Chapter 5 Baroque and Rococo
Key Words and Phrases:
1. Realistic and Illusionism，逼真与错觉。
2. complex and dynamic，繁复而有动感。
3. Metamorphosis, 变形。
4. Still life paintings
5. elaborate and grand，精细而庄重。
6. delicate and light，精致而轻巧。
7. Absolutism and the Enlightenment, 专制与启蒙。
8. Baroque Classicism, 巴洛克风格的古典主义。
Baroque
One of the first steps away from the Renaissance was taken by the mannerists.
The mannerists rejected Renaissance principles of balance and perspective. They
preferred to portray people and scenes as they saw them subjectively.
Mannerists were influenced by the intensely emotional piety of the Counter
Reformation. One of the greatest mannerists was the Cretan painter Domenikos
Theotokopoulos, known in Spain as El Greco or "The Greek." He painted the saints in
distorted figures that showed strong religious feelings, figure 1.
1. El Greco, Burial of Count Orgaz. 1586. Oil on canvas, 4.88×3.61m.Church of Santo
Tome, Toledo, Spain.
Other artists thought that mannerism was too subjective. They developed a new
style called baroque, meaning bizarre. The age of Baroque, between absolutism and
the Enlightenment, is acknowledge as merely and eccentric offshoot of the
Renaissance. Baroque presents a complex and dynamic variety of form and
expression in contrast with the moderation of Classicism. Worldly joys and sensuality,
religious spirituality and asceticism, wide formal diversity all went hand in hand. At
the same time, theatricality and stagelike settings entered the world of art with the
advent of illusionism. Pageantry, courtly ceremony were not simply an expression of
Baroque, but also an artistic device in the portrayal of crowed scenes.
Baroque is the representation of spontaneity and visual immediacy, always with
an underlying, calculated awareness of compositional and symbolic purpose. It is the
fulfilment of a new discourse between what is stressed and what is natural, between
animated gesture and idealization, coordinated control of the architectural orders and
an energizing of space and surface. In comparison with Mannerism - and in conflict
with sundry sixteenth century counter reformation precepts - it marks the return, in a
sacred setting, to allegory and metaphor. It reaffirms the delight of surprise: at nature
as a marvellous spectacle, at the miraculous as a prodigy of nature, at the way in
which substance will accentuate its own colour, richness and limpidity. Light, the least
substantial element, becomes, on the other hand, a malleable material in the Baroque
composition, or in the image produced. It may be soft, shielded, or reflected from
contrived light sources; it is concentrated, deliberately channelled; it forms a dazzling
field for objects seen against it.
Baroque had many aspects. It was intended to be more realistic than mannerism.
At the same time it was grand, elaborate, formal, and emotional. Much baroque art
was religious. It was encouraged by the Catholic Church as a way to inspire religious
feelings. On the other hand, much of it was very worldly. The great monarchs of
Europe encouraged it as a way to advertise their glory and power and to inspire
feelings of patriotism.
In Rome, Caravaggio succeeded in achieving a decisive breakthrough with his
dramatic use of chiaroscuro, while in Bologna it was the Carracci who established the
Baroque landscapes of Poussin, the night pieces of La Tour and Claude Lorrain’s
lyrical handing of light. In Spain, we find the warm colority of Murillo, the
contemplative piety of Ribera and Zurbar n and the forcefully expressive court
portraits by Vel zquez.
Difficult as the stylistic issues are to understand, all this explains the vitality and
variety in Roman art of the period, and the strides made in form and technique.
Between 1597 and 1608 the Bolognese painter Annibale Carracci completed his
decoration of the gallery in Palazzo Farnese with mythological frescoes on the
triumph of the power of love, figure 2. In their newness, freshness and vigour they
were almost aggressively alive. Nothing like them had been seen before, nor had the
levels of illusion been so subtly differentiated as in these pictures in the barrel vault,
in their painted architectural setting.
2. Annibale Carracci，Wedding procession of Bacchus and Ariadne. Gallery in Palazzo
Farnese, Rome.
Caravaggio died in this first decade of the seventeenth century, after a life
devoted to passionate research, deep, stubborn and original, into the formal problems
of painting realistically dramatic subjects: on how to concentrate action, or convey a
more direct perception by means of dark backgrounds and by throwing a brilliant
lateral light on to the image. Ordinary, nonpalatial settings added to the realism, as did
his use of ordinary people as models.
