BAROQUE ART RELIGIOUS REFORM
Baroque art is rooted in the controversy launched by the Protestant Reformation that began in Germany in 1517 C.E. The various kingdoms and city-states of Italy, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, and France remained devoutly Catholic. Wars fought in the name of religion were wars of political empire as much as spiritual conviction.
Two major developments rooted in the Protestant Reformation shaped the evolution of art in the 17th century.
Religious:
Pope Paul III convened the Council of Trent in the hope of resolving conflicts and bringing Protestant sects back into the Catholic fold in 1545 C.E. It met periodically until its conclusion during the reign of Pope Pius IV. The Catholic doctrine and decrees on the communication of theology revitalized the Catholic Church throughout Europe. The schism between the Catholic Church in Rome and the Protestant sects proved permanent.
Portrait of Pope Paul III.
Political:
Decades of strife concluded with treaties that largely tied religious observance to national boundaries and secular government. The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 C.E. provided a temporary resolution to conflict in the remains of the Holy Roman Empire, establishing that, in any given territory, rulers could choose either Catholicism or Protestantism, and the religion of the head of state would be the religion observed by the citizens. In certain larger cities, such as Cologne, Strasbourg, and Frankfurt, residents enjoyed religious freedom.
Repentant Peter
Wait, aren’t those basically the same?
Yes, but remember that there wasn’t really a separation of church and state until much later, and in some places not at all. So, if there was a shift in religion, it impacted the political landscape, and vice versa.
Baroque—The Religious Side
Realism was a prominent feature of Baroque art, built on the rationalism of the Renaissance.
Realism was a basic tenet of the program laid out for the arts by the Catholic Counter-Reformation. During the Renaissance, naturalistic form supported theological doctrine through images and sensations that people could recognize and identify with. This naturalism represented supreme rational order, the divine perfections of God’s universe, and rejected the sensational and arcane effects of the Mannerists.
The Catholic Church argued that art should provide Christians a way to get closer to God, sharing the pains and sorrows of life to achieve salvation through suffering. The decree of the Council of Trent dictated requirements for producing images of veneration
- Depict true or biblical events, not false or mythical stories.
- Be sedate in presentation, emphasizing the spiritual nature of the experience.
- Be lifelike, enabling the worshipper to feel present at the event portrayed.
- Through emotional and expressive qualities, inspire not just devotion from the worshipper but the desire to emulate the spirituality and sacrifices portrayed.
The decree represented the polar opposite to the Protestant understanding of prayer and communion, and following the saints was perceived by Protestants as idolatry forbidden by the Ten Commandments.
The Counter-Reformation evolved into an aggressive propaganda campaign to combat heresy, proclaim the supremacy of the Catholic faith, and incite Protestants to return to the fold.
That won’t work.
The Council of Trent dictated guidelines about images that could be venerated. Compare the guidelines with Madonna dal collo lungo. Did Parmigianino follow the rules?
The Madonna with the Long Neck. Parmigianino. ca. 1535-1540 C.E. Oil on wood.
- Depict true or biblical events, not false or mythical stories.
Technicality here. We’re sure Mary sat and held Jesus, but this is not exactly an event, just assumption.
- Be sedate in presentation, emphasizing the spiritual nature of the experience.
There isn’t really any spiritual nature exemplified here, but an example of the adoration of Mary and Jesus.
Be lifelike, enabling the worshipper to feel present at the event portrayed.
Mary’s long neck and Jesus’s long body look distorted and not life like at all, and we won’t even get into the small man in the lower right corner.
Through emotional and expressive qualities, inspire not just devotion from the worshipper but the desire to emulate the spirituality and sacrifices portrayed.
There isn’t an emotional aspect to this painting, the artists intended to inspire worship in the gracefulness and elegance of Mary.
If It’s Not Baroque, Don’t Fix It
Baroque art had a high degree of naturalism and dynamic, emotive theatricality.
There were two principal paths followed by Baroque artists:
- naturalistic and anti-Classical style
- idealistic and classically inspired
The art of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was highly anti-Classical style and naturalistic. Trained in Milan, Caravaggio was greatly influenced by the realism of Northern Italian painters (who drew from Leonardo) and their early experiments in the genre of still life.
