French Baroque 1600c.E.-1750c.E.

French Baroque 1600-1750

Europe in the 1600s was at the end of Counter Reformation, and as the political and cultural shifts took place, we begin to see art, particularly in France, influenced more and more, by the ruling monarchy. The transition from Mannerism into Baroque is not clear, but eventually the arts started to adopt a new look. And feel. Paintings started to become more exuberant, dynamic and ornamented. The scale of work produced during this time increased dramatically. Where Mannerism marked a departure from classical and realistic norms, Baroque becomes a return to these norms, but with an emotional undertow and visual tension. However, through the Baroque pursuit of eloquence, it abandoned the precious and contorted effects of mannerism. It was during this time that artists developed a love of harmony and symmetry and pursued new values expresses as metaphor, allegory. Artists main source of income were mostly from private commissions from upper class patrons instead of coming from the church. This led to the treatment of subject matter that was more universal, and less idealistic in theme.

The French approach to art in the early1seventeenth century differed from the rest of Europe. The majorities of Baroque artists from France were seen to be at odds with "the spirit of the age", and were sometimes regarded as anti-Baroque. Artists like de la Tour did not take a conceptual view of art, and lacked the imaginative exuberance that is so common in other artwork from the 17th century. At this time the majority of the European population was composed of the working class. The French artist differed in the treatment of commoners, especially in comparison to the Dutch, who saw them as a source of good-natured humor. The French however portrayed them having grave and stoic dignity, resigned to a life of hardship. The peasant was given a level of respect never before seen in painting. Baroque artists outside of France

Georges de La Tour is one of the earliest of the French Baroque painters. He started out painting religious and genre scenes in a mannerist style, later showing strong influence from Caravaggio. He had a very abrasive personality that can be described as, haughty, sharp-tongued, self-assured, stingy, and violent. But he somehow produced a body of work that transcended his true nature. He gives us frozen moments that spur the viewer to introspection.

Contrary to Caravaggio, La Tour has the light source contained inside the boundaries of the painting. The light is always obscured by another element in the painting, which gives it a more dramatic, more human feel, with greater depth. The emotional effect of this is very intimate and human. The duplicitous nature of shadow and light in a La Tour painting could be seen as a metaphor for the good and bad contained within human nature. It is also vague enough to be open to multiple interpretations. In any interpretation this duality is almost given more importance than the subject matter.

The personality of Nicolas Poussin was contrary to La Tour, though both were very rational and humanistic. Poussin sought to enter into the person of his subject, to become immersed in psychological analysis. He combines his love of virtue and his love of landscape by placing tragic figures in richly interesting and complexly constructed, "heroic" landscapes. He produced some of the most demanding, yet satisfying landscape paintings in western culture. He believed passionately that the disposition of the painting as a whole could be constructed to covey a mood or emotion. He also had a unique combination of pagan and Christian themes, often giving a poetic treatment to subjects from classic mythology and ancient history. Poussin was a classicist for whom the aesthetic values of antiquity represented not only a formal ideal, but also a moral standard, a way conceiving a form that cannot be separated from the good and true.

The Death of Germanicus marks the beginning of Poussin's alternative approach to the dominant trend of seventeenth-century Baroque style. In relation to other painters of