In Caravaggio’s Calling of Mattew, figure 3, two groups of figures emerge from
a dark background. They are arranged at the opposite sides of the plane. The group in
the right is composed of two figures, pointing to the left. The group, constituted by
five people, on the left is turning to the right, showing different expressions. This
opposition creates a centripetal force that even if the two groups occupy different
portion in the plane they still give a sense of balance. The strong contrasts in this
painting take great effect. The light shoots from the upper right, illuminating the
figures as if the spotlight casts a strong ray on the actors on the dark stage that their
expressions and poses are noticeably highlighted. The window on the wall gives the
scene a sense of uncertainty. The viewer can hardly tell where the whole scene
happens, in door or out of doors. The astonishing expression of Matthew who points
at himself and the determined expression of Jesus who points at Matthew.
3. Caravaggio, Calling of Mattew. 1599-1602. Oil on canvas, 3.4 ３
．
５
m. The Contarelli
Chapel, Church of San Luigi dei Francesci, Rome.
Gianlorenzo Bernini, with his enormous technical ability, expressive skill in many
arts and outstanding gift for organization, had already produced his first sculpture.
Illustrating Ovid's tale of Daphne's escape from Apollo by metamorphosis into a laurel
bush. Formal and temporal dynamism are here combined as, for the spectator, several
actions come together in a single moment and may be assumed to lead to many more.
In the Apollo and Daphne, figure 4, we find an achievement of simultaneous expression
by the dissimilar means of sculpture and architectonic space.
4. Gianlorenzo Bernini, Apollo and Daphne. 1622-25. Marble, height 2.4m. Galleria
Borghese, Rome.
Peter Paul Rubens of Flanders was a master of the baroque style. He painted with
his irrepressible vitality and amazing skill in rendering complex movement in oblique
or spiral strokes. Rubens has a luminosity of colour, particularly in the wonderful
flesh-tints, and a splendidly personal and positive attitude to nature. We may recall the
tangled vortex of his Battle of the Amazons and his Rape of the Daughters of
Leucippus, figure 5. He also painted highly emotional religious scenes. Rubens was
enormously productive, leaving almost 1,000 known works, and enjoyed an
unbelievably high reputation both during his lifetime and after his death.
5. Rubens, Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, c. 1616-17. Canvas, 2.22×2.09m. Alte
Pinakothek, Munich.
The towering personality of Rubens left its unmitigatedly Baroque imprint upon
Flanders, or the Southern Netherlands, most northerly of the Spanish possessions,
centered on Antwerp. Through pupils and followers his influence continued, his art
becoming an essential reference-point for European painting, and for Flemish painting
in particular.
The Dutch in the Northern Netherlands had won their freedom from Spain in the
first half of the seventeenth century. Holland was a predominantly commercial
country, where art patronage had no direct links with the princely court but lay chiefly
in the hands of the middle classes and even of foreign collectors. In Holland itself, in
Haarlem, Frans Hals emerges as the acknowledged master portraitist. His single or
group subjects, frequently painted in summary style, without preparatory drawings,
are nonetheless penetrating and incisive, figure 6.
6. Frans Hals, The Merry Drinker, 1628-30. Canvas, 81×66.5cm. Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam.
In the mid-1600's, the Dutch Netherlands probably had more painters than any
other country. About this time, in 1633, the 27-year-old Rembrandt van Rijn settled in
Amsterdam. No painter has ever captured the human spirit so completely. His
psychological interpretation of character is evident in this deeply moving self-portrait,
figure 7. It is one of 60 self-portraits that Rembrandt did during his lifetime. Here the
artist, an aging and financially troubled man, lets us see inside his soul.
7. Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-portrait, c. 1669. Oil on canvas. 63.5 × 57.8 cm. Royal
Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, Hague.
Already in his lifetime critics were commenting on his highly individual
technique. In his mature period especially he bestows unceasing care on the actual
build-up of colour on canvas. From flat, multiple layers of paint, and broad and rapid
brushstrokes is created, as it were, the basis and material of pictorial expression. Skin
is luminous, metal gleams out of deepest shadow, with the perpetual inner vibration
achieved by Rembrandt alone, as though his colours were pulsating.
In The Night Watch, figure 8, these opulent technical effects are enhanced by
intricacy of composition. Essentially he is showing a company of the Amsterdam
Civic Guard as its commander gives the word to march and the men engage in a
hectic scramble to get into line left and right. The architectural background is probably
taken from an engraving after Raphael and light, cast fully on figures at different
picture depths, is distributed so as to increase the dynamism of the scene. Such
pictures, condemned at the time for lack of conformity with the old, accepted rules,
were, for all that, imbued with a private conception of the Baroque, to be directly
inferred from paintings the artist bought and sold, and indirectly from his
consummately skilful etchings.
