The Counter-Reformation:
Catholic Baroque vs. the ‘Other’ Baroque

With every change of power or order in society, whether it is in business or government, there is always a change in structure. Buildings and signage are redesigned with the idea of a complete marketing makeover. The same can be said for the Catholic Counter-Reformation of the mid sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, after the successful Protestant Reformation of the early 1500s. Rome called forth a physical change of the Catholic Church in response, and years later, the Calvinist churches (the Dutch Reformed Church) in the Netherlands called for a complete physical change of their structure as well. As a direct response to the Protestant movement that had turned successful, the Catholic Church met three times over nearly twenty years from 1545 until 1563 in what was called the Council of Trent. The Church decided to elicit an emotional response from current Catholics, as well as Catholics turned Protestants, with the hope of rejuvenating the foundations and population of the Church. Pope Paul III helped the council to redefine Catholic doctrine, as well as redefining the role of the clergy, which was deemed essential to the Church’s system of faith. During the sporadic meetings of the council, Pope Paul III commissioned artists and architects to create paintings and redesign buildings that would remind Catholics of the grandeur of their faith. The outcome needed by the Church was for its members to walk into the redesigned buildings, covered with divine paintings, and feel that Jesus was there to guide them, to bring them to their knees and pray for forgiveness or guidance from the Holy Father. The Baroque arts became a marketing ploy made by the Church in its resurgence to power in European society. Many churches and cathedrals were built to look as if they were made by the hands of angels and were divinely inspired, lavish accomplishments that were crowned when St. Peter’s Cathedral was completed after Carlo Moderno remodeled the building from 1606 to 1612. Considered one of the first artistic achievements of the Baroque world, St. Peter’s purely defined the rich and ornate power that Catholic Europe was looking for in the Counter-Reformation. In stark contrast to the Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation, the Dutch Reformed Church, a Protestant outcropping started by Jean Calvin during the Protestant Reformation, took the Baroque world to a different level. Known as the ‘Other Baroque’ in history the movement made by the Dutch Reformed Church turned the original Baroque into a worldwide cultural movement, and less of a marketing campaign to gain more followers. However, unlike the Catholic’s idea of lavish wealth and opulence in their churches, Calvinist churches were plain, whitewashed buildings, blending in with most other northern Dutch buildings. Their interiors were not painted with scenes of divinity much like those of St. Peter’s Cathedral and the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, one hundred years before St. Peter’s was remodeled; nor did they hold any works of fine art. Calvinists believed that one should find divine guidance without the use of opulent distractions, a clearly fundamental and theological reasoning for the common look of the churches. While art was banned in the churches, Calvinists were more than welcome to have many sumptuous paintings and sculptures in their private homes, with many citizens of Amsterdam, the Calvinist capitol of the north, owning impressive personal art collections. The idea of marketing religion continues on, even to this day. With advances in technology, you need no longer to walk into a church filled with prolific artwork to feel a need to worship. However, if it had not been for the Catholic Church’s move to market themselves to the mass as a rebuttal of the Reformation, the Baroque world would have never come to be. Many glorious paintings and sculptures, as well as architecture, would not be found across European landscapes, museums and galleries.