Baroque Style Research Articles

American Furniture and the Baroque Style

American Furniture and the Baroque Style

Zbirka »Florum Jessaeorum« (Nürnberg 1607) Daniela Lagkhnerja

Zbirka »Florum Jessaeorum« (Nürnberg 1607) Daniela Lagkhnerja

Die SeidenbieneColletes daviesanus Sm., ein Gebäudeschädling

An investigation of damaged buildings revealedC. daviesanus appearing locally as noxious animal, for it digs its nest cavities in various, not too hard building materials. The nest cavities are easily to be recognized by the cellophane-like covering over, the cells in linear series and the pollen brought in (“Achillea-Form”). His natural nesting places are steep banks of sand, sandstone or loess without shadow and more or less directed to the south.C. d. avoids clay wallsC. d. uses to nest in buildings offering adequate material like different sorts of sand-stone or mortar, which is sufficiently deep weather-beaten. ThusC. d. accellerates destruction. WhenC .d. nests in building walls, it does not matter if they are directed to the north. Damages caused byC. d. in buildings of dogger sand-stone (f. i. a church in baroque style at Drügendorf/Forchheim) and “Main” sand-stone (f. i. Abbey of Ebrach) as well as in the mortar of frame-houses in and around Erlangen are described.

The Church Music of Pelham Humfrey

Writing in the second half of the eighteenth century, William Boyce described Pelham Humfrey's church music as ‘peculiarly expressive and affecting, the evident Productions of a masterly Genius’. It was this emotional immediacy, the desire ‘to move the affections or excite passion’, as Roger North put it, that was fundamental to the spirit of the Baroque. This spirit represents an exaggeration of the Renaissance humanists' desire for directness of expression; there are ways in which it can be said to have literally vulgarised the aristocratic humanism of the Renaissance. The contrast is aptly illustrated by comparing Tallis's most familiar ‘Salvator mundi’, a setting of lofty beauty, with Blow's more immediately passionate setting of the same text. The English Baroque cannot really be said to come of age in music until the generation immediately after the Restoration in 1660, but from that time composition in the new style flourished in all mediums. Spanning the years 1663 to 1674 Humfrey's output represents, perhaps more influentially than that of any other member of his generation, the consolidation of a distinctively English Baroque style.

Charles Le Brun and the Louvre Colonnade

The magnificently preserved Château of Vaux-le-Vicomte, with its “garden of intelligence” and sumptuous interior decoration, constitutes the outstanding surviving architectural ensemble from mid-seventeenth-century France.1 The chateau was begun in 1656 for Nicolas Fouquet, the powerful Superintendant of Finance. Louis Le Vau, architect, André Le Nôtre, garden designer, and Charles Le Brun, painter, combined their talents to produce Vaux—a masterpiece of French Baroque style and the initial collaborative effort of the three artists who were to create the Versailles of Louis XIV.

Charles Le Brun and the Louvre Colonnade

The magnificently preserved Château of Vaux-le-Vicomte, with its “garden of intelligence” and sumptuous interior decoration, constitutes the outstanding surviving architectural ensemble from mid-seventeenth-century France.1 The chateau was begun in 1656 for Nicolas Fouquet, the powerful Superintendant of Finance. Louis Le Vau, architect, André Le Nôtre, garden designer, and Charles Le Brun, painter, combined their talents to produce Vaux—a masterpiece of French Baroque style and the initial collaborative effort of the three artists who were to create the Versailles of Louis XIV.

College Art News

FORDHAM UNIVERSITY: “Baroque Art and the Jesuit Contribution,” a symposium, was presented by the Fine Arts Department on April 25–26. Rudolf Wittkower, Columbia University, was chairman. James Ackerman, Harvard University, spoke on “The Gesu in Rome and the New Church Style of the Mid-Sixteenth Century.” Other speakers were René Taylor, Museo de Arte, Ponce, Puerto Rico, “Villalpando, Solomon's Temple and Hermeticism in the Jesuit Society,” Howard Hibbard, Columbia University, “The Painted Decorations of the Gesu: Iconography and Influence“; Rev. Thomas Culley, S. J., Brown University, “The German College in Rome: A Musical Center of Jesuits During the Seventeenth Century”; Per Bjurstrom, National Museum, Stockholm, “The Baroque Theatre and the Jesuits“; Francis Haskell, Oxford University, England, “The Role of Patrons: Baroque Style Changes.” Following a series of round-table discussions, there was a concert of Baroque music. Irma Jaffe, Chairman of the Department informs us that the response to the symposium was highly enthusiastic, the symposiasts expressed their great satisfaction, and “the concert was glorious.”