Caravaggio’s exposure to the religious fervor of the Counter-Reformation incited him to make Christian, specifically Catholic, history and doctrine accessible, understandable, and meaningful to all viewers through his work. His direct presentation, dramatic poses and expressions, and use of chiaroscuro made his works appear performed rather than painted with non-idealized, common people.
The Conversion of Saint Paul.
Conversion and religious revelation dominated Counter-Reformation themes, reinforcing notions of the spiritual supremacy of Catholicism.
Caravaggio’s pronounced chiaroscuro enhances the religious message of the Calling of Saint Matthew, representing the light of divine revelation. The painting depicts Jesus, in deep shadow on the far right, calling Matthew the tax collector to join his disciples. Set in a commonplace tavern, the nondescript dark background emphasizes the mundane, foul existence Matthew had previously led. The viewpoint is the empty space at the table opposite Matthew, which visually integrates the viewer into the composition as equal witnesses and participants in his conversion.
Calling of Saint Matthew. Caravaggio. c. 1597–1601 C.E. Oil on canvas
Jesus himself is barely visible with a thin halo, reaching out to point at Matthew in a manner imitating Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. A single beam of light emanates from an unspecified source above Christ’s head and falls on Matthew, who points at himself in astonishment.
This beam of light makes it obvious that Matthew is being called into the Lord’s service with expressive clarity, making the painting’s intention readable to anyone. Just as Adam receives the spark of life from the finger of God, Matthew receives the light of divine inspiration from Christ and begins a new life as an apostle
Ecstasy, Not Pain
The same naturalism and theatrical characteristics seen in Caravaggio’s works are found in Gianlorenzo Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. Bernini refused to limit the work to a rigidly defined spatial setting; instead, it spills over the boundaries of the niche in the Cornaro Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria to integrate the viewer into the saint’s vision.
Bernini combines sculpture, architecture, and painting to transform the chapel into a stage set complete with theater boxes—typical of the Baroque period. Bernini’s subject, the Spanish nun Teresa of Avila, was selected by its patron, Cardinal Federico Cornaro, to replace a previous statue of the Ecstasy of St. Paul. Characteristic of Baroque’s images of religious inspiration, Bernini depicts a vision Teresa of Avila had: an angel piercing her body with an arrow, bringing her into a painful but ecstatic communion with God.
Bernini visualizes her experience as a metaphor for Divine Love, with the cherub replacing the fearsome angel of fire, smiling sweetly and adoringly at the swooning saint. Earlier representations of Saint Teresa’s vision depict her kneeling. Here Bernini shows her collapsed backward in an expressive and emotional fashion. Framed by columns beneath a pediment and above the altar, Teresa appears like a vision herself, floating on a bank of clouds that is cleverly supported on a hidden pedestal.
Detail: Ecstasy of Saint Teresa
Like Caravaggio’s conversion painting, the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa incorporates light as a metaphor for spiritual revelation.
The gilded rays beaming down from above reflect natural light from a concealed window above the cornice on the back wall, a clever theatrical effect that Bernini employed frequently. Depending on the time of day, the light diffusing down the rays would bathe the scene in a heavenly, golden glow or set it to blaze with the spiritual fervor that Teresa describes in her account.
Evolving Architecture
The design of religious spaces continued to evolve to accommodate the needs of those who ministered and worshiped in them. Explore how religious spaces evolved from Classical influence into the Baroque era.
Buildings, are they really that different?
The different needs of the practitioners and worshipers delegated the functional use of the religious space. In other words, the building’s designs were adapted for each specific purpose. Compare each floorplan—can you see where the centralized focus of worship is?
Floor plan Pantheon
Santa Sabina
Il Gesù Plan
Pantheon
Hadrian succeeded Trajan and constructed monuments all over the Roman empire, including the Pantheon in Rome. The Pantheon, which literally means “all gods”, was a temple dedicated to every major deity, and its structure allowed for a large open space, not inhibited by columns, to accommodate large groups.
Seven niches, representative of the seven planets, surrounded the interior housed statues of the seven gods and goddesses, including Venus and Mars.
Pantheon
The dome overhead was like a heavenly vault with the oculus resembling the sun. It was originally adorned with bronze stars to resemble other heavenly bodies. The vast space of the dome and changing light from the oculus were meant to inspire religious awe and represent a universal religious hierarchy in keeping with cosmic order.
Dome. Pantheon.
The Pantheon resembled a typical temple. Originally an inscription on the architrave stated it was built by “Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, who was consul three times.” Hadrian placed Agrippa’s name on the façade as a remembrance of the consul.
The interior is extremely unconventional. A result of Roman engineering, the dome (one of the largest in antiquity) is mounted on a concrete cylinder. The walls of the dome are thicker and heavier near the base and lighter toward the apex, where the oculus punctured the center.
The oculus is open to the sky, and a drainage system channels any rainwater that enters away from the building. The walls were also thinned using coffers, which create a rhythmic pattern over the surface of the ceiling.
The base of the dome is accented with alternating rectangular patterns resembling frames and window-like openings. The walls are covered with marble veneer and are heavily ornamented with repeating squares against circles, accenting the niches where statues of the gods stood. The design of the Pantheon may have reflected Hadrian’s personal involvement and interest in architecture.
Santa Sabina
Bishop Peter of Illyria constructed the church of Santa Sabina in Rome around 422 C.E. The basic elements of the Early Christian Basilica are discernible on both the interior and exterior. The nave is lit by clerestory windows and flanked by single side aisles ending in a rounded apse. The exterior is simple brickwork, but the interior is covered with marble veneer. The nave arcade is composed of Corinthian capitals reused from a 2nd century building and was once decorated with scenes from the Bible on the wall above and below the clerestory.
Entering the building, the visitor’s eye is drawn toward the apse of the church. Projecting into the nave is a high pulpit from which the entire congregation could hear the readings of Gospels. Unlike later periods in the Church’s history, Early Christian places of worship do not make a great distinction between the placement of the clergy and the laity. Instead, the architecture of the church is designed for interaction between the two groups
Santa Sabina. Rome, Italy. Late Antique Europe. c. 422–432 C.E. Brick and stone, wooden roof.
Il Gesù
The Jesuits were the pope’s vital partners in the pursuit to reassert the supremacy of the Catholic Church and needed a church to appropriate their distinction as a major participant in the Counter-Reformation. The mother church of the Jesuit order, Il Gesù, was originally commissioned to Michelangelo. When Michelangelo was late in providing the plans, the Jesuits then requested Giacomo Da Vignola to design the ground plan and Giacomo Della Porta to create the façade.
Il Gesù’s plan represents a transition: the nave takes on the main volume of space and the structure becomes a great hall with side chapels, while the dome emphasizes the approach to the altar. In comparison with plans of similar churches, like San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, the opening of the building into a large hall provides a theatrical setting and ritual efficiency and accommodates large crowds, combining social and priestly functions.
Il Gesù, including Triumph of the Name of Jesus ceiling fresco.
Baroque—The Secular Side
The Thirty Years War involved nearly all of Europe except for Italy and resulted in the political restructuring of Europe. The redrawing of boundaries created new superpowers in France and the Netherlands and prompted new artistic centers, which allowed for wider dissemination of styles across the continent through increased trade and commerce. Although religious art remained a dominant genre, secular subjects gained in popularity.
Economic competition between countries was relentless. Extensive global exploration, spurred by advances in cartography and shipbuilding and the establishment of major trade routes, gave Europeans access to a wide range of goods, including art.
Still Life with Game Fowl, Vegetables and Fruits
This birthed a commercial art market no longer dominated by the Roman Catholic Church or royal and aristocratic patrons. The mercantile middle class commissioned artworks for their homes and bought pieces ready-made on the open market, evolving artists’ conception and creation of images.
The scientific investigation of the natural world in the Renaissance led to the Scientific Revolution—a fundamental transformation of ideas in physics, astronomy, and biology. Discoveries by Nicholas Copernicus and Galileo Galilei in the 16th century brought to light the vast scale of the universe and the movement of planets around the sun. Galileo’s telescope allowed scientists to glimpse the cosmos. Though Copernicus’s and Galileo’s ideas were prohibited by the Catholic Church—Galileo was even tried for heresy—they soon spread throughout Europe and even Catholic Italy.
The invention of the microscope turned the lens of scientific inquiry to the smallest elements of the natural world: plants, animals, and microorganisms. This prompted artists to turn to the natural world for secular subjects, like still life, landscape, and genre painting—scenes of everyday life.
17th century naturalism was driven by visual and emotional authenticity.
Following scientific interests, which stemmed from Renaissance artists like da Vinci, psychology, humor, martyrdom, and religious ecstasy were popular themes. Many Baroque works give their subjects a much more dramatic, immediate, and intimate presentation than the more coolly rational and balanced images of the Renaissance.
The Night Watch. Rembrandt van Rjin. 1642 C.E. Oil on canvas.
Portraiture
In Northern Europe, both Peter Paul Rubens and Rembrandt van Rijn were fascinated by mathematics, natural history, and Classical philosophy and literature. They were sought after as portraitists and cast a lengthy shadow over the subsequent development of art.
Rubens
Rubens’s style epitomized the exuberant and sensuous aspects of Baroque painting. Self-taught as a painter, he modeled his style on the Renaissance and antique works of Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto.
Rubens’s interest in Classical antiquity was annotated in a Latin treatise he wrote, On the Imitation of Statues, “I am convinced that in order to achieve the highest perfection one needs a full understanding of the ancient statues, nay a complete absorption in them.”
Rubens’s interaction with royalty and aristocracy gave him an understanding of what appealed to the wealthy. One of his royal patrons, Marie de’ Medici, was a member of the famous Italian house and widow of Henry IV. She commissioned Rubens to paint a series of huge canvases remembering and exalting her career. Rubens used mythological and divine representations to elevate Medici and significant moments in her life, giving the impression that it was all divinely appointed.
In Henri IV Receives the Portrait of Marie de’ Medici, allegorical symbolism is used to conclude that the marriage of Henri IV and Marie de’ Medici was ordained by the gods and a cherished political match. Henri IV is seeing a portrait of his wife for the first time.
He had not met her yet as they were married by proxy. Above is a representation of Zeus and Hera, Greek gods, looking on in approval, as Henri IV seems to be captivated by the painting. The eagle, a symbol for Zeus, and the peacock, a symbol for Hera, confirm this representation.
Behind Henri IV is an allegorical personification of France, which Rubens used often in the Marie de’ Medici Cycle to represent French royalty. Cupid holds the painting, while cherubs hold Henri IV’s armor on the ground.
Henri IV Receives the Portrait of Marie de’ Medici, from the Marie de’ Medici Cycle.
Velázquez
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez is the towering figure of the Spanish Baroque. Except for two extended trips to Italy, he spent almost his entire professional life at the royal court in Madrid.
When he was a young child, Velázquez’s parents, who were of lesser nobility, instilled in him a religious fervor and an emphasis on the importance of a classical education. He received a traditional training in languages and philosophy before becoming a painter. Velázquez’s teacher and eventual father-in-law, Francisco Pacheco, was a respected painter and an expert in the polychromy of statuary. From him, Velázquez acquired the habit of the direct study of nature. Unlike his teacher, Velázquez did not “improve” upon and idealize nature. Instead, he used direct observation as way to make a more truthful image.
Las Meninas is an unprecedented image of family and royalty. In placing himself in the stately company, Velázquez also offers visible proof of the nobility of art. The viewer sees the child Maria Teresa attended by her maids, tutors, page, caretaker, and dog in the corner—the people who would normally be accompanying the princess. It was customary in royal courts to include individuals with various physical differences, and people with dwarfism usually served as caretakers and playmates for the royal children.
In the shadows at the left, half-hidden by an immense canvas, the painter pauses with paintbrush in hand. The subject of his work are the king and queen, the perceived viewers of this scene.
The princess and her companions are in the room to accompany her parents, to relieve their boredom. In fact, there is a blurry reflection of their faces in the mirror at the back of the room. Or is Velázquez painting the princess instead, even though she has her back turned to him?
Velázquez has turned this public representation of the royal family into a picture of the act of looking and of representing. As a picture of nobility, it is also a self-portrait. Las Meninas signifies a new way of thinking in European art, relinquishing portraiture from Classical representations and formality.
