Spanish Baroque Art

Hey everybody, hope you enjoyed your spring break. We are now coming to the tail end of the Baroque era. I'm going to be making a separate video for every part of the Baroque period. The Italian Baroque is the largest part of the unit, it's the most important part of the unit. But we are going to, over this week, talk about Spanish Baroque, Dutch Baroque, Flemish Baroque, and then we're going to end with French. So, we left off looking at some famous architecture from Italian Baroque art and talking about some really important painters and sculptors like Bernini and Caravaggio. If you just take a minute and think about, well, what was the Baroque period all about? Well, two things. If you could think of the Baroque period, what other period in art history that we've looked at so far is most like Baroque? Think about it, just think about it. What other period in European art history that we've looked at is most like Baroque? That ideas of movement, the ideas of emotion, the ideas of grandeur. And I'm hoping, I'm hoping that one era sticks out more than any other, and that would be Hellenistic art of Ancient Greece. And that was really the inspiration for Baroque art. Now, Italian Baroque art, all about the Catholic Church and bringing people back to the Church, making them feel something because of the Protestant Reformation. They were hemorrhaging all of these followers, they wanted to bring them back. So, Spanish Baroque art is going to be a little bit different, and we're going to get into why it's different, and we'll also talk about what are some of the similarities in Spanish Baroque and Italian Baroque. So before you even continue watching this video, please make sure you go through and you take a look at the Spanish Baroque art outline that I posted, that will give you kind of a rundown overall of what was happening in Spain at the rise of the Baroque period, as well as talk about the most important artist that you need to know from the Spanish Baroque era, Diego Velazquez. And I'm saying that with a lisp on purpose, we'll talk about why in a few minutes. Now, the Baroque era is a long era. Starts out in the 1600s, goes to around 1750, is kind of when they would say the Baroque era officially ends throughout Europe. But the inspiration of Italian Baroque art is different than that of Spanish, and really the difference really is because of who's paying for the art. In Italy, it was the church that was paying because they wanted these artists, they wanted to mass produce art that could highly influence as many people as possible to stop leaving the Catholic Church and not go to become a Protestant. In Spain, the patron is the royal families, the royal courts of Spain. So that's going to shift who the subject matter is. So instead of stories of the Bible that are emotional, you're now going to have these highly realized, highly realistic images of the royal family of Spain. Again, patrons were the monarchs, the style is realistic, not as dynamic and emotional though as Italian, and they're trying to really convey the dignity of the royal family. Now, I'm going to get into the PowerPoint here, and you are going to want to write down everything in red that I have here. So, for here for Baroque Spain, they are a devoutly Catholic country, they are very religious, and art was allowed to be created and displayed in various areas of life. And we're going to see that's going to be a little bit different when we get to some of the other regions of the Baroque period. So, like Italy, painting is used to inspire, to teach the masses about the Catholic faith, but it's also going to be used to portray the royal family, so that's a difference. And they're going to be using it to portray historical events. You will see some of the influence of Caravaggio's Tenebrism, and again, I keep saying it over and over again, but the absolute monarch will use the artwork to promote their reign, and that's going to be very, very similar when we get to French Baroque, and when we get to Louis XIV. So, in the year 2005, an art magazine compiled a list of art historians' top ten most famous and most important images of all time. So, tenth is Rembrandt, Picasso, Grunewald's Ischenheim Altarpiece, that is a piece that is in the 250, Giotto's Lamentation from the Aretha Chapel, that is in the 250. Unfortunately, Giorgione's and Botticelli's, those two paintings are not, neither is Vermeer's. But Velázquez's painting, Las Meninas, that painting is in the 250, and it's also seen as probably the number one most important piece of art ever made. So, this image you probably have seen before. So, this is a very good connection to Italian Baroque, mostly because of the tenebrism, that light with the young girl in the center, and then also kind of the difference in the shading and the change in light as you go from one area of the painting to another. So, let's talk about what's actually happening here. So, I have written on there, it says, it is all in the details. We have the refined faces of every person that is in the room. You have the Princess Margarita. She is in the center. She's very young. She's only four or five years old here. We have the detail of the flowers on her dress. And Velázquez is surprised and amused, expression of all he's creating and showing that surprised and amused expression of everyone else that is in the room. It's pretty dimly seen because everyone else is a little bit in shadow. She's in the light. Central figure, who is it? That is the Princess Margarita. Who do you think Velázquez is painting, though? He is standing in front of a huge canvas. Is he painting the viewer, which is us, the audience? Is he painting someone else? Is he painting the Princess Margarita here? Or is he painting the royal couple, the King and the Queen of Spain? You can see their reflection. There's a mirror on the far side of the wall. So who is he painting? That gives an air of mystery here. That is why it has led to such discussion as history has gone on. This painting originally hung in the office of the King. And then what is the meaning of the Cross of Santiago that's painted on Velázquez's chest? What do you think that might be? It's a little bit hard to see. He's kind of wearing this painter's dress and garb. And then there's this red cross painted on it. So we'll get to that in a minute. Take a minute. Think about what that is. And I'll tell you soon. So let's talk about who's who. You