Verisimilitude in Baroque Art and Breaking Bad

Introduction: Verisimilitude Across Art Forms

Baroque art is renowned for its intensity of emotion and its verisimilitude — the commitment to depicting reality and truth as if reflected in a mirror. The nude form, the gamut of human emotions, and the cycle of birth, life, and death remain constants. Contemporary visual art forms like film and television often, though not always, employ verisimilitude as well. Among the range of film and television productions that have used verisimilitude, Breaking Bad rises to the surface as one that powerfully showcases the realities of its narrative world.

Comparing Breaking Bad to Baroque sculpture and painting might seem like a stretch, but it emerges as a completely realistic and sensible endeavor. Even when art depicts a fictional dimension — as it typically does with religious or mythological subjects during the Baroque — verisimilitude is maintained in the lighting, the textures, and especially in the countenance of the subjects. Thus, Apollo and Daphne are mythical figures who appear unmistakably human in Bernini's sculptural rendition, rendered in all their passion. Similarly, Caravaggio's The Inspiration of Saint Matthew depicts an angel descending to speak with the title character — the subject itself is fantastical, but the depiction is not. In the same way that Baroque art blends the magical and the utterly real, so too does modern television like Breaking Bad.

Caravaggio and Verisimilitude in Baroque Painting

Verisimilitude has long been a tenet of art, or an ideal to which artists aspire. Ancient Greek statuary testifies to the importance of verisimilitude in rendering the human form. Two-dimensional art makes verisimilitude harder to master, given the challenges painters face when confining three-dimensional objects on a flat plane. The emergence of verisimilitude in Baroque painting therefore represents a breakthrough in technique.

Caravaggio's mastery of chiaroscuro is one of the clearest examples of how painters imbued their work with verisimilitude during the Baroque era. In The Calling of Saint Matthew, it is as if Caravaggio set out specifically to paint light beaming in from windows in the most realistic way possible. Some of what the viewer sees — such as legs — are cast in shadow, while faces are fully illuminated. Moreover, Caravaggio managed to capture the way people behave naturally, as though they are unaware of being observed rather than posing for an artist. The scene shows seven men: one looks down at the table, perhaps too bored or disinterested in the conversation even though another man is pointing directly at him; an older man likewise gazes down at the activity on the table; two younger boys on the viewer's right look directly at the two standing figures, both of whom are pointing. The details of their anatomies, their facial expressions, their clothing, and above all the lighting in the room all speak to Caravaggio's deep commitment to verisimilitude.

Bernini and the Sculptural Pursuit of Realism

Sculpture offers even greater range and potential for verisimilitude, since the human form can be rendered in three dimensions. In Bernini's Apollo and Daphne, the artist captures the exact moment at which the pursuing Apollo has caught the object of his desire. Apollo bears a look of intense concentration; his curly hair suggests movement, and the folds of his drapery respond dynamically to his lunging stride. Daphne's hair flies outward and her mouth is agape — signs simultaneously of erotic surrender and vulnerability. As she is caught, her torso has twisted and her left arm reaches toward her hair. Bernini captures every nuance of her movement, as well as Apollo's.

Without enhancing the work with color, Bernini provides the viewer with musculature and other physiognomic features that underscore the centrality of verisimilitude to his practice. Daphne's body seems to emerge directly from the marble itself, as if Bernini has fused story and material in an act of meta-verisimilitude. Apollo and Daphne captures not only the narrative of the two figures but also the consummate realism of the artist who depicts them.

Breaking Bad and Verisimilitude in Television

Television has the opportunity to achieve verisimilitude in ways Baroque artists never imagined. Without access to photography, Baroque painters like Caravaggio strove for photorealism in their depiction of light and form. Television does not need to strive for a realistic depiction of light and form in the same way — with the exception of deliberate artistic flourishes, television cameras reflect back what the lens captures. Verisimilitude is, in that sense, guaranteed. Realism in television therefore depends on the actors' skills and the director's ability to capture time and emotion authentically.

In Breaking Bad, the viewer watches a high school chemistry teacher transform from a shy, withdrawn, and weak man into a ruthless drug lord. The evolution of Walter White occurs at a level of realism rarely attained in television, which tends to exaggerate for entertainment value or to compensate for weaknesses in script, characterization, acting, or direction. Walter White's story resonates because his transformation mirrors those that occur in real people. Some people change for the better; others degenerate into something monstrous in order to compensate for their own weaknesses. Without depicting excessive gore, the producers use verisimilitude to capture the expressions on actors' faces as they confront life-or-death decisions.

Conclusion: The Enduring Necessity of Verisimilitude

Verisimilitude will always be necessary. The viewer longs for connection and for something to relate to. Viewers need a link between the artist's world and their own, and verisimilitude permits a deep and meaningful connection between viewer and art form. Abstractions and animations are enjoyable additions to the range of art, but they cannot serve as the only art forms available. When stories are told with verisimilitude, those stories come to life.

Abstract film and television are rare precisely because it is also difficult to tell stories without verisimilitude. Art has more latitude in this regard because viewers bring different expectations and different relationships to visual art. Interestingly, not all art operates on the principle of verisimilitude. Music almost never does — when recording artists capture reality like a mirror, the result is "sound," but not music. Verisimilitude, then, is not a universal requirement across all creative forms, but it remains indispensable to the storytelling traditions that span from Baroque painting and sculpture to the modern television drama.

Works Cited

Caravaggio. The Calling of Saint Matthew. 1600.

Caravaggio. David with the Head of Goliath. 1610.

Caravaggio. The Inspiration of Saint Matthew. 1602.