continued from No. 1
Curriculum Links of Language Studies with Other Subjects
Развитие межпредметных связей:
изучение английского языка и мировой
художественной культуры в 10–11-х классах
The presented materials aim to develop the students’ knowledge of
English and Art offering a broader educational approach to teaching the language.
Theme 12
MANNERISM AND BAROQUE
Mannerism is the term used to describe the artistic style that
arose in mid-16th century. It comes from the Italian maniera, or “style,” in
the sense of an artist’s characteristic “touch” or recognizable “manner.”
Mannerism is usually set in opposition to High Renaissance conventions.
It was not that artists despaired of achieving the balance of Raphael; it was that such
balance was no longer relevant or appropriate. Mannerism developed among the pupils of two
masters of the integrated classical moment, with Raphael’s assistant Giulio Romano and
among the students of Andrea del Sarto, whose studio produced the quintessentially
Mannerist painters Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino.
Baptism, by El Greco
After the realistic depiction of the human form and the mastery of
perspective achieved in high Renaissance Classicism, some artists started to deliberately
distort proportions in disjointed, irrational space for emotional and artistic effect.
There are aspects of Mannerism in El Greco. In spite of the uniquely individual quality
that sets him apart from simple style designations, you can detect Mannerism in El
Greco’s “acid” color sense, his figures’ elongated and tortured anatomy, the
irrational perspective and light of his breathless and crowded composition, and obscure
and troubling iconography.
In Italy mannerist centers were Rome, Florence and Mantua. Venetian
painting, in its separate “school” pursued a separate course, epitomized in the long
career of Titian.
Baroque style started around 1600 in Rome, Italy and spread to
most of Europe. The style used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to
produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, and
music.
The name “baroque” adapted a French adjective that is derived from
the Portuguese noun “barroco”; both described a pearl of irregular shape.
The popularity and success of the Baroque was encouraged by the Roman
Catholic Church when it decided that the drama of the Baroque artists’ style could
communicate religious themes in direct and emotional involvement. The secular
(светская) aristocracy also saw the dramatic style of Baroque architecture and art
as a means of impressing visitors and would-be competitors. Many forms of art, music,
architecture, and literature inspired each other in the Baroque cultural movement.
The appeal of Baroque style turned consciously from the witty,
intellectual qualities of 16th century Mannerist art to an appeal aimed at the senses. It
employed an iconography that was direct, simple, obvious, and dramatic. Baroque art drew
on certain broad and heroic tendencies in Annibale Carracci and his circle, and found
inspiration in other artists like Correggio and Caravaggio and Federico Barocci, nowadays
sometimes termed ‘proto-Baroque’.
Aeneas flees burning Troy, Federico Barocci, 1598: a moment
caught in a dramatic action from a classical source, bursting from the picture plane in a
sweeping diagonal perspective.
Baroque poetry was strongly influenced by visual developments in
painting. It can be sensed in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, a Baroque epic.
In paintings, Baroque gestures are broader than Mannerist gestures:
less ambiguous, more like the stage gestures of opera, a major Baroque artform. Baroque
poses depend on contrapposto (“counterpoise” - равновесие), the
tension within the figures that moves the planes of shoulders and hips in
counterdirections.
A defining statement of what Baroque signifies in painting is
provided by the series of paintings executed by Peter Paul Rubens for Marie de Medici at
the Luxembourg Palace in Paris (now at the Louvre), in which a Catholic painter satisfied
a Catholic patron (sponsor): Baroque-era conceptions of monarchy, iconography, handling of
paint, and compositions as well as the depiction of space and movement.
The Adoration of the Magi, a 1624 oil-on-canvas painting by Peter Paul
Rubens
There were highly diverse strands of Italian baroque painting, from
Caravaggio to Cortona; both approaching emotive dynamism with different styles. Another
frequently cited work of Baroque art is Bernini’s Saint Theresa in Ecstasy for
the Cornaro chapel in S. Maria della Vittoria, which brings together architecture,
sculpture, and theater into one grand conceit.
In Baroque sculpture, groups of figures assumed new importance, and
there was a dynamic movement and energy of human forms – they spiralled around an empty
central part, or reached outwards into the surrounding space. For the first time, Baroque
sculpture often had multiple ideal viewing angles. The characteristic Baroque sculpture
added extra-sculptural elements, for example, concealed lighting, or water fountains.
The architecture, sculpture and fountains of Bernini (1598–1680) give
highly-charged characteristics of Baroque style. Bernini was undoubtedly the most
important sculptor of the Baroque period. He approached Michelangelo in his omnicompetence
(умение работать во всех областях): Bernini sculpted, worked
as an architect, painted, wrote plays, and staged spectacles. In the late 20th century
Bernini was most valued for his sculpture, both for his virtuosity in carving marble and
his ability to create figures that combine the physical and the spiritual. He was also a
fine sculptor of bust portraits in high demand among the powerful.
The Triton Fountain by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, in Piazza Barberini, Rome
Baroque actually expressed new values, which often are summarised in
the use of metaphor and allegory, widely found in Baroque literature, and in the research
for the “maraviglia” (wonder, astonishment — as in Marinism), the use of artifices.
If Mannerism was a first breach with Renaissance, Baroque was an opposed language. The psychological
pain of Man - a theme that was to be found in both the art and architecture of the
Baroque period. A relevant part of works was made on religious themes, since the Roman
Church was the main “customer.”
