Art History the Impressionists MD4 Term Paper

Art History: The Impressionists

Baroque

The word baroque has no clear origin. Some says that it came from a medieval philosophical word connoting the strange or the ridiculous, some consider it as derived from the Spanish barueco or Portuguese referring to an irregular shaped pearl. As 18th century was coming to an end baroque find its way to art criticism terminology in form of epithet leveled against art of the 17th century, though it later faced criticism that it was too strange or bizarre to merit serious study. Some of the baroque images can be viewed through this link, http://loki.stockton.edu/~fergusoc/lesson7/lect7.htm

Jakob Burckhardt among other 19th century Swiss cultural historian had a view that baroque was the decadent end of the Renaissance, and so was his student Heinrich who identified the essential differences between the art of 16th and 17th century describing baroque as a fully distinct art but not a decline or a rise from classic. Art of baroque captures a wide range of regional distinctions. Sometimes it becomes challenging when somebody wants to label any related two distinct artists such as Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Rembrandt as baroque, however despite such differences most of them have common themes as well as stylistic preoccupations that each artist have handled in his own way.

For a deep understanding of the different forms of existing baroque art, knowledge of their historical context will be of great importance.The first modern age has been linked to 17th century. This was when there was a continuous expansion of the world's human awareness. Art became more influenced by numerous scientific discoveries, for instance investigations of the planets by Galileo accounted for astronomical accuracy within most of the then paintings. (Thames & Hudson, 1985). Revelation that showed the earth to never exist at the center of the universe went altogether with the crop up of pure painting in terms of landscape devoid of human figures. Colonization policies and the active trade of….....