38. Peter Paul Rubens

Rubens and Isabella Brant in the
honeysuckle bower, 1609
Canvas, 178 x 136 cm
Munich, Alte Pinakothek

This painting commemorates Rubens'

marriage to a woman about whom he
wrote was, "without vices and was all
goodness and sincerity". Of all the
portraits done by Rubens this self-
portrait is among the most arresting
and psychologically profound. His
wife has doubts, but he knows
himself to be the master of his world.
Rubens travelled extensively on
diplomatic missions during which he
painted the ceilings of palaces. He
met the great names of his time,
including Velasquez.
39. Peter Paul Rubens
The little fur. c. 1638
I'anel, 176 x 83 cm
N'icnna, Kunsthistorisches Museum

Rubens married his second wife,

Helene Fourment, when she was six-
teen, and painted her here when she
was a reputed twenty-four. It is
thought that she tried to have this
painting destroyed after his death. He
stimulated a market for tlcshy nudes
,ind for rape scenes from mythology.
NX'hile not denying that he was a great
painter, it is easy to sympathise with
the view that he was too often vulgar
md insincere. We become voyeurs to
a performance, not accidental obser-
vers to an intimate scene.

40. Sir Antony van Dyck

Portrait of Charles I, King of England.
1635-38
Canvas, 272 x 211 cm
Paris, Mu.s6e National du Louvre

Van Dyck was Rubens' chief assistant

as a young man but he developed a
celebrated career as a portrait painter.
He travelled widely, particularly in
Italywhere he spent some time and
found the greatest favour in the court
of the English king. His portraits are
sombre and guarded, seeming to idea-
lize the sitter while retaining a little

of the original character.

41. Frans Hals
Portrait ofCatharina Hotft and her nurse,
1619-20
Canvas, 86 x 65 cm
Berlin-^X'est, Staatliche Museen,
Ciemaldegalerie

Two Dutchmen took the

travelling
Italian Baroque style to the Catholic
town of Utrecht in Holland. Here the
portraitist Frans Hals saw these new
styles. His group portraits ot muske-
teers prep;iring to fight the Spanish
took on something of the Italian
chiaroscuro style in which shadowy
figures stand against a dark back-
ground.
Hals excelled at portraits of obvious
expression which makes him some-
thing of a sentimentalist. He ran a
largeworkshop and produced many
copies of the same work.

43. Jan Steen

Prince's Day, 1 4th November 1660,
c. 1668
Panel, 46 x 63 cm
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

Steen was an exceptional painter of

"genre" scenes, and ranks close to
Rembrandt. He did Biblical and
domestic groups and is best known
for his tavern scenes. He was a brewer
and innkeeper himself at times and
seemed to have delighted in the weak-
nesses of his fellow men for drink.
Steen proposed a merry world of jus-
tifiable corruption. Are we to believe
that the morality of the alehouse is in
accord with the religious beliefs of the
times? Scoundrels make entertaining
subjects for paintings.
42. Adriaen van Ostade
The rio/ifiist. 1673
cm
Panel, 45 x 42
The Hague, Mauritshuis

Ostade was a Dutch painter and print

maicer who excelled at small scenes of
domestic life. His happy peasants dis-
porting in an antique gloom are like
wax dolls. His e;irly figures
stiff little
tended toward caricature and were set
in diU'k interiors, but he moved them
out and introduced them to passing
incidents like this visit from an
itinerant fiddler. His brother Isack,
became a distinguished painter of
silver-white landscapes peopled with
skaters.
 44. Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn
Danae, 1636
Canvas, 186 x 201 cm
Leningrad, The Hermitage

The Dutchman, Rembrandt, was a

university educated man who
absorbed the Caravaggio style of the
Early Baroque. Some early paintings
exploit the atmospheric use of
shadowy light in scenes of scholars in
cavernous cellars or studies. This
painting has an overdesigned quality
and looks back to Mannerism. A
decade before, Rembrandt was taught
by a belated Mannerist painter, Pieter
Lastman. The movement of the girl,
slowly turning in the bed to register
gentle surprise at the entrance of the
man, (recognisably Rembrandt
himself) as he steals in behind the
curtain, creates a powerful erotic
moment, heightened by the effusive
golden tones.

