Baroque Influence On American Culture

After 1600 through the 1700’s, European culture generated a new artistic style, known as “The Baroque”. The term literally means "irregular pearl" and is use to describe the vibrant and wild artistic creativity of the seventeenth century. The newly created Baroque style grew out of the Catholic “Counter-Reformation”. Later on as the style spread to northern Europe, it became popular at royal places that use this new style as a symbol freshly emerging monarchies. As the book explains, Baroque style exhibits a combination of power, massiveness, or dramatic theatrical, larger-than-life, color, and intensity. The Baroque style was popular in Rome, Italy and spread to most of Europe. One historical event that was important in the baroque period was the incredibly popularity and success of the Baroque style that was heavily stimulated by the Roman Catholic Church, in response to the
Protestant Reformation that was occurring at that moment. This new style of art was able to communicate religious themes in direct and emotional involvement. The nobility class also saw how this new style of Baroque impacted architecture and art because it expressed the power and control in Europe when a foreigner visited. The second event that happened during the baroque period was the existing tensions between the Protestants and Catholics which started a 30 year War in Europe.
The book mention that this war was fought principally in Germany and was provoked because of a religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics which ended in war between dynasties and foreign powers which only brought famine and disease to many towns English Puritans broke away from the Catholic Church because they felt that it had not completed the work of the Reformation.
But the most important event in my opinion was the newly created baroque style is because by looking at the pictures you can see technical brilliance. All paintings, sculptures, and architectures seems too harmonically joint together but what’s most interesting is this new three-dimensional effect never seen before which makes the paintings look both real and illusionary with remarkable visual effects. Baroque art seems to engage the viewer, both physically and emotionally by creating a highly developed naturalistic illusion’s. For example paintings and sculptures are added a dramatic lighting effects which creates a unique sense of almost theatricality effect just by looking at their movement of their
bodies.
In conclusion I think that in the high renaissance everything was done to “perfection”. Renaissance paintings looked as if all the air had been sucked out of a scene, nothing was out of place. Everything had been perfect and everyone depicted in a renaissance painting is of the ideal form. The scene in the renaissance paintings is usually the moment right before the highpoint of all the action. For example Michelangelo’s David shows the sculpture’s moment before he throws the stone, in additions intense emotional moments are used in the renaissance works. Then Mannerism came into the picture where all artists were highly skilled as the renaissance ones except they decided to break off from traditional renaissance style. This meant that the figures start to be disproportioned and the colors, especially in clothing, are slightly off. The objective of mannerists was to make things off from the ideal form so that people would focus on what is what wasn’t right in the painting. In baroque paintings they are much more dramatic than the renaissance paintings. Baroque Paintings depict more of the story within their paintings with lots of intense contrast in lighting. There is also much more action and movement in baroque works which is what a baroque painting differs from that of a renaissance. From what I observed in the baroque paintings the moment depicted in the paintings are usually at the peak to the story, It is at the highpoint where the most action happens and that is what splits apart work from the baroque and high renaissance paintings.