5. Retell the text according to the plan:

1. Italian Baroque.

2. Flemish Baroque.

3. Dutch Baroque.

Unit7

Baroque and rococo

Before you read

1. Discuss the following questions:

• What famous English artists and sculptures do you know?

• Who designed St. Paul’s Cathedral? When was it built?

• What was the political situation in England of that times?

• When was the Royal Academy of Arts founded?

• What Spanish artists do you know?

2. Look at the chart and describe the difference between in Baroque style in these countries. Add your own examples of artists, sculptors and architects and their artworks.

BAROQUE
	Italian	Flemish	Dutch	Spanish	English	French
Heyday	1590–1680	1600–1640	1630–1670	1625–1660	1720–1790	1670–1715
Patron	Church	Church	People	Monarch	Upper class	Monarch
Emphasis	Religious work	Altarpieces	Portraits, Still life, landscape	Court portraits	Portraits of aristocracy	Classical landscape and decorative architecture
Style	Dynamic	Florid	Virtuoso	Realistic	Restrained	Pretentious
Qualities	Drama, intensity, movement	Sensuality	Visual accuracy, studies of light	Dignity	Elegance	Order and ornament
Artists
Famous paintings

3. Read and translate the text. English Baroque

While in literature the 1600s was an era of extraordinary creativity (Shakespeare, Donne, Milton), the visual arts in England lagged far behind. Since religious art was forbidden in Puritan churches and the taste for mythological subjects never caught on, English art was limited almost exclusively to portraits.

H ogarth. William Hogarth invented a new genre – the comic strip – or a sequence of anecdotal pictures. He could also be considered the first political cartoonist. He drew his targets from the whole range of society, satirizing with equal aplomb the idle aristocracy, drunken urban working class (a first in visual art), and corrupt politicians.

Gainsborough. Gainsborough worshiped van Dyck learned from the master how to elongate figures to make them seem regal and set them in charmingly negligent poses to make them seem alive. Gainsborough refreshed British art with his loving portrayal of landscape backgrounds. He painted landscapes for his own pleasure, constructing miniature scenes in his studio of broccoli, sponges, and moss to simulate unspoiled nature. In «Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan» the natural beauty of both the landscape and subject harmonize perfectly. The framing tree at right arcs into the painting to lead the eye back, while the curves of clouds and mid–ground tree, skirt bring the focus back to the sitter's face. This Baroque swirl of encircling eye movement repeats the oval of her face. The leafy look of Gainsborough's paintings h elped establish the concept, that nature was a worthwhile subject for art.

Reynolds. Reynolds was a champion of idealizing reality. He so idolized such masters as Raphael, Michelangelo, Rubens, and Rembrandt he even painted his self–portrait costumed as the latter. His portraits succeeded in spite of his pedantic self. Ironically, in his best portraits Reynolds ignored his own rules. Instead of idealizing what he termed «deficiencies and deformities» he relied on an intimate, direct style to capture the sitter's personality.

HOW TO TELL THEM APART
GAINSBOROUGH	REYNOLDS
Easy-going, often overdue with commissions. Nave, spontaneous. No intellectual pretensions or ambitions, loved nature, music. Solo act – didn't use assistants. Casual poses without posturing. Natural sitting, nature background. Sitters in contemporary dress.	Hard-working, businessman, professional. Gentleman/scholar, at home in genteel circles. Well educated in classics, England's first art theorist. Employed assistants and drapery painters. Aimed at «senatorial dignity» in portraits. Antique props: urns, pedestals, columns. Sitters in character as goddesses, saints.