gr\J '^
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45. Rembrandt
The Night Wcikh. 1642
Clanvas, 363 x 437 cm
Amsterdam, Rijksmuscum

There was a story that Rembrandt's

decline and bankruptcy was on
account of this painting, but there is
no evidence that the company of sol-
diers who commissioned it ever rejected
it, Even its popular name is an mis-
leading addition. When the painting
came to be cleaned it was found to be

daylight. As with the famous painting,

Tht Aikitomy Lesson, it has a dry, non-
committal mood. It is an example of
the move to photographic realism in
painting, and perhaps Rembrandt's
weaknesses were his reluctance to
allow his own feelings to intrude into
the p;iinting. It remains a work of
great technical mastery full of unusual
light and sporadic action.

46. Jan Vermeer

The glass of u ine, 1 660-61
Canvas, 65 x 77 cm
Berlin-West, Staatliche Museen,
GemaidegaJerie

Vermeer stands apart in his age as a

great master whose innovations left
scarcely a mark on the following gene-
rations. He painted a view of Delft,
perhaps from window, which had
a
some influence on landscape painting,
but his surviving works are nearly all
of poised figures in quiet interiors.
They hold wineglasses, jugs or musi-
cal instruments, and seem to converse
in hushed words of intimacy.

47. Gerard Ter Borch

The letter, c. 1660
Canvas, 80 x 68 cm
London, The Royal Collection

Ter Borch's drawing dates from

first

his eighth year. In his teens he was

visiting England, and was in Italy in
his early twenties. For all his world-
liness his paintings have a private,
introspective atmosphere.
He had great skill in rendering fabrics;
the lady's metallic dress seems so
photographically real that it breaks
the spell of the painting. The dog
asleep on the little stool is a piece
of charming invention, though the
lady's feet are in a distorted perspec-
tive.
48. Franz Anton Maulpertsch religious decoration. Art becomes
The Hoi) Family. 1752-53 ritual. The true spirit of the Prussian
Canvas, 127 x 90 cm Rococo is in this decorative determi-
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum nation.

Maulpertsch was the leading Viennese

painter of church frescoes. It is said
that his style is a fusion of Rembrandt
and the Venetian school. His inacces-
sible ceiling paintings are a complex
arrangement of figures, lost in gloom
and ghostly spaces, all cut with gleams
and bursts of light. His subjects are
the overpainted religious themes for
which he showed little originality.
One senses the routine repetition of
49. Cosmas Damian Asam
Glorifiuitioti nf Miiry. 1736
Fresco, detail
Ingolstadt, S. Maria de Victoria

The Asam brothers were a German

team ot architects and trescoists who
learned their art in Rome. Bavaria,
where they worked upon decorating
church ceilings, followed the Italian
rather than the French Baroque. It is
s;ud that German artists at this time
were using acid and unreal colouring,
while the Austrians took after the
Venetian palette, which is softer and
more romantic. It is difficult to under-
stand the high reputation of the Asam
brothers, from this detail of a famous
fresco. Their style was brittle and ten-
ded toward caricature.

50. Jean-Etienne Liotard

Portrait of a woman in Turkhh costume,
c. 1749
on velJum, 100 x 75 cm
Pastel
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

Liotard was a celebrated pastel artist

from Switzerland who became ena-

moured of everything Turkish after a
lengthy stay in Constantinople. His
paintings are smoothly app^ng and
one. La of a lady
Belle Chocolatiere,
drinking chocolate was taken up by a
chocolate and cocoa company for
their printed cans. There are several
slightly different versions of this same
painting. It has an easy drawing-room
charm, and the affected pose of the
sitter is balanced by the pleasing effect
of the soft, white furnishings.
 the Sisdne Chapel. After the Italian experience his commissioned
portraits and mythological decorations for palaces show the
development or new techniques of brushwork.
The King of Spain sent him to Italy once more to buy paintings
and to secure the of Italian fresco painters for the King's
services
palace. Velasquez befriended Poussin and Bernini, and collected
paintings by Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese, the three great
Venetian painters of the late Renaissance. It was while in Rome
that he painted the celebrated portrait of the Pope Innocent X. It
is said to be not a flattering painting : thePope is depicted as thin-
lipped and steely-eyed ; his red cape is given a sheen of reflected
light, which seems just that, until it is examined more closely, and
then it is seen to be crude brushstrokes. It is characteristic of
Velasquez' painting that the impressionistic effects are best
observed from a distance.
Venus with a Mirror (The Rokeby Venus) might be of this time or
even be earlier. The colour of the original has such a creamy, rich
texture that it would seem to be nothing else than a membrane of
skin over living flesh. Whereas the Giorgione Venm or Titian
Venus each have a familiar reclining posture which may owe as
much to the imagination of the painter as to the artist's model,
thisVelasquez Venus, with her startling posture, defies the
imagination, and could only be from real life. It is a triumph of
observation over convention. The only known Spanish nude
painted until the 19th century, it takes a startling perspective on
the human body, and robs the later Fragonard of what must surely
be the most innocently provocative posture the human form can
take.
With his last paintings, particularly The Maids of Honour,
Velasquez showed himself a master of illusion, but an appreciation
for this genius has come only in this last century, which has seen a
rapid growth of interest in his work accompanied by an avaricious
demand for his paintings at auctions. In this heady atmosphere of
rediscovery, Velasquez has been called the greatest painter of all
time.
The Maids of Honour, 1656
painting by Diego Velasquez
Madrid, Museo del Prado

61
 CHAPTER V

Late Baroque and Rococo in Italy

Luca Giordano, Maratta and Neo-

the speedy Neaholilan -
classic nobility - Piazzettaandiiepolo abandon Baroque for
decorative Rococo style - Giovanni Tiepolo, master of illnsionistic
wall painting and the genius of Venetian late Baroque - Pietro
Longhi and the funny absurd - The "vedute" or city views of
Canaletto and Guardi - Piranesi and Pannini,

The Late Baroque saw a loosening of the styles begun by

Caravaggio ancl the Carracci eighty years before. It was a slow
evolution in the hancJs of many people, and it represents a step
towards individuality. The structured tableaux or figures gave way
to a looser scattering throughout the painting, which served to
diffuse the central action. The unifying element in the picture was
the decorative design. The figures began to luxuriate in a new
freedom, to lean and stretch in a more languorous way, which
hinted at the discredited Mannerist styles of a century earlier. Both
the power of the Pope in Rome, and the strength of the Spanish
hold on southern Italy diminished in the last decade of the High
Baroque. France under King Louis XIV and the powers of the
French Academy in Rome both became the significant influence in
Italian painting. While some painters were still at work on
derivative frescoes which Iook back to da Cortona, others were
The Archangel Michael drops the assembling the styles of the Rococo.
rebel angels into the fiery depths of
The first appearances of Late Baroque can be seen around 1660 in
hell, 1666
the frescoes of Mattia Preti (l6l3-99). He dominated the Naples
painting by Luca Giordano
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum school after Ribera with his dramatic, dynamic paintings. Luca
Giordano (1632-1705), also from Naples, earned a reputation for
his imitations of other painters it is said that he could imitate
;

Rembrandt's style. He was a nimble worker who could paint a

huge altarpiece in one day. He went to Spain and left the Escorial
Palace littered with his work. His manner was so varied that his
work was called "confusionism".
In Rome Francesco Cozza painted the ceiling frescoes of the
Pamphili Library with a free-ranging style. In the seaport of
Genoa, Gregorio de' Ferrari and Domenico Pioli executed the
finest Late Baroque ceilings. Giovanni Gaulli (1639-1709), called
Baciccia, left Genoa for Rome and took the Baroque principle of
illusioni.sm to an extreme with the ceiling of the Gesu church in
Parma. The fresco spills over the statues and painted plaster of the
vault to complete the illusion of a crowd ascending into the
blazing light of the sky.
Bernini was succeeded in Rome by Carlo Maratta (1625-1713).
Maratta had no interest in the dramatic style of da Cortona and
Baciccia; he had a classical leaning and developed a manner which
has been called sweet and elegant, and which made him the most

62
 celebrated ceiling frescoist of his times. The Neapolitan tradition
was taken up by Francesco Solimcna (1657-1747), who was
described in his time as the greatest painter in the world, but
whose work appears to us now as crowded and somewhat
Mannerist. He was followed by Francesco de Mura (1696-1784)
who grew away from the dark chiaroscuro to refreshingly bright
colours, which earned him the name of the "Neapolitan Tiepolo".
It was the northern Italian cities of Bologna and Venice which
made the most successful attempts to break away from the classi-
cal Baroque. Giuseppe Maria Crespi, (1665-1747) refused to aban-
don the sharply contrasted chiaroscuro of Caravaggio, and painted
domestic scenes which have a Dutch flavour. He became dissatis-
fied with Bologna and went to Venice where he influenced
another emerging talent. Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, (1683-1754)
studied under Crespi, and his paintings demonstrate a move away
from Baroque contrasts and toward a more decorated Rococo
style. The celebrated Venetian, Tiepolo, who completed the move

to Rococo, is reputed to have been influenced by him.

Esther before Ahasverus, c. 1733 Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734) is said to have absorbed the style of
painting by Sebastiano Ricci the Neapolitan Luca Giordano, and yet his work is often scarcely
London, National Museum distinguishable from that of the Venetian Veronese of a century
earlier. He was commissioned in Rome, Florence, Parma and

Vienna, and made journeys to England where he failed to be

engaged to decorate St. Paul's Cathedral and Hampton Court
Palace. His brilliant frescoes in the Palace of Medici-Riccardi in
Florence are said to have given impetus to the Venetian school of
decorative painting which spread all over Europe in the hands of
Pellegrini, Pittoni and Tiepolo.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (l696-1770) was the culmination of this
Madonna del Carmelo, 1739, detail
painting by Tiepolo
brief Venetian decorative era. He is said to be the master of the
Venice, Scuola del Carmine, Italian Rococo which can be seen as both a development
style
Sala Grande from Baroque, and a reaction to it. Rococo had little hold on the
imagination of Italian painters, it was principally a French and
German phenomenon. It is characterized by the intrusion of
decorative whimsy into paintings; by the use of silver and gold
embellishments and sinewy countercurves. It was more a style for
architecture and statuary than for painting.
Tiepolo moved away from the shadowy Caravaggist manner to a
free and fluid style in which the figures are both decorative and
amazingly real and alive. He sketched and painted at great speed,
bringing the figures to life with highlights touches of white,
:

which give an of movement. The work of Tiepolo and his

illusion
Italian contemporaries is peopled with the costumed and masked
figures of harlequins, and all the stock characters of an early
theatre tradition called Commedia dell'Arte. Tiepolo's reputation
suffered a decline through the 19th century, but his original,
inventive designs, the vivacity of his work and the underlying
sense of melancholy many people find in his paintings have
rehabilitated his work in the eyes of the 20th century public. He is

now often considered the greatest painter of his times. A possible

pupil of Tiepolo, Pietro Longhi (1702-85), kept to Tiepolo's early
style of genre painting, that is, figures grouped in a domestic

63
[^
 CHAPTER VI

Late Baroque and Rococo in

France and England

Rigaud and Largjlliere - Pageantry and preening in the court of

Louis XIV - The "fetes galantes" ofWatteau - Lancret and
Nattier, his imitators - The pastels ofQuentin de La Tour -
Cbardin; poetic realism amongst the pots and pans - Frangois
Boucher, the protege of Madame de Pompadour - The virtuosity
ofFragonard; his sketches and delicate colour harmonies -
William Hogarth ; satirical caricatures and moralizing
"conversation pieces" - Sir Joshua Reynolds; Baroque portrait
dignity and soft English landscape combined - The poetic
mountain landscapes of Wilson, Cozens and Sandby - Thomas
Gainsborough and fashionable portraiture -Joseph "Moonlight"
Wright ofDerby and the industrial landscape - George Stubbs,
animal painter.

