The story being told here is the death of the Virgin Mary, mother of God -- yet Caravaggio does so in a way that "rejects the elegance of the High Renaissance" and places the story firmly in "our world," emphasizing the lowly aspects of the Apostles (their bald heads, their poverty) and painting the Virgin in a way that she resembled (at least to the monks at the time) a drowned prostitute pulled from the river.
The video does a very good job of pointing out how Caravaggio's composition leads the eye from the hanging drapes overhead to the reflected and…
Manifesto: A Difference between Baroque and Modern Art The manifesto of the Baroque artist was in the work itself -- there was no need to explain it in writing as the tools of the artist were fully capable of allowing the artist to present a view that was both pleasing to the artist and/or patron and illuminative/educative for the viewer. The entire Baroque artistic movement was rooted in a spirit
Such linkages and juxtapositions contributes to the search for hidden meanings, and concentration on Poussin's iconography shows that critics believe there is usually more meaning in the frame than a cursory look would convey. To a degree, this belies Poussin's emphasis on simply reflecting nature, for the hand of the artist is always evident in the way the frame is formed consciously around various symbols and icons as well
There is a kaleidoscopic plurality of symbols and links among them, but it is easier to decipher the central meaning of the whole: the spiritual supremacy of the pope. Thus a political program was transformed into a beautiful masterpiece." (Findlen) Bernini believed that in architecture the main focus was on the material and the invention, then on the manner in which the parts were ordered and finally on the "perfection