DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN BAROQUE AND ROCOCO

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 595.

UNIT 2

III. Translate the following sentences into English.

1. Цей молодий викладач – мій брат.

2. Її дочка вивчає латинь сама.

3. Педіатрія – моя спеціальність, а стоматологія – його.

4. Я швидко вдягнувся, поснідав і пішов до університету.

5. Він знає цих студентів, вони всі з США.

6. Дивно, але вона не любить нічого про себе розповідати.

7. Ти підеш до бібліотеки сам?

8. Якщо ти даш мені свій посібник з хімії сьогодні, я зможу повернути його тобі завтра.

9. Цей студент не робив дослідження сам, викладач допоміг йому.

10. Вони захоплюються спортзалом, бібліотекою та басейном нашого університету.

Warming Up

Quite to the opposite of the Baroque soul, the soul of the Rococo is characterized by lack of austerity that inspires silence and meditation.

The basic theme of silence is vividly portrayed in the range of works going from Caravaggio to Georges de La Tour, for instance in the latter's Magdalene with the Smoking Flame. Another striking example is Magdalene Meditating, an early 17th-century work from the Neapolitan school. Following in the wake of Caravaggio, this school of silence would spread everywhere across Europe.

Claude Meylan's "Salome" provides still another depiction of silence, of the most fundamental of dialogues (that of Life and Death). This work illustrates the repercussions of the message left by Caravaggio, a message of what is intrinsic to man, in a painting that – in the light-and-dark contrasts of grays surrounding the face of Salome – conveys the latter's newly awakened horror at the sacrifice of John the Baptist.

During the Baroque period, this concern with the essence of life is to be found even in works by the more mundane artists. Indeed, among the mundane greats on the Baroque scene, it had become the fashion to adopt an economy of means, in an endeavor to attain a more informal intimacy, to create works of a more confidential tone. This can be seen, for instance, in Guido Reni's "Saint Joseph and Child", a work that, although unclaimed by the contemporary world, did have its hour of glory during the 17th century. And why was this so?

Because, at the time, Reni was far more famous than all the Caravaggios and La Tours of the world, who have since been rediscovered. Reni represented a high point in Baroque art history. Moreover, in this work he allowed himself the luxury of tackling an extremely rare subject. The very strangeness of its subject is what its glory became: instead of portraying Virgin and Child, as was generally the case, it stages Father and Child. Although renowned in particular, for his bright colors and the elegance of his compositions, here Reni nevertheless sought to rein in the methods of his art the better to convey the intrinsic nature of this Father-Child dialogue.

The great aesthetic impact of the Baroque made it felt all the more in works dealing with such serious subject matter as the Christian epic. In this vein, the Piety (Virgin Mary mourning over the dead body of Christ) was one of the major themes to be broached, precisely because, here again, Life and Death are allied. The theme involves a perspective of day and night, corresponding with the light-and-dark philosophic mood marking the entire 17th century.

The Baroque approach to the Piety centered on the theme's dramatic essence, as beautifully illustrated in the work of Andriaen van der Werff, a painter who, notwithstanding his Flemish origin, made a career for himself in Italy. Van der Werff's Piety is entirely in black and blue.

Another stunning example is to be found in the Piety of the Venetian painter Giovanni Battista Piazzetta: the light marking the great arch stretching the corpse in the foreground drives back the dark ness, from where the work's feminine central figure seems to burst forth. Here again, the play of light and shadow translates a fundamental dialogue and, as such, proves itself intrinsically Baroque.