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The general period that is labeled Renaissance continued without any sharp stylistic break into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This period of art is called Baroque, although no one Baroque style or set of stylistic principles actually has been defined. Scholars gradually came to see that the Baroque styles were quite different from those of the Renaissance. The Baroque looks dynamic while Renaissance styles are relatively static. Like the art it produced, the Baroque era was manifold spacious and dynamic, brilliant and colorful, theatre and passionate, sensual and ecstatic, opulent and extravagant, versatile and virtuoso. Baroque style quickly spread over Europe and expended well beyond art in the conceptions of the new astronomy and physics.
In this paper I want to describe and compare two great painters Peter Paul Rubens (1577 - 1640) and Nicolas Poussin (1594 - 1665), citizens of two different countries who both belonged to the Baroque period of art. The brilliant Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens preceded the great Italian architect, painter and sculptor Bernini, in the development and dissemination of the Baroque style. Rubens influence was international; he drew together the main contributions of the masters of the Renaissance and of the Baroque to synthesize in his own style the first truly European manner. The art of Rubens, even though it is the consequence of his wide study of many masters, is no weak eclecticism but an original and powerful synthesis. From the beginning, his instinct was to break away from the provincialism of the old Flemish Mannerists and to seek new ideas and methods abroad. His aristocratic education, his courtiers manner, diplomacy, and tact, as well as his classical learning made him the associate of princes and scholars.
He became court painter to the dukes of Mantua, friend of the king of Spain and his adviser on art collection, painter to Charles I of England and Marie de Medici, queen of France, and permanent court painter to the Spanish governors of Flanders. Rubens also won the confidence of his royal patrons in matter of state, and he often was entrusted with diplomatic missions of the highest importance. Rubens also functioned as an art dealer, buying and selling works of contemporary art and classical antiquities which made him indeed a rich and wealthy man. However, this didnt spoil his amiable, sober, self-disciplined character, and now we have in Rubens the image of the successful and renowned artist and the shrewd man.
Rubens became a master in 1598 and went to Italy two years later, where he remained until 1608. During these years, he formulated the foundations of his style. Shortly after his return from Italy, he painted The Elevation of the Cross for Antwerp Cathedral. This work shows the result of his long study of Italian art, especially of Michelangelo, Tintoretto, and Caravaggio. The scene is a focus of tremendous, straining forces and counterforce's, as heavily muscled giants strain to lift the cross. Here, the artist has the opportunity to show foreshortened anatomy and the contortions of violent action not the bound action of Mannerism, but the tension of strong bodies meeting resistance outside themselves.
The body of Christ is a great, illuminated diagonal that cuts dynamically across the picture. Strong modeling in dark and light marks Rubens work at this stage of his career; it gradually will give way to a much subtler, colorist style. The vigor and passion of Rubens early manner never leave his painting, although the vitality of his work is modified into less strained and more subtle forms, depending on the theme. Yet Rubens has one general theme human body, draped or undraped, male of female, freely acting or free to act in an environment of physical forces and other interacting bodies. Comparing this style to the one of the French painter Nicolas Poussin I must say that the latter is found to be interested in landscape and nature paintings as well as the painting of ancient Greek scenes. Rubens conception of the human scene does not contain profoundly tragic elements nor anything mannerist ically intellectual, enigmatic, or complex.
His forte is the strong animal body described in joyful, exuberant motion natural to it. His Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus describes the abduction of two young mortals by the gods Castor and Pollux, who have fallen in live with them. The amorous theme permits departures from realism, especially in the representation of movement and exerted strength. The impact of Rubens hunting pictures lies in their depiction of ferocious action and vitality.
In The Lion Hunt, a cornered lion, three lances meeting in his body, tears a Berber hunter from his horse. The wild melee of thrusting, hacking, rearing, and plunging is almost as allegory of the confined tension of Mannerism exploding into the extravagant activity that characterized the Baroque. Rubens unlike Poussin, shared heartily in the Baroque love of magnificent pomp, especially as it is set off the majesty of royalty, in which Rubens heavily believed. The Baroque age saw endless, extravagant pageants and festivals produces whenever the great or even lesser dynasts moved. Perhaps the most vivacious and dexterously composed of the series is his Arrival of Marie de Medici at Marseilles; it can be taken as exemplary of the mood and style of the others. Broad and florid compliments, in which Heaven and earth join, are standard in Baroque pageantry, where honor is done to royalty.
