Landscape with the Flight into Egypt (Carracci)

Transcription

(music) ("In The Sky With Diamonds" by Scalding Lucy) Sal: Here we are looking at Pontormo's entombment, a typical Mannerist painting from about 1520. [unintelligible] is a starting off point to talk about what follows Mannerism. Beth: Right, a kind of rejection of Mannerism ... Sal: Very rhetorically a rejection of Mannerism is going to come around beginning in the last quarter of the 16th century, in the late 1570s, especially 1580s and onwards. Beth: I can see why people would reject it. It's incredibly complicated. Sal: Exactly. Beth: It's difficult to read. Sal: Sure. Beth: Hard to tell what's going on. There are a lot of reasons that this doesn't seem like the traditional definition of art, especially when you think about the Renaissance and its interesting naturalism. Sal: All of the qualities; its difficulty in reading, its enigmatic qualities, the very stylized elegant nature, these were all things that made Mannerist art good in the Mannerist period. But after over 50 years of Mannerism's dominance in Italy, beginning in the 1520s and reaching towards the end of the century, a backlash does begin to build exactly towards the issues that you were talking about. There's a growing desire for many reasons, a few of which we'll talk about, for a return to the basic principles of the high Renaissance which they look back upon from 70 years later, as a period when art was good for several different reasons. Beth: One of the reasons that they're going to reject Mannerism has to do with its illegibility at a time when the church is being attacked and really needs art to communicate in a very easy and direct way, right, because of the reformation. Sal: Sure. The Protestant Reformation was criticizing art coming out of the Catholic areas for being too distracting, for not communicating the story well and so as we know, the Protestants intended to put their emphasis on the written word in the Bible rather than on art because they would point to something like this and say, "This is not a good religious teaching tool." Beth: Right, and the whole way the church defended art was by saying it was there to teach. Sal: Right. Beth: "How could you point to this and say this is teaching anybody anything?" Sal: Exactly. As the Reformation is building, even at the beginning of the 1540s, but especially toward the end of the century, they feel that new style is needed. Beth: That makes sense. Sal: Our story about this reaction actually starts in Bologna. It starts there for a couple of reasons. One reason is that Cardinal Paleotti, who was one of the leaders of the counter-reformation, was a Bishop from Bologna. At the various meetings, the Council of Trents, which was this religious convention to formulate the Catholic response to the Protestant Reclamation, Cardinal Paleotti was in charge essentially of figuring out what to do about art; how to make good influenced art that would be immune to the criticism of the Protestants. The Council of Trents also meets in Bologna several times. Beth: How'd they do that? I thought they only met in Trent. Sal: No. As frequently happened during this era, sometimes when the plague or other diseases would break out, they would move the conferences to other places. Because you have this Bishop from Bologna, because also the Council is taking place sometimes in Bologna, it's almost first in Bologna that you see artists responding to this need for an art that is basically more straightforward, clear, legible, a good religious teaching tool, it gets rid of all the ambiguities and the overwrought elegance that they see being the problem by now with some of those characteristics works of Mannerism that had come before. Beth: I noticed that here in this image of the crucifixion. This is by ... Sal: this is by Annibale Carracci. This is a crucifixion from pretty early in his career, around the 1580s and this was made in Bologna, in fact, you can see a little miniature Bologna down at the bottom as well as in the distance. Here we see an artist who as a young man is trying to formulate a new style of painting in part, although not exclusively, because of this new religious atmosphere of the counter-reformation that's pushing artists to make art that is legible, straightforward, easy to understand, and properly communicates the stories from the Bible or other religious texts. Beth: What I notice most about it is this kind of emotional quality to it where it's very clear from everyone's gestures and facial expressions what they're feeling; the crafting of the chest or the throwing out of the arms. Sal: And the facial expressions. Beth: That kind of overwrought acting going on. Sal: Yes, that's definitely true. The style that Annibale Carracci, and his brother and cousin are also artists working with him, and others that soon will follow them, this is going to give birth to the Baroque style. What you've just described are very much characteristics of the Baroque style. Bold gestures, bold facial expressions, to make the meaning in the narrative that's clear