This illustrates the profound impact and global reach that baroque had during the 17th century.
Baroque and the performing arts
Although baroque is commonly associated with architecture and fine arts, the term first appeared with reference to music. The 16th to the 18th centuries marked one of the most important periods for Western music, with baroque making up a significant portion of what we now know of as classical music. Where music of the medieval and Renaissance periods was for the most part simplistic, made up of singular, clean lines, baroque music established harmony and the major and minor scales as the central, tonal structure. This made for a richer, fuller sound. Following the major and minor scales, musical phrases became more structured and repeated to form a melodic motif. These motifs were heavily embellished; they were intertwined to form rounds with the introduction of techniques like trills. Again, this resulted in a big and ornamented sound. Composers like Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frederic Handel (1685–1759), and Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) provide examples of the way that music changed in the baroque period.
Theater found a natural home in the baroque movement, full of emotion, drama, and expression. The theater allowed for innovation through the combination of new technologies and storytelling devices, resulting in new artforms like the opera and ballet.. These types of dramatic arts combined music and theater and joined the already-established performing arts, reflecting daily life with a high degree of glamor and spectacle, and capturing the attention and imagination of spectators from a range of social classes and educational backgrounds. Ropes and pulley systems were employed so that characters could descend and ascend from a divine realm that felt closer than ever. The presence of visual art was also added to the spectacle of theater, with the addition of an elaborately framed stage hosted in great halls in highly ornate buildings.
In an attempt to approximate life, baroque theater appealed to the complex ideas and emotions of the time. In As You Like It (1623) William Shakespeare epitomized the baroque era when he wrote “all the world’s a stage” (1623, [2017]). This phrase encompasses the turn from Renaissance humanism to the higher power of God; that there is a divine master to which all our earthly activities hope to appeal. The way in which theater combined art forms to mirror life in a grand and exaggerated manner illustrates one of the central characteristics of baroque: the embellishment of life with religious power.
Caravaggio and the baroque style in painting
By now we know that the purpose of baroque was to captivate and command the attention and admiration of the public to restore faith, shaken by the developments of the Renaissance. To this effect, the baroque aesthetic is arresting; it interacts with its onlookers, almost pursuing them. This was all in an effort to traverse the divide between art and life, divinity and the earthly realm; to make divinity and art more immediate. But what painting techniques made this effect possible in the visual arts?
The classicism that became popular in the Renaissance was purely to be admired; it sat motionless on a pedestal. Baroque took this naturalism and imbued it with a heightened sense of emotion, full of terror and ecstasy. One of the most important artists of the baroque movement was Italian painter, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1517–1610). One aspect that makes Caravaggio’s work so distinctive is his use of light. His paintings are rich in color and contrast, creating a dramatic effect that became typical of the baroque style.