Virtuosity was researched by artists (and the virtuoso became a common
figure in any art) together with realism and care for details.
In English literature, the metaphysical poets represent a closely
related movement; their poetry sought unusual metaphors, which they then examined in often
extensive detail. Their verse also manifests a taste for paradox, and deliberately
inventive and unusual turns of phrase (обороты речи).
The term Baroque also is used to designate the style of music
composed during a period that overlaps with that of Baroque art, but usually encompasses a
slightly later period. J.S. Bach and G.F. Handel are often considered its culminating
figures.
Opera was born during the Baroque era out of the experimentation of the
Florentine Camerata, the creators of monody (монодического
стиля), who attempted to recreate the theatrical arts of the ancient Greeks; indeed
it is exactly that development which is often used to denote the beginning of the musical
Baroque, around 1600.
In modern usage, the term “Baroque” (барочный) may still be
used, usually pejoratively (пренебрежительно), to describe works of art,
craft, or design that are thought to have excessive ornamentation or complexity of line,
also to describe literature, computer programs, or laws that are thought to be excessively
complex, indirect, or obscure in language, to the extent of concealing or confusing their
meaning.
I. USEFUL VOCABULARY
The Florentine Camerata (флорентийская
камерата) was a group of humanists, musicians, poets and intellectuals in late
Renaissance Florence who gathered under the patronage of Count Giovanni de’ Bardi to
discuss and guide trends in the arts, especially music and drama. They believed that music
had become corrupt, and by returning to the forms and style of the ancient Greeks, the art
of music could be improved, and thereby society could be improved as well.
Monody 1) an ode for one voice or actor, as in Greek drama; 2) a
style of composition dominated by a single melodic line.
Opera seria (опера-сериа Italian ‘serious opera’)
type of opera distinct from opera buffa, common in the 17th and 18th centuries. It tended
to treat classical subjects in a formal style, with most of singing by solo voices.
Examples include many of Handel’s operas based on mythological subjects.
Opera buffa (опера-буфф Italian ‘comic opera’) type
of humorous opera with characters taken from everyday life. An example is Rossini’s The
Barber of Seville.
 Comedia delle’arte (комедия дель арте) popular form of
Italian improvised drama in the 16th and 17th centuries, performed by trained troupes of
actors and involving stock characters (маски, типажи) and situations. It
exerted considerable influence on writers such as Moliere and Carlo Galdoni.
Intermezzo (интермеццо) 1) a brief entertainment
between two acts of a play, 2) a short orchestral interlude often used between the acts of
an opera to denote the passage of time.
 Libretto (либретто) the text of a work that is both theatrical
and musical (e.g. an opera)
Pamphlet (памфлет) a small printed publication with a
paper cover dealing with topical matter (затрагивающий
существующие в данный момент проблемы), e.g. a political
pamphlet.
Cherub (singular), cherubim (plural) – херувим,
херувимы – type of angel of second order in Christian belief.
II. READING
Activity A
Read the text about Baroque opera and fill in the gaps 1-4 with the
suitable sentences A-D.
A. One reason for this was an attempt to attract members of the growing
merchant class, newly wealthy, but still less cultured than the nobility, to the public
opera houses.
B. Once the Metastasian ideal had been firmly established, comedy in
Baroque-era opera was reserved for what came to be called opera buffa.
C. They became so popular, however, that they were soon being offered
as separate productions.
D. Monteverdi’s later Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (1640)
is also seen as a very important work of early opera.
BAROQUE OPERA
Opera did not remain confined to court audiences for long; in 1637 the
idea of a “season” (Carnival) of publicly-attended operas supported by ticket sales
emerged in Venice. Influential 17th century composers of opera included Francesco Cavalli
and Claudio Monteverdi whose Orfeo (1607) is the earliest opera still performed
today. 1. ___ In these early Baroque operas, broad comedy was blended with tragic
elements. They became associated with the poet Pietro Trapassi, called Metastasio, whose
librettos helped crystallize so-called opera seria’s moralizing tone.
2. ___ Before such elements were forced out of opera seria, many librettos
had featured a separately unfolding comic plot as sort of an “opera-within-an-opera.”
3. ___ These separate plots were almost immediately resurrected in a separately developing
tradition that partly derived from the commedia dell’arte, (as indeed, such plots
had always been) a long-flourishing improvisitory stage tradition of Italy. Just as
intermedi had once been performed in-between the acts of stage plays, operas in the new
comic genre of “intermezzi”, which developed largely in Naples in the 1710s and
’20s, were initially staged during the intermissions of opera seria. 4. ____
Italian opera set the Baroque standard. Italian libretti were the norm,
even when a German composer like Handel found himself writing for London audiences.
Italian libretti remained dominant in the classical period as well, for example in the
operas of Mozart, who wrote in Vienna near the century’s close.
Keys: 1. D, 2. B, 3. A, 4. C.
Activity B
Guess. Match the pictures and the names of the characters from the
commedia dell’arte – Pantalone, Pulcinella, Colombina, Harlequin.
Keys: A. Harlequin, B. Pantalone, C. Pulcinella, D. Colombina
By Irina Ishkhneli,
School No. 1738, Moscow
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