2º Online Baroque Art lesson

Before Eastern holidays, you study the Absolutism. The next part of the topic is Baroque art.

What is Baroque? The Baroque art and architecture is the style, originated in Rome (Italy) and spread thought all Europe and South America during the period 1590-1720.

The word Baroque derived from the Portuguese “barocco”, which means “irregular pearl”. That name indicates the totally personal way of the artists of expressing themselves. Even so, there are some common characteristics: illumination and theatrical effects, complex and dynamic compositions, excesive decoration, curves, big formats, etc.

In Baroque art nothing is as simple as it looks... For example, let's see the following and very famous canvas by Diego Velázquez:

What do you see? Apparently, it is a normal scene: several women, artisans, are working doing tapestries meanwhile at the back several rich aristocrats visit the workshop to buy some of them. Right? No at all, this canvas is, in fact, an episode from the greek mythology! It tells the story of how godness Athenea (here called Palas-Athenea) punish a girl called Aracne, who was showing off saying she was better than Athenea herself, turning her into a... spider! You can read all the details in the Museo del Prado website (click on the (+) icon and read the texts, them click on the next page (numbers at the bottom of the image) to see how the story goes). 

As said, in Baroque art nothing is as simple as it looks... But, how can we recognise Baroque? Let’s do a comparaison with the other art styles studied this academic year by using the same topic (Mother and Child):

Medieval times: Romanesque. The figures are rigid, some parts of the body (for example the eyes or the hands) are too big to show their simbolic importance. There is no relationship between them and the background are non-realistic colours:

Gothic: still in medieval times but now the figures are more realistic and proportioned, and there is some kind of interaction between them:

Renaissance: figures are totally naturalistic, beautiful and well proportionated. The background now is also a beautiful landscape.

Baroque: although figures are still realistic, they are now sorrounded by shadows and dark colours:

  

You can learn more things by watching this funny video by Khan Academy (about 6 minutes).

Have you watched the video? Really? Good, because now it is time to do the first special activity that will be considerer alternative to an exam... Don’t worry, after to gamification adventures, this is going to be very easy and funny! Just open this document (2 pages of images - no password required) and follow the instrutions :). Send me your answers to blogeducativo08@gmail.com before Monday, 20 April. 

That's enough for this week. If any question or doubt, just ask me ok?