(jazzy piano intro)
- [Voiceover] How can you look at a painting or sculpture
and know that it was made during the period
that we call the Baroque?
- [Voiceover] How do you recognize the Baroque style?
Let's start by looking at this very important sculpture
by Bernini of the Biblical story of David,
who defeats the giant Goliath.
- [Voiceover] I'm standing in front of this sculpture,
and I wanna duck.
This man is about to launch a rock.
- [Voiceover] He's giving this every ounce
of energy he's got.
- [Voiceover] Look at his eyebrows,
the way they're knit together.
Look at the way that he's biting his lips.
The artist is observing the human body,
understands all of the naturalistic lessons
that had been gained during the Renaissance,
but is putting them towards an intense emotionalism.
- [Voiceover] This is a position of the body
that could only be like this for a split-second.
- [Voiceover] The body itself has broken with the stability
that had been so characteristic of the Renaissance.
Bernini's body is wound up,
and is about to release its energy.
He's like a spring that's taut.
And you're right, his body could never hold this position
for more than a moment.
- [Voiceover] We see a diagonal.
- [Voiceover] And it's not just straight diagonals,
these are interrelated, arcing diagonals.
And so there is this tremendous energy
that's not only the result of the representation
of his body, but it's the very forms and lines
that the artist is creating in stone.
- [Voiceover] And that's part of the way
that the figure involves us.
It moves into our space.
With Michelangeolo's David, we maintain a polite distance.
Its ideal beauty is there for us to contemplate.
But Baroque art does something different.
Instead of appealing to our minds,
it appeals to our bodies.
- [Voiceover] It appeals to our emotions.
- [Voiceover] Michelangelo's David looks like a god.
- [Voiceover] Well, Michelangelo is largely unwilling
to sacrifice the pure, linear qualities of his figure.
Notice the way in which the line of his body is almost
unobstructed, whereas Bernini is absolutely willing
to cross his body with his arms, with all of those diagonals
that energize but also move away from
that notion of the ideal.
There's another important aspect
that the complexity of Bernini's composition enables,
and that is a greater set of contrasts
between light and dark.
Michelangelo's David, because he is so planar,
the marble is all available to the light,
and so you don't get deep shadow.
With Bernini, because the form is crossing itself,
you get these contrasts between highlights and shadows
that further activate the sculpture.
- [Voiceover] So how do we see this in painting?
- [Voiceover] One of the great examples is to look at
the Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio.
- [Voiceover] This is an amazing painting,
and incredibly powerful, very much like Bernini's David.
We're confronted with something very close to us,
which here is Saint Peter,
who asked to be crucified upside-down, because he said
he wasn't worthy to die the way that Christ died.
So, here we see Peter nailed to the cross.
The bottom of the cross almost feels like it's so close
that we could touch it.
So the same way that Bernini's David moved into our space,
Caravaggio is using foreshortening.
- [Voiceover] But it also creates an incredible
sense of instability.
Look at the way that that cross is just being raised up,
and we're not sure that the massiveness of Peter
and of the lumber is too heavy,
whether or not he may fall with a giant thud,
that everything feels contingent and in motion.
- [Voiceover] And here we have the diagonal of the cross,
but also another diagonal formed by the back of the figure
who's helping to raise the cross, and the figure underneath
who's raising it with his back.
And so we have criss-crossing diagonals,
which is also a very common feature of Baroque art.
- [Voiceover] It's interesting to compare this to Bernini's
sculpture, because Bernini was working in the round.
Here, the artist is creating an illusion of form, of mass,
and one of the ways he's able to do that
is to create these sharp contrasts between light and shadow,
which, just like the Bernini sculpture,
is creating a sense of vividness and energy.
So we've got this dark background,
and these brilliantly highlighted figures,
creating this sense of veracity
that we could reach out and touch them.
- [Voiceover] The whole thing about Renaissance painting
was there was an illusion of space, there was architecture,
there was landscape behind the figures,
but here, Caravaggio uses darkness so that everything
is pushed to the foreground.
- [Voiceover] So it's emotional, it's intimate,
it feels real, it feels immediate.
- [Voiceover] And it gets to us in our bodies.
Look at how close Peter's feet are, and we can see the nails
that have been driven through his feet.
We can see the nails in his hand.
There's an interest in making us emotionally involved
even in the violence, here.
