The word 'drama' is often used in the description or explication of Baroque paintings as though it neatly summarised the essential difference between them and those of other schools. There is of course no doubt that Baroque art, and painting in particular, was dramatic, or rather, that it expressed itself in dramatic ways. Drama however, was not lacking in the periods which preceded the Baroque but what Baroque artists did was to 'activate' that drama.
When we talk of drama perhaps what we more precisely mean is 'dramatic events'; the paintings of the Renaissance are full of dramatic events as are those of the intermediate period, that of Mannerism. How could they not be? Given that a very large part of the work produced by artists in western Europe was dictated by their patrons, principally the Catholic church, and that many of the events in both the Old and New Testaments involved drama of some sort, often homicidal, it might be said that drama, or the depiction of drama and dramatic events, was broadly a common thread linking the main subject matter of all three periods so far referred to.
If that is the case, why then is the Baroque singled out as peculiarly dramatic? Let's have a look at some examples and see if we can answer that question. In Christian art, especially in Italy - and especially in Florence - the life of Saint John the Baptist is an ubiquitous subject and, perhaps most particularly, after representations of his baptism of Christ, his death, that is, his beheading. In a beautiful small cloister in Florence, the Chiostro dello Scalzo, is a wonderful fresco cycle representing the crucial events in the life of the Baptist; nearly all of these large images were painted - in monochrome, between 1509 and 1526 - by the Renaissance master Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530).
In this splendid series there is, naturally, the scene of the decapitation of Saint John; if one were looking for a dramatic event then clearly that fits the bill. This image contains all the necessary ingredients for the staging of such a horrific episode, 'dramatic' being perhaps a slight understatement. On the left side we have two women, one of whom may be the indirect cause of this execution, that is Salome, and the other, a lady-in-waiting; or they might simply be servants of some kind, sent by Herod to collect the 'evidence' of the death of this troublesome prophet. On the right, a figure who seems to be a person in charge, and in the background porch, various onlookers; but in the centre we have the two persons immediately concerned with this tragedy: the hapless saint and his executioner.
Drama is built-in to this event; the execution of any individual is, by its nature, dramatic but this particular execution is even more so as it is, in effect, a murder. John the Baptist was beheaded and what we are witnessing in Andrea del Sarto's painting is the moment immediately after the powerful executioner has swung his sword, the moment when he hands the decapitated head to the women waiting on the left. As I have pointed out elsewhere, the dramatic centre of attention is in fact the powerful figure of the executioner, most unusually with his back to us, the implied (supernumerary) spectators. The now-perishing body of the saint, still resting against the executioner's block, is spurting blood from the neck, a fact adding to the realism of the drama.
So, if the idea itself of decapitation is not dramatic enough then the 'realism' of this depiction - especially the gesture of the executioner as he hands over the head, and the gushing blood - definitely contributes to making it so. Thus it would seem that 'drama' is not a prerogative of the Baroque as it is obvious, here and in numerous other pictures from the Renaissance, that it too could treat drama. Another supposed characteristic of the Baroque was its 'theatricality'; a more theatrical staging of such a scene as Del Sarto has made here is hard to imagine. Figurative art, especially if dealing with a narrative (story telling), is of necessity theatrical. If by 'theatrical', in relation to the Baroque, what is meant is exaggerated gestures, exaggerated facial expressions as one often does see in theatrical performances, then yes, that is a reasonable observation; although, given that we are frequently observing dramatic events in Baroque pictures, then surely it follows that, at least sometimes, extreme gestures and facial expressions will be appropriate, will be dramatic - and possibly seeming 'theatrical' to the detached 21st century admirer of pictures.
But I believe there is a distinct difference between the drama in a Renaissance painting and that in a Baroque one: movement. In the fresco discussed above, in the Chiostro dello Scalzo, the image is fundamentally static; to use a modern expression, it is a 'still shot' from a movie; the action, complete and dramatic as it is, remains frozen, as though captured in a photograph. Baroque painting attempts, within the obvious limitations of a painted image, to convey the idea of movement. Naturally, there is no actual movement as we are dealing with a painted image on a canvas or wall; but the suggestion of sequential transition from one moment in time to another is I believe a defining characteristic of many Baroque paintings.