as possible, in absolute contrast to all of the ambiguities and the emotionless, fanciful renderings that we saw in these kinds of scenes in Mannerism. Beth: Also a kind of emotion to make things Sal: Right. which is something we didn't see so much in the high Renaissance, when there was a kind of distance in that ideal beauty. Here there's a kind of down-to-earth, this is what the story is telling us, this is how the figures are feeling. Sal: It's definitely more dramatic and energized than a high Renaissance composition might have been. What I always say is in some ways, the Baroque style is a return to the principles of the high Renaissance, but with the volume turned way, way up. Beth: To 11 (laughs). Sal: (laughs) Exactly. Beth: (laughs) Past 10. Sal: (laughs) Right. The gestures and the facial expressions are one way that this becomes very dramatic. Baroque paintings like already we can see in this one, tend to have dramatic lighting very frequently. Something else that also increases the intensity and the legibility and the clarity of the image, is that all the figures are quite large and pressed right up against the front of the picture plane. Beth: Everything's very close to us. Sal: Very close to the viewer, to really almost enter the viewer's space and to really heighten that sense that you are there, too, and you can experience this and it will heighten your religious devotion. Also typical of Baroque art and its rejection of Mannerism is the intense or great simplification of the composition. There are no complicated patterns. There are no contorted positions. There's no enigmatic representation of space or foreshortening. Everything is boiled down to its essentials. There's nothing extraneous in these early Baroque paintings. Beth: It's the narrative that's ... Sal: Exactly. Beth: ... Really the most important. Sal: Exactly. The narrative is the core. There's nothing extra, there's nothing confusing. The other thing also, is that compared to Mannerist paintings, the Carracci and their later Baroque followers are very intent in creating very naturalistic images. Gone is the very attenuated elegance stylization of Mannerism. There's a return to basics also in the rendering of the figure and its anatomical accuracy, the representation of fabric, depth, space, gravity and three dimensionality. Everything that was illogical in a Mannerist work of art, and praised for it at that time, now becomes logical, clear and straightforward. Beth: And there's a kind of implicit criticism Sal: Sure. Beth: In Mannerism, kind of saying Mannerism wasn't good art. Sal: The Carracci literally did say that. There were not only artists, but they were art critics in a way and they were responding to the praise of Mannerism from the earlier decades and saying, "No, this is not good art because it doesn't replicate nature, because it's not based on study from life," so they go around looking at artists who they thought of as good, including the typical ones we think of from the higher Renaissance like Raphael, Michaelangelo and so on, but also traveling to areas that didn't tend to be emphasized in the literature as much, traveling around their native region of Amelia, but also looking at people like Tischen, Bearnaise in Venice and you can see all of these influences in their paintings. In an early one like this, we're also in a later, more mature work like this Lamentation which is from around 1605, still this is Annibale Carracci and we can see the basic hallmarks of this new Baroque style that's emerged. Intense, very dramatic rendering of the narrative, but at the same time, very simple, very straightforward, there's no mistaking the emotions, there's no mistaking the narrative and what's going on here ... Christ looks dead. But again, also very strikingly naturalistic, very descriptive. Beth: It's so easy to read. My eye goes first to this figure of Christ at the bottom, he's been removed from the cross. Then it goes up to Mary Magdalene, who's got that dramatic emotion, throwing her arms up and kneeling and looking down at him and up to the other Mary. Sal: The other Mary, yup. Beth: Reaching out, those arms that reach out towards the third woman, so then our eye moves across and then it moves down toward Christ's mother and then back down toward Christ. There's a way that the artist is really leading our eye through the composition in a very sort of methodical way. Sal: Also playing down the areas of the composition that don't necessarily contribute to the narrative, so again, notice that the figures are very close to the front of the picture plane and everything behind that is in dark shadow, nothing to distract you. Beth: Elaborate landscape. Sal: Also in terms of the composition, we should say that here we can see one of the most important features of all Baroque art, in addition to the naturalism and the drama, the very strong diagonal that cuts across the picture plane also adding ... Beth: Two parallel diagonal lines. Sal: Also adding to the energized drama of the scene. Beth: Yup. (music) ("In The Sky With Diamonds" by Scalding Lucy)