The artist enriches his surfaces here with a decorative splendor that pulls the whole composition together. Rubens imposing, dynamic figure compositions were not his only achievements; he also produced rich landscapes and perceptive portraits. His works in landscape style is what he has in common with Poussin and his portrait style is what differs him from this other painter. Rubens portrait of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, is a painting of singular power. Rubens was a friend of Arundel and an admirer of his taste and learning. The artists admiration for the man himself is clearly expressed in the portrait as the earl is posed in an attitude of regal majesty.
Rubens lavishes all of his rich resources of color tone in the rendering of the splendid accoutrements of high rank and latte-day chivalry. On the whole this imperious image as well as his other works and paintings give us a great understanding of an autocratic age and dynasts of Baroque. Telling about the next famous French painter I have to say that Nicolas Poussin was the one who established Classical painting as peculiarity expressive of French taste in the seventeenth century. Poussin, born in Normandy, spent most of his life in Rome. There, inspired by its monuments and the landscape of the Campagna, he produced his grandly severe regular canvases and carefully worked out a theoretical explanation of his method. He worked for a while under Domenichino but shunned the exuberant Italian Baroque; Titian and Raphael were the models that he set for himself.
His work titled Et in Arcadia Ego had first two versions that reflected the influence of those Italian painters on Poussin. But at the end, the rational order and stability of Raphael proved most appealing to Poussin. The final version of Et in Arcadia Ego shows what Poussin learned from Raphael, as well as from Antique statuary; landscapes, of which Poussin became increasingly fond, expands in the picture, reminiscent of Titian but also indicative of Poussin's own study of nature. In notes for an intended treatise on painting, Poussin outlines the grand manner of Classicism, of which he became the leading exponent in Rome. Poussin represents that theoretical tradition in Western art goes back to the Early Renaissance and that asserts that all good art must be the result of good judgement a judgement based on sure knowledge. In this way, art can achieve correctness and propriety, two of the favorite categories of the classicizing artist or architect.
Poussin praises the ancient Greeks for their musical modes, by which, he says, they produced marvelous effects. He observes that this world mode means actually the rule of the measure and form which serves us in our production. Poussin's finest works, like The Burial of Phocion, are instances of his obvious preference for the Dorian Mode. His subjects are chosen carefully from the literature of antiquity, where his age would naturally look for the gracious, and it is with Poussin that the visual arts draw closer to literature than ever before. Here, he takes his theme from Plutarch's life of Phocion, and Athenian hero who was unjustly put to death by his countrymen but then given a public funeral and memorialized by the state.
This scene is not indeed intended to represent a particular place and time; it is the construction of an idea of a noble landscape to frame a noble theme. Concluding my essay I would like to say that each peace of art or architecture from any time period is unique and is valued differently. Though Rubens and Poussin were painters who lived and created during the Baroque period and reflected it in their works each of them had his unique and preferred style. Both painters made a great contribution in the art of those times by reflecting its true lifestyle. Rubens succeeded greatly in reflecting the life of royalty of those times as well as in painting a human body. And thought Poussin was more interested in landscapes and antiquity he still gives a great idea of different historical events as well as the Baroque period.
References Horse, De La Croix, Richard, G. Taney, Diane, Kirkpatrick. (1987) Art Throughout The Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company Bazin, German. (1974) Baroque and Rococo Art. New York: Praeger. White, Christopher. (1987) Peter Paul Rubens: Man and Artist. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Waterhouse, Ellis Kirkham. (1976) Baroque Painting in Rome. London: Pahidon. Martin, John R. (1977) Baroque. New York. Harper & Row. Wright, Christopher (1986) The French Painters of the 17 th Century.
New York: Graphic Society.
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