Talk: Baroque Art and Culture

Talk: Baroque Art and Culture

This is a lecture by Prof Maria Chester. It is part of the Berwick Music Series 2022.

September 29th 2022 | 4:00pm – 5:00pm | Online via Zoom 

n this lecture Prof Chester will introduce you to the refined and extravagant Baroque, in which the valorisation of detail, the excess of ornaments, the search for sensations and internal passions lead to a sort of dualism and contradiction between light and shadows, the sense of movement, and an extreme explosion of our senses. Baroque art was a cultural period, not just an art movement, that went from the second half of the XVI century to the first half of the XVIII century. As it is usual in fine arts, Baroque was a contrast to the Renaissance. It can be defined as the “art of appearances” because it is spectacular, gimmicky and emotional: Caravaggio, Bernini, Zurbarán, Velázquez, Murillo, Rubens, all of them are Baroque representatives. You will be also briefly introduced to Baroque architecture in Europe and in South America, where it was called “plateresque” because of the resemblance to the work of silversmiths.