in Seaport
c. 1634
Etching, 12.4 × 19.2 cm
State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg
The very nature of the theatre made it particularly congenial to the spirit of the age. On the stage, appearances easily replace reality, reality wears a mask of illusion, and the world at large appears as an endless chain of transformations. It became a truism to compare the world to a stage where each plays a role assigned to him. Hence such maxims as “All the world’s a stage”, “Life is a dream”, or phrases like “The comedy of life”. The underlying idea may be summed up in the words, “Life is a play”, and thus we may speak of the theatralisation of reality during the Baroque era.
Trees and Rocks by a Waterfall
c. 1635
Brush drawing in brown wash, heightened with white over black chalk, on buff paper, 38.8 × 25.2 cm
British Museum, London
For all its love of strong spectacular effects, 17th-century art never moved too far from reality; on the contrary, it sought to convey the fullest possible picture of life, reproducing its infinite wealth of detail and the unity of its various aspects, and often deliberately exaggerating the contradictions. Whatever its form – whether it be a stage performance or a poem, a novel or an architectural ensemble – a work of Baroque art is always dramatic in spirit and form and always synthetic in nature.
Rocky Stream with an Artist Seated on the Left
c. 1635
Brush drawing in brown wash over graphite red chalk and black chalk, 26.4 × 35.7 cm
Teylers Museum, Haarlem
The general picture is not one of the different arts tending to converge in a common focus, rather that each of the arts, having consolidated its position within its own province, began to expand into the adjoining areas, broadening its sphere of influence and jockeying for dominance in the arts. The result was what seemed a paradoxical situation: there was, so to speak, a struggle for the throne in the realm of culture, and yet there were no losers, for each participant benefited by borrowing from the others, constantly increasing its own chances of dominance. This productive exchange of values carried the arts as a whole to new heights. We should particularly note that the greatest 17th-century writers more often than not chose to convey their ideas in dramatic form, from whence derives the theatricality of Baroque poetry and prose. At the same time, the fine arts went hand-in-hand down the same path as literature.
Landscape with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt
1635–1636
Oil on canvas, 73 × 97.5 cm
Private collection, New York on loan to the Hamburger Kuntshalle
Tree Study
c. 1635
Brush drawing in brown wash with pen and brown ink, 28.9 × 20.5 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris
The classical principle ut pictura poesis retained its significance for both aesthetic and artistic practice; in the sphere of music, there emerged such new dramatic forms as opera and the oratorio, which were of paramount importance for the later development of music; in garden design, we see the dramatisation of Nature itself; and there are strong grounds to speak of a specifically dramatic quality to 17th-century architecture, sculpture, and painting.
The Colosseum
c. 1635–1640
Brush drawing in brown wash, over pen and brown ink and black chalk, 19.2 × 26.2 cm
Teylers Museum, Haarlem
The idea of the close intercourse between and especially the essential homogeneity of the arts was central to the aesthetic doctrine of the period. In 1642, a treatise by Baltasar Gracian, one of the leading theoreticians of the Spanish Baroque, was published. This work, reprinted in 1648 under the title Agudeza y arte de ingenio (The Art of Quick Wit), was innovatory, giving a new direction to aesthetic thought by shifting its focus from Aristotle’s Logic and Poetics to his Rhetoric. The Spanish author strictly differentiated between man’s powers of logical and aesthetic judgement.
View of the Campo Vaccino
1636
Oil on canvas, 56 × 72 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris
The latter is designated by the word gusto, or taste, which is determined by creative intuition capable of grasping the essence of disparate objects of phenomena and establishing affinities between them. “The art of quick wit” was given a theoretical basis in the writings of Gracian’s contemporary, Emmanuelle Tesauro, who was justly called the Boileau of the Baroque. His treatise Il Cannochiale Aristotelico (The Telescope of Aristotle, 1655) contains a systematic exposition of the new principles of poetics.
Trees and Rocks by a Stream
c. 1635
Brush drawing in brown wash, with pen and brown ink heightened with white, 25.2 × 19.3 cm
Teylers Museum, Haarlem
Taking, like Gracian, Aristotle’s Rhetoric as his point of departure, he placed an even stronger emphasis on the independence of Arte Nuova, new art, from any logical schemes, and dwelt at great length on this art’s specific character. Tesauro declared the concetto, ingenious conceit, to be divine, and placed artists capable of it on a level with the Creator, who in turn is thus transformed into an accomplished rhetorician. The art of quick wit uses metaphor as its principal instrument, whereas logic assigns this role to concept.
Landscape with a Goatherd and Goats
c. 1636–1637
Oil on canvas, 52 × 42 cm
National Gallery, London
Hence the basic importance of metaphor and allegory in the poetics of the stile moderno: the theory of art and aesthetics cognition takes on certain features of general rhetoric.
The rhetorical orientation of art and aesthetics in the 17th century is closely bound up with a phenomenon aptly described in more recent literature on the subject as a “mythology explosion”.
The 17th century is essentially the beginning of the end for mythology’s dominant role in artistic subject matter, after holding undisputed sway for several millennia.
The Cowherd
1636
Etching, 12.6 × 19.5 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
And precisely at this crucial point, in a seemingly unfavourable historical and cultural situation, the mythological theme suddenly burst into flower, with an unprecedented growth in its repertory of themes and with an infinite wealth of forms and interpretations. In this respect,