Baroque

Central Europe

In central Europe the Mannerist tradition remained dominant until the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), particularly in Bohemia and Bavaria, where Italian influence was perhaps strongest.

The Rubensian Baroque became dominant after mid-century, and here the lead was taken by Silesia and Bohemia. Michael Willmann, originally from Königsberg (modern Kaliningrad) on the southeastern Baltic coast, developed a highly charged, emotional Baroque style, based on Rubens, at Lubiąż (modern Dorf Leubus, northwest of Wrocław) from 1661 to 1700 and at Prague after 1700. In Karel Škréta Šotnovoský, Bohemia possessed a painter of significant stature; his somber portraits and religious scenes are filled with a deeply serious mystical fervor. The frescoes by Johann Michael Rottmayr in the castle of Vranov in Moravia (1695) and in Breslau (now Wrocław; 1704–06) constitute a prelude to the great development of Baroque painting in the Habsburg domains. There the vigorous and extremely colorful frescoes are closely integrated with the architecture. The vast majority of the best central European Baroque painting outside portraiture is monumental in scale, and the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art”)—where painting, sculpture, and architecture are combined together into a single, unified, and harmonious ensemble—is of overwhelming importance.

Painting in Austria flourished, and Franz Anton Maulbertsch is arguably the greatest painter of the 18th century in central Europe. The vast majority of his brilliant fresco cycles are located in relatively inaccessible areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and northern Hungary. But the mystical intensity of his religious scenes and the joyous abandon of his secular subjects form a triumphant closing chapter to 18th-century central European painting. Maulbertsch’s last frescoes at Strahov, Prague (1794), reveal, nevertheless, the impact of the Neoclassicism that descended in the last decades on all Austrian painters, including Troger’s pupil Martin Knoller. But Austrian monumental painting remained fully Baroque in the hands of Daniel Gran, Paul Troger, and Bartholomäus Altomonte; and it was not until the latter part of the century that the Rococo made its impact.

During the first four decades of the 18th century, Bohemian Baroque painting developed almost independently of Vienna, where the Habsburg rulers of Bohemia had their capital. The impetuous work of Jan Petr Brandl and the powerful realism of the portraitist Jan Kupecký, who worked in Rome, Venice, Vienna, and Nürnberg, always remained Bohemian in spirit. The frescoes of Wenzel Lorenz Reiner, however, show more Italian influence. One of the few important Baroque frescoes of the second half of the century is that by Jan Lucaš Kracker in St. Nicholas, Malá Strana (“Lesser Quarter”), Prague. The influence of Bohemian Baroque painting is frequently underestimated. Apart from Vienna and the surrounding area, it was dominant in Silesia and strong later in the century in Franconia.

After the death of Cosmas Damian Asam in 1739, Johann Baptist Zimmermann became the most important fresco painter in the Munich area; his lyrical handling of pale colors is typical of the Rococo period. Christian Wink continued to paint in the same style until the close of the century. In Georg Desmarées the court at Munich gained a painter in whose Rococo portraits there is more than a hint of decadence.

The center of south German painting had by the late 1730s shifted from Munich to Augsburg in Swabia, where Johann Georg Bermüller became the director of the Academy in 1730; but his frescoes, as well as those of Franz Joseph Spiegler and Gottfried Bernhard Goetz, are perhaps more representative of the Late Baroque than the Rococo. The frescoes of Matthäus Günther, who became director of the Augsburg Academy in 1762, show a steady evolution from his early Baroque compositions, through the much lighter asymmetrical Rococo compositions, to the strongly sculptural quality of his late works, which reveal the onset of Neoclassicism.

In Franconia and the middle Rhineland the most important painters were Johann Zick and Carlo Carlone. Zick’s frescoes at Würzburg (1749) had not been entirely successful, and in 1750 he was supplanted by Tiepolo; but at Bruchsal he produced one of the most brilliant series of Rococo frescoes in Germany (now destroyed). His son Januarius began painting in the Rococo style but under the influence of Anton Raphael Mengs produced some late frescoes that were strongly classical.

The French tastes of Frederick I of Prussia at Berlin led him in 1710 to summon Antoine Pesne to court, where Pesne continued for the remainder of his life to paint in an entirely French Rococo style. The homely intimacy of the paintings of Daniel Chodowiecki, however, have a sensitivity and refinement more comparable to Chardin’s.

Saxony under Augustus III produced few painters of real importance except Mengs, who rapidly turned from the Rococo to the Neoclassicism propounded by the influential art historian and classical archaeologist Johann Winckelmann.

Poland

King Władysław IV Vasa (reigned 1632–48) assembled an important collection of Italian and Flemish Baroque paintings, but these promising developments were cut short by the destruction of the Swedish Wars in the middle of the 17th century. Under John III Sobieski (reigned 1674–96) there was a considerable revival, and, although two of the painters active in Poland—Claude Callot and Michelangelo Palloni—were foreign-born and foreign-trained, domestic talent flowered with the work of Jerzy Eleuter Szymonowicz-Siemiginowski and Jan Tretko. In 1697 the crowns of Poland and Saxony were united under Augustus II, and he and his son Augustus III ruled over Poland until 1763. During this period, Polish painting formed part of the Saxon tradition, but during the reign of the last king of Poland, Stanisław II August Poniatowski (reigned 1764–95), Warsaw quickly became a center of European importance. Although inclined to Neoclassicism in architecture, Stanisław’s taste in painting was more conservative. Accordingly it is the late Rococo portraits of Marcello Bacciarelli that are particularly important. A nephew and pupil of Canaletto, Bernardo Bellotto, settled in Warsaw in 1767 and executed for Stanisław the great series of 26 views of the city that were intended to hang in the Royal Castle.

Russia

The Baroque in Russia was imported from western Europe and made little impact outside court circles. Indeed the traditional production of icons for the Orthodox church by artists of the Novgorod and Moscow schools continued throughout the Baroque period. Nevertheless the foundation of St. Petersburg (1703) by Peter I the Great marked the beginning of the substitution of Western influence for Byzantine, an important change. During Peter’s reign foreign painters began to go to Russia in increasing numbers; conversely, groups of young Russians were sent to Italy, France, Holland, and England to study painting. Western influence determined the character of Russian painting for more than two centuries.

The art of Peter’s age shows almost no trace of Byzantine influence. Only in iconography did the old style persist for some time. Early in the 18th century, religious painting began to give way to secular painting, and the church prohibition of sculpture became ineffective. Dