Caravaggio - 17th century Italian painting. Painting of Italy Italy in the 17th century general characteristics

Painting and Graphics To learn to paint, you must first learn to see. Anyone can paint, a camera and a mobile phone are capable of copying, but, as it is considered in painting, “the face of an artist” is difficult to find. Juna left her mark on painting. Her paintings

PAINTING IN SPAIN The art of Spain, like the entire Spanish culture in general, was distinguished by a significant originality, which consists in the fact that the Renaissance in this country, barely reaching the stage of high flowering, immediately entered a period of decline and crisis, which were

PAINTING OF FLANDRIA Flemish art in a sense can be called a unique phenomenon. Never before in history has such a small country, which was also in such a dependent position, created such an original and significant

PAINTING OF THE NETHERLANDS The Dutch revolution turned Holland, according to Karl Marx, “into an exemplary capitalist country of the 17th century”. The conquest of national independence, the destruction of feudal remnants, the rapid development of productive forces and trade

PAINTING OF FRANCE In the 17th century France occupied a special place among the advanced European countries in the field of artistic creativity. In the division of labor among the national schools of European painting in solving genre, thematic, spiritual and formal tasks for France

Baroque (artsy, bizarre) - a style that developed in the 17th and 1st half of the 18th centuries. In the art of a number of European countries, mainly in Italy, as well as in Spain, Germany, France.

Baroque art is characterized by grandeur, splendor and dynamics, pathetic elation, intensity of feelings, an addiction to spectacular spectacles, strong contrasts of scales and rhythms, materials and textures, light and shadow. The palaces and churches of Bulgaria, thanks to the luxurious, whimsical plasticity of the facades, the restless play of chiaroscuro, complex curvilinear plans and outlines, acquired picturesque and dynamism, merging into the surrounding space.

The domes acquire complex shapes, they are often multi-tiered, like those of St. Peter's in Rome. The characteristic details of the Baroque are the Atlanteans, Caryatids, and Mascarons. The ceremonial interiors of the buildings were decorated with multicolored moldings and carvings; mirrors and paintings of walls and plafonds illusoryly expanded the space. A combination of contrasting colors, rich color palettes (from emerald to burgundy). A popular combination is white and gold. Lines - convex-concave asymmetrical pattern; in the forms of a semicircle, rectangle, oval; vertical lines of columns; pronounced horizontal division. General symmetry. Exaggerated luxury, an abundance of murals, ornate furniture, decorated with stucco, inlay. Every corner of the interior is richly decorated.

Decorative compositions of a religious, mythological and allegorical nature prevail in the visual arts. In painting - emotions, the unconstrained freedom of stroke, in sculpture - the pictorial fluidity of form, a sense of change. The famous master - architect and sculptor Bernini. In painting, the features of the Baroque were manifested in the work of Tiepolo, Rubens.

Russian Baroque developed in the first half of the 18th century, mainly in the architecture of Rastrelli and masters close to him. Shining examples are the ensembles of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, the Catherine's Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, sculptural works of Rastrelli the father (Monument to Peter I, a portrait of Menshikov, "Anna Ioannovna with a little arapchon").

Baroque architecture

Carlo Maderna - one of the founders of the Italian Baroque, a prominent representative of the Baroque in Italy. The main creation is the facade of the Roman Church of Santa Susanna (1603).

Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini - the great Italian architect and sculptor, the largest representative of the Roman and all Italian Baroque. His work is considered to be the standard of baroque aesthetics. Bernini's most famous work is St. Peter's Square and Cathedral in Rome. The square is framed by semicircular colonnades of the Tuscan order designed by Bernini, which, in combination with the cathedral, form the symbolic shape of the "Key of St. Peter". In the middle is an Egyptian obelisk.

St. Peter's Square in Rome

Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli - the famous Russian architect of Italian origin, academician of architecture. Two of his most famous works are the Smolny Monastery ensemble and the Winter Palace with its famous Jordan Staircase. Famous Kiev projects of Rastrelli are the Mariinsky Palace and St. Andrew's Church in Kiev. Built by order of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna under the leadership of I.F. Michurin.

Baroque was the dominant style of 17th century Italian art, primarily in architecture and sculpture. But along with it there was a realistic trend, which found its fullest expression in the works of the artist Caravaggio, who had a tremendous impact on the development of all realistic painting in Europe.

Baroque painting.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1573-1610)

"Young man with a lute". A violin, notes, fruits are on the table in front of him. All these objects are painted with honed skill in their dense roundness, materiality, tangibility. Chiaroscuro the face and figure are glorified, the dark background emphasizes the saturation of the forward light tones, the objectivity of everything presented. Caravaggio claims the superiority of direct reproduction of life. He opposes the morbid grace of the still widespread mannerism and the pathetics of the developing Baroque to the simplicity and naturalness of everyday life. Generalizing the forms, revealing the essential, he endows the simplest objects with significance and monumentality. Caravaggio's compositions with figures cut to the waist are precisely constructed, they have a strict regularity, integrity, isolation, bringing Caravaggio closer to the masters of the Renaissance. This gives monumentality and significance not only to his everyday life, but also to religious scenes, such as, for example, "The Disbelief of Thomas."

"Young man with a lute"

Caravaggio boldly interprets religious images, without fear of rudeness and harshness, giving them features of similarity with the common people. He finds his heroes among fishermen, artisans, soldiers - whole people, endowed with strength of character. With sharp contrasts of light and shade, he enhances the powerful, almost plastic modeling of forms, bringing the figures closer to the foreground of the picture, showing them in complex angles, emphasizing their significance and monumentality.

The composition "The Calling of the Apostle Matthew" is resolved as a genre scene - which depicts two young men in costumes fashionable at that time, looking with curiosity at the incoming Christ. Matthew turned his gaze to Christ, while the third youth, without raising his head, continues to count the money. A bright ray of light, penetrating the open door, pulls out living, highly characteristic figures from the darkness of the room. The black-and-white solution contributes not only to the identification of the volumes of forms, but also enhances the dramatic effectiveness, emotionality of the image.

Saints and great martyrs appear as strong, full-blooded people in the works of Caravaggio: the simple-minded rude Matthew, the stern, inspired Peter and Paul. There is nothing unusual in their plastic-tangible figures. Most of the composition "The Conversion of Paul" is occupied by the image of a horse, under the hooves of which one can see the figure of the prostrate young Paul, illuminated by a bright light, presented from an unusually complex perspective. Using optical effects, the artist achieves monumentality and strength of the overall solution.

In the later works of Caravaggio, the drama of the worldview is enhanced. The unity and intensity of action, mood, completeness and uniqueness of compositional constructions, the amazing power of chiaroscuro modeling give them the character of real scenes, full of great feelings and thoughts. From picture to picture, the tragic power of Caravaggio's images grows. In the painting "Laying in the Tomb" against a deep dark background, a closely-knit group of people close to Christ stands out with a bright light, lowering his body into the grave. They are rude and restrained in their feelings, but the movement of each is marked by a special concentration. And only Mary's hands, raised in a pathetic fit of despair, set off the harsh sorrow of the other characters, contrasting with the oppressive weight of the lifeless body of Christ. The tombstone, at the edge of which the carriers of the body stopped, emphasizes the solidity of the entire group. The view from below enhances the impression of grandeur.

The artist achieves tremendous emotionality in the composition "The Assumption of Mary", the captivating sincerity of the experiences that are expressed in the postures, gestures, and faces of the sorrowful disciples of Christ who surrounded the bed of the deceased. Everything here is subordinated to the expression of the woeful consciousness of the tragedy of life, the inevitability of its end. In essence, these are images of courageous people from the people, endowed with depth of perception, significance and, at the same time, the spontaneity of expression of complex mental movements. The sharpness of observation in the characterization of each character is combined with monumental laconism and tragic grandeur.

The impact of Caravaggio's work on the development of realism in European art was enormous. In Italy itself, there were many of his followers, who were called caravaggists. But his influence outside Italy was even more significant. Not a single major painter of that time passed by the passion for caravaggism, which was an important stage on the path of European realistic art.

The main features of 17th century art. The attraction of the baroque masters to grandiose dimensions, complex forms, monumental elevation, pathos is the search for means that enhance the effectiveness of the images created. Hence the idealization of imaginative solutions, dramatization of plots, increased emotionality, hyperbolicity, colorful irrationality, exaggeration of naturalistic effects, an abundance and richness of accessories and details, the use of complex angles, light and color contrasts designed to create a deceptive impression of "living pictures". In the baroque synthesis of the arts, sculpture and painting are subject to architecture, being in constant interaction with it. Colorful paintings adorn domes, shades and walls, create the illusion of an immense space. Sculpture full of dynamics is picturesque and inseparable from architecture. The creators of extensive architectural and decorative ensembles include in their composition and nature, transformed by the hand of man. They combine squares and streets adjacent to the most representative buildings, colonnades, terraces, sculptures, fountains and cascades. The striving for wide coverage of reality in art is traced.

Baroque Baroque - from "strange, bizarre" - the style of art in Europe and America of the late 16th-mid-18th centuries. Associated with the noble-church architecture of mature absolutism. Gravitates towards the solemn "big style". B. is characterized by contrast, tension, dynamism of images, striving for grandeur and splendor, combining reality and illusion, and fusion of various types of arts. Bolivia's architecture is characterized by a spatial scope, cohesion, and fluidity of complex, usually curvilinear forms. For sculpture and painting - spectacular decorative compositions, ceremonial portraits. B.'s representatives - P. Rubens, V. Rastrelli, P. Calderon, T. Tasso, A. van Dyck, F. Borromini.

The Carracci brothers. Carracci, a family of Italian painters from Bologna in the early 17th century, the founders of academicism in European painting. At the turn of the 16th - 17th centuries in Italy, as a reaction to Mannerism, an academic direction in painting took shape. Its main principles were laid by the Carracci brothers - Lodovico (1555-1619), Agostino (1557-1602) and Annibale (1560-1609). They strove for widespread use of the Renaissance heritage, while calling for the study of nature. Standing at the origins of 17th century Italian painting, they largely determine its character. The activities of these masters, which marked a turning point in the development of Italian art, received a great resonance in European artistic circles, which was also favored by the fact that since the 90s of the 16th century both the brothers Carracci and Caravaggio worked in Rome.

GIOVANNI LORENZO BERNINI Date of birth: December 7, 1598 (1598 -1207) Place of birth: Naples Date of death: November 28, 1680 (1680 -11 -28) (81 years old) Place of death: Rome Nationality: Italy Genre: sculpture, architecture Style: Baroque

"Ecstasy of Saint Teresa"

FRANCESCO BORROMINI Date of birth 25 September 1599 (159909 -25) Place of birth Bissone, Ticino Date of death 2 August 1667 (1667 -08 -02) (67 years old) Place of death Rome Baroque architectural style

Caravaggio Michelo ngelo Merisi de Caravaggio (Italian. Michelangelo Merisi de Caravaggio; September 28, 1573, Milan - July 18, 1610, Grosseto [source not specified 123 days], Tuscany) - Italian artist, reformer of European painting of the XVII century, one of the greatest masters baroque. There are no religious plots, there are real themes and images, "a man from the crowd" Shows the objective world, life situations, diversity and richness The viewer's empathy with the picture: the viewer is a participant in the action. Fragment The image of the Saint was portrayed as truly earthly Distribution of incident light: theatrical light, ramp lighting, beam lighting: dark background, one-sided selective lighting The use of bedspreads - "antique anave" - \u200b\u200bheavy, draped fabrics. Local red color Problem of life and death Beautiful and ugly

"The Calling of the Apostle Matthew"

"Madonna Rosario" 1607.

Rubens Peter Paul 1577, Siegen, Germany - 1640, Antwerp. Flemish painter, draftsman. Head of the Flemish School of Baroque Painting. The spirit of life-affirming optimism distinguishes Rubens's paintings on ancient themes with their solemn rhythm, grandeur and full-blooded images, sometimes endowed with an overweight corporeality. The creative range of Rubens is huge, turning to the themes of the Old and New Testaments, to the depiction of saints, to ancient mythology and historical subjects, to allegory, genre, portraiture, and landscape. His art, endowed with a lively and powerful sense of nature and inexhaustible imagination, is rich in plot motives, unfolded dramatization of action, a variety of compositional solutions, an abundance of figures and accessories, intensity of feelings and pathetics of gestures. Based on the high concept of Renaissance humanism about man, Rubens captures his heroes, far from classical ideals, in increased physical and spiritual stress. The feeling of the eternal element of nature is subordinated in his works to the generalizing idea of \u200b\u200bthe unity of the immense world, the clarity of the plastic imagination. Rethinking the artistic experience of the past in line with the system of baroque art, the master creates a unique world of images in which the features of conventionality and external exaltation inherent in the baroque recede before the powerful pressure of living reality. In search of the heroization of the image, overflowing energy, the struggle of opposing forces, the artist is at stake. 1610s broadly and diversely conveys the dynamics of movement, violating the classical principle of closed space in the composition.

Anthony Van Dyck March 22, 1599 - December 9, 1641) - South Netherlandish (Flemish) painter and graphic artist, master of court portraits and religious subjects in the Baroque style. Anthony van Dyck remained committed to Flemish realism. In his best works - in portraits of people of different classes, social levels, different in mental and intellectual disposition - he correctly found individual similarities and penetrated into the inner spiritual essence of the model. Typical images of Van Dyck give an idea of \u200b\u200bthe character of an entire era in European history. In portrait painting, he created a type of brilliant aristocratic portrait, the image of a refined, intellectual, noble person born of an aristocratic culture, refined and fragile. Van Dyck's heroes are people with delicate features, with a touch of melancholy, and sometimes even hidden sadness, dreaminess. They are graceful, well-mannered, full of calm confidence and a sense of independence, and at the same time mentally inert; these are not knights, but cavaliers, courtly secular people or people of refined intellect who attract with spiritual aristocracy. He created complex compositions with decorative backgrounds and motives of landscape and architecture. The elongated proportions, the pride of the pose, the ostentatiousness of the gesture, the spectacularity of the falling folds of the clothes enhanced the imposing images. Acquaintance with the painting of the Venetians brought richness, richness of shades, restrained harmony to his palette. The gesture and costume set off the character of the subject. The artist painted portraits of the royal family, polished courtiers, often hiding the inner emptiness behind the elegance of their appearance. The composition of the portraits became complicated, decorative, the colorful range - cold bluish-silver.

Snyders France (1579-1657) Flemish painter. The largest Flemish still life and animal painter. Frans Snyders is called "Rubens of Still Life", so vivid is his contribution to the tradition of this genre of Flemish painting. Monumental canvases depicting meat, fish, vegetable and fruit shops brought great fame to the artist. These large decorative works, created to decorate the ceremonial palace interiors, embodied the spirit of the Flemish Baroque. Snyders was a wonderful animal painter, he created hunting scenes, animalistic sketches, introduced images of pets into his "shops" and "kitchens". Snyders' works were very popular among the Flemish and Spanish nobility.

Jacob Jordaens Jordaens, Jordaens Jacob (1593 -1678), Flemish painter who painted pictures of religious, historical, mythological, allegorical content, as well as genre paintings with life-size figures and portraits. Born in Antwerp on May 19, 1593 in the family of a cloth merchant. Bright sensual perception of life, optimism, powerful molding of forms. Jordaens' painting is extremely colorful, the body of the figures breathes health and freshness, especially of women; the movements of the characters in the paintings are strong and impetuous. In the paintings of Jordaens, as in the works of Rubens, there is more power and energy than the beauty of form and grace. The composition of the Flemish artist's paintings is free and rich, the execution is also free and fast. In the early works of Jordaens, with emphasized materiality of objects, contrasting chiaroscuro, plebeian specificity of figures grouped in the foreground. Features of his artistic language: addiction to full-blooded peasant and burgher types, heavy and strong figures, juicy details, a tendency to genre interpretation of mythological and religious themes, dense energetic painting with a predominance of softly nuanced warm tones.

"Bean King"

Jusepe Ribera (1591 -1652) Spanish (by birth) painter and printmaker. Follower of the Italian master Michelangelo de Caravaggio, a representative of the realistic trend in European painting of the 17th century. He received his art education in Valencia and Rome. He spent most of his life in Naples, where he became the court painter of the Spanish viceroys. He created pictures on biblical and evangelical subjects, wrote scenes from the lives of saints, paying special attention to the themes of hermitism and full of drama scenes of martyrdom. He created the series "Apostles" and "Beggar Philosophers", painted portraits, paintings on ancient subjects, genre scenes. During his lifetime he was extremely popular, enjoyed the patronage of the Spanish king. Ribera is one of the most important painters of the Baroque era. His work belongs to both Italian and Spanish art, since his style, rich and complex, became the starting point in the development of the Neapolitan school, and thanks to the numerous works brought to Spain, he had a huge influence on most Spanish artists.

Diego Rodriguez de Silva Velazquez (1599-1660) The portraits created by Velazquez in the years 1630-1640 brought him the well-deserved fame of the master of this genre. Although Velazquez's portraits are usually devoid of gesture and movement, they are unusually realistic and natural. The background is chosen so as to shade the figure as much as possible, the color scheme is strict, but enlivened by carefully selected color combinations. Velazquez managed to convey the character of a person in a portrait, to show the inconsistency of his character traits. The most famous are the portraits of Don Juan Mateos (1632), General Olivares (1633), the equestrian portrait of King Philip III (1635), Pope Innocent X (1648), as well as a series of portraits of dwarfs and jesters (Los truhanes). Portraits of the late period of Velazquez's work are largely characterized by artistry and psychological completeness (Infanta Maria Teresa, 1651; Philip IV, 1655-1656; Infanta Margaret of Austria, circa 1660).