8. The Night Watch (The Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq), 1642. Canvas,
3.7×4.45m. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
In contrast to the baroque styles, painters in the Netherlands developed a realistic
style. The Protestant Dutch were not as interested in religious themes as painters in
Catholic countries. Vermeer portrayed scenes of everyday life, figure 9. Still life
paintings were popular. Nearly everyone, it seems, admires the exquisite simplicity
and subtle optical of his pictures. Usually focused on a single figure - most often a
women - or a few figures enframed in the corner of a room deftly suffused in light, his
paintings epitomize that fantasy of domestic order and tranquility that only the world
of canvas and pigment can fully indulge. It has often been noted that Vermeer’s
pristine domestic spaces have a still-life quality. Their inhabitants rarely speak, make
few gestures, and tend to be quietly absorbed in such activities as reading, writing,
sleeping, making music, making lace, performing household tasks, or simply looking.
Even music-making appears to be a curiously soundless pleasure in this silent
pictorial world. Vermeer’s reputation as one of the greatest artists of his day rests on
an extant oeuvre of just thirty pictures.
9. Jan Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance. 1665. Oil on canvas, 42×35,5 cm. National
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Diego de Velázquez was among the many artists who visited Rome in the
mid-seventeenth century - he was there in 1630 and again in 1650-1, figure 10 drawn, like most of the others, by the ruins of antiquity rather than by contemporary
Roman art and architecture. He began in a style of solid, almost sculpturesque realism
influenced, if only indirectly, by Caravaggio, whose work was then beginning to reach
Spain. Spaniards responded instinctively to such straightforward realism. Miguel de
Cervantes in the prologue to Don Quixote significantly used a pictorial metaphor for
the 'plain and simple' style of writing he strove for, and Velázquez's almost exact
contemporary, Francisco de Zurbaran, began in the same way. Zurbaran's pictures of
praying monks, figure 11 - painted mainly for monasteries in South America as well
as Spain - combine to a unique degree down-to-earth actuality with the intensity of
Counter-Reformation mysticism. The subsequent development of the art of Velázquez
was, however, quite different.
10. Velázquez, Pope Innocent X, 1650. Oil on canvas, 140×120cm. Galleria Doria
Pamphilj, Rome.
11. Francisco de Zurbarán, Hl. Lorenzo, 60 × 79 cm. 1638. Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes,
Cádiz.
In 1623 Velázquez entered the service of the young king Philip IV (1621-65),
who took a strong personal liking to him and almost monopolized his production for
the rest of his life. The royal collection opened Velázquez's eyes to the splendour of
Venetian art, especially Titian, whose great series of poesie adorned the palace in
Madrid. They confirmed Velázquez in his natural love for the painterly - and his
indifference to Raphael and the more linear tradition. Eventually he was to go beyond
even Titian's subtle handling with broken and fluid brush-strokes, sometimes with
such thinly applied paint that the texture of the canvas shows through.
'The Family of Philip IV’, better known as Las Meninas (the Maids of Honour),
figure 12, is Velázquez's supreme achievement, a highly self-conscious, calculated
demonstration of what painting could achieve and perhaps the most searching
comment ever made on the possibilities of the easel painting. Already before the end
of the seventeenth century an Italian artist called it ‘the theology of painting’ and it is
indeed essentially a painting about painting. The central figure is the five-year-old
Infanta Margarita, daughter of Philip IV and his second wife, who are reflected in the
looking-glass on the far wall. She is attended by two maids of honour, from whom the
picture takes its modern title. Two court dwarfs stand behind the large sleepy dog, a
lady-in-waiting and a male official are engaged in conversation and a member of the
queen's staff can be seen through the doorway at the end of the room. Velázquez
himself, palette and brushes in hand, stands by a gigantic canvas. All the figures are
members of the royal household including the painter, who had risen to the high rank
of chamberlain. There were no precedents for such a picture, recording an apparently
casual incident of no significance in the life of the court and painted on a scale
hitherto reserved for full-length formal portraits and historical subjects. But behind
what appears to be no more than a moment captured in the mirror of art there are
several layers of meaning.
