(music) ("In The Sky With Diamonds" by Scalding Lucy)
Sal: Here we are looking at Pontormo's entombment,
a typical Mannerist painting from about 1520.
[unintelligible] is a starting off point
to talk about what follows Mannerism.
Beth: Right, a kind of rejection of Mannerism ...
Sal: Very rhetorically a rejection of Mannerism
is going to come around beginning in the
last quarter of the 16th century, in the late 1570s,
especially 1580s and onwards.
Beth: I can see why people would reject it.
It's incredibly complicated.
Sal: Exactly.
Beth: It's difficult to read.
Sal: Sure.
Beth: Hard to tell what's going on.
There are a lot of reasons that this doesn't
seem like the traditional definition of art,
especially when you think about the Renaissance
and its interesting naturalism.
Sal: All of the qualities; its difficulty in reading,
its enigmatic qualities, the very stylized elegant nature,
these were all things that made Mannerist art good
in the Mannerist period.
But after over 50 years of Mannerism's dominance in Italy,
beginning in the 1520s and reaching towards
the end of the century, a backlash does
begin to build exactly towards the issues that
you were talking about.
There's a growing desire for many reasons,
a few of which we'll talk about,
for a return to the basic principles of
the high Renaissance which they look back upon
from 70 years later, as a period when art
was good for several different reasons.
Beth: One of the reasons that they're going to
reject Mannerism has to do with its illegibility
at a time when the church is being attacked
and really needs art to communicate
in a very easy and direct way, right, because
of the reformation.
Sal: Sure. The Protestant Reformation was
criticizing art coming out of the Catholic areas
for being too distracting, for not communicating
the story well and so as we know,
the Protestants intended to put their emphasis on
the written word in the Bible rather than on art
because they would point to something like this and say,
"This is not a good religious teaching tool."
Beth: Right, and the whole way the church
defended art was by saying it was there to teach.
Sal: Right.
Beth: "How could you point to this and say
this is teaching anybody anything?"
Sal: Exactly. As the Reformation is building,
even at the beginning of the 1540s,
but especially toward the end of the century,
they feel that new style is needed.
Beth: That makes sense.
Sal: Our story about this reaction actually starts in Bologna.
It starts there for a couple of reasons.
One reason is that Cardinal Paleotti,
who was one of the leaders of the counter-reformation,
was a Bishop from Bologna.
At the various meetings, the Council of Trents,
which was this religious convention to formulate
the Catholic response to the Protestant Reclamation,
Cardinal Paleotti was in charge essentially of
figuring out what to do about art;
how to make good influenced art that would
be immune to the criticism of the Protestants.
The Council of Trents also meets in Bologna several times.
Beth: How'd they do that? I thought they only met in Trent.
Sal: No. As frequently happened during this era,
sometimes when the plague or other diseases
would break out, they would move
the conferences to other places.
Because you have this Bishop from Bologna,
because also the Council is taking place sometimes
in Bologna, it's almost first in Bologna that
you see artists responding to this need for
an art that is basically more straightforward,
clear, legible, a good religious teaching tool,
it gets rid of all the ambiguities and
the overwrought elegance that they see
being the problem by now with some of those
characteristics works of Mannerism
that had come before.
Beth: I noticed that here in this image of the crucifixion.
This is by ...
Sal: this is by Annibale Carracci.
This is a crucifixion from pretty early in his career,
around the 1580s and this was made in Bologna,
in fact, you can see a little miniature Bologna
down at the bottom as well as in the distance.
Here we see an artist who as a young man is trying
to formulate a new style of painting in part,
although not exclusively, because of this new
religious atmosphere of the counter-reformation
that's pushing artists to make art that is
legible, straightforward, easy to understand,
and properly communicates the stories from
the Bible or other religious texts.
Beth: What I notice most about it is this
kind of emotional quality to it where
it's very clear from everyone's gestures and
facial expressions what they're feeling;
the crafting of the chest or the throwing out of the arms.
Sal: And the facial expressions.
Beth: That kind of overwrought acting going on.
Sal: Yes, that's definitely true.
The style that Annibale Carracci, and his
brother and cousin are also artists working with him,
and others that soon will follow them,
this is going to give birth to the Baroque style.
What you've just described are very much
characteristics of the Baroque style.
Bold gestures, bold facial expressions,
to make the meaning in the narrative that's
clear as possible, in absolute contrast to all
of the ambiguities and the emotionless,
fanciful renderings that we saw in these kinds
of scenes in Mannerism.