Velazquez's true crown jewels are two of his works in the Prado, Meninas (1656) and Spinners (c. 1657). The painting "Meninas" (in Portuguese - menina - a young aristocratic girl who was a maid of honor for the Spanish Infants, therefore the painting is also called "Maids of honor" or "Ladies of the Court") takes us into the gloomy atmosphere of a spacious palace room. For the first time in the history of painting, Velazquez shows the life of the royal court in everyday life, reveals to the viewer its everyday life, like a backstage life. The whole picture is built on a complex dialectic of lowering the official greatness and raising the real. Although the Meninas combine the features of everyday painting and group portrait, the work goes beyond these genres.

Chapter “Art of Italy. Painting". Section "Art of the 17th century". General History of Art. Volume IV. Art of the 17th-18th centuries. Author: V.N. Grashchenkov; edited by Yu.D. Kolpinsky and E.I. Rotenberg (Moscow, State Publishing House "Art", 1963)

Mannerist painting was one of the manifestations of the crisis of Renaissance humanism, the product of its collapse under the onslaught of the feudal-Catholic reaction, which, however, was powerless to return Italy to the Middle Ages. The traditions of the Renaissance have retained their vital significance for both materialistic science and art. The ruling elite, not content with the decadent art of Mannerism, tried to use the Renaissance traditions for their own purposes. On the other hand, the heirs of the Renaissance are broader democratic circles opposed to the domination of the nobility and the church. So by the end of the 16th century. defines two ways of overcoming Mannerism and solving new artistic problems: the academicism of the Carracci brothers and the realism of Caravaggio.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1573-1610) is one of the greatest masters of European realism. He was the first to define the principles of the new realistic art of the 17th century. In this respect, Caravaggio was in many ways the true heir of the Renaissance, despite the harshness with which he subverted classical traditions. His rebellious art indirectly reflected the hostile attitude of the plebeian masses to the church-aristocratic culture.

Few information about the life of Caravaggio paint him as a man of stormy temperament, rude, courageous and independent. His whole short life was spent in wanderings and privations. A native of the small Lombard town of Caravaggio, the son of a local architect, he was still a boy (1584-1588) trained in the workshop of a minor Milanese mannerist Simone Peterzano. Having moved to Rome around 1590 (there is an assumption that he had already been there before), Caravaggio at first eked out the miserable existence of a painter-craftsman, helping other masters in the work. Only the patronage of Cardinal del Monte and other titled amateurs helped the artist sell his first paintings, and then receive several large orders that brought him quick but scandalous fame.

The revolutionary courage with which he interpreted religious images provoked sharp attacks from representatives of the clergy and official art. The fiery, quarrelsome nature of the artist, his reckless bohemian life also served as a pretext for constant clashes with others, which often ended in a fight, a duel or a blow of a sword. For this, he was repeatedly prosecuted and imprisoned. In 1606, Caravaggio, in a quarrel that broke out during a ball game, killed his opponent and fled from Rome. Finding himself in Naples, he went from there in search of work to Malta, where, after staying for a year (1607-1608), he was admitted to the order thanks to the patronage of the grand master, whose portrait he painted. However, for a gross insult to one of the leaders of the order, Caravaggio was thrown into prison, escaped from it and worked for some time in the cities of Sicily and again in Naples (1608-1609). In the hope of the Pope's forgiveness, he went by sea to Rome. Mistakenly arrested by the Spanish border guards, robbed by carriers, the artist falls ill with malaria and dies in Porto Ercole in 1610, thirty-six years old.

Freedom-loving independence in life helped Caravaggio to become exclusively original in art. The burden of tradition did not weigh on him; he boldly drew his images from life. At the same time, Caravaggio's connection with the masters of the Brescian school (Savoldo, Moretto, Moroni), Venice (Lotto, J. Bassano) and Lombardy (the Campi brothers) is obvious, with whose works he met in his youth, before coming to Rome. It is these Northern Italian origins that help explain the origins of many of the features of Caravaggio's art.

The essence of the artistic reform of Caravaggio consisted primarily in a realistic appeal to nature, which, in contrast to the idealistic attitudes of Mannerism and the emerging academicism, is recognized by him as the only source of creativity. Caravaggio understands "nature" as an object of direct reflection in art. This is an important step towards the development of the realistic method. In his painting, everyday life and still life appear as independent genres, and traditional religious or mythological subjects are sometimes interpreted in a purely genre sense.

From all this, however, it does not follow that Caravaggio blindly copied nature. The accusation of naturalism on Caravaggio, which has always emanated from the camp of opponents of realistic art, is deeply false. Even in his early works, he was able to clothe depicted nature in generalized, monumental forms. Later, contrasting chiaroscuro ("tenebroso") acquired great importance for him, serving not only for the relief selection of volumes, but also for the emotional enhancement of images and for achieving a natural unity of the composition. The problem of chiaroscuro in Caravaggio is inextricably linked with his further search for coloristic and tonal unification of all parts of the picture. The apparent freedom and randomness in the compositional construction of the painting, deliberately opposed to the cult of beautiful "composition" among the epigones of Renaissance art, also have great artistic activity.

Already the early works, of the first half of the 1590s, testify to the young master's keen interest in a real person, in the world of inanimate things around him (the so-called "Sick Bacchus" and "Boy with a Basket of Fruit" in the Borghese Gallery, Rome; "Boy bitten by a lizard "in the collection of R. Longhi in Florence and" Bacchus "in the Uffizi). Simple and naive, they amaze with the power with which Caravaggio asserts the objective materiality of the existence of his images. This emphasized objectivity, still life is inherent in most of his early paintings. No wonder he was the creator of one of the first still lifes in European painting ("Basket with Fruit", 1596; Milan, Ambrosiana). The painting style of early Caravaggio is distinguished by the firmness of the contours, the minted volumes, the sharp comparison of various colors, dark and light spots. His small canvases, painted with loving care and almost tangible accuracy of details, he fills with just one half-figure (later two or three), defiantly moving it towards the viewer and forcing him to stare at her intently and unhurriedly.

From the very first steps of his work, Caravaggio turns to the depiction of everyday scenes. He confidently proclaims his right to portray life as he sees it. Once invited to look at antique statues, he remained indifferent and, pointing to a lot of people around, said that nature is his best teacher. And to prove his words, he invited a passing gypsy woman into the workshop and portrayed her predicting fate to one young man. This is what the biographer (Bellory) tells about Caravaggio's The Fortune Teller (c. 1595; Louvre).

The artist finds themes for paintings on the street, in suspicious taverns (The Players, 1594-1595; from the Chiarra collection in Rome), in the midst of gay bohemians, especially often depicting musicians. He considered his "Lute Player" (c. 1595; Hermitage) to be the best of his paintings. Close to her "Music" (c. 1595; New York, Metropolitan Museum) can be ranked among the masterpieces of the master. The subtle spirituality of the images, the perfection of the pictorial performance once again refute the inventions about the soulless naturalism of Caravaggio.

Soon (in the second half of the 1590s) Caravaggio transferred the realistic techniques of everyday painting to religious subjects. These are "The Penitent Magdalene" (Rome, Doria Pamphilj Gallery) and "The Disbelief of Thomas" (Potsdam), known only in copies, as well as "The Taking of Christ into Custody" (possibly the original master; Odessa, Museum) and "Christ in Emmaus "(London, National Gallery). Interpreted as something extremely vital and grossly real, they sometimes carry great dramatic expressiveness.

The mature period of Caravaggio's work was marked by the search for a monumental style in connection with the execution of two cycles of paintings for the Roman churches of San Luigi dei Francesi (1598-1601) and Santa Maria del Popolo (1601). He portrays sacred events simply, truthfully, and most importantly, emphatically everyday, as something he saw in everyday life, which caused a sharp dissatisfaction with customers.

One of the paintings, "The Apostle Matthew with an Angel" (Berlin; died in 1945), was completely rejected, because, according to Bellory, “this figure had neither the decency nor the appearance of a saint, depicted sitting with his legs crossed, with feet roughly exposed. " Caravaggio had to replace his painting with a more "decent" one from the point of view of the church. But in other images of these cycles there is little religious piety.

The Calling of the Apostle Matthew (San Luigi dei Francesi), one of Caravaggio's finest works, is conceived like a genre scene. A group of people sat around the table in a dim room; one of them, Matthew, is addressed by the entered Christ. Matthew, apparently, does not quite understand what they want from him, two young men in smart jackets and hats are looking at strangers with surprise and curiosity, two others did not even raise their heads, busy counting money (according to legend, Matthew was a tax collector). A sheaf of light falls from the door opened by unexpected strangers, picturesquely picking out people's faces in the dimness of the room. This whole scene is full of genuine vitality, leaving no room for mystical feeling.

In The Calling of Matthew, Caravaggio overcomes the former excessive rigidity and constraint of images, his realistic language achieves great freedom and expressiveness. The figures are vividly located in space, their poses and gestures are rich in variety, subtle shades of emotions. Chiaroscuro contributes to the dramatic unity of the entire scene. For the first time, the interior is understood as a space saturated with light and air, as a certain emotional environment that surrounds a person.