In the of the 17th century the French Baroque seemed

last years
stronger than ever. The Louis XIV style had brought an
unprecedented sense of luxury, of gorgeous fabrics and posturing
figures, in the commissioned paintings of Hyacinth Rigaud (l659-
1743) and Nicolas de Largilliere (1656-1746). Rigaud became a
court flatterer and excelled in depicting shallow royalty as splendid
majesty. One senses the constraints upon what must have been a
sensitive artist, the obligation to paint dandies when his earlier

King Louis XIV of France,

work shows him to have been a skilled portraitist, owing
1701
painting by Hyacinthe Rigaud something to Rembrandt. He is reputed to have painted over two
Chantilly, Musee Conde thousand portraits but the majority of those were completed by
the apprentices of his workshops. Largilliere spent his formative
years in Antwerp and in England as an assistant to Sir Peter Lely,
the portraitist. When he returned to Paris to paint portraits of the
wealthy middle-classes, his work retained the Flemish echoes. It
required the determined genius of Watteau to soften the brittle
French Baroque of the Louis XIV style.
Antoine Watteau (l684-172l) drew together the threads of French
Baroque and produced a manner which was as distinctive and
engaging as that of Tiepolo in Venice. It is a blend of Rubens and
Veronese, often set against landscapes both rugged and lyrical.
While the artists of France and Germany were elaborating the
meaningless decorative impulse into something deeply and
nostalgically human, his work retained the elements of the Rococo
but seemed to provide an alternative beautiful images of a delicate
:

and ephemeral world.

Watteau trained with a designer and painter of theatrical scenery,
at a time when the colourful Italian Commedia dell'Arte conven-
tion was being adapted for Parisian audiences. It can be no

65
Eight studies of a woman's head,
detail
drawing by Antoine Watteau
Paris, Musee National du Louvre

Resting shepherd
drawing by Nicolas Lancret
Vienna, Graphische Sammlung
Albertina

J
 he imparted to fruit and bread and bottles of wine. It is now
recognized that his portraits are superior to those of the over-
praised Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1704-88). La Tour developed
what became a Paris fashion for pastel portraits, but the public
demand required something more glamorous than a clever
likeness, so La Tour's technique became vulgar and obvious, to
match the demand.
Two more convincing disciples of Watteau were two courtly
decorators, Francois Boucher (1703-70) and Jean Honore
Fragonard (1732-1806). Boucher was a friend of Madame de
Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV, with whom he conspired
to turn painting into an erotic confection. He obliged by
producing pneumatic nudes with pink nipples tumbling upon
unmade beds. It is a very commercial aspect of the erotic, with a
little too much artifice and phony candour, and yet we are at a

time when it is fashionable to deplore Boucher's blatant hedonism

The girl with the marmot, c. 1785
watercolour by Jean Honore for its lack of redeeming social realism.
Fragonard In his painting Diana after her Bath two improbable goddesses,
Vienna, Graphische Sammlung who look as though they have never left Versailles, take a break
Albertina
from hunting to disrobe; no doubt a future age will look more
kindly on the licentious conventions of Boucher's work. And it
would be a pity if Boucher's other paintings were to be ignored;
the crooked cottage among the trees oi Morning, or The Painter in
his Studio, which offers a surprising look of faraway regret upon
the face of the painter seated at his easel.
Fragonard was oriefly a pupil of both Chardin and Boucher, and
like Boucher he became passionate over the work of Tiepolo.
Fragonard was a rapid improviser whose work suffers through
the unreflective bravura of his effort. He painted figures and
landscapes, portraits and crumbling architecture, all with swift
brushstrokes, and an impressionistic manner which brings his
work perilously close to wallpaper decoration. It is the pure
influence of Rubens untempered by the Dutch discipline. But his
work matured as he came to admire Rembrandt and Hals, and in
his thirties more sombre landscapes made their appearance
alongside the lighter court pictures. He was
commissioned to
paint for Madame du XV, and it
Barry, the mistress of Louis
seems that his work fell out of favour with the growing Neo-
classical fashion that took hold at the end of the 18th century. His
last works show a move towards a Neoclassical style, but in the

turbulent times of the French Revolution he adhered closely to his

earlier techniques, and retired to the south of France to die.
In his earlier days Fragonard had travelled through Italy with a
friend, Hubert Robert (1733-1808). Robert was a friend of Pannini
and Piranesi, the painters of romantic ruins, and he excelled upon
this subject, but softened the austerity of classical decay into
images of a harmonious landscape. In this respect his work
comes closer to that of Claude Lorraine. He returned to Paris and
was appointed keeper of the King's pictures and an early curator
of the Louvre. His range of subject matter widened to include the
street scenes of Paris and large, decorative paintings for fashionable
Parisian houses.