SPINOZA: A LOOK AT HIS PSYCHOLOGICAL CONCEPTS

Scientific interests, among other things, are also rooted in childhood experience. Around the corner from our house in The Hague, my hometown, there was a statue of Benedictus de Spinoza. We youngsters used to play our games at the feet of the contemplative philosopher ensconced in his chair of stone. At one end of the street stood the famous “Court of the Holy Spir. it,” a sixteenth century group of dwellings built for the purpose of affording the aged a peaceful haven in the evening of their lives. On the opposite side was the restored renaissance house where Spinoza once dwelled. Questions about this mysterious figure in stone were answered later as we became better acquainted with the dramatic history of Holland. We learned that Spinoza, the gentle refugee and polisher of eyeglass lenses, was the close friend and adviser of Jan de Wit, the principal Regent of the Seven Dutch Provinces. It was said that the only time in his life that Spinoza lost his composure and equanimity was when his friend was brutally put to death by the crowds in a political mutiny. At that point he was ready to fight the riotous violence with his bare hands. Spinoza’s lonely grave stands not far away in the beautiful yard of an old Protestant church of stately baroque style, under which lies buried his murdered friend. More was gleaned about the significance of this solitary philosopher when studying at the University of Leyden, in the town near where Spinoza lived and left his spiritual mark. The family of Benedictus de Spinoza had to flee religious persecution in Spain and Portugal at the close of the sixteenth century and settle in Amsterdam, Holland, a town and country then undergoing tremendous mercantile expansion. The young Dutch republic, although still at war with Spain, was dispatching its ships all over the seven seas. At the same time the country was opening its arms to the various per-

Aspects of the Development of French Drama in the Beginning of the Seventeenth Century, with Special Reference to Schelandre's “Tyr et Sidon”

The first thirty years of the seventeenth century represent a period of transition in the history of the French theatre, and like all periods of transition they are of particular interest, although the features peculiar to them are difficult to analyse and to reduce to a formal pattern. In the plays of this period can be seen the passing of an old dramatic ideal and the gradual emergence of a new resthetic. The present paper attempts to trace this development in the tragedies and tragi-comedies written during these thirty years, a field not as restricted as it might seem, since the plays called by these names at this time fall rather into the category of drame libre. This transitional period cannot in fact be regarded simply as representing the decline of the French Renaissance theatre or the rise of the Baroque, but rather as a distinct phase of development in itself. The terms Renaissance and Baroque are more usually, and perhaps more strictly, applied to the plastic arts; but if one considers the differences in tone, in artistic outlook and in approach to the subject which distinguish a Renaissance painting from one in the baroque style, and then applies these criteria to the theatre, it is apparent that the Renaissance play is typified by clarity and certainty, and that of the Baroque period by obscurity and uncertainty. French Renaissance tragedy is 'concerned with the logical exposition of noble sentiments and great emotions, while the baroque tragi-comedy presents a complicated action in which unruly passion lies beneath an orderly surface. Underlying the formal regularity of baroque art can be seen seventeenth-century man's uncertainty about himself and the world he lived in, as opposed to the humanism and scientific optimism of the Renaissance, a contrast of outlook exemplified by Montaigne's early Stoicism and rigid essay form compared with the scepticism and fluid form of his later essays. The true baroque spirit in the theatre can be seen only after about 1630. The theatre in the period of transition which preceded it is sometimes called the romanesque baroque.! It comes into prominence after the collapse of the Renaissance drama, but writers had presumably been entertaining the common people with their drames libres for some years before the beginning of the seventeenth century, away from the main cultural streams in France. One must imagine a professional playwright like Hardy touring the country and trying to induce the provincials to accept the modern tragedies based on classical models on the same footing as the medireval mysteries and miracle

