Aricle about Baroque Art

Rembrandt van Rijn- 1609- 1689, another of the Netherlands famous artist in art history, painted one of his most famous paintings, “The Blinding of Samson” in 1636.

He was influenced by Caravaggio’s religious art paintings where Caravaggio took the old bible stories and placed them in modern day settings. A good example is “The Calling of St. Matthew,” 1599- 1602. The setting is the local corner tavern and the main characters are local street people. Rembrandt used this same story telling device in the famous painting, “The Blinding of Samson,” 1636.Describing the artwork Delilah has deceived Samson, cut off his hair, and robbed him of his great power.

Making sure Samson is no longer a “viable enemy” the soldiers are actively destroying his eyesight. The action is theatrical and dramatic, a mature Baroque art style. Two Philistine soldiers have tackled Samson, holding him on the ground, ready for the spear bearer. Arms and legs are flailing.

The intense light is streaming in from outside the tent, almost totally silhouetting the spear bearer, heightening the drama. Rembrandt became a superstar and died in misery (1606- 1669).Rembrandt was born July 15, 1606, as a son of a mill man in the Netherlands. He followed latin studies and got his diploma after studying between 1621 and 1623 with the painter Swanenburgh as his professor. After these studies he stayed six months at Pieter Lastman’s workshop in Amsterdam.

In 1625 he moved back to Lieden in the Netherlands and opened his own artistic workshop. Six years later he moved to Amsterdam and married Saskia van Uylenburgh in 1634. Saskia died in 1642, so Rembrandt had to hire a maid, called Geertje Dirks, to take care of his son Titus.In 1654, his beloved Hendrickje Staffels gave birth to his daughter Cornelia, named after Rembrandt’s mother.

The following year his finances went from bad to worse. His portraits were not selling well and his landlord demanded the payment of the full price of the house, so that he could stay in it. He lost his house and his artworks. After the death of Hendrickje in 1663, he married Magdelena van Loo, the niece of his aunt Titia. That same year his son Titus died. Rembrandt died a year later in misery.

His notoriety survived his death and he became one of the most influencial Dutch painters.Besides his paintings, he left a large collection of drawings and engravings that still fascinate nowadays. Michelangelo, Caravaggio Michelangelo, known as Caravaggio,(1571- 1610). He was one of Italy’s famous artists in art history.

He painted on canvas, viewing a line model whenever he was able to get one. He painted ordinary people he knew, in the world he lived in. He painted one of his famous paintings, “The Calling of St. Matthew,” in 1599- 1602.

The Calling of St. Matthew is a religious theme he rendered using ordinary people.This is rather unusual in the history of religious art. His style is quite different here from the monumental heroic and idealized figures of the Renaissance.

Matthew, a tax collector, is sitting at a tavern with his friends and armed guards. Although the painting has a contemporary everyday peasant character about it, Caravaggio uses an up- close low level art composition similar to one used by Leonardo da Vince in the “Last Supper,” 1495-98. The figures in both Leonardo’s and Caravaggio’s paintings are placed all along a low level frontal plane.Caravaggio uses Leonardo’s technique of light into darkness for dramatic effect. The highlighted areas and colors are so high in the figure grouping of Matthew and his friends, that we really don’t notice two people that have came into the room, one of whom is Jesus Christ. Christ’s halo is barely seen.

If it weren’t for the compositional balance technique of highlighted clothing and the lighted face of the other figure, we probably wouldn’t know, at first glance, it is a religious theme. We wouldn’t even recognize one of the figures as being Jesus Christ.Michelangelo was an Italian painter, sculptor, and architect of the 15th and 16th centuries. Among many achievements in life of nearly ninety years, Michelangelo sculpted the David and several versions of the Pieta, painted the ceiling and rear wall of the Sistine Chapel and served as one of the architects of St.

Peter’s Basilica, designing its famous dome. He is considered one of the greatest artists of all time. Michelangelo was born on March 6, 1475 in Caprese, near Arezzo, Tuscany. He was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer.Michelangelo’s versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.

Michelangelo’s father sent him to study grammar with the Humanist Francesco da Urbino in Florence as a young boy, however, the young Michelangelo showed no interest in his schooling, preferring to copy paintings from churches and seek the company of painters. At the age of thirteen, Michelangelo was apprenticed to the painter, Dominico Ghirlandaio.Michelangelo was only fourteen, when his father asked Ghirlandaio to pay his apprentice as an artist. In 1489 Lorenzo de Medici, de facto ruler of Florence, asked Ghirlandaio for his two best pupils, Ghirlandaio sent Michelangelo and Francesco Granacci.

During this period between 1490 to 1492, Michelangelo attended the Humanist academy, which the Medici had founded along Neo Platonic lines. He also became acquainted with such humanists as Marsilo, Ficino and the poet, Angelo Poliziano, frequent visitors to the Medici court.Michelangelo studied sculpture under Bertoldo di Giovanni. At the afe of twenty- one, Michelangelo reached Rome on June 25, 1496.

On July 4th of the same year, he began work on a commission for Cardinal Raffaele Riario, on over- life- size statue of the Roman wine god Bacchus. Michelangelo died on February 18, 1564 after a “slow fever. ” Peter Paul Rubins, 1571- 1640, one of the Netherlands famous artist in art history, fled to Germany with his family escaping Spanish religious protestant persecution. He later returned to Flanders at the age of ten, and became a devout Catholic.Rubins trained under local master artists and became a master himself in 1598. Because Flanders was still under the influence of Spain, artists were able to rely on commissions sponsored by the Catholic Church and the state.

Peter Paul Rubins studied Renaissance art in Italy eight years after becoming a master. Returning to Flanders, taking care of family business, Rubins received a Regency appointment to become the court painter. He improved his art career through government contacts receiving commissions from private patrons as well.One of Peter Paul Ruben’s famous paintings in art history, “The Raising of the Cross,” a triptych, was painted in 1609- 1610.

The influence of Italian art is immediately recognizable in Ruben’s Michhelangelesque, heroically strong, muscular bodies. His figures release tremendous power, pulling, lifting, and straining to the edge of their ability of raising the cross. Dramatic tension rises with the immediacy of the moment. High contrast lighting dramatically focuses on the central figure of Jesus Christ, a characteristic tendency used by Caravaggio. Also Caravaggesque is the strong diagonal artistic composition.

Led through the painting artistically by Rubens, the viewer’s eye comes into the painting on the left side, drawn to the high contrast lighting of Christ’s body, just as a person reads a book. The eye then follows the length of Christ’s body to the straining, foreshortened figure near the bottom of the painting, raising the cross with all his might. Finally, our eye comes back again to the head, Christ via the figure and rope on the right. Peter Paul Rubens shows his Flemish art realist abilities rendering the armor worn by the soldier to the left of Christ and in the articulated foliage along the top right of the painting.