Las Meninas. Diego Velázquez. c. 1656 C.E. Oil on canvas.
Rembrandt
Rembrandt van Rijn, the son of a miller and a baker’s daughter, received an excellent education, attending Latin school and later the University of Leiden. Unlike most Dutch artists, Rembrandt painted a wide variety of subjects—portraits, history, mythology, religious narratives, and landscapes.
A prolific self-portraitist, Rembrandt represented himself more than a hundred times in drawings, etchings, and paintings.
Self-portraits of famous artists were a kind of currency as gifts for honored guests or people to whom the artist was indebted. Self-portraits enabled Rembrandt to explore the effects of light and color, including tenebrism, and to experiment with brushwork.
The series constitutes one of the most revealing and honest autobiographies ever made. He recorded every change of fortune and impact of time and emotion with dispassionate truth.
Self-Portrait with Saskia. Rembrandt van Rijn. 1636 C.E. Etching.
Self-Portrait with Saskia is a portrait of Rembrandt and his wife, one of his favorite models, and is the only etching he made of the two of them together. The couple’s representation wearing historical clothing from the 16th century illustrated their relationship and love, not a lifelike representation.
Le Brun
Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun executed over nine hundred works during her lifetime, including history paintings, landscapes, and idealized likenesses of prominent aristocrats, including Marie Antoinette. One of the most successful women artists, she was greatly impacted by Peter Paul Rubens, and she made replicas after his Medici cycle and painted two self-portraits under his influence.
Her Self-Portrait emphasizes her skill in her ability to paint fabrics, her monumental composition with an intriguingly turned away canvas, and the freshness and spontaneity of her confident gaze.
Self-Portrait. Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun. 1790 C.E. Oil on canvas.
Portraits—Dutch Style
In the 17th century, the Netherlands became immensely wealthy from overseas trade, prompting an increase in portrait commissions. Dutch Baroque painting is absent of religious themes and rich with genre, landscape, and still-life secular subjects that frequently encode moral content. Battle, woodland, moonlight, farm, and village scenes were popular and carried moralistic messages that were felt without being obvious. These paintings met the desire of the middle class for a decorative and accessible art that reflected their secular, commercial, pragmatic lives. They also offered a focus for spiritual contemplation in a Protestant culture.
Woman Holding a Balance. Johannes Vermeer.
Jan Vermeer made his reputation as a painter of interior scenes, a popular subject among middle-class patrons. Women are the primary occupants of the homes he painted, and they present highly idealized depictions of the social values of Dutch citizens.
Woman Holding a Balance depicts a young woman wearing a veil and a fur-trimmed jacket standing in a room in her home.
She is illuminated with light from a window, similar to Caravaggio’s use of light in the Calling of Saint Matthew and symbolizing spiritual enlightenment. She stands before a table on which she has spread out her most precious possessions, which reflect the sunlight. She is holding a balance for weighing gold, but it is empty, odd since they are in perfect balance.
Behind her is a painting of the Last Judgment, in which Christ weighs the souls and is representative of the hidden meaning. The woman holds the scales in balance and contemplates the kind of life she must lead to be judged favorably on judgment day.
Still LIfe Painting
Still-life painting is named for the Dutch stilleven, a word coined about 1650 C.E. to describe artful arrangements of flowers, food, and household objects.
Still lifes were often classified by the food and utensils they featured, as exemplified in Rachel Ruysch’s Fruit and Insects. Ruysch was one of only three Dutch female artists to receive great acclaim during the Dutch Golden Age and was referred to as the most celebrated Dutch woman artist of the 17th and 18th centuries. Ruysch was successful for nearly 70 years as a specialist in flower paintings and woodland scenes. She was accepted to The Hague’s Painter’s Guild in 1701 and several years later was invited to Düsseldorf to work for the duke as a court painter.
Ruysch came from a distinguished and wealthy background. Her interest in floral subjects probably originated with her father, a famous botanist. As a young woman, she produced numerous still lifes of plants and fruits in a woodland setting. Often these works had a variety of snakes, toads, moths, grasshoppers, and the like, which differentiated her from the many other floral painters of the age.