12. Velázquez, Las Meninas. 1656. Oil on canvas, 3.18×2.76m. Museo del Prado,
Madrid.
Las Meninus is, first of all, a demonstration of the painter's unique power to
represent life as it takes place before our eyes and thus to arrest time, to stop the clock
for ever at a certain moment. The completely dispassionate way in which the
grotesque ugliness of the female dwarf is recorded makes us believe in the exquisite
beauty of the infanta and her attendants. The naturalism of these figures is further set
off by the contrast with the dim reflections in the looking-glass and the dimmer
pictures on the wall above it. And the presence in the painting of the painter himself
recalls the ingenious play with levels of reality.
Yet there is no trace at all of the contrived, of trompe I'oeil painting, in this
greatest of all visual illusions. The long-handled brushes he used enabled him to stand
back from the canvas and judge the total effect - an enclosed space naturally
illuminated from the windows on the right wall, the door and, most important of all,
the area in front of the picture plane, that is to say that part of the room in which the
king and queen notionally stand. These three sources of light eliminate harsh and
stagey shadows. Moreover, the rectangular pictorial space provides a framework
within which the figures seem to have come together accidentally, without being
'composed' at all. They are unified by then relationship not to one another but to the
spectator standing in the position apparently occupied by the king and queen, whose
reflections appear in the looking-glass. In this way the spectator becomes part of the
whole, being drawn into the picture just as the worshipper is involved in such a very
different work of art of the same years as Bernini's chapel in Rome.
A secondary theme of Las Meninas is that of painting as a liberal art and, by
extension, that of the status of the artist. The latter was very much on Velázquez's
mind when painting the picture, for he was just then seeking admission to one of the
orders of military knighthood which would have raised him to noble rank. Their
ancient statutes, however, excluded all 'manual' workers as well as those of Moorish
and Jewish ancestry and thus the question as to whether painting was a liberal or
merely a mechanical art was crucial. The question had been hotly disputed in Spain
for some time. Liberal status carried substantial practical advantages, such as
exemption from taxes and military service. Moreover, Velázquez portrayed himself as
a court official wearing his badge of office, the keys, in his belt, figure 13.
13. Velázquez, Las Meninas (detail). 1656. Oil on canvas, 3.18×2.76m. Museo del
Prado, Madrid.
Louis XIV: The Sun King
He was the very figure of a hero with proportions such as a sculptor would
choose to model; a perfect face and the grandest air, figure 14. He was as dignified
and majestic in his dressing gown as when dressed in robes of state, or on horseback
at the head of his troops. He excelled in all sorts of exercise - he ability to speak well
and listen with quick understanding.
14. Hyacinthe Rigaud, Portrait of King Louis XIV of France. 1701. Oil on canvas,
2.7×1.8m.The Louvre, Paris.
Louis XIV's vanity was without restraint. It colored everything and convinced
him that no one even approached him in military talents and in government. Hence
those pictures in the gallery at Versailles which disgust every foreigner; those opera
prologues that he himself tried to sing; the sickening compliments that were
continually offered to him in person and which he swallowed with unfailing relish.
Hence his distaste for all merit, intelligence, education, and, most of all, for all
independence of character and sentiment in others and, above everything else, a
jealousy of his own authority.
Nicolas Poussin was born in Normandy. Turning away at first from religious to
mythological subjects, he then evolved his unique multi-figured compositions
reminiscent of Raphael and of antique sculpture and architecture. Narrative clarity,
rigorous compositions, and use of pure color characterized these works. By 1640,
Poussin was summoned to return to Paris to work for Louis XIV. The eighteen months
he spent in France were fraught with tension and disappointment. In 1642 he
returned to Rome, never to leave again.
The Arcadian Shepherds (figure 15) has long been regarded as embodying the
quintessence of Poussin’s art. The idealized painting transports us to remote antiquity,
where we stand with shepherds and a shepherdess by a monumental tomb. Arcadia is
an idyllic region in Greece where, during the ancient golden age, it was believed that
humanity had lived peacefully and harmoniously with nature. To the shepherds who
lived there, life seemed perfect until they discovered a tomb and realized that death is
a reality that they will someday have to confront. Despite the dramatic implications of
the subject, the mood of the painting is calm and contemplative. In Poussin's approach,
even death becomes philosophical.
15. Nicolas Poussin, The Arcadian Shepherds (Et in Arcadia ego). 1638-9. Oil on canvas,
85 121cm. Louvre, Paris.
