Italian Baroque art

This was subsequently interpreted and expounded by clerical authors such as Molanus, the Flemish theologian, who demanded that paintings and sculptures in church contexts should depict their subjects clearly and powerfully, and with decorum, without the stylistic airs of Mannerism.

Two of the leading figures in the emergence of Baroque painting in Italy were Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci.

Controversially, he not only painted figures, even those of classical or religious themes, in contemporary clothing, or as ordinary living men and women, but his inclusion of the seedier side of life (such as dirty feet) was in marked contrast to the usual trend of the time which was to idealise the religious or classical figure by treating it with the decorum considered appropriate to its status.

There followed a succession of important altarpieces in which the critical lessons of such artists as Correggio, Titian, and Veronese are progressively developed and integrated by Annibale within a unifying concept of naturalistic illusionism, based, in particular, upon an unmannered design that is given optical verisimilitude through the manipulation of pure, saturated colors and the atmospheric effects of light and shadow.

Other influential painters during this early period who influenced the development of Baroque painting included Peter Paul Rubens, Giovanni Lanfranco, Artemesia Gentileschi and Guercino, whilst artists such as Guido Reni[3] and Domenico Zampieri known as Domenichino, pursued a more classical approach.

His baroque manner is clearly evident in paintings that he executed for the Sacchetti family in the 1620s and the vault fresco in the Palazzo Barberini (finished 1639) in Rome.

Prolonged visits to the town were made by artists from other parts of Italy and other countries, including Velázquez, Van Dyck, the French sculptor Pierre Puget, Bernardo Strozzi and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione.

[7] Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) was the leading sculptor of his day and the favorite artist of several popes and their relatives, who gave him important commissions.

Melchiorre Caffà (1635–1667) was the pupil of Ferrata and executed ‘The ecstasy of Saint Catherine’ in S Catherina da Siena a Monte Magnapoli in Rome, before his early death.