Baroque Period

HUMA205-1201B-08: Art Appreciation

AIU Online

Colin Batson

Sir Anthony Van Dyck is the first artist that I have chosen to write about. Sir Van Dyck was known for doing portraits for such people like the Genoese aristocracy, and helped to usher in the immortal type of noblemen, with the portraits of the men as proud and slender in frame. One of his well known portraits is his “Portrait of a Young General.” This portrait was created between the years of 1622 and 1627. The Portrait is of a young white male with brownish black armor. He is standing in a regal pose looking away from the artist. The technique that was used for the portrait was oil on canvas. Van Dyck influenced English portrait painting for 150 years after his time, and he was also one of the most important innovators of water color and etching.

One of the most well known artists of the Baroque period has to have been Rembrandt Van Rijn. Just like Van Dyck he favored realism which some of his critics would go on to say that he preferred ugliness over beauty. Rembrandt was known to create portraits as well with one of them being a “Portrait of an Old Jewish Man.” The painting shows an old Jewish man who might have been a Rabbi, sitting forward in a chair, the portrait has a dark background, and the robes of the man are colored in a contrasting brown color, he has a whit beard and his skin looks to be a little pale. The technique that was used was oil on canvas, and it was created in 1654.

The last artist that I am writing about is Jan Vermeer. Jan Vermeer was known to be a contrast to artist like Rembrandt who used the minimum amount of light in his portraits, where as he relished on using vast amounts of light in his. Take his portrait of the “Kitchen Maid”, (also known as the Milk Maid) you can tell that he used the light to brighten up the room that the maid was working in. The painting is a picture is a painting of a woman wearing a dull yellow blouse with green cuffs around the arms above the elbows, a blue apron around her waist with a red skit and she is pouring what seems to be mile into a bowl that is surrounded by what looks like bread.

The way that Vermeer utilized the coloring is nothing more than spectacular. He was able to bring out the details between the woman and the items around her. The painting was created between the years of 1657 and 1658, and the technique that was used was oil and canvas.

These works of art fit perfectly with the time period that they were created in because the Baroque movement was all about the differences between the light and dark aspects that helped bring out the emotion and drama of their creations. During the Baroque period religion was starting to see new light as people were starting to reaffirm their faith. You can tell by a lot of the paintings that were done during this period that the artist were focusing not just on the people that they see everyday, but on the aspect of a newfound faith in the church and in God.

References

Frank, Patrick: Prebles’ Artforms Tenth Edition (Renaissance and Baroque Europe)

www.huntfor.com/absoluteig/Rembrandt.htm

www.huntfor.com/absoluteig/dyck.htm