The Baroque is a highly ornate and often extravagant style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th until the mid-18th century. It followed the Renaissance style and preceded the Rococo (in the past often referred to as "late Baroque") and Neoclassical styles. The Baroque style used contrast, movement, exuberant detail, deep color, grandeur and surprise to achieve a sense of awe. The style began at the start of the 17th century in Rome, then spread rapidly to France, northern Italy, Spain and Portugal, then to Austria and southern Germany. By the 1730s, it had evolved into an even more flamboyant style, called rocaille or Rococo, which appeared in France and central Europe until the mid to late 18th century. The popularity and success of the Baroque style are related to the encouragement of the Roman Catholic Church. In response to the rise of religious reform, the Church decided at the Council of Trent that art should express religious themes directly and emotionally. The aristocrats at that time believed that dramatic Baroque architecture and art were a means of attracting their guests and expressing victory, rights and control. As a result, various baroque palaces with vestibules, building ladders and luxurious reception rooms were built.
In the autumn of 1571, the artist Caravaggio was born in Milan, Italy. In 1576 the family moved to Caravaggio to escape a plague that ravaged Milan, and Caravaggio's father and grandfather both died there on the same day in 1577. Like Leonardo Da Vinci from Vinci and Veronica from Veronica, when they became famous, the world came to call them their homeland. Caravaggio's mother died in 1584, the same year he began his four-year apprenticeship to the Milanese painter Simone Peterzano, described in the contract of apprenticeship as a pupil of Titian. His career, however, was short-lived. Caravaggio killed a man during a brawl and fled Rome. He died not long after, on July 18, 1610. Much of Caravaggio's early work featured chubby, pretty young boys done up as angels or lutenists or his favorite saint, John the Baptist. Many of the boys in the paintings are naked or loosely clothed.
The painting that I chose is "Medusa". A depiction of the head of Medusa painted on a circular and curved wooden shield. Medusa is a woman described in Greek mythology. With her glance, she could turn people who looked at her into stone. Instead of normal hair, she has a living, venomous snakes on her head. The snakes are watersnakes from the Tiber river as those were the best type of snakes Caravaggio could find nearby. The blood streams out of her head as she has just been killed by the Greek demigod Perseus. This painting shows the moment that Medusa is looking at the reflective shield that Perseus is holding (which according to the myth actually happened just before she got beheaded). She realizes that her head is separated from her body, but that she is still conscious. You can see this realization by the horror in her eyes. As the painting is created on a shield, Caravaggio’s idea was that this painting actually represents the view of the shield as held by Perseus just after he killed Medusa. It is also interesting to have a closer look at Caravaggio’s use of light and shadow in this painting. As a feat of perspective, the picture is remarkable, for out of the apparently concave surface of the shield - in fact convex- the Gorgon's head seems to project into space so that the blood around her neck appears to fall on the floor.
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