Poussin's style is consistent with his intellectual interpretation of the subject. The
composition is lucid and the poses of the figures are clearly articulated and
interrelated. To assure satisfying compositions, Poussin worked them out by arranging
miniature wax figures on a stage in a small box until he was pleased with their
disposition. The colors are cool and simple, the light regular and undramatic, and the
brushstroke controlled. The influence of the High Renaissance style of Raphael is
evident, and the costumes and facial types reveal Poussin's careful study of ancient art.
Poussin's paintings are among the finest examples of Baroque Classicism. The
landscape is based on the area around Rome, which Poussin and Claude Lorrain
(figure 16) knew well.
16. Claude Lorrain, Landscape with sacrifice to Apollo, 1662-3. Oil on canvas,
174×220cm. Cambridgeshire.
Nicolas Poussin was probably the most classical, intellectual, and philosophical
painter of the seventeenth century. Although born in France, he spent most of his
mature life in Rome. A close circle of similarly minded French friends there and in
Paris were the patrons for his well-studied, thoughtful compositions. He preferred
heroic or stoic themes from antiquity, as Georges de La Tour did, figure 17.
17. Georges de La Tour. The Repentant Magdalen. c.1640. Oil on canvas. National
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
In architecture the best example of baroque is Louis XIV's palace at Versailles,
figure 18. Another good example is the public square of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome,
figure 19, which is enclosed by two great semicircles of columns. Baroque architects
used elaborate decorations with many angels, curves and swirls, colored marbles and
gilt, twisted columns, and formal gardens.
18. Gianlorenzo Bernini, St.Peter’s Basilica collumes, square designed c. 1656-57.
19. Louis Le Vau and Jules Hardouin-Mansart. Palais de Versailles, France. Garden by
André Le Notre. 1668-85.
The palace of Versailles, was built round about 1660-80. Versailles is so huge
that no photograph can give an adequate idea of its appearance. There are no fewer
than 123 windows looking towards the park in each storey. The park itself, with its
avenues of clipped trees, its statuary, its terraces and lakes, extends over miles of
countryside.
It is in its immensity rather than in its decorative detail that Versailles is Baroque,
figure 20. Its architects were mainly intent on grouping the enormous masses of the
building into clearly distinct wings, and giving each wing the appearance of nobility
and grandeur. They accentuated the middle of the main storey by a row of Ionic
columns carrying an entablature with rows of statues on top, and flanked this effective
centre-piece with decorations of a similar kind. With a simple combination of pure
Renaissance forms, they would hardly have succeeded in breaking the monotony of so
vast a facade, but with the help of statues, urns and trophies they produced a certain
amount of variety. It is in buildings like these, therefore, that one can best appreciate
the true function and purpose of Baroque forms. Had the designers of Versailles been
a little more daring than they were, and used more unorthodox means of articulating
and grouping the enormous building, they might have been even more successful.
20. Jules Hardouin-Mansart and Charles Le Brun, Hall of Mirrors, Palais de Versailles.
Begun 1678.
Rococo
Toward the end of the 1600s, a new style called rococo began to grow out of
baroque. Most popular in France, it reflected the tastes of French aristocrats. Rococo
was elaborate like baroque, but less grand. Instead, it was lighter, more delicate almost dainty.
The pictorial transmutation of symbolic values; the dissolution of architectural
structure in an eye-deceiving maze of stuccowork and looking-glass, of flowers and
garlands, mother-of-pearl, shells and rocks and foam and glinting, silvery light; the
belief in superabundance as decoratively essential; these are poles apart from the solid
formality and symbolic content of the Baroque. Yet the term "rococo," a heavy
sarcasm later coined by Classicist critics to describe what they saw as fatuous
aberrations or incomprehensible rule-breaking, in fact combined barocco with the
word rocaille, originally used for the rock-and-shell ornamentation of Renaissance
gardens. And, leaving the artistic argument aside, "rococo" does seem to catch and
express the extraordinary grafting of the two styles, which are incompatible only as
abstract concepts and whose eighteenth-century union is achieved in those areas
where Baroque culture was most vigorous.
Rococo painters such as Jean Antoine Watteau portrayed playful rather than
serious subjects. A further department of the visual arts also contributed to the change
from fading mythological themes, legacy of humanism and its antiquarian studies, to
less heroic subjects. The pictures of Watteau are lyrical transformations of the
atmosphere and episodes of the comic theater. With him the creaking amatory situation
becomes a delicate idyll, the type-character reveals psychological depth; the
masquerade is a thoughtful. In Embarkation from Cythera, figure 21，a group of lovers,
both smiling and melancholy, leaves the fabled isle of Venus: a picture hovering
between allegory, sentimental charm and a yearning for emotions more dreamed of
than experienced.
