As we talk about Dutch Baroque art, we're going to see some big changes to the context of art making, especially in regards to economics, society, religion, and politics. So, Dutch Baroque art is divided into two categories, based on geography and religion. So first we're going to take a look at the Catholic monarchy in Southern Netherlands or Flanders which is overseen by the Spanish crown. Think about the distance between Spain and the Netherlands and then realize that the ruling dynasty are the Habsburgs for the Holy Roman Empire.
That will be contrasted to what we find happening in the Dutch Republic. In the North now, we've got Protestants and they are operating under a republic. And that's where we're going to see big changes and continued growth in the middle class.
So this is the region where we are. So remember the Spanish Monarchy is way down here off the map and that's going to be part of the story as well. The Dutch Baroque period is often nicknamed the Golden Age of Painting. Because of what's happening with society there's going to be an expansion and demand for art making.
And people who are not part of the church are going to commission art of all different sizes, of all different qualities, of all different everything. And so we start to see certain subject matters be in demand. History paintings, large-scale paintings of mythological or historic or religious events. Of course, portraiture, very popular during the Dutch Baroque period.
genre painting scenes from daily life people cooking in a kitchen or working outside in the field landscape is important to the northern Dutch people as are still lifes and within these broad categories there are infinite small sub categories as you shall soon see so let's start by introducing Rubens He's very well known. You might even recognize some of his work visually. He is a Catholic German born of Dutch blood. He painted for eight years in Italy early on in his career and he became the court painter to the Netherlandish royal family. Rubens was the first to use kind of a pan-European style a synthesis of Michelangelo and Titian and Caravaggio, people who he'd had exposure to in Italy.
And Rubens becomes an international influence. So not only is he an amazing artist, he's highly educated, he's well-mannered, diplomatic, multilingual. He, in addition to making art, he becomes a dealer of other art and he makes lots of money and he owns property. So he is not the stereotypical starving artist.
In 1567 Philip the second of Spain invaded the Netherlands as part of a counter-reformation effort. The northern Netherlands will escape and prosper as Protestant republic and the southern Netherlands will languish over 80 years under Spanish rule. And that Spanish rule is absentee rule because the distance is too far.
Rubens however becomes the art advisor to the king of Spain, the court painter to Charles I of England and and as you will see, Maria de' Medici of France. So we've got a word that comes up sometimes in Art History Room called Rubensian physique. And look over here at this image here and you can see that these are very curvy female nudes. So there's no skinny runway model thing going on here.
But that was what a Rubensian physique refers to. Here's a picture of Rubens and his second wife. It shows their hands there and a symbol of marriage.
Look at how he's got his foot twined around her skirt. This is a way to show his place in society. He's relaxed, he's elegant, they engage directly with the viewer. This could have been created as a demonstration piece, showing his expertise in painting of fabrics.
and body composition and that kind of thing. So this is showing he and his wife as sophisticates of society. Now here is a work that he created in 1617. This is an oil on wood, and it's what we call an allegory. An allegory are symbols for something else. He creates a series of paintings, as successful artists often do, based on the five senses.
So there would have been one for smell and touch and taste. This one is the allegory of sight and that makes perfect sense since we are talking about visual disciplines here. There are so many symbols in this work. It's really fun to just take a moment and look around and notice everything that you might see. Understand that this is a made-up environment, a fictive environment.
There's no such place. But he made images probably from composite places that he saw. So then let's look at some of the details here. We've got everything from reproductions of Michelangelo's sculptures of day and night to Rubens' own painting called The Tiger Hunt. We've got a Madonna and Child.
And his co-painter Bruegel did the flowers here. The Dutch are crazy about flowers, as you will come to find out. Look at the Habsburg double eagle up on top of the chandelier.
Here is Juno Optica, the personification of sight. So this is like a Roman goddess. And then down at her feet are all these implements that help you see things. Like... lenses and a telescope.
There is a monkey wearing glasses. There's also a double portrait of the patrons, the people who wanted him to paint this, and an equestrian portrait of Prince Albert. Can you find it? Well, the Medici family hasn't gone away.
They've morphed and changed an awful lot. This is from a series of paintings. When you have a series of paintings, we call it a cycle.
Well, Maria de' Medici had been sent away, exiled, by her son, Louis XIII. She had been regent for Louis after her husband died. Regent means that you help rule until the child king is old enough to rule.
Well, she wouldn't give up her power, and so her son sent her away. But then he allowed her to come back, and she was so thrilled, and she knew that all the people in France would be so thrilled that she commissioned this cycle to gain favor and let everyone know how wonderful she was. So not one painting, not two paintings, but 24 five foot by three foot.
oil on canvases celebrating the life of herself. This is drama to the point of melodrama. The subject includes stories about her life, her marriage, and her reign.
She was really a minor figure in Baroque Europe, but Rubens was happy to do the commission while she was in exile in Antwerp. So this, he got paid a tremendous amount of money for this. So can you find Maria? look at the title the arrival so this is foreshadowing her return to France she's coming on a boat to the port of Marseille and you can see her stepping off the boat here and here is Maria surrounded by her ladies in waiting meeting her is an allegorical figure of France we know it's France because of his cape his cape has those little Gold form that we call the fleur de lis.
That's what you see right here. This is one of the symbols of France Well, what else is going on here? Everyone is thrilled that Maria is returning, even the gods of the sea and the goddesses of the sea who raise up out of the water to greet her. Look at the emblem on the front of the boat.
That is the symbol of the Medici family. Those oranges are still there. The gentleman who is escorting her has the emblem of Santiago. on his chest.
And then here is this angel blowing trumpets and announcing her return. It's really interesting to note that Rubens abandons all conventions of portrait painting in order to shore up and bolster the popularity of this rejected queen. And I guess it worked because we're still talking about her. Rubens, of course, as a Catholic and creating works for the Catholic Church, is going to deal with the topics that are very well known. And that certainly is the case here with his Elevation of the Cross.
This is a triptych. We're at 1610. The center portion is 15 feet high and 11 feet wide. So what we have here is the biblical story of Christ who is now nailed to the cross and they are elevating the cross into the upright status on that hill of Golgotha.
So the story is clear however what Rubens has done is he has based the figures on ancient Greek works of art like the Laocoon. You see the Laocoon? For those of you who have not taken the Greek art history class this is a very famous Hellenistic sculpture. very realistic and very emotional very dramatic and it's something that artists like Michelangelo and the Renaissance were very influenced by and then people even at this later date were still influenced by what they saw this is a unified composition that moves across the three panels and that is an innovation so what we've got going on here visually is a W shape down up down up Okay?
And so that moves your eye across the surface of the panel. Stylistically, no one had seen anything like this before. It was a spectacle. It was not subtle. Do you see the Caravaggian lighting?
Where is the unseen light source? Where is that cross being erected? On the upper left panel, you see St. John and the Virgin Mary. mother and child that sort of pulls you into the work over here this is the more sentimental scene on the left panel the right panel indicates soldiers capturing people and there's this very strong diagonal in the central panel extensive body modeling lots of chiaroscuro but no tenebrism here light and dark function as sort of like bolts of lightning. There's a strong use of foreshortening of foreshortening of Christ's body as it looks like it goes back into space.
And you notice that he surrounds this movement by a landscape element. So he could have left it blank. He could have used open sky like he does over here, but he really sets those figures off by highlighting them in this way.