The task of the monumental expressiveness of the image is solved in a different way by Caravaggio in two paintings from the life of the apostles Peter and Paul in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo. There is nothing heroic about his Crucifixion of Peter. The apostle is a courageous old man with a plebeian physiognomy. Nailed to the cross upside down, he painfully tries to rise up, while the three executioners forcefully turn the cross with their victim. Huge shapes fill the entire canvas. The apostle's legs protruding in the foreground rest against the edge of the canvas; the executioners, in order to straighten up, must go beyond the frame. With this technique, Caravaggio perfectly conveys the dramatic tension of the scene. Even more unusual is the composition "The Conversion of Paul". The entire space of the picture is occupied by the image of a horse, under whose hooves, illuminated by a bright light, the figure of the fallen Paul is spread.

The pinnacle of Caravaggio's art was two monumental paintings: The Entombment (1602; Vatican Pinakothek) and The Assumption of Mary (1605-1606; Louvre). The latter, intended for the Roman church of Santa Maria della Scala, was not accepted by the customers because of the realism with which the artist depicted the death of the Mother of God.

The tragic theme "Entombment" was solved by the master with great strength and noble restraint. The composition of the picture is based on the sequential development of the rhythms of the leaning figures. Only the pathetic gesture of Magdalene's thrown up arms breaks the mournful silence of the group. The images are full of tremendous inner tension, conveyed in the slow movement of the heavily lowered body of Christ, in the sound of rich colors. In the image of the dead Christ, Caravaggio strove to embody the idea of \u200b\u200bheroic death. Particularly expressive is the movement of Christ's lifeless hand, repeated later by David in his Marat. With an almost sculptural solidity, the entire group is placed on a tombstone shifted forward. With this, Caravaggio puts the viewer in close proximity to what is happening, as if at the edge of a blackened grave under a slab.

The Assumption of Mary is presented as a true life drama. In contrast to traditional iconography, which interprets this topic as the mystical ascension of Mary to heaven, Caravaggio depicted the death of an ordinary woman mourned by loved ones. The old bearded apostles innocently express their grief: some are frozen in silent sorrow, others are crying. In deep thought, young John stands at the head of Mary. But the true personification of grief is the figure of Magdalene, sadly bent over, burying her face in her palm - there is so much direct feeling and, at the same time, tragic greatness. So the common people images of Caravaggio spoke in the sublime language of great human feelings and experiences. And if earlier the master, in his approach to nature, to life, saw a means of debunking the ideals of official art alien to him, now he has found in this life truth his own ideal of high humanism. Caravaggio wants to oppose the official church art with his plebeian, but sincere feeling. And then, together with the "Assumption of Mary", the "Madonna of the Pilgrims" (c. 1605; Rome, Church of Sant'Agostino), "Madonna of the Rosary" (1605; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) appeared, and later, shortly before her death, - a touching Adoration of the Shepherds (1609; Messina, National Museum).

Ideological loneliness, constant clashes with church customers, everyday hardships sharply intensify the tragic intonations in Caravaggio's later work. They break through in the deliberate cruelty of "The Flagellation of Christ" (1607; Naples, Church of San Domenico Maggiore), then in the exaggerated randomness of the composition "Seven Acts of Mercy" (1607; Naples, Church of Pio Monte della Misericordia), where the movements of the figures are similar to the earlier "The Martyrdom of the Apostle Matthew" from San Luigi dei Francesi, is rapidly directed from the center in all directions outside the picture.

In these painful searches for new forms of dramatic expression, which, it would seem, were ready to open the way of baroque painting, Caravaggio again comes to the art of unadorned life truth. His last works, written in haste, during his incessant wanderings in southern Italy, are poorly preserved. But even blackened and spoiled, having lost much in their coloristic virtues, they make a very strong impression. In The Beheading of John the Baptist (1608; Malta, La Valetta, Cathedral), in The Burial of St. Lucia "(1608; Syracuse, Church of Santa Lucia), in" The Resurrection of Lazarus "(1609; Messina, National Museum), the artist refuses any kind of deliberate construction. The figures are freely located in a vast space, the boundaries of which are barely guessed in the twilight. Bright light unevenly snatches out of the darkness separate parts of figures, faces, objects. And in this struggle of light and darkness, a feeling of such intense tragedy is born, which cannot be found in all the previous works of the master. Limited and naive in his first works, Caravaggio's realism finds remarkable artistic and spiritual maturity in his last canvases.

Caravaggio's work was of great historical importance for all European art of the 17th century. His artistic method, despite its inherent features of some limitations, paved the way for the further development of realistic art.

Caravaggio's contemporaries, adherents of "high" art, unanimously resented his realism. They considered his works as crude, devoid of a lofty idea, grace, and the artist himself was called "the destroyer of art." Nevertheless, many painters joined Caravaggio, who formed a whole direction called caravaggism, and his influence even spread to representatives of groups hostile to caravaggism. The numerous school of Caravaggio in Italy is mainly characterized by external imitation of plots, type and style of the master. His contrasting gloomy chiaroscuro was especially successful. Artists are very sophisticated in painting with sharp night lighting effects; one of the Dutch caravaggists who lived in Italy, Gerard Honthorst, even received the nickname Gerardo delle Notti ("Gerardo of the night").

Most of the Italian caravaggists are artists who lived with a glimpse of the glory of the great master. But some of them deserve special attention. The Mantuanian Bartolomeo Manfredi (c. 1580-1620 / 21), who worked in Rome in the second decade of the 17th century, strove to directly imitate Caravaggio's early style. He uses similar genre plots and characters, treating religious themes in an emphatically everyday way. To Manfredi were close Valentin, a native of France, although Italian in origin, and Dirk van Baburen from Utrecht, who were in Rome at the same time. Two other Utrecht masters, Hendrik Terbruggen (in Rome from 1604 to 1614) and the already mentioned Honthorst (in Rome from 1610 to 1621), were very strongly influenced by the Roman works of Caravaggio. The Tuscan Orazio Gentileschi (1565-1639) also proceeded from the early Caravaggio, gravitating, however, towards a more idyllic rendering of images and towards a colder, lightened color. In his best works, warmed by warm lyricism ("The Lute Player", Vienna, Liechtenstein gallery; "Rest on the Flight to Egypt", circa 1626, Louvre), Gentileschi is drawn by a very outstanding artist. But often in his paintings, especially those painted after moving to England (1626), there are strong tendencies towards mannered idealization of images. The Sicilian Orazio Borgianni (c. 1578-1616) visited Spain in his youth and created works imbued with an ardent religious feeling; he was a completely independent master and only partially came into contact with the artistic principles of caravaggism, carried away by the luscious chiaroscuro, more picturesque than that of other Roman artists. The Venetian Carlo Saraceni (c. 1580-1620), who was originally strongly influenced by Adam Elstheimer, from whom he inherited his style of painting with small strokes, love for small-format paintings and mastery of living narration, then showed himself as an original interpreter of the ideas of Roman caravaggism in the field landscape painting ("The Fall of Icarus" and "Burial of Icarus by Daedalus" in the Capodimonte Museum of Naples).

But the most interesting master among the Roman caravaggists was Giovanni Serodine (1600-1630). Originally from Northern Italy, as a fifteen-year-old boy he finds himself in Rome, where, having gone through an external passion for caravaggism, he quickly develops his own style. While retaining the plebeian strength and simplicity of Caravaggio's images, their true democracy ("Distribution of alms by St. Lawrence", 1625; Sermonte, monastery), he at the same time takes a step forward in solving purely coloristic problems. Serodine paints with strong pasty strokes, the rapid movement of which gives his images a dramatic tension; light and color form an organic pictorial unity for him ("Portrait of a Father", 1628; Lugano, Museum). In this respect, Serodine is ahead of all his Roman companions, drawing closer to Fetti and Strozzi.

The influence of Caravaggio, mainly of his late, "dark" manner, on the masters of the Neapolitan school of the first half of the 17th century, turned out to be fruitful. - Giovanni Battista Caracciollo, nicknamed Battistello (c. 1570-1637),

Massimo Stanzione (1586-1656) and Bernardo Cavadlino (1616-1656); The work of the outstanding Spanish painter Jusepe Ribera was also associated with the Neapolitan caravaggists.

By 1620, caravaggism both in Rome and in Naples had already exhausted its possibilities and began to quickly dissolve in the academic-baroque directions, although echoes of caravaggism can be traced in the work of many Italian painters up to the end of the 17th century.

Despite the fact that caravaggism was unable to maintain its position and was relatively soon pushed into the background of the artistic life of Italy, the interest he aroused in the "base" genre persisted even in Rome itself, where art seemed to have reigned supreme since the 1630s. baroque. There, among visiting Dutch artists, a whole movement of genre painting arose, whose representatives were called "bamboccianti" after the name of the Harlem artist Peter van Lara, who worked in Rome (from 1625 to 1639), nicknamed Bamboccio in Italy. These genre painters, most of whom were Dutch, but there were also Italians (Michelangelo Cherkvozzi, 1602-1660; Viviano Codazzi, 1611-1672), in their small paintings depicted unassuming street scenes, the life of the urban and rural poor. One of the critics of the time called them the "open window" artists. The traditions of this modest trend, which enjoyed constant success, paved the way for a new rise in the genre of genre, already in purely Italian forms in the first half of the 18th century. Not without the influence of the Dutch, still life painting developed in Naples and in Northern Italy, the first example of which was given by Caravaggio.