67
Portrait of David Garrick between The Baroque and Rococo styleswhich seem to be so
Tragedy and Comedy, 1760-61
Mediterranean in character provoked a great deal of disgust and a
painting by Joshua Reynolds
litde envy across the channel in England. The 18th century had
Private collection
opened upon a stilted tradition portraits, some sporting scenes, a
:

few naval paintings, and very litde of domestic vitality. There was
a passing fashion for decorative painting stimulated by the arrival
of French and Spanish artists, but it took a patriotic Englishman,
very distrustful of the French, to spark some life into English
painting.
William Hogarth (1697-1764), an irascible and pugnacious man,
began his career as a silver engraver. He moved on to become a
master at portraits and groups, and also a notable engraver of
satirical scenes for which he is best known. His influence on
English painting was seminal, for he became the centre of
opposition to the conservative tradition. He was scornful of a
fashionable appreciation for French painters and for old English
masters, critical of the high price these paintings fetched at sales.
His works break new ground and have a characteristic humour
and liveliness. They are said to show a debt to Rococo and to
Watteau. His sets of moral engravings, widely known today,
uncovering the follies of his times, are indicative of his highly
developed sense of social responsibility. They speak in negative
terms of the pitfalls awaiting a young man in a city - drinking,
gambling, corruption and prostitution. The wicked satirist's pen
may be a familiar feature today, but in the 18th century Hogarth,
along with his friends Henry Fielding, the author of Tom Jones,
and theatre actor David Garrick, were expressing a radical and
dissenting voice in a country of authoritarian duplicity in high
places. Hogarth's crusading fervour went a long way toward the
founding of the Royal Academy of Art in London and the

68
 establishment of regular public exhibitions of paintings.
The English generation following Hogarth looked to Italy once
more for inspiration. Allan Ramsay (1713-84) is credited with
enlivening English portraiture with the more flamboyant Italian
styles. The first president of the Royal Academy was Sir Joshua
Reynolds (1723-92), who spent two years in Rome before
travelling to the artistic centres of Northern Bologna,
Italy,

Florence and Venice. The Renaissance paintings of Titian,

Tintoretto and Veronese made the profound impression on
Reynolds which they had made upon earlier artists. His own
portraits, once so dark and formal in the Van Dyck manner, took
on the bright sweetness of the Italian Grand Style. He tried to
reproduce the clear colours of the Venetian masters but his
experiments resulted in a further paling ot the paint so that we are
left with ghost-like figures.

Reynold's style underwent further changes, perhaps for the worse,

when work became excessively studied and
in his late forties his
classical.His historic pieces of this time are not his best. His
portraits of children are tender and accessible, and their sweet
sentiment has made them a popular decoration for chocolate
boxes. Toward the end of his life a visit to Holland acquainted
him with the Flemish master Rubens, and his own portraits took
on some of the richer colours.
Reynolds was an educated and literate man who liked the
company of intellectuals such as Dr. Johnson, the writer of a
dictionary, and the statesman, Edmund Burke. He represented a
new breed of cultured artists and was a believer in formal academic
Mary, Countess Howe, c. 1760
training. He was not a great draughtsman and his paintings are
painting by Thomas Gainsborough
London, Kenwood House conventional and predictably charming. Only occasionally can we
look past the surface of his portraits and into the character of the
sitters.

From the mainstay of portrait painting two alternatives opened for

English painters. An
unexpected and lusty school of water-
colourists flourished in the hands of Paul Sandby and Francis
Towne. Sandby (1725-1809) painted landscape with a fidelity to
asymetrical topography. He believed that the Welsh landscape was
an excellent subject. Francis Towne had a more delicate and
detached approach, and John Robert Cozens (1725-97), who chose
the Alps as his subject, introduced poetic landscapes bathed in
moody atmospheric light, which stirred similar passions in the
next generation of oil painters.
Landscape painting became an acceptable subject. Richard Wilson
(1713-82) was impressed by Italian painting in particular, and by
the Frenchmen, Claude Lorraine and Poussin. His own moody
landscapes with northern lighting are said to owe something to
Albert Cuyp. He had a liking for rugged Welsh countryside and
seemed to have made several paintings of similar views.
A more artificial approach to landscapes was developed by
Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88). It would seem that he seldom
took his canvas to the field but built up his picture from separate
observations and from litde models set up in his studio. It was not
for another generation, and until the Romantics, that it was felt