- [Voiceover] I'm interested in the way that the
center of gravity has been shifted, and is being
raised up so that there is this instability.
- [Voiceover] A way to drive this point home is just
to compare this to a painting by Raphael
from the High Renaissance, where we have
an emphasis on stability and balance.
The figures in this painting by Raphael
are in the shape of a pyramid,
which is the most stable of forms.
There's a clear light on the figures,
they're situated within this three-dimensional space.
We can move from foreground,
to middle-ground, to deep background.
- [Voiceover] And Raphael is enjoying the opportunity
to give us as much information as he can,
not only about the three figures in the foreground,
but about the natural world beyond them,
whereas Caravaggio is being much more careful
about what we're going to focus on.
- [Voiceover] Look at that beautiful face of the Madonna.
She's not a particular person,
she is the divine mother of God.
- [Voiceover] But Peter is an actual individual
that we're seeing.
This is a particular man,
at a particular point in his life.
- [Voiceover] And there's dirt,
and clothes that are disheveled.
This is much more the real world
than we ever see in the High Renaissance.
- [Voiceover] So all of the art
that we've looked at has been Italian.
Can we see these same characteristics
in art that's being produced north of the Alps?
- [Voiceover] We can certainly see it in the art of Rubens.
if we looked at Rubens' raising of the cross,
we would see a diagonal, we would see dramatic
contrast of light and dark.
- [Voiceover] What if we were looking at artists
who lived in a Protestant context?
- [Voiceover] A lot of the characteristics
we've been describing, these are characteristics
that we associate with Catholic Baroque art,
that sought to energize believers.
In Holland, we're looking at paintings
that are very different than the altarpieces
from Catholic Europe, and that's because
we're in a Protestant country, where artists are
no longer commissioned to paint altarpieces for the Church.
So let's take something that seems like the opposite
of the Baroque art that we've been talking about.
Let's take Vermeer's Woman With A Water Pitcher.
- [Voiceover] Instead of seeing a Biblical scene,
we're seeing a common domestic scene.
A wealthy woman in her home, in the North of Europe.
- [Voiceover] So what makes this Baroque?
- [Voiceover] Everything in this painting is quiet.
The light has a subtlety to it.
It is very different from the drama and violence
of the light that we saw in Caravaggio.
Instead, the artist seems to be in love
with the very subtle modulation of light,
the very subtle gradations of tone.
Look especially at the way that the light
filters through her headdress.
- [Voiceover] Or under her right arm,
as she opens that window.
- [Voiceover] We see a woman surrounded
by rectilinear forms.
The rectangle of the window,
of the map on the upper right,
the rectangle of the table to the lower right.
She inhabits that space between.
But she's moving and resisting the stability and geometry
that is set up by the environment around her.
- [Voiceover] She's picking up or putting down the pitcher,
opening the window, this caught moment in-between.
And even the light has a sense of being in-between,
of the light coming in from the outside,
of the light in the interior.
And that interest in light is key to Baroque art,
whether it's Caravaggio's drama
or the subtlety of light in Vermeer.
- [Voiceover] This is a painting that is about
subtle transition, and whether or not
it's the subtle transition of the light,
or the subtle transition of her attention
from the basin and pitcher to the window.
- [Voiceover] We are close to her,
we feel as though we could reach out
and feel that rug that covers the table.
So that closeness that we saw in
Caravaggio and Bernini is still here.
- [Voiceover] Let's move through all of these different
types of paintings, how do we recognize the Baroque
in 17th century Dutch landscape?
- [Voiceover] Here's Ruisdael's beautiful painting
of the Bleaching Grounds.
But notice it's not an ideal landscape.
This is the landscape of Ruisdael's hometown of Haarlem.
- [Voiceover] We call this a landscape,
but this is really about those clouds.
Look at those huge, voluminous forms
that are moving across that sky.
I can see them forming and unforming before my very eyes.
This is still about transition, and look at the way
that those clouds cast shadows that create these
alternating fields across the land below.
- [Voiceover] So, Baroque art is about time,
it's about effects of light, whether that's dramatic
or more subtle, it's about involving the viewer,
of moving into our space, of breaking down
the barrier between us and the work of art.
It's about the use of the diagonal,
of a sense of energy and drama,
sometimes subtle drama, but still drama.
- [Voiceover] And for me, it's always about
a sense of direct relationship with the subject.
(jazzy piano outro)