Caravaggio's innovative art resonated deeply outside Italy. Initially, its impact was of the same outwardly imitative character as in Italy itself. Young Flemish, Dutch, French and Spanish artists who lived in Italy for a long time were fond of Caravaggio's paintings and tried to follow him. But it was not these imitators who determined the fate of European caravaggism. The new trend has widely captured many painters, often who have never been to Italy. It is characteristic that all the major artists of the 17th century. to one degree or another paid tribute to caravadjism. We find traces of this passion in the early works of Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Velasquez, Ribera and the Le Nain brothers.

The reason for such an exceptional popularity of the ideas of caravaggism lies in the fact that the historical tendencies towards realism that existed in various national schools, in their struggle with mannerism and its variety - Romanism - were able at first to rely on a harmonious, albeit limited, realistic system developed by Caravaggio. In many countries, caravaggism very soon acquired a very definite national imprint. Therefore, it is more correct to consider European caravaggism not so much as a consequence of the direct influence of Caravaggio's art, but as a natural Stage, as an early form in the general development of European realistic painting of the 17th century.

Along with the realistic art of Caravaggio at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. another great artistic phenomenon appears - Bologna academicism. Its emergence is closely related to general cultural changes that determined the formation of a new artistic style of the Baroque in architecture, sculpture and painting.

The task of updating the painting was undertaken by the Bolognese artists Lodovico Carracci (1555-1619) and his cousins \u200b\u200bAgostino (1557-1602) and Annibale (1560-1609) Carracci. In their struggle with Mannerism, the Carracci brothers tried to use the Renaissance heritage, which they perceived as an ideal, as the highest limit for the development of art. Realizing the futility of manneristic epigonism, they wanted to create a more creative and vital system. Recognizing the imitation of classical models as necessary, they paid great attention to the study of nature. However, Carracci and their followers deliberately draw a sharp line between the artistic ideal and reality. In their view, “nature” is too coarse and requires obligatory processing and refinement in accordance with the canonical concepts of ideal beauty and grace. Carracci believed that "good" painting (or, as they said at the time, "great style") should be based on borrowing the best qualities from the outstanding masters of the Renaissance. This inevitably left an imprint of excessive rationality and superficial eclecticism on their art.

For the widespread propaganda of their ideas, Carracci founded in Bologna in 1585 the so-called "Academy for the True Path" ("Academia degli Incamminati"), which was the prototype of the later art academies. In fact, the Academy of the Carracci brothers was very far from what we usually understand by this word. It was just a private workshop where painters were trained and improved according to a special program. The Academy brought together a very small number of artists and did not last long. An artistic organization like this was not new. And before Carracci and after, many academies were created, for example, the Florentine Academy of Drawing, which arose in 1563 on the initiative of Vasari, or the Roman Academy of St. Luke, created in 1593 by the famous Mannerist Federigo Zuccari. However, Carracci's predecessors and contemporaries usually limited themselves to publishing declarative programs and discussing abstract theoretical issues that were so abundant in numerous treatises of the second half of the 16th century.

The historical significance of the Academy of the Carracci brothers lies in the fact that they were the first to practically create an art school with a developed curriculum. Pupils were taught perspective, architecture, anatomy, history, mythology, drawing from antique casts and from life, and, finally, the practice of painting. The brothers divided the leadership of the Academy according to their personal inclinations: the elder Lodovico was in charge of the whole business, Agostino read theoretical lectures, Annibale conducted practical classes in drawing and painting. By their method of artistic education, the Carracci broke with the artisan empiricism of previous training in the workshops. They combined the theory and practice of painting, created a harmonious aesthetic and pedagogical system, laying the foundations for the entire subsequent academic doctrine of Western European painting of the 17-18 centuries.

Of the three brothers, Annibale was the most talented. Passionately devoted to his work, he worked quickly and with enthusiasm, sharply polemicized with opponents, quarreled with his brothers, ridiculing Agostino's aristocratic habits and Lodovico's pedantry. All the best that was in it, Bolognese academicism owes Annibale, who in fact was the leading figure of the new trend.

The efforts of the Carracci brothers were aimed at creating a solemn monumental art, which found its fullest expression in the decorative paintings of palaces and churches and in large altarpieces. In the 1580-1590s. they jointly decorate a number of Bologna palaces with frescoes. At the same time, a new type of altar painting was taking shape in their art, the best of which belong to Annibale (The Ascension of Mary, 1587, Dresden; Madonna with St. Luke, 1592, Louvre). In these imposing compositions, sometimes full of agitated movement, sometimes strictly symmetrical and cold, there is a lot of boring rhetoric and conventional theatricality. Heavy figures are arranged in beautiful groups, every movement and gesture, the folds of cloaks are strictly calculated, brought in accordance with the canons of "classical" beauty.

A special group is represented by paintings by Annibale Carracci on mythological themes, in which his passion for the Venetians is strongly influenced. In these paintings, glorifying the joy of love, the beauty of the naked female body, Annibale reveals herself as a good colorist, a living and poetic artist (Venus and Adonis; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum).

In 1595, Annibale Carracci moved to Rome, where, at the invitation of Cardinal Odoardo Farnese, he began to decorate the ceremonial interiors of his palace. In 1597-1604. Annibale, with the participation of his brother Agostino and his students, painted the large gallery of the Palazzo Farnese. These frescoes brought him worldwide fame and served as an example for many decorative ensembles of the 17-18 centuries.

The gallery's painting on the theme of the love of the gods (based on Ovid's Metamorphoses) is a cycle of frescoes covering the vault and part of the walls. The painting of the vault consists of three large ceiling paintings, the subjects of which personify the triumph of love. The lower part of the vault is decorated with a frieze in which rectangular panels are interspersed with round medallions painted with grisaille, separated from each other by figures of Atlanteans and seated naked youths, clearly inspired by the images of Michelangelo.

In his ensemble, Carracci proceeded from the principles applied by Michelangelo in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and by Raphael in his Loggias. However, he largely deviates from the techniques of the Renaissance masters, putting forward new principles that determined the nature of the monumental decorative painting of the Baroque. The decorative system of Carracci's frescoes gravitates towards one center, which is the composition "Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne", and their perception is based on the contrast of the illusory spatiality of still disconnected pictorial compositions and framing imitating sculpture. Finally, the main thing that distinguishes Carracci's frescoes from Renaissance monumental painting is the predominance of a purely decorative effect over the depth of images, the loss of significant ideological content.

Among the best works of Annibale Carracci are his landscapes. Mannerism almost completely consigned this genre to oblivion. In Caravaggio, he also fell out of sight. Carracci and his students create on the basis of the traditions of the Venetian landscape of the 16th century. a type of so-called classic, or heroic, landscape.

Landscape as a complete artistic image of nature combines immediate impressions and abstract idealization, rational construction. Already in her figured compositions, Annibale Carracci pays great attention to the landscape as a kind of emotional accompaniment. Around 1603, together with his students, he completed several paintings in which the landscape completely dominates the figures ("Flight into Egypt" and others; Rome, Doria Pamphili Gallery). In the landscapes of Carracci, with their almost architectural consistency of composition, balanced, closed at the edges by curtains, with three spatial planes, nature takes on a timeless, heroic character; devoid of the true movement of life, it is motionless, eternal.

It is noteworthy that Annibale Carracci, who so consistently acted as the creator of a new, "sublime" style, is also known as the author of genre compositions written simply and with great pictorial ease. His "Portrait of a Musician" (Dresden, Art Gallery) with the sorrowful penetration of the image resolutely stands out against the background of all the official works of the master. These realistic aspirations, spontaneously breaking through the academic doctrine, but unable to destroy it, were especially strongly reflected in the drawings of Carracci. An excellent draftsman, he felt freer in drawing from the conventional artistic canons he himself created: it is not without reason that the renewal (after Leonardo da Vinci) of such a genre as caricature is associated with his name. In drawings from life, he achieves remarkable naturalness and precise reliability, which, however, in the process of the subsequent idealization of images, are lost in his completed pictorial compositions. This contradiction between the realism of the etude and the conventionality of the completed image, generated by the whole essence of Carracci's creative method, has now become a characteristic feature of any academic art.

The creative and pedagogical activities of the Carracci brothers attracted a number of young artists to them in Bologna and Rome, who directly continued Carracci's new ideas in the field of monumental decorative, easel and landscape painting. Among their students and collaborators, the most famous are Guido Reni and Domenichino, who appeared in Rome shortly after 1600. In their work, the principles of Bologna academicism reach their final canonization. That healthy and vital that was in the art of Carracci, dissolves in the mannered beauty and convention of the images of dogmatic academism.

Guido Reni (1575-1642) is known as the author of numerous religious and mythological paintings, skillfully executed, but unbearably boring and sentimental (especially many of these paintings came out of his workshop in later years). The name of this gifted, although somewhat languid artist later became synonymous with everything lifeless, false, sugary that was in academic painting.

