This essay examines the political and social forces that shaped European art during the Baroque era (ca. 1600–1750) and the subsequent Rococo style of the eighteenth century. Drawing on works by Tapie and Millon, the paper discusses how scientific discovery, religious conflict, and national power influenced Baroque artists, using Bernini's The Ecstasy of St. Teresa as a primary example. It then contrasts the Baroque with the Rococo style, tracing the latter's origins to the courts of Louis XIV and Louis XV and illustrating its characteristics through the Salon de la Princesse at the Hôtel de Soubise in Paris.
The Baroque era (ca. 1600–1750), much like the art produced during this time, was composed of many dimensions — spacious and dynamic, colorful, theatrical, opulent, and extravagant — all of which were highly influenced by a number of contemporary political and social events. For the artist, this was an age of discovery, due in part to the rise of national powers that attempted to colonize the entire world. Wars and other disputes based on political and social differences were everywhere, particularly in Europe and North America. The rise of scientific discoveries by such figures as Newton and Kepler inspired many Baroque artists to create works of art that "embraced all the spaces of the celestial world and the spaces of the microcosm within an unfolding universe" (Tapie 56).
Perhaps most importantly, the art of this era was influenced by the Catholic reaction to the advancement of Protestantism. Overall, the political and social character of this time is best illustrated through the lens of sculpture, architecture, and painting working in concert — a synthesis most powerfully realized in the work of Gianlorenzo Bernini.
Bernini's The Ecstasy of St. Teresa — a life-size marble sculpture presently located in the Cornaro Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome — stands as the defining political and social artifact of the Baroque era. This magnificent work "draws upon the full resources of architecture, sculpture and painting" and symbolizes the social power of the Cornaro family through its location in the chapel. On either side of the central group are sculpted opera boxes in which portraits of the Cornaro family "represent an audience watching with intent piety the denouement of a heavenly drama," which in effect reveals "the remote mysteries of religion as they descend to meet the social world of man" (Tapie 83). In this way, Bernini fused religious devotion with aristocratic display, making the work a quintessential expression of Baroque ambition.
In contrast to the Baroque era, the Rococo style is so closely related to the social and political circumstances surrounding King Louis XIV — also known as the "Sun King" — that the two cannot be separated. According to Henry A. Millon, the sparkling gaiety of this style "was cultivated by a new age associated with the regency that followed upon the death of Louis XIV and then with the reign of Louis XV," meaning that these two French kings and their opulent lifestyles highly influenced the art that emerged during the early and middle years of the eighteenth century in Europe (156).
"Boffrand's Salon de la Princesse as Rococo example"
It is clear that the nature and meaning of art created during the Baroque era and that associated with the Rococo style were greatly influenced by the political, social, and at times economic power of the Church during the Baroque and the great kings of Europe during the heyday of the Rococo style.
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