do want to write down the name of the painting, the year it was made, oil on canvas. This is, again, Princess Margarita, five years old. She's the daughter of Philip and Mariana. And let's just kind of go through who is who. So we have Doña Maria Agustino Samiento. She offers Margarita a tray with a little jug of water on it. She is the woman who is kind of kneeling, staring at Margarita. You also have Doña Isabel Velasco. She is the maid of honor to the right of the princess. She is the one who's kind of almost staring directly at us, almost looking as if she's curtsying to the princess. We have Mary Barbola, who is a female dwarf and who was also an attendant to the princess. We have Nicolas de Pertusatato. He was a male dwarf, and he places his foot on the dog. And you might be asking, well, why do they have these dwarves? They have these dwarves. They were seen as almost entertainment for the royal children as they were growing up. And then we have, in the background, leaving the scene, José Velasquez Chamberlain. And he is the Chamberlain of the Queen's Quarters. And what that really means is he is in charge of the tapestries that hang around the royal palace. And again, tapestries were important. They were like these big woven decorative blankets that hung from the walls. But they provided insulation when it got cold out because these large buildings are made out of wood and stone. So it can get pretty cold in the winter, and they would hang tapestries from the walls to insulate them. And then we actually have King Philip IV and Queen Mariana. And they are seen in the mirror. They have been married for 21 years. They were married relatively young. And at this point, they have been married for 21 years. So they are in the background. Above them is an image of a Greek god. This Greek god symbolizes not just fertility but prosperity. And then we have Diego Velasquez. He's got his various paintbrushes. He's got his art palette and his painter's paint palette. And he is staring out at the viewer, kind of creating this sense of, is he painting us? Now, you want to write down these two bullet points that I have. So Velasquez wears that cross on his painter's kind of smock that he has on for one specific purpose. And that purpose is he has now been knighted at this point. He is the court painter of the king. He is the official painter of the king. And he wants to elevate the status of the artist. He wants to elevate them above the common craftsman. And by showing in this painting that he has been elevated to a knight, he is saying artists are special. They deserve to be kind of, they deserve to rise above the common craftsman because this is a very specific, very special talent. So with that, he kind of completes what Dorer also was working towards and what Leonardo was also working towards. And I added the second bullet point because that really shows you that Baroque element, that alternating dark on one area, light on another, or the light kind of on the most important part of the piece. So that's kind of the Baroque connection there, but it's highly finished. And there is this sense of one specific moment in time where all of this, not even emotion, but all this movement is happening. Somebody's walking out of the room. Somebody's painting. Somebody's handing a jug of water. Somebody's stepping on the dog. So it's like this very fluid scene captured almost like a photograph. And if you'd like to watch more, there's a video I have linked here that goes into a little bit more detail about Las Meninas. So I'm going to transition now. So that was the art of the Baroque. It was pretty straightforward. Velazquez is the most important painter of that era. And all of the art really does focus mostly around the royal family. Now, at this point as well, the Spanish have colonies in the New World with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella sending Columbus across the Atlantic in 1492. That will start the rise of the Spanish Empire. And for a period of time in the 1500s, you have Spain as one of the most powerful, if not most powerful countries in the world. They have a vast amount of wealth coming in from the colonies. They have plantations there. They're getting gold from there. There will be an issue with Philip III is going to try to take over England with the Spanish Armada. He is not successful, and he basically blows a ton of money. And that's going to set the Spanish Empire in a state of decline that will really kind of last until the 1800s. And after the 1800s, and especially after World War I, you will have really the almost complete collapse of the Spanish Empire. So let's talk about, well, what is new in the art of the Spanish colonies? Because we have this coming together of Spanish influences. We have this convergence of Native American imagery. And we also even have a little bit of Asian and African influences because you have also slaves now coming over. So we're going to kind of see the convergence of all of those things into this mixing pot of art that is taking place in the colonies. So the time period here is really all the pieces are created between 1500 and 1820. It is the colonial Latin American area of the world. That's what we're looking at. We're not looking at really anything in modern-day United States or Canada because they were not controlled by the Spanish Empire. So the first piece we have is called the Master of Calamarca, also known as Angel with Arquebus. Or, I'm sorry, the artist's name is Master of Calamarca. The name of the piece is Angel with an Arquebus. An arquebus is a rudimentary rifle. They're not very powerful. They're loud. They're bright. They could scare people, and they also had awful aim. So it's actually an angel. You can see the wings there. It doesn't seem like an angel at first, but it's an angel really dressed in contemporary clothing of a wealthy Spanish nobleman. So he's depicted with the arquebus instead of a traditional sword. They're kind of showing the evolution here of what it means to be a gentleman. The military pose is derived from European engravings of military exercises. That's where his pose comes from. And I think it was in a series of images where angels, some of them were drummers, some of them were buglers, some of them were standard bearers, and some of them held swords. The clothing is very much the drapery of a 17th century or the 1600s of a Spanish aristocrat. We've got this rich costuming, and we also