By 1610, Guido Reni was a leading figure in the academic movement in Rome. In 1614 he returned to Bologna, where, after the death of his teacher Lodovico Carracci, from 1619 he became the head of the Bologna Academy. Reni's central work is the Aurora plafond fresco (1613) at the Casino Rospigliosi in Rome. This beautiful composition, full of light grace and movement, written in a cold range of silver-gray, blue and golden tones, well characterizes Reni's sophisticated and conventional style, which is very different from the heavy plastic and colorfulness of Carracci's more sensual images in the Farnese Gallery. Local color, flat bas-relief and clear balance of the composition of "Aurora" speak of the emergence of elements of classicism in line with the academic direction. Later, these trends intensify. Among the mature works of the master, his Atadanta and Hippomenus (c. 1625; Naples, Capodimonte Museum) shines with the cold beauty of naked bodies, an exquisite play of lines and rhythms.

The features of classicism are more fully expressed in the work of another representative of Bologna academicism - Domenico Zampieri, nicknamed Domenichino (1581-1641); it was not for nothing that he was Poussin's teacher and beloved master. A student of Annibale Carracci, who helped him with the painting of the Farnese Gallery, Domenichino was widely known for his fresco cycles in Rome and Naples, where he worked for the last decade of his life. Most of his works stand out little against the general background of the work of other academic artists. Only those paintings in which a large place is given to the landscape are not devoid of poetic freshness and originality, for example, "The Hunt of Diana" (1618; Rome, Borghese Gallery) or "The Last Communion of St. Jerome "(1614; Vatican Pinakothek) with a beautifully painted evening landscape. With his landscapes (for example, "Landscape with a Ferry"; Rome, Doria Pamphilj gallery) Domenichino sets the stage for the classicist landscape of Poussin and Claude Lorrain.

The heroic nature of the landscapes of Carracci and Domenichino takes on a gentle lyrical tint in the mythological landscapes of the third disciple of the Carracci brothers, Francesco Albani (1578-1660).

Representatives of Bologna academicism did not escape the influence of their ideological and artistic opponent Caravaggio. Some elements of realism, taken from Caravaggio, without making significant changes in the academic system, made the images of the Bolognese more vital. In this respect, the work of Francesco Barbieri, nicknamed Guercino (1591-1666), is interesting. Pupil

Lodovico Carracci, he formed in the circle of Bologna academics; spent almost his entire life in his hometown of Cento and in Bologna, where from 1642 he headed the Academy. The three years he spent in Rome (1621-1623) were the most fruitful in his work. In his youth, Guercino experienced the strongest influence of Caravaggio. From Caravaggio, he clearly borrowed his luscious chiaroscuro and penchant for realistic type; under the influence of the caravaggist "tenebroso" he also developed his own coloring with its gravitation towards monochrome silver-gray and golden-brown tones.

Altarpiece of Guercino “Burial and taking to heaven of St. Petronilla "(1621; Rome, Capitoline Museum), despite the typically academic division of the composition into" earthly "and" heavenly "parts, is full of great strength and simplicity. The powerful figures of the gravediggers, lowering the body of the saint at the edge of the picture, are painted in the spirit of Caravaggio. The heads of the boys on the left are very expressive, representing a magnificent sketch from nature. However, Guercino never became a consistent supporter of Caravaggio. An attempt at a compromise combination of academism and caravaggism was reduced in his subsequent works mainly to an outwardly naturalistic interpretation of images.

Guercino's fresco "Aurora" (between 1621 and 1623) in the Roman Casino Ludovisi completes the line of academic monumental and decorative painting, in many ways anticipating the mature baroque style. On the flat surface of the ceiling of the hall, the artist depicted the boundless expanse of the blue sky, in which the chariot of Aurora rushes directly overhead, in a sharp angle from the bottom up, announcing the coming of morning. With illusionist means, Guercino achieves extraordinary visual persuasiveness, that effect of deceptive "plausibility" that all the monumentalists of the 17th century were so fond of.

Guercino is one of the most brilliant draftsmen of his era. He cultivates a type of free sketching. In his figured compositions and landscapes, filled with swift strokes of a pen with a slight wash with a brush, the refined calligraphy of the stroke is combined with the airy picturesqueness of the overall impression. This style of painting, as opposed to more careful studies from nature, soon became typical of most Italian masters of the 17th century. and was especially popular with Baroque artists.

In addition to Bologna and Rome, academic principles are widespread throughout 17th century Italian painting. Sometimes they are intertwined with the traditions of late Mannerism (as, for example, in Florence), with caravaggism, or acquire the features of a pathetic baroque.

For a long time, the names Carracci, Guido Reni and Domenichino were placed next to the names of Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo. Then the attitude towards them changed and they were treated as pathetic eclectics. In reality, Bolognese academicism, with all its negative aspects inherited by later academicism, had one positive - the generalization of the artistic experience of the past and its consolidation in a rational pedagogical system. Rejecting academicism as an aesthetic doctrine, one should not forget its importance as a great school of professional excellence.

If in Rome, after Caravaggio, the baroque-academic trend dominated almost completely, then in other centers of Italy (Mantua, Genoa, Venice, Naples) in the first half of the 17th century, currents appeared, whose representatives were trying to reconcile baroque painting with caravaggism. The features of such a compromise, to one degree or another, can be traced among the most diverse painting schools and artists. That is why it is so difficult to give a clear stylistic description to many Italian artists of that time. They are characterized by a mixture not only of everyday and religious-mythological genres, but also of various pictorial manners, a frequent transition from one style to another. This kind of creative instability is one of the typical manifestations of the internal contradictions of 17th century Italian art.

The artists of the provincial schools are of interest not because of what brings them closer to the art of the Baroque, but precisely because of their works in everyday life, landscape and other genres "low" from the point of view of academism. It is in this area that they are distinguished by their individual originality and subtle pictorial skill.

Genre-realistic searches were most clearly expressed in the work of Domenico Fetti (1589-1623), who worked in Rome, Mantua (from 1613), where he replaced Rubens as court painter, and in Venice (from 1622). Fetti paid tribute to both caravaggism and baroque painting; in his art, you can see the traces of the influence of the Venetians Tintoretto and Bassano, Rubens and Elsheimer (in the landscape), which contributed to the addition of his painting style. Fetti himself proved himself to be an excellent colorist. His small canvases are temperamentally painted with small vibrating strokes, easily and freely sculpting stocky figures of people, architectural volumes, clumps of trees. The bluish-green and brownish-gray range of colors is enlivened by the bright red color interspersed into it.

Fetty is alien to the heroic monumentality of the "grand style". His attempts of this kind are unsuccessful. He gravitates towards a genre-lyrical interpretation of religious images, towards paintings of a small, "armchair" format, to which his entire style of painting fits so well.

The most interesting of Fetti's works is a series of paintings based on gospel parables, written around 1622: The Lost Drachma, The Evil Servant, The Merciful Samaritan, The Prodigal Son (all in the Dresden Gallery), The Pearl of Great Price ( Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum). The charm of these compositions (many of them are known in the author's repetitions) is in the subtle poetry of the depicted living scenes, fanned by light and air, inspired by the surrounding landscape.

Simply and poetically, the artist told the parable of the lost drachma. In an almost empty room, a young woman silently bent down in search of a coin. A lamp placed on the floor illuminates the figure and part of the room from below, forming a whimsical oscillating shadow on the floor and wall. In the collision of light and shadow, the golden, red and white tones of the painting light up. The picture is warmed by soft lyricism, in which notes of some vague alarm sound.

The landscape in Fetti's paintings (for example, Tobias Healing Father, early 1620s; the Hermitage) is important. It is distinguished from the "heroic" landscape of academics by features of intimacy and poetry, which later developed in the so-called romantic landscape. Among Fetti's works, a beautiful portrait of the actor Gabrieli (early 1620s; Hermitage) stands apart. The artist managed to create a subtle psychological image with avaricious painting means. The mask in Gabrieli's hands is not only an attribute of his profession: it is a symbol of everything that covers true human feelings, which can be read on the smart face of a tired, sad actor.

A similar place in 17th century Italian painting. is occupied by the Genoese Bernardo Strozzi (1581-1644), who since 1630 moved to Venice. Like Fetti, Strozzi was benevolently influenced by Caravaggio, Rubens and the Venetians. On this healthy soil, his pictorial style developed. For his paintings, he chooses a common people type, solving religious themes in a purely genre plan (Tobias Healing his Father, c. 1635; Hermitage). Strozzi's creative imagination is not rich or poetic. He builds his compositions from one or several ponderous figures, rude and even slightly vulgar in their healthy sensuality, but painted broadly and succulently, with remarkable pictorial refinement. Among the genre works of Strozzi, his "Cook" (Genoa, Palazzo Rosso) stands out, in many ways close to the works of the Dutch Artsen and Bakelar. The artist admires the crafty cook, the view of the beaten game and utensils. Some still life, usually impoverishing the images of Strozzi, is very useful here. Another version of Strozzi's one-figure genre composition is presented by Dresden's "Musician".

