Objectives

This chapter covers the development Baroque art throughout both Catholic and Protestant Europe. Following the precepts of the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church responded to the Protestant Reformation with an outpouring of sculpture, architecture and painting glorifying Papal Rome and Catholicism. Musical forms, such as opera and the concerto grosso, were invented. Outside of Italy, a bourgeois Baroque style developed, particularly in Protestant Holland. Court painters Peter Paul Rubens, Antony van Dyck, and Diego Velászquez immortalized Catholic monarchs in Spain, Italy, and pre-Revolutionary England. In France, the Baroque served the absolutist monarch, Louis XIV, producing Versailles, Neoclassical theatre, and academic control of the arts. Oratorios were written by George Frederick Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach. Philosophical, political and scientific concepts were investigated and debated. Literature included French Neoclassical drama, the Metaphysical poets, Anne Bradstreet, and John Milton, as well as the picaresque novel Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes.

After reading this chapter you should be able to

• Recognize and identify key Baroque works in visual art, architecture, music, literature and theatre, including themes and subject matter.
• Trace the development of Baroque art.
• Describe the relationship between the Catholic Counterreformation and the arts in Catholic Europe.
• Describe the relationship between the Protestant Reformation and the arts in Protestant Europe.
• Discuss the relationship between geographic and scientific discoveries, philosophical investigation and the arts.
• Trace the relationship between the Italian Baroque and the development of Baroque art, music, literature and architecture throughout Europe.