She connected still life with scientific observation and vanitas symbolism. At 15, Ruysch was apprenticed to the well-known Dutch flower painter Willem van Aelst. From that point on, she produced various kinds of still lifes, mainly flower pieces and woodland scenes.
Fruit and Insects. Rachel Ruysch.
Powerful Architecture, Baroque Style
Versailles
Like Nan Madol, the Forbidden City, and Machu Picchu, the Palace at Versailles communicates the power and authority of the patron who commissioned it: Louis XIV. Not only did the palace exemplify his power, but it was designed to communicate the absolute monarchy. This was accomplished through the massive size and grandeur of the palace and the splendor of the gardens.
Versailles, which had been a comparatively modest retreat, became a small city for the king and his enormous entourage. The palace was only a small part of the larger estate. The gardens closest to the palace were the most intricate, with carefully planned flower beds and trimmed hedges. The gardens grew less elaborate the farther away they were from the palace, probably because they were not visible from the building.
The Palace of Versailles
Two large intersecting canals were the largest elements in the estate, and sculptural decoration could be found throughout. There were also hundreds of fountains, which were a luxury. Many fountains would be turned on only when the king approached, signifying his central role in the ceremonial life of the estate. The plan was organized around a series of round focal points that had various paths radiating outward, much like a stylized image of the sun, further exemplifying Louis’s self-connection with Apollo. This provided both order and majesty to the overall design of the gardens.
Versailles illustrated the order and control Louis XIV had over France.
More Photos of the Palace
Alhambra
The Alhambra in Spain was built on a hilltop site of an early Islamic fortress and was the seat of the Nasrids, the last Spanish Muslim dynasty. Christians who conquered the complex during the Conquest of Granada felt the palace represented the embodiment of luxury and chose to preserve its beauty and to commemorate the defeat of Islam.
The complex is almost a half a mile along the crest of a high hill and included government buildings, royal residences, gates, mosques, baths, barracks, stables, workshops, servant’s quarters, and gardens.
The Court of Lions was the private retreat of Sultan Muhammad V and is divided into quadrants by cross-axial walkways—a garden form called a chahar bagh. The walkways carry channels that meet at a central marble fountain supported on the backs of twelve stone lions. The Court of Lions is surrounded by an arcade of stucco arches embellished with muqarnas.
The Hall of the Sisters was designed as a winter reception hall and music room. The ceiling is designed to provide both excellent acoustics and ornate decoration simulating the heavens.
Palace plan.
The sheer size and grandeur communicate the power, influence, order, and control of the Nasrids.
Court of the Lions.
Hall of the Sisters.
Alhambra
Cross-Cultural Fertilization—Baroque Style
The expeditions from Spain resulted in viceroy territories throughout the Indigenous Americas. This cultural infusion resulted in art and architecture that reflected European influence. Explore different artworks from Spanish viceroyalties.
The Virgin of Guadalupe
As Spain colonized the Indigenous Americas, Catholic missionaries insisted on the termination of the indigenous religions. The indigenous peoples were forced to convert to Catholicism and participate in religious practices, including the veneration of saints.
A representation of the Virgin Mary, the Virgin of Guadalupe is found throughout Mexico today in homes, churches, and other everyday areas. The initial image of the Virgin of Guadalupe is believed to be an acheiropoieta and imprinted on Juan Diego’s robe in a spiritual experience.
Several copies have been made, including the Virgin of Guadalupe (Virgen de Guadalupe) by Miguel González.
González’s version is inlaid with fragments of shell and created using a technique called enconchado.
In the representation, the Virgin is on top of an eagle perched on a cactus, representing Mexico City’s coat of arms. She is surrounded by four round framed images supported by angels and depicting her appearance to Juan Diego, along with the moment Diego revealed the imprint to the Bishop.
The influx of Asian goods to Mexico during the period of colonization affected the artistic production and inspired decorative arts. This is evident in the elaborate shell-inlaid frame that combines floral motifs with symbols of the Virgin.
The Virgin of Guadalupe (Virgen de Guadalupe).
Spaniard and Indian Produce a Mestizo
The introduction of a culture in colonization impacts the receiving culture in many ways, including intercultural mating. This was captured in casta paintings, which document the process of race mixing among the three main groups that inhabited the Spanish colonies: Indian, Spanish, and African.