In place of the inherent stillness of the typical Renaissance pyramidal pictorial structure, many Baroque pictures make use of the diagonal, an inherently 'mobile' device as it encourages the eye to move from one position to another, normally upwards, across the image; and this upward direction is also unusual in Renaissance work as the general direction of observation was from the front plane into the depth of the (perspective) illusion. Caravaggio re-introduced to Rome, in his early pictures, the classical view, that of an image that could be 'read' from left to right, at the same time bringing the action of half-length figures right up to the picture plane itself while neutralising the depth behind the action in an amorphous void of black or near-black. And, like his namesake Michelangelo (Buonarroti), Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio) normally dispensed with the background setting: no perspective meant no looking into depth, instead encouraging a reading across the image. He thus changed the viewer from being an observer of others - very often seen as complete figures - acting in a narrative, to being not quite a participant in the action but now a close proximity spectator of it: no longer truly an 'observer' as with much Renaissance work, but rather a passer-by, or bystander, witnessing the action at full size, so to speak. His half-figures, close up to the picture plane and virtually life-size, make the viewer a de facto witness, no longer a distant, detached observer.
We saw earlier that Caravaggio had re-introduced to Rome an ancient Roman way of composing images, that is in friezes which we read from left to right, and that the half-figure was another innovation of his, together with a diagonal structure, so the question arises as to where he might have got these ideas himself. The answer would seem to require us to shift our focus north from Rome to Lombardy where Caravaggio came from. This extreme northern region of Italy was linked, at least culturally, to the Veneto region and therefore to Venetian painting. At this point we must remind ourselves that pictures were commissioned and bought - originals, duplicates and copies - from all over Italy and indeed Europe; and especially those of masters such as Titian and Veronese.
In the case of Veronese and other Venetians, it is clear that the diagonal was an established structural or compositional device. There seems to be some evidence that Caravaggio had visited Venice on his peregrinations towards Rome but, as just pointed out, Venetian paintings could be seen in many places other than in Venice itself.
The photo above is an example of Veronese using the diagonal as the principal structural device. Although the Renaissance triangle is still operative, the eye of the viewer is controlled, directed, by the diagonal rising in the lower right of the painting and ascending to the Madonna's face; the residual triangle may be continued then from the head of the Madonna down across her chest and along the shoulder of the 'instructing' angel in the lower left of the picture. Needless to say, this composition and many others have a more complex composition than just one or two lines but here the diagonal is a major structural element *. In fact, when we first look at this painting, the rather obvious diagonal movement is what initially strikes us; in addition, despite the horizontal stairs at the base, this diagonal - which passes through both the face of the Child and that of his mother - is reinforced by two of the major folds in the drapery wrapped around the corinthian columns behind and above the Madonna.
Another Venetian painter who made use of the diagonal is Tintoretto, as is clearly obvious in the image above. The almost too-strong diagonal beginning in the top right corner and its corresponding one at the lower right (forming the right wall of the arcade) pull our eyes forcefully into the fictive - but convincing - depth of this painting. The foreground figures however have virtually no relationship with the diagonals, spread out as they are more-or-less across the front plane of the image. In Caravaggio and much Baroque work by contrast, the figures themselves form the diagonal: it is not merely a geometrical structure, as above.
Here perhaps we should recognise again that many pictures, in many eras, including the Baroque and including some of those by Caravaggio himself, do not have a diagonal composition; many paintings have a central focus, a constant of Western painting from ancient Roman art onwards; in the wonderful MANN in Naples (the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli) there are many objects recovered from the unearthing of Pompeii and Herculaneum, including whole walls of frescos. Very interestingly, it is precisely in the marvellous architectural perspectives that we can see the importance of a central focus; in fact, in much Roman art, the importance of symmetry is plainly obvious, however, that said, in wall paintings of people in the countryside for example, the Roman painter still had some way to go in terms of composition: allowed the freedom from the constraints of painted architectural decoration, the Roman painter tended to place his or her figures somewhat haphazardly across the visual field of the composition.