Beth: Also a kind of emotion to make things
Sal: Right.
which is something we didn't see so much in the
high Renaissance, when there was a kind of
distance in that ideal beauty.
Here there's a kind of down-to-earth,
this is what the story is telling us,
this is how the figures are feeling.
Sal: It's definitely more dramatic and energized
than a high Renaissance composition might have been.
What I always say is in some ways,
the Baroque style is a return to the principles
of the high Renaissance, but with the volume
turned way, way up.
Beth: To 11 (laughs).
Sal: (laughs) Exactly.
Beth: (laughs) Past 10.
Sal: (laughs) Right.
The gestures and the facial expressions are one way
that this becomes very dramatic.
Baroque paintings like already we can see in this one,
tend to have dramatic lighting very frequently.
Something else that also increases the intensity
and the legibility and the clarity of the image,
is that all the figures are quite large
and pressed right up against the front
of the picture plane.
Beth: Everything's very close to us.
Sal: Very close to the viewer, to really almost
enter the viewer's space and to really heighten
that sense that you are there, too, and
you can experience this and it will
heighten your religious devotion.
Also typical of Baroque art and its rejection
of Mannerism is the intense or great simplification
of the composition.
There are no complicated patterns.
There are no contorted positions.
There's no enigmatic representation of
space or foreshortening.
Everything is boiled down to its essentials.
There's nothing extraneous in these early Baroque paintings.
Beth: It's the narrative that's ...
Sal: Exactly.
Beth: ... Really the most important.
Sal: Exactly. The narrative is the core.
There's nothing extra, there's nothing confusing.
The other thing also, is that compared to
Mannerist paintings, the Carracci and their
later Baroque followers are very intent in
creating very naturalistic images.
Gone is the very attenuated elegance
stylization of Mannerism.
There's a return to basics also in the
rendering of the figure and its anatomical accuracy,
the representation of fabric, depth, space,
gravity and three dimensionality.
Everything that was illogical in a Mannerist
work of art, and praised for it at that time,
now becomes logical, clear and straightforward.
Beth: And there's a kind of implicit criticism
Sal: Sure.
Beth: In Mannerism, kind of saying
Mannerism wasn't good art.
Sal: The Carracci literally did say that.
There were not only artists,
but they were art critics in a way and
they were responding to the praise of
Mannerism from the earlier decades and saying,
"No, this is not good art because it doesn't
replicate nature, because it's not based on
study from life," so they go around
looking at artists who they thought of as good,
including the typical ones we think of from
the higher Renaissance like Raphael, Michaelangelo
and so on, but also traveling to areas that
didn't tend to be emphasized in the literature as much,
traveling around their native region of Amelia,
but also looking at people like Tischen, Bearnaise
in Venice and you can see all of these influences
in their paintings.
In an early one like this, we're also in a later,
more mature work like this Lamentation which
is from around 1605, still this is Annibale Carracci
and we can see the basic hallmarks of this
new Baroque style that's emerged.
Intense, very dramatic rendering of the narrative,
but at the same time, very simple,
very straightforward, there's no mistaking
the emotions, there's no mistaking the narrative
and what's going on here ... Christ looks dead.
But again, also very strikingly naturalistic, very descriptive.
Beth: It's so easy to read.
My eye goes first to this figure of Christ
at the bottom, he's been removed from the cross.
Then it goes up to Mary Magdalene,
who's got that dramatic emotion,
throwing her arms up and kneeling and
looking down at him and up to the other Mary.
Sal: The other Mary, yup.
Beth: Reaching out, those arms that reach out towards
the third woman, so then our eye moves across
and then it moves down toward Christ's mother
and then back down toward Christ.
There's a way that the artist is really leading
our eye through the composition in a very
sort of methodical way.
Sal: Also playing down the areas of
the composition that don't necessarily contribute
to the narrative, so again, notice that
the figures are very close to the front of
the picture plane and everything behind that
is in dark shadow, nothing to distract you.
Beth: Elaborate landscape.
Sal: Also in terms of the composition,
we should say that here we can see
one of the most important features of all Baroque art,
in addition to the naturalism and the drama,
the very strong diagonal that cuts across
the picture plane also adding ...
Beth: Two parallel diagonal lines.
Sal: Also adding to the energized drama of the scene.
Beth: Yup.
(music) ("In The Sky With Diamonds" by Scalding Lucy)