21. J.A. Watteau, Embarkation from Cythera. 1717. Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Francois Boucher and after him Jean-Honore Fragonard were, each in his way,
connected with the court and its official system of art-training and production.
Besides designing for the royal tapestry factories, Fragonard was Director of the
Royal Art Academy and a friend of Madame de Pompadour, he had hesitated between
religious, classic and other subjects; but now the demand of the wealthy art patrons of
Louis XV's pleasure-loving and licentious court turned him definitely towards those
scenes of love and voluptuousness with which his name will ever be associated, and
which are only made acceptable by the tender beauty of his color and the virtuosity of
his facile brushwork; such works include the Bolt, The Swing (figure 22), and so on.
Boucher worked on many public and private decorative projects. In The Triumph of
Venus (or perhaps Galatea, figure 23), pictorial description attains supreme freedom
in the scintillating play of transparent air and water and a glowing softness of
flesh-tones.
22. Jean-Honore Fragonard, The Swing. 1767. Oil on canvas, 81 ６
４
．
２
cm. Wallace
Collection, London.
23. Triumph of Venus. 1740. National Museum, Stockholm. Probably painted for a
Salon, the periodic exhibition of artists' work.
Quite differently conceived are the pictures of Chardin, who concentrates mainly
on the expressive construction of genre scenes, and chiefly of still lifes, figure 24. He
will strictly scrutinize some completely ordinary object in order to show it in the light
of its aesthetic and moral significance. His rigorous compositions rest on the simple
forms of geometry - cone or cylinder - and objects are so depicted that we can almost
feel what they are made of. His colour is calm and restrained and, by comparison with
the paintings of Watteau, his works may seem to lack brilliance. But if we study them
in the original, we soon discover in them an unobtrusive mastery in the subtle
gradation of tones and the seemingly artless arrangement of the scene that makes him
one of the most lovable painters of the eighteenth century.
24. Chardin, Barrel with a Tap. Oil on canvas, 28×23cm. 1733. Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Romantic love - its dreams and disappointments, pleasures and pains, realities
and fantasies - becomes a central theme in Rococo art. The variety of interpretation,
demonstrated in these three examples, and the probing character of the representations
reveal important changes as the themes of art are broadened, revealing an expanded
interest in the psychological and emotional stales that affect people in their everyday
lives.
A series of paintings done by William Hogarth, Marriage à la Mode, figure 25,
presents a satirical view of modern life and exposes the difficulties of a loveless "city"
marriage of convenience. The serious nature of Hogarth's social criticism of both the
nouveau riche and the nobility is evident throughout the series, which begins with the
signing of the marriage contract between the daughter of a rich social-climbing
merchant and an impoverished nobleman. In a sequence of six scenes, their
debauchery progresses, the murder of the husband by the wife's lover and her death by
suicide, leaving their only child an orphan. Our scene shows the husband returning at
1:20 P.M. with a hangover after a night on the town. The dog sniffs at a woman's cap
hanging from his pocket. His pose is meant to suggest sexual exhaustion. The wife's
pose and the overturned chair and scattered music suggest that her lover is the music
teacher, who seems to have departed quickly. Extravagance is evident in the
mantelpiece, with its ostentatious display of bric-a-brac, and the stack of bills held by
the clerk. The painting over the mantel features a figure of Cupid, Venus's son and
assistant, blowing a bagpipe - an inharmonious symbol - amid ruins. The disease that
will ultimately infect the couple's child is already evident in the black spot on the
husband's neck. In style, the looseness Hogarth's brushstrokes in the original paintings
is indebted to the example of contemporary French painting.
25. William Hogarth, Marriage à la Mode II. 1743. Oil on canvas, 69.9×90.5cm.
National Gallery, London.
Rococo architecture, on a smaller scale than baroque but extravagantly decorated,
was used for palaces, churches, and houses belonging to the nobility, figure 26.
26. Neumann. Kaisersaal (Imperial Hall), Residenz, Würzburg,
Germany.1719-44. Fresco by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo,1751-52.
FOR DISCUSSION
1. How to distinguish the characteristics between Baroque art and Rococo art?
2. What do think about Nicolas Poussin’s style?
Bavaria,