Lecture II - The Baroque Period - 1st Half of 17thC

Baroque Period – 1st Half of 17^th Century

(although the term has been attributed since. The Pre-Raphaelites were the only ones to actually name themselves).

There is much drama in this style of painting, using light and dark.

Hobbema’s The Avenue is a good example of this.

It’s also a good example of Dutch paintings gave small, intimate details of everyday life.

Rubens worked on 100s of commissions at a time.

He had a factory going an would sign things off having done very little work on them!

(Personally I don’t like his paintings. Far too fleshy for me!)

Vermeer’s work was beautiful with a sense of calm and ordinariness. They have a quality of photography to them, if slightly out of focus.

This is because he actually used a camera obscura to paint.

Whilst painting The View of Delft he actually turned his whole room into a camera obscura.

At just 19, Rembrandt painted a particularly audacious self portrait as a way of marketing his work. 

These paintings are masterful, proud and just a bit cocky.

In his 63 years he painted no less than 88 self portraits (making him second only to Van Gogh).

Towards the end his style had become almost impressionistic. 

The Nightwatchman is Rembrandt’s most famous painting and they won’t let it out of Holland.

All of the people in the painting would have paid to be in there.

It was the first time he broke with tradition and painted people’s half faces. (If you’ve paid your money you want to be seen!)

He also put his dying wife in the painting, her waist hung with chickens. No-one knows why. The painting says a lot about the Dutch culture as well as Rembrandt’s stunning ability as a draughtsman.

There is a stillness, a drama, political content contained within. It’s also really big and Rembrandt used mechanical devices to help him paint it.