The Baroque and the Modern
F06
Roberto de Lucca
What is the baroque? How do we define modernity in art? Caravaggio is the first Western artist to express attitudes that we identify, for better or for worse, as our own. Versed in later naturalistic painting, it is easy for us to forget how revolutionary Caravaggio’s ironic farewell to the symbols, allegories, and paraphernalia of Renaissance painting really is. Ambivalent sexuality, violent death, and blind faith in divine salvation are some of the contradictory messages and images that pervade his works. How do we read his paintings, and what can they tell us about our present condition? How did his revolution spread to the rest of Europe and come down to us? We will look at another (and better) term that critics use for the order known as “postmodernism”: the “neo-baroque.” How does the baroque extend to us? We will examine a brief cycle of paintings done in Rome before the painter was forced to flee into exile, where he died at age 39. We will learn to read paintings and historic documents from the age of Caravaggio. Conducted in Italian. Intermediate level.