In the photo above, taken this year at the MANN, we see an example of such an architectural fresco (with my nephew beside it for scale). Close scrutiny reveals that every aspect of this painting is centralised, something we might expect in a Renaissance altarpiece made after the re-discovery of the principles of perspective drawing; 're-discovery' because, as is clear in this photo, the Romans were almost completely au fait with the required geometry. The fresco is damaged at the very top but, looking for example at the row of little figures painted on the projecting brackets or corbels (mensole) on either side of the (central) door, we see that their shadows, in the space between the top corbels and the bottom ones, follow the logic of a central light source: on one side, falling from the left, on the other, falling from the right. Although not completely correct in terms of our later understanding of the rules of perspective illusion, we have to admit that, overall, it's pretty good! But back to Baroque painting.
In Naples, the popularity of the diagonal, and the profound influence of the ideas of Caravaggio, may be gauged by looking at two paintings, both of the same subject and both painted within a few years of each other: the Pietà, one by Andrea Vaccaro and one by Jusepe de Ribera.
In the first, by Andrea Vaccaro, the diagonal again moves from the lower right up through the centre of the image towards the top left of the canvas. The theme, the Pietà, or the Mourning over the dead body of Christ, is a very common one in Christian art; here however, rather than have the mourning figures placed around the central horizontal corpse of Christ, His body is stretched out in a diagonal linking (almost) the top left corner with the lower right. Instead of all being brightly illuminated as it might be in a (Renaissance) Perugino for instance, only the body is strongly illuminated - along with the heads of the other main actors - out of the depthless void of the surrounding darkness of their misery: the psychological drama!
Ribera, although from Spain, was one of the most influential painters in Baroque Naples - at that time in fact under the dominion of Spain; he has Christ stretched across the lower third of his canvas, with the diagonal moving from the opposite direction, that is, from left to right. Again, the light, perhaps not so strong as in the Vaccaro, illuminates the corpse and the faces of the women mourners, as well as a small angel in the top left, whose little body forms a cruciform shape. The importance of the suffering of Mary, Christ's mother, is accented in this picture, with her face, highlighted, almost in the centre of the composition. Both of these painters and others in Naples at this time - incidentally, after the death of Caravaggio in 1610 - make use of the diagonal composition and importantly, of the strong contrast between large areas of darkness (scuro) and relatively smaller but concentrated areas of light (chiaro).
To point up the profound difference the compositional angularity makes (the diagonal), let's finish by returning to Venice and a smallish Pietà painted by one of its masters, Giovanni Bellini. The typically Renaissance (and earlier) frontal view of Christ being nursed by his grieving mother and assisted by the distraught Saint John, with its verticality and comparatively bright and very detailed landscape background, contrasts markedly with the principal tenets of the later Caravaggism of the Baroque. The poses are different, the angles are different, the light is different, the drawing is different; but the half-figures are common to early Caravaggio and to subsequent Roman and Neapolitan Baroque.
Where does this leave us with our question concerning the origins of Caravaggio's 'revolution", or his ideas at least? From the little I have observed - and the even less that I know - it appears that, coming himself from Milan, that he must have, obviously had, taken certain cues from the art around him, most likely indicated by his first master Simone Peterzano. The dominant Venetian school with its various tendencies is possibly the most probable source of some of the typical elements which we associate with Caravaggio and caravaggism.
* The Veronese discussed here has in fact a rather complex surface structure: starting with the diagonal described above and the implied triangle and its base - the horizontal stairs - there are as well two or three other 'active' lines. The most obvious is the vertical of the two columns which, if continued downwards to meet the stairs, form a right-angle with them and therefore another triangle, completed with the dominant diagonal. But there is another 'minor' diagonal, formed this time from the shoulder of the large angel in the lower left corner which then passes through the Madonna's chest and face into the space between the small blue-winged angel and the larger blonde-haired one with his arms folded; at the same time intersecting the dominant diagonal, thus forming a Saint Andrew's Cross. This intersection creates an empty space on the right which has an arrow-head shape - or, yet another triangle - one which is a quite common by-product of the use of diagonals.
Note: Except where indicated, all photographs were taken by the author.
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