Strozzi is known as a good portrait painter. In the portraits of the Doge Erizzo (Venice, Academy) and the Maltese cavalier (Milan, Brera Gallery), the appearance of tightly cut, self-confident people is vividly conveyed. The old man's pose of the Doge and the inflated arrogance of the gentleman are successfully captured. Associated with the Genoese school in many ways, Strozzi's work, in its best achievements, is organically included in the traditions of Venetian painting.

Jan Lise also worked in Venice (c. 1597 - c. 1630). A native of Oldenburg (northern Germany), he studied in Harlem (c. 1616), and appeared in Italy around 1619. From 1621 he lived in Venice, where he became close to Fetti. Beginning with genre scenes from the life of peasants ("The Quarrel of Players"; Nuremberg), Lisa then moved on to mythological and religious themes ("Punishment of Marsyas"; Moscow, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts). His later "Vision of St. Jerome "(c. 1628; Venice, Church of St. Nicholas of Tolentinsky) is a typical example of a Baroque altarpiece. For several years, Liss's work has undergone a rapid evolution from the genre of genre to baroque painting in its most extreme forms.

After Fetti and Strozzi, realistic tendencies in Italian painting quickly diminished, finally degenerating with subsequent masters. Already in the first half of the 17th century. the process of merging of genre-realistic and baroque painting takes place, as a result of which a certain common eclectic trend is born, to which many masters belong, who are abundantly represented in art galleries around the world.

By about the 30s. 17th century on the basis of academic painting, the mature baroque style was formed. In it, on the one hand, the conditional character of images, their abstraction and rhetoricism, is preserved and even strengthened, and on the other hand, elements of naturalism are introduced that affect the theme, in the interpretation of human figures. Another distinctive feature of baroque painting is the exaggerated emotional, dynamic solution of the image, its purely external pathos. The paintings of baroque artists are filled with agitated confusion of violently gesticulating figures, carried away in their movement by some unknown force. As in sculpture, the themes of miracles, visions, martyrdom and apotheosis of saints are becoming favorite.

Monumental decorative paintings occupy a leading place in baroque painting. Here the successive connection with the ideas of Bologna academism and the forms of the "grand style" developed by it was most affected. The first representative of the mature baroque was Giovanni Lanfranco (1582-1647), a native of Parma, a student of Agostino and Annibale Carracci. Closely related to the art of the Bolognese, Lanfranco, in his painting "The Assumption of Mary" in the dome of the church of Sant Andrea della Balle (1625-1628), gives a solution that differs from the decorative system of murals of academics. Based on the traditions of his fellow countryman Correggio, he refuses to divide the painting into separate fields and strives for the illusion of a single space, thereby destroying the idea of \u200b\u200bthe real boundaries of the interior. The figures, presented in sharp angles, from bottom to top, appear to be floating in the dome breakout. From Lanfranco all other painters and decorators of the Roman Baroque come. The model for the baroque altarpieces was his painting “The Vision of St. Margaret of Cortona "(Florence, Pitti Gallery), which directly anticipates" Ecstasy of St. Teresa Bernini.

The style of religious-mythological decorative painting appears to be finally formed in the work of the painter and architect Pietro Berrettini da Cortona (1596-1669), who played about the same role in painting as Bernini did in sculpture. In all of Pietro da Cortona's paintings, the element of unbridled decorativeism dominates. In the church of Saita Maria in Vallichella, framed by gilded stucco moldings covering the walls and vaults, ecstatically gesturing saints, scenes of miracles, flying angels (1647-1651) are presented. Pietro da Cortona's decorative talent manifested itself on a particular scale in his palace paintings. In the fresco "Allegory of Divine Providence" (1633-1639) in the Palazzo Barberini, streams of human figures spread in all directions outside the ceiling, connecting with other parts of the decorative painting of the hall. All this grand chaos serves as a pretext for the noisy and empty glorification of Pope Urban VIII.

In Roman baroque painting of the period of its heyday, a kind of classicist direction develops in parallel, directly continuing the line of academism. With a certain stylistic difference, the divergence of these two constantly warring directions was rather arbitrary. The largest representatives of the academic movement in Roman Baroque painting were Andrea Sacchi (1599-1661) and Carlo Maratta (1625-1713).

Sacchi, like his rival Pietro da Cortona, painted mainly decorative shades (Divine Wisdom in the Palazzo Barberini, c. 1629-1633) and altar paintings (The Vision of St. Romuald, c. 1638; Vatican Pinacoteca), marked with a seal rational contemplation and extreme abstraction of images. Maratta enjoyed exceptional popularity among his contemporaries as a master of monumental altarpieces in which he imitated Carracci and Correggio. However, both masters are of interest primarily as portrait painters.

Among the portraits of Sacca, the portrait of Clemente Merlini (c. 1640; Rome, Borghese Gallery) stands out. The artist with great persuasiveness conveyed the state of concentrated meditation of a prelate with an intelligent and strong-willed face, who had broken away from reading. There is a lot of natural nobility and vital expressiveness in this image.

Sacchi's pupil, Maratta, even in his ceremonial portraits retains the realistic content of the image. In the portrait of Pope Clement IX (1669; Hermitage), the artist skillfully highlights the intellectual significance and subtle aristocracy of the person being portrayed. The whole picture is sustained in a single, somewhat faded tonality of various shades of red. This coldish mutedness of color here successfully matches the inner restraint and calmness of the image itself.

The simplicity of the portraits of Sacchi and Maratta distinguishes them favorably from the external pathos of the portraits of the artist Francesco Maffei (c. 1600-1660), who worked in Vicenza. In his portraits, representatives of the provincial nobility are depicted surrounded by allegorical figures, all kinds of "Glories" and "Virtues", involuntarily recalling the compositions of Baroque tombstones. At the same time, the painting style of Maffei, brought up on the coloristic traditions of the Venetian masters of the 16th century. (J. Bassano, Tintoretto, Veronese) and who took something from the capricious arbitrariness of the Mannerist graphics (Parmigianino, Bellange), differs markedly from the cold and dry manner of Roman artists. His paintings, executed with genuine pictorial brilliance with open and hasty strokes freely scattered across the canvas, set the stage for Magnasco and the Venetians of the 18th century. The works of Maffei, as well as the close to him Florentine Sebastiano Matsponi (1611-1678), who worked in Venice, best of all represent that peculiar direction of Baroque painting, marked by high coloristic expression, which by the middle of the 17th century. developed in Northern Italy, more precisely - in Venice and Genoa - and which was a transitional stage from the art of Fetti, Strozzi and Lissa to the art of artists of the 18th century.

By the end of the 17th century. Baroque monumental and decorative painting reaches its peak in the work of Giovanni Battista Gaulli, nicknamed Baciccio (1639-1709), and Andrea Pozzo (1642-1709). Gaulli's central work was the decorative ensemble of the interior of the Jesuit Church of Gesu (1672-1683) - a vivid example of the Baroque synthesis of architecture, sculpture and painting.

In the painting of the plafond, dedicated to the glorification of Christ and the order of the Jesuits, the main active force is light, which, spreading in all directions, seems to move flying figures, lifting up saints and angels and overthrowing sinners. Through the illusionistic breakthrough of the vault, this light pours into the interior of the church. Imaginary and real space, pictorial and sculptural figures, fantastic light and real lighting - all this merges into one dynamic irrational whole. In terms of its decorative principles, the Gesu ensemble is close to the late works of Bernini, who, by the way, not only procured this order for Gaulli, but also gave him his employees, sculptors and modelers, to help him.

Andrea Pozzo, not possessing Gaulli's coloristic abilities, follows the path of further illusionistic tricks in the field of plafond painting, putting into practice what was set forth in his famous treatise on perspective. Pozzo has decorated a number of Jesuit churches in Italy with his shades imitating architectural decoration. The most significant of these was the huge ceiling of the Roman church of Sant'Ignazio (1691-1694). Variegated and dry in painting, it is built on dizzying illusory effects: the fantastic architecture of the painting soaring skyward seems to continue the real architecture of the interior.

The last major representative of monumental and decorative painting of the 17th century. there was a Neapolitan Luca Giordano (1632-1705), nicknamed for the extraordinary speed of work "Fa presto" (does quickly). Moving from one city to another, from one country to another, Giordano with thoughtless ease covered hundreds of square meters of ceilings and walls of churches, monasteries and palaces with his decorative painting. Such, for example, is his plafond "The Triumph of Judith" in the Neapolitan church of San Martino (1704).

Giordano's brush also includes countless paintings on religious and mythological themes. A typical eclectic virtuoso, he easily combines the style of his teacher Ribera and the manner of Pietro da Cortona, the Venetian flavor and "tenebroso" of Caravaggio, creating very temperamental, but extremely superficial works. Another master of the Neapolitan school, Mattia Preti (1613-1699), tried to use the realistic heritage of Caravaggio in the spirit of a similar "Baroque caravaggism".