Baroque Prose in the Theater: Ben Jonson

Many years ago Morris W. Croll's studies of seventeenth-century prose demonstrated that the so-called anti-Ciceronian movement in prose style—which included in England such writers as Bacon, Jonson, Browne, Hall, and Burton—based itself not merely on a refusal to imitate Cicero, but on certain common philosophical attitudes, chiefly Stoic and libertine, and on common rhetorical models in Seneca and Tacitus. Croll, having sketched the intellectual tradition in which these writers worked, went on to examine their writings empirically. In a brilliant essay entitled “The Baroque Style in Prose,” he outlined their chief syntactic procedures and showed how these sprang from and reflected a common aesthetic. A more recent study, The Senecan Amble by George Williamson (London, 1951), has amplified Croll's historical researches, attempting to fix the anti-Ciceronian or Senecan movement more firmly amid its tangled antecedents and its numerous consequences. Both Croll and Williamson, however, have concerned themselves primarily with stylistic theory, and with large historical sequences in which individual authors appear as points on a complex graph. It still remains to study some of the writers in question more closely as individuals, both to verify their locations on the graph and also to explore the richness and multiplicity of individual accents that compose the common style. The purpose of the present essay is a simple one: to focus attention on a single author, Ben Jonson. The evidence will show, I think, that the case of Jonson bears out Croll's findings to a remarkable extent, and that although Croll fails to mention Jonson in his article on baroque prose, Jonson has some claim to be regarded as the baroque stylist par excellence, whose highly personal, highly inflected style realizes to their fullest extent the principles of the baroque rhetoric.

Agrippa d'Aubigne's Les Tragiques [:] A Study of the Baroque Style in Poetry.

Agrippa d'Aubigne's Les Tragiques [:] A Study of the Baroque Style in Poetry.

Luther and Bach's Cantata 50

twelfth chapter of the Book of Revelation.1 A fugue of the most solid and massive character, designed ultimately for an ideal organ of infinite dimensions, the piece stands out in music history as a supreme expression of Baroque style. As with all good fugues, its life springs from its subject, given with accompanying text in Example I. in English the King James rendering will serve: Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ. The Lutheran version

Review. The 'Pensees' of Pascal. A study in Baroque Style. Maggioni, Sister Mary Julie

Review. The 'Pensees' of Pascal. A study in Baroque Style. Maggioni, Sister Mary Julie

REVIEWS

REVIEWS Get access The ‘Pensées’ of Pascal. A study in Baroque Style. By MARY JULIE MAGGIONI. (The Catholic University of America Studies in Romance Languages and Literatures, Vol. XXXIX). Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press. 1950. vii + 154 pp. N. J. ABERCROMBIE N. J. ABERCROMBIE LONDON Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar French Studies, Volume V, Issue 1, January 1951, Pages 73–74, https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/V.1.73 Published: 01 January 1951

Music in the Baroque Era from Monteverdi to Bach

An analysis of the Baroque style of music and its inventive forms of expression, such as the opera, from 1600 to 1750.

Human Dignity in the Thought of Vitoria

Without falling into the detestable errors of racialism, we can say that national cultures enshrine, at least in a measure, qualities both good and bad truly characteristic of the nation. Thus we may see in Spanish history, literature and art, a great emphasis on man’s natural dignity, an emphasis which at times passes from virtue to vice in the pride which is at present so curiously insisted on by some who pretend to a special understanding of things Spanish. The great Spaniard, Francisco de Vitoria, although far from approving an unhealthy national pride, does in fact bring out very clearly that man, by his own proper nature, is invested with a dignity which is involved in the moral consideration of the most diverse activities.In his day the Spanish tendency to boasting—pilloried in the Rodomontades—had real and marvellous achievements to rest on, and the reconquest of Christian Spain was at last an accomplished deed. Moralists and theologians were imbued with a feeling for man’s greatness. Vitoria in particular was concerned in his thought with the dignity of man as such, rather than man as Spaniard. In the Relectio de Indis he brings out most clearly that the treatment of barbarians must be governed by what is worthy of man in himself. Nothing does so much credit to Spanish culture as that, even while the baroque style in sentiment and manners was elaborating its less admirable features—ostentatious display, excess of pride, of panache, and the absurdities of pundonor—Spain could still produce a man like Vitoria whose simplicity, austerity, and firm adherence to principle give us the Spanish feeling for dignity in its best form, as expressed by gravedad.