have a little bit of influence here of mannerism in the kind of stiffness and dance-like pose that he is in with his legs locked like that and his arms up like that and kind of the ornate, almost overflowing clothing that looks like it's too big to wear. And we see here the relationship between these images and the winged warriors of some pre-Columbian art. And it may have originated in the region around the Lake Titicaca in Peru. So now this next image is a paneling. So it's a screen, and it would have been—think about a movable wall. This is panels all kind of brought together with a wooden frame and then a screen. And what we see here is the screen with the siege of Belgrade and hunting scenes on it. It was commissioned by a gentleman named José Saramento. He was the viceroy of New Spain, which essentially is all of the Spanish colonies in the New World at this point. It's the only known example of an artwork that combines biombos and encanados. And again, that was in your vocab. So two faces on the screen, one hunting screen, and the other has a war scene. So you've got two sides here. The hunting scene is kind of more suited to an intimate space for small receptions. The war scene is more situated or more suited for the grandeur of a room with some political importance so they could flip it out and use different sides depending on what the situation was. And the war scene depicts the contemporary event of the Great Turkish War between 1683-1699, and a Dutch print was used for the inspiration. So created in the New World, but inspired in different elements. It illustrates the scene of the Habsburgs and their battle here with the Spanish. And you can see it here a little bit up close, the war side. And you can see there the paneling, how they were connected with hinges. So now onto a piece that is overtly religious. Looking at the center of it, it is the Virgin Mary. We have angels with other various scenes of the Virgin Mary on it. But is it the Virgin Mary? So it's by Miguel Gonzalez. It's called The Virgin of Guadalupe, and we'll get to why that is. It was created in 1698. It's oil on canvas on wood with mother of pearl. So we have this multimedia, this infusion of different elements. Wood, mother of pearl, canvas, paint, oil paint. So the painting describes an event in which Mary appeared to Native Americans on a hill. And it's a shrine that is sacred to a pre-Columbian goddess. So they're kind of blending this Native American religion with this new religion that they're trying to force on the Native Americans. So Mary ordered a Native American to convert. His name was Juan Diego. That was in 1531. And to tell the local archbishop to build a sanctuary on that site. So Mary made the hilltop flower, and Juan Diego brought flowers to the archbishop. Juan Diego's cloth revealed the Virgin's image. So he had a cloth with her and had the Virgin's image on it. It was seen as a miracle. And the Virgin of Guadalupe is the most revered symbol, and one of the most revered symbols in all of Mexico. She was seen as the patroness of New Spain. And she's even seen, and we even see here still, a symbol of Mexico. The eagle perched on a cactus at the bottom center. So if you see that, it's the bottom center. We saw that with the Codex of Mendoza, which is even still on the Mexican flag today. So in the Guadalupe images of Mary, she always stands on a crescent moon, which we see there below. Clouds are behind her, which are signs of the Book of Revelation. And she is surrounded by these four roundables depicting the apparition of Juan Diego at the moment. The Virgin's image is revealed in his tunic. So that's what we're seeing in those four roundables. The image was in demand, and it was sold all around New Spain. So again, an enconchado is the influence of Asian decorative arts. And that's what we see here with the Mother of Pearl being used. One of our last pieces for Spanish Baroque art is attributed to Juan Rodriguez. I'm not really sure if it was Juan Rodriguez or not. It's the Spaniard and Indian who produced a mestizo. So a mestizo is someone that is a female Native American parent and a male European parent. So the panel from the first known series of casta paintings may not have been a completed set. So they think this was part of a large series of paintings, but it may not have ever been finished. We see the Spanish hierarchy here. That's what a casta painting is. It's showing this kind of strict social class system that is being enforced in New Spain. There were six different gradations. They had a whole list of what your social class is based off of who your parents are. So Spanish blood linked to civilizing forces. They had lavish costumes. Africans and Indians are rendered in this series with respect for one of the very first times. Many Africans and Indians are rendered with South European features. Slim noses, curly hair, almond-shaped eyes. So they're taking the color of the people, and that is realistic, but the physical features. They are making these Native American and African people look more European. Spanish colonists commissioned these works to be sent abroad to show how the caste system, this social class system they have, how it actually works. And our final painting of the day is a religious painting by Miguel Cabrera called The Portrait of Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz. It was painted in 1750. It's oil on canvas. She was seen as a child prodigy, knew how to read from a very early age. She's a Creole woman who became a nun in 1669. Feminist culture survived in Mexican converts where privileged nuns lived in comfort with servants and households. So we're seeing that here. She's a literary figure. She published books that were widely read. She wrote poetry, theatrical pieces. She maintained a great library and was instrumental in giving girls an education in this male-dominated world. It was seen as a feminist piece in some ways, and she was a feminist symbol in New Spain for a very long time. She is wearing the habit that's that head covering of the Religious Order of the Hermits of St. Jerome. She's there in her library. And the painting was done 55 years after her death by admirers of hers, showing her the influence that she had on the culture of New Spain. So in our next series, we're going to be getting into Dutch Baroque and Flemish Baroque. And then from there, we will head to France. So until next time, I will see you guys. Have a good night.