A special place in the Italian easel painting of the 17th century. occupy the genres of idyllic pastoral and romantic landscape, which later received such great importance in European art. The largest representative of Italian pastoral painting is considered the Genoese Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (c. 1600-1665). The origins of this genre go back to the Venetian Jacopo Bassano. Castiglione is also largely associated with the Genoese animal painters of his day, who continued the traditions of the Flemish masters who lived in Genoa. The religious plot serves him only as a pretext for piling up picturesque animalistic still lifes, for depicting all kinds of animals in one picture ("The Expulsion of the Merchants from the Temple", Louvre; "Noah, Calling Beasts" in Dresden and Genoa). Admiring the wealth of the animal world, given to man by generous nature, is the only content of these paintings, which, however, are not devoid of a subtle poetic feeling. In other paintings, this poetic mood takes on a more definite expression; the emotional role of the landscape and human figures is enhanced. He depicts life as a beautiful idyll in the bosom of nature (Bacchanalia, Hermitage; Pastoral, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts; The Finding of Cyrus, Genoa). However, in his bucolic compositions, sometimes very exquisite, always a little sensual and fantastic, there is no that deep penetration into the antique ideal of beauty, which is achieved in Poussin's paintings on similar topics. Castiglione repeated the images of his pastorals in masterfully executed etchings, drawings and monotypes (he was the inventor of the monotype technique). In addition to Genoa, Castiglione worked for a long time at the Mantuan court and in other cities in Italy.

The name of the Neapolitan Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) is usually associated with the idea of \u200b\u200bthe so-called romantic landscape and, in general, a kind of "romantic" direction in 17th century painting. Thanks to this, Salvator Rosa enjoyed exaggerated success in the 19th century, at a time of general enthusiasm for romanticism. Rose's popularity was aided by his restless wandering life and rebellious character, even more decorated with all sorts of legends and anecdotes. A talented self-taught artist, he successfully ascended as an improviser musician, actor and poet. While working in Rome, he did not want to come to terms with the artistic dictatorship of Bernini, whom he ridiculed in poetry and from the stage, because of which he was even forced to leave the city for a while.

Rosa's pictorial work is very uneven and contradictory. He worked in a wide variety of genres - portrait, historical, battle and landscape, painted pictures on religious subjects. Many of his works are directly related to academic art. Others, on the contrary, testify to a passion for caravaggism. Such is the painting The Prodigal Son (between 1639 and 1649; Hermitage), which depicts a kneeling shepherd next to a cow and sheep. The dirty heels of the prodigal son, sticking out in the foreground, vividly recall the techniques of Caravaggio.

Rose's "romantic" inclinations manifested themselves in his battles, scenes of military life and landscapes. Especially characteristic are his landscapes with figures of soldiers or bandits ("Trumpeting Soldier", Rome, Doria Pamphilj Gallery; "Soldiers Playing Dice", Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts). The "romantic" landscape Rose grew on the basis of the academic, with which it is brought together by the general techniques of compositional and coloristic construction of the picture (this closeness is especially noticeable in numerous "Harbors"). But, unlike academics, Rosa introduces elements of a lively, emotional perception of nature into the landscape, conveying it usually as a gloomy and agitated element ("Landscape with a Bridge", Florence, Pitti Gallery; "Astarte's Farewell to the Shepherds", Vienna, Artistic-Historical museum). Deaf corners of the forest, heaping rocks, mysterious ruins inhabited by robbers - these are his favorite themes. The romantic interpretation of landscape and genre in Rosa's work was a kind of opposition to the official baroque-academic art.

The most striking and most extreme expression of the "romantic" movement was the sharply subjective art of Alessandro Magnasco, nicknamed Lissandrino (1667-1749). A native of Genoa, he spent most of his life in Milan (until 1735), making only one long trip to Florence (c. 1709-1711).

Whatever Manasco portrays: gloomy landscapes or bacchanalia, monastery chambers or dungeons, religious miracles or genre scenes - everything bears the stamp of painful expression, deep pessimism and grotesque fiction. In his paintings, images of gypsies, wandering musicians, soldiers, alchemists, street charlatans pass in a long line. But most of all, Magnasco has monks. Either these are hermits in a forest thicket or on the shores of a raging sea, then these are monastic brethren in the refectory, resting by the fire or praying frantically.

Manyasco performs his paintings with quick fractional strokes, sketching out disproportionately elongated, broken figures with several Zigzag strokes of the brush. He abandons multicolor colorfulness and writes monochrome, usually in a dark greenish gray or brownish gray scale. Magnasco's highly individual, coloristically sophisticated style with its system of abrupt, moving strokes differs greatly from the lush, full-fledged painting of the Baroque, directly preparing in many ways the pictorial language of the 18th century.

The leading place in the master's work is occupied by the landscape - a mystically inspired element of the forest, sea storms and architectural ruins, inhabited by bizarre figurines of monks. People are only a particle of this element, dissolve in it. For all its emotionality, Magnasco's landscapes are far from real nature. They have a lot of purely decorative showiness that comes not from life, but from the artist's manner. Magnasco, on the one hand, gravitates towards an emotionally subjective understanding of the landscape, and on the other, towards depicting the landscape as a decorative panel ("A Secular Company in the Garden"; Genoa, Palazzo Bianco). Both of these tendencies, already developed, we will later find in the landscape painters of the 18th century.

The devastated Lombardy, flooded with Spanish, French, Austrian troops, the terrible poverty of the masses, brought to the limit by wars and merciless extortions, abandoned villages and roads teeming with vagabonds, soldiers, monks, an atmosphere of spiritual depression - this is what gave rise to the hopelessly pessimistic and grotesque art of Magnus.

Another artist of the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Bolonian Giuseppe Maria Crespi (1664 - 1747), is of great interest.

The exceptional pictorial temperament of Crespi, his realistic aspirations come into irreconcilable conflict with the entire system of academic painting, in the traditions of which he was brought up. This struggle runs through all of Crespi's work, causing sharp leaps in his artistic manner, which sometimes changes beyond recognition. It is noteworthy that the formation of the Crespi style was greatly influenced by the early Guercino, the least academic of all the academic masters. Traces of this influence are reflected primarily in the dark brownish-olive coloring of many of Crespi's paintings, in their thick enveloping chiaroscuro. Through Guercino, echoes of Caravaggio's realistic art reached Crespi. The development of Crespi's painting skills was facilitated by his wide acquaintance with the artists of the 16th century. and Rembrandt.

The early and late works of the master are more closely associated with academicism. He paints large religious compositions (The Death of Joseph, Hermitage; The Holy Family, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts - both circa 1712) or small mythological paintings somewhat reminiscent of Albani's works (Cupids Disarmed by Nymphs, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts). At the same time, he creates many small genre paintings, being carried away mainly by the formal tasks of color and chiaroscuro or the piquant entertainment of the plot. Only a few works of his mature years, dating back to about the first decade of the 18th century, made Crespi one of the greatest Italian painters of that era.

Among the best works of Crespi is his Self-Portrait (c. 1700; Hermitage). The artist depicted himself with a pencil in his hand, his head casually tied with a scarf. The portrait has a touch of mysterious romance and effortless artistry. The genre painting Market in Poggio a Caiano (1708 - 1709; Uffizi) captures the festive revival of the village market. Everything pleases the artist's eye: figurines of peasants in wide-brimmed hats, and a loaded donkey, and simple clay pots, painted as if they were precious utensils. Almost simultaneously with The Market, Crespi writes The Beating of Babies (Uffizi), reminiscent of Magnasco's work in its nervous drama. The juxtaposition of The Market in Poggio a Caiano and The Massacre of Babies speaks of those extreme fluctuations from the realistic genre to the religious Expression, which reveal all the contradictions of Crespi's artistic worldview.

Both of these aspects of Crespi's art merge together in the famous series of paintings on the themes of the sacraments of the Christian religion (c. 1712; Dresden). The idea of \u200b\u200bsuch a series arose by accident. Crespi first wrote Confessions, a spectacular painting scene he once saw in church. Hence the idea was born to depict the rest of the church rituals, symbolizing the stages of a person's life path from birth to death ("Baptism", "Confirmation", "Marriage", "Communion", "Consecration into the monastic dignity", "Unction").

Each scene is extremely laconic: several close-up figures, almost complete absence of everyday details, a neutral background. Illuminated by shimmering silvery light, calm figures gently protrude from the surrounding twilight. Chiaroscuro has no caravaggist concreteness; sometimes it seems that people's clothes and faces themselves emit light. With the exception of Confessions, all the other paintings form a complete cycle, the emotional unity of which is emphasized by the seeming monotony of the muted brownish-golden color. Calm, silent figures are imbued with a mood of sad melancholy, which takes on a tinge of mystical asceticism in scenes of dull monastic life. As a gloomy epilogue, which inevitably ends a person's life with its joys and sorrows, the last rite - "Unction" is shown. An eerie hopelessness emanates from a group of monks bending over a dying brother; the tonsure of one of the monks, the shaved head of a dying man, and the skull lying on a chair gleam in the dark in exactly the same way.

In terms of the emotional expressiveness and brilliance of painting, the Sacraments of Crespi make the strongest impression after Caravaggio in all 17th century Italian painting. But all the more obvious is the huge difference between Caravaggio's healthy plebeian realism and Crespi's painfully unbalanced art.

The work of Magnasco and Crespi, along with the art of late Baroque decorators, is a brilliant but dismal outcome of the century that began with the rebellion of Caravaggio.