The Magnificent Age: Art, Life and Baroque

When Martin Luther published his 95 theses in 1517, it was not only a challenge to the perceived corruption of the Catholic Church, it was an act which prompted the transformation of the religious, socio-political, and artistic landscape of Europe.

One of the most dynamic styles to emerge in the wake of the Counter-Reformation, the Baroque lasted a century and manifested differently in Italy, Spain, and France, where it produced the most extraordinary artists and architects including Caravaggio, Bernini, Velasquez, Poussin, and Borromini.

Scholarship and Rhetoric

In this lecture you will see how the image of the scholar saint was evoked in the paintings of Jose Ribera (his ‘Democritus’) and Caravaggio (saints Matthew and Jerome). No less significant were the intellectual artists and architects whose output was the product of significant study: Borromini’s complex church schemes for example or the deployment of rhetoric in Guercino’s ‘Abraham banishes Hagar and Ishmael.’

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