The Theological Significance of Genesis

To be sure, like many monuments of ancient literature in general and most of the Old Testament books in particular, Genesis is the result of collective writing. Literary critics have described the composite character of its authorship and the long process of its compilation. They have isolated, analyzed, dated, and characterized as its literary sources, various sequences of narratives and cycles of traditions. They have even recognized that each of these sources was in turn the result of editorial work, either written or oral, done by individuals or schools of storytellers and poets who represented specific and sometimes contradictory points of view concerning history, psychology, sociology, ethics, and religious beliefs or practices. Likewise, more recent students have observed that the materials used by these various authors or editors offer a remarkably wide range of literary forms, such as myths, legends, fragments of individual, tribal, and national biography or lore, excerpts from genealogies, quotations of ancient falk songs, ditties, proverbs, oracles, and local sayings of aetiological interest. This analytical work is most valuable, for it enables the historian to reconstruct with a relative degree of certainty the chronological development of the religion of Israel over a period of a thousand years or more. In many ways, Genesis resembles a mediaeval church which was built on the foundations of a Gallo-Roman temple dedicated to the goddess Isis: the stones of its crypt reveal the signs of Byzantine art, the columns of its apse are in pure Romanesque, the vaulting of its transept and nave show the grace of middle Gothic, its Western rose window displays the wealth of the Flamboyant, and even one of its portals, which fell during the XVIIIth century, has been rebuilt in the Baroque style. In spite of its composite origin, this edifice is not an architectural monstrosity. It possesses a distinctive personality, it offers an esthetic message which is wholly its own, and it must be interpreted and understood as a single work of art. Mutatis mutandis, the book of Genesis as it exists today may represent several schools of widely different or conflicting conceptions of ethics and religion. Nevertheless, its final editor has succeeded in presenting a relatively homogeneous document, with a singleness of purpose, and a dominant message which overshadows the discrepancies of details. Whatever sources may have been incorporated within its frame, whatever traditions may have been preserved in its chapters, whatever historical, psychological, sociological, moral, and religious points of view may still appear in its pages, Genesis exists as a completed masterpiece, polished and rounded, whose unity of theme and plan offers a striking contrast with the loosely connected, ill-digested, and sometimes chaotic agglutination of literary deposits which are found in other sections of the Hexateuch.

The Baroque as a Basic Concept of Art

Two of the outstanding problems of modern cultural scholarship have been the revaluation of the Baroque style and the development of principles, or basic concepts, of cultural history.The revaluati...

The Early Style of Cezanne and the Post-Impressionists

The early works of Cézanne have recently claimed more attention from connoisseurs than ever before. There are several reasons for this tendency. Those who like the baroque style in itself, and romanticism for its own sake, are delighted by the bizarre and fantastic qualities, the vague suggestions, the unleashed power in the master's youthful works. But however true it is that perfect works of art were created during the Baroque and Romantic periods, they must not be confused with the excesses that romanticism and the baroque style, in common with all passing vogues, committed against good taste. Those who dislike Impressionism and believe they are able to divorce the artist Cézanne from Impressionist taste are the more pleased to praise his first style. It is true they have done so after having lauded the works which came after his Impressionist period in which his preoccupation with construction appears more marked. They have not realized that, though Cézanne devoted himself to the problems of construction, between 1880 and 1885, it was construction from the Impressionist point of view. Others have been lured by the study of museum pieces, by the presence of traditional motifs which youthful painting carries with it. They have failed to understand that these only prove that Cézanne's personality was not yet completely developed.But despite these errors of judgment, without doubt there are good reasons for interest in the master's early works. Many elements of his youth are to be found again in his last works, which, though expressed in a new and perfect manner nevertheless share so closely in that renewed form that they may easily be considered essential. Above all, these elements have been transmitted, like a vital force to post-Impressionist art. Thus may be found a profound relationship between them and the art, not only of a Gauguin and a Van Gogh, but also in our day, of a Matisse and a Rouault.

The Early Style of Cezanne and the Post-Impressionists

The early works of Cezanne have recently claimed more attention from connoisseurs than ever before. There are several reasons for this tendency. Those who like the baroque style in itself, and roma...