These paintings are often labeled and attempt to scientifically document interracial procreation. However, casta paintings depict a separation and hierarchy of races, giving the false impression that the more European you are, the more valuable you are.
Spaniard and Indian Produce a Mestizo. Attributed to Juan Rodríguez Juárez. c. 1715 C.E. Oil on canvas.
Evidence suggests that these paintings were commissioned by Spanish viceroys and reflect an apprehension of racial mixing.
In Spaniard and Indian Produce a Mestizo, a European father is depicted with his indigenous wife, with a servant carrying their child between them. The wife is wearing a traditional garment, but the father is represented wearing French-style European clothing. While this couple looks happy, as time progressed and more casta paintings were produced, interracial procreation was viewed in a negative light through depictions of conflict and poor living conditions.
Screen with the Siege of Belgrade and hunting scene
The Screen with the Siege of Belgrade and hunting scene is the only known work to combine a biombo and the enconchado technique. Depicting a scene from the Great Turkish War, the screen was commissioned by Jose Sarmiento de Valladares, viceroy of New Spain, and likely displayed in a ceremonial stateroom in Mexico’s viceregal palace.
The Siege of Belgrade is on one side of the screen, and a hunting scene was on the back; the screen functioned to separate a portion of the room to give the impression of an intimate sitting room. It is evidence of European themes combined with indigenous techniques.
Screen with the Siege of Belgrade and hunting scene. Circle of the González Family. c. 1697–1701 C.E. Tempera and resin on wood, shell inlay.
Portrait of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz lived in the Spanish viceroyalty of Mexico and was a prodigy, learning to read and write Latin at the age of three. Although she received many marriage proposals, she chose to pursue intellectual interests and become a nun.
Sor Juana Inés de la was an accomplished writer and supporter of women’s right to education. She is depicted by Miguel Cabrera, after her death, in her habit and seated at a desk in a library in Portrait of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
Her position at the desk is symbolic of her intellectualism, and her escudo de monja and rosary are symbolic of her religious devotion.
The portrayal as an intellectual and religious woman is significant, as often nuns are represented in a passive manner. But Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz looks directly at the viewer while surrounded by symbols of her accomplishments and faith.
Portrait of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Miguel Cabrera. c. 1750 C.E. Oil on canvas.
Angel with Arquebus, Asiel Timor Dei
Master of Calamarca was a Bolivian artist known for painting angelic representations on the walls of a Catholic church in Calamarca, Bolivia. Angel with Arquebus, Asiel Timor Dei exemplifies several European influences.
The inscription Asiel Timor Dei identifies the angel as Asiel, and timor dei means “the fear of God” in Latin. Asiel is portrayed wearing a European-looking garment with ballooned sleeves and intricate patterns.
He has a feather plume in his hat and wears traditional European stockings and shoes. The textile with intricate patterns, along with the feathered hat, was a sign in the indigenous Andean culture that the wearer was of high social status. Asiel’s clothing is not specific to one culture, but a merging of the two.
Asiel has the gender-neutral features associated with angelic representations in the Catholic Church, and the gun is a significant symbol of the Counter-Reformation efforts of the Catholic Church.
Angel with Arquebus, Asiel Timor Dei. Master of Calamarca (La Paz School). c. 17th century C.E. Oil on canvas.
The Counter-Reformation was associated with the military, believers and angels were considered the army of God. Guns came to represent the Spaniards and were possibly considered supernatural by the indigenous cultures, as they had not seen them before the Spanish conquests.
Lesson Summary
The Catholic Church responded to the Protestant Reformation with the Counter-Reformation, which through the Council of Trent provided a list of requirements that artists should meet in producing images of veneration.
Baroque art was naturalistic, theatrical, and used chiaroscuro to enhance the emotional impact of an artwork. The design of religious spaces continued to evolve to accommodate the needs of those who ministered and worshiped in them. Secular demands for artworks included portraiture, landscapes, and still lifes. Architecture displayed power and authority not only through palaces, but through complexes and gardens. Indigenous art of the Spanish viceroyalties demonstrated European traits in cross-cultural fertilization.