Seaport with the Setting Sun
1637
Oil on canvas, 74 × 99 cm
Alnwick Castle, Alnwick
Alongside the marked tendency towards extending the stock of subjects beyond the traditional limits, and the increasing variety of genres, 17th-century art demonstrates an unflagging interest in myth. The question of interrelationship of myth and reality will be found to be central to any branch of Baroque art we turn to. Painting seems to have achieved more in the exploration of this problem than any other art. To convince oneself of this, it is enough to recall the work of such leaders of the different national schools as the Carracci, Caravaggio, Velazquez, Poussin, Rubens, and Rembrandt.
The Dance
c. 1637
Etching, 19.2 × 25.5 cm
Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
The 17th-century approach to mythology had some characteristic traits, most notably a breaking away from traditional iconography (within certain bounds, of course) and the predominance of individual interpretations of mythological themes. Does that imply that myth was no longer perceived as myth in the proper sense of the word, but only as a body of material previously built up in the collective consciousness and liable to free creative interpretation? At any rate, it is an indisputable fact that 17th-century artists exercised considerable freedom in the treatment of mythological sources.
Seaport with the Rising Sun
c. 1637–1638
Oil on canvas, 74 × 99 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Moreover, the “mythology explosion” in Baroque art may have been prompted by a desire to employ the synthesising potential of myth in a rational way. Viewed like this, myth may be understood as a particular means of generalising reality, as an instrument of artistic cognition. This granted, it takes only one step to establish a direct relationship between mythology and rhetoric in 17th-century art. The idea of such an interconnection can already be found in the treatises of the leading theorists of the Baroque era.
Oak Tree in the Campagna
1638 (?)
Chalk and brown wash, 32.9 × 22.4 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Later this idea was brilliantly developed by Giambattista Vico, who advanced, in particular, the concept of the mythological roots of poetic tropes; Vico held that every metaphor is a myth in miniature.
Fundamental to the understanding of 17th-century art is the problem of its principal stylistic concepts. Among a wide variety of stylistic trends, there were two leading ones, the Baroque and Classicism. It has been suggested that the Baroque played a prevalent, and Classicism a subsidiary role.
Pastoral Lanscape
1638
Oil on canvas, 100 × 132 cm
Collection at Parham House, West Sussex
Some authorities distinguish yet a third trend, unconnected with either the Baroque or Classicism. We are not inclined to adopt either the former, or the latter view, believing as we do that the notions of Baroque and Classicism, neither of which can be placed in a subordinate position to the other, amply suffice for the reconstruction of a complete picture of 17th-century stylistic evolution, with all the interaction of its conflicting trends. The terms Baroque and Classicism may be said to mark the two extreme points between which the process of style formation developed as a struggle between opposing tendencies.
Pastoral Caprice with the Arch of Constantine
Oil on canvas, 98 × 145 cm
Duke of Westminster Collection
The Baroque style can be characterised in a general way, using such features as heightened expressiveness, eccentricity, a rejection of the norms and rules, a taste for sharp contrasts and extravagant effects, a combined use of different viewpoints, imagery of exuberant splendour, metaphorical language, love of allegory, and a strong and direct appeal to the emotions and the imagination in a deliberate effort to overwhelm the spectator.
Landscape with Lowland Plain in the Vicinity of Rome
c. 1638
Brush drawing in brown wash with pen and ink, 19.6 × 30.5 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris
Classicism is based on the cult of Reason and the Classical ideal of Antique art. Hence its fundamental features: a sense of measure, structural logic, clarity of form, strictly ordered and well-balanced composition, rational self-control and discipline, and, last of all, an elevated, didactic tone in addressing the viewer.
Heinrich Wolflin, who was the first to systematically apply typological principles to the study of style, drew a clear and sharp dividing line between the Renaissance and the Baroque. But a similar demarcation between styles can obviously be effected within the Baroque era itself.
Stone Pines with Two Figures
c. 1638–1641
Brush drawing in brown wash, over pen and brown ink and graphite, 18 × 25.1 cm
Teylers Museum, Haarlem
Whereas the Baroque style arose largely in opposition to the preceding artistic system, 17th-century Classicism was a sort of a “negation of the negation”, reasserting much of what the Baroque denied. But the role of 17th-century Classicism is not confined to this sort of positive conservatism. The rise of the Baroque style was associated with the process of the destruction of the old picture of the world; it was a generalised expression of the dynamic spirit of the time.
An Artist Studying Nature
1639
Oil on canvas, 78.1 × 101 cm
Gift of Mary Hanna, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati
By contrast, Classicism contributed to the creation, on the ruins of the old foundations, of a new building, no less strong and stable than the demolished one. Just as Newtonian mechanics produced an absolute space and time framework of reference, so did French Classicism elaborate a strict logical system of artistic representation, totally opposed to the relativism of the Baroque. Nor could this system have ever emerged otherwise than in opposition to the Baroque. Thus the two leading, and rival, 17th-century styles owed a fair amount to one another.
Two Ships in a Storm
1638–1640
Brush drawing in grey wash, over pen and brown ink and graphite, on beige paper, 31.9 × 22.4 cm
Musée