69
 legitimate for a wealthy man to involve himself in something
remotely agricultural. Gainsborough's early landscapes painted in
Suffolk, have affinities with 17th century Dutch painters. He later
moved to a lighter style, closer to Watteau, and added groups of
figures; his works show hints of Rococo design and a certain
French atmosphere.
Gainsborough was obliged to give more time to portraits to make
a living, and he took a liking to the works of Van Dyck, which,
while making his work acceptable, cost his paintings something in
originality. When Rubens became his model, his palette moved to

^^\, h -'
richer, creamier hues. He was an original and inventive artist who
devoted much time to the discovery of new techniques. Reynolds
is supposed to have said of him "Damn him, how various he is."
:

His influence was considerable and his techniques were studied in

depth by John Constable, who belongs to a later Romantic era of
painting.
Academy by candlelight, c. 1769
The long history of the Baroque casts ashadow which touches
painting by Joseph Wright
London, Royal College of Surgeons upon two of the last great painters of this genre. In a curious way
of England they echo thetwo founders of Baroque, Caravaggio and the
Carracci. Caravaggio's technique of chiaroscuro was taken up by
Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-97). Wright had travelled in Italy
and began his career painting moonlit landscapes and candle lit
scenes which bring to mind the Utrecht school of Holland. He
achieved many splendid and unforgettable paintings of curiously
lit interiors, sometimes with the ruddy glow of firelight.

George Stubbs (1724-1806) was unimpressed by his travels in Italy.

Like the Carracci, he believed that he should learn from
observations of nature. He studied anatomy and lectured on medi-
cine, and this led to his detailed paintings of horses, with a chilling
over attention to muscles and the fine features of the anatomy. It
is said that his preoccupation with horses stemmed from the time

he saw a lion eating a horse in North Africa. There is something

starkly classical in an artist who
could pursue the ideals of realism
to the dissection of his subjects, the horses. But then the whole
era of the Baroque seems to have been a wavering contest between
the two forces which contend for the creative soul of man, the
Classical and the Romantic.

70
 CHAPTER VII

Rococo decoration
Mirrors, furniture mouldings and porcelain - The great
-
decorators of south German and Austrian churches
Maulpertsch and Asam Liotard, romantic pastel painter -
-

Goya's tapestries and his reaction to the Napoleonic invasion of

Spain - His horror of anarchy and cruelty.

The Rococo of the new, lighter

style lent itself to the decoration
Parisian architecture, which superseded the Baroque excesses of
Louis XIV's Palace at Versailles. Plaster moulding and fretwork
were decorated in pastel colours, ivory-white, silver and gold, and
interior decorators emphasised the spirit of light humour with the
judicious use of mirrors. The spirit of Rococo is seen in the design
of furniture and decoration of porcelain, in tapestries and silver-
ware, and resoundingly, in the interior decoration of churches in
southern Germany.
Ornament of the Hall of Mirrors
Franz Anton Maulpertsch (1724-96) was a leading Viennese
in theAmalienburg, 1734-39
frescoist who took his techniques to Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
drawing by Francois Cuvillies
after a
Munich, Nymphenburg Park Cosmas Damian Asam, the Bavarian church decorator, painted
frescoes of cluttered vulgarity, andJean-Etienne Liotard (1702-89)
was a Swiss painter in pastels, who became enamoured of Turkey
and scandalized society by dressing in Turkish costume. He
painted in Holland and England where his wicked likenesses
displeased the sitters. His painting of the Countess of Coventry
dressed up in Turkish costume occurs in very different repro-
ductions, suggesting that copies were made by Liotard or others.
The predominant whiteness shot through with blue of costume,
carpet and furniture fabric, all suggest a very modern sensitivity to
fashionable decoration.
The Rococo current continued in France through the period of
the French Revolution and overlapped with Neoclassicism in
painting and decoration. Spain was a litde touched by the Rococo,
but the overwhelming factors of war and invasion prevailed upon
painting styles. In the tradition of individualists and eccentric
geniuses like El Greco and Velasquez, a new name arose in
Spanish painting, that of Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes
(1746-1828), known as Goya. He spent time in Rome but came
back to Spain to begin his career at a time when Tiepolo, who had
lived for a year in Madrid, was the most celebrated painter. Goya's
designs for tapestries have something of Tiepolo' s affected gaiety,
and were soon modified under the direction of the German artist,
Anton Raphael Mengs renewed international
(1728-79), to reflect a
was not long before he broke with
interest in classical art. It
Meng's academic form of classicism. Goya was a powerful
personality who found himself drawn to the work of Rembrandt
and Velasquez. His own individuality began to assert itself, along

71
 with a sense of realism and a pride in direct observations. For all
this his earlier portraits are stern and stiff. He caught the
unsavoury character of the sitters but telt unwilling to give them a
dynamic, living form. His portrait of the Duchess of Alba (1795)
is of a doll-like figure with an expression of distrustful superiority.

Under successive kings Goya became a successful and fashionable

court painter, and might have remained so had he not been
r tormented by two events. At the age of forty-six he fell ill, and it
left him totally deaf His sharp and discerning eye came under the

influence of a feverish imagination. His work aspired to the kind

of subjects for which there are never commissions. He painted a
madhouse, and made a series of engravings attacking the abuses of
organized religion and politics. Pressure from the Inquisition and
the authorities caused him to withdraw the plates of the
engravings, and hand them over to the king. Even his religious
paintings reflected a starkly new attitude, one of artistic integrity,
and his portraits turned to a form of realism which borders on
caricature.
The second event which profoundly redirected Goya's life was the
French invasion of Spain under Napoleon. The English under
Wellington finally liberated Spain and Goya made a fine portrait
of the Duke. But widespread cruelties and the general sufVering of
The Duchess of Alba, 1795 war had affected Goya and prompted him to produce a series of
painting by Francisco de Goya horrific etchings under the tide The Disasters of War, besides the
Madrid, Duke of Alba collection harrowing paintings of the executions, and further portraits, less-
than-flattering likenesses of the tyrant who now ruled Spain. His
final works speak of his misery and despair. He returned to
Bordeaux in France, where he died.
Goya's work comes close to the modern interpretation of an
artist's work as an illumination of life. He was faithful to his times

and earned respectability for the role of the artist as a reformer. He

had no obvious successors in Spain, but his work influenced
Delacroix and the 19th century French movement, as well as the
later schools of Romanticism, Realism and Impressionism.

Bibliography Baroque and Rococo by Germain Watteau by Helene Adhemar

Bazin David to Delacroix by W. FrieJlander
The author has consulted Baroque and Rococo Art by Erich Laroiiue Encyclopaedia of Renaissance
the following works in the Hubala and Baroque Art.
writing of this book: The Baroque Painters of Italy by Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-

Charles McConjuocIale 1750 by Rudolf Wittkower

Painting and Sculpture in Europe, Rococo to Revolution by Michael
1780 to 1880 by F. Novotny Levey

72
The Author
Ian Barras Hill is a freelance art
historian who is a regular
contributor to a number of
English art magazines and has
written widely on European
painting in the 18th and 19th
centuries. He was educated at
Harrow Art School, Highgate
School, London and St Peter's
College, Oxford and in 1970
studied Renaissance art in
Florence and Rome. His first
publication was Sir Edwin
Landseer: an illustrated life

(1973) and has recently finished

a book on German social
history in the Second World
War. He is currendy
researching a book on the
history of prints and
printmaking and as an
erstwhile illustrator, cartoonist
and painter himself has
attempted to view the different
artists and their respective
periods in this series with a
fresh, modern eye combining
detailed scholarship with a
lively style.

Companion Volumes

Impressionism
Post Impressionism
The Italian Renaissance
Baroque and Rococo includes paintings and drawings by

tt golden period Poussin - Caravaggio - Rubens - Velazquez - Goya -

Rembrandt - Van Dyck - Vermeer - Hals - Tiepolo -
Canaletto - Watteau - Boucher - Fragonard - Chardin
Hogarth - Reynolds - Gainsborough and others.

ISBN: 8317 0690 2

40 pages in full color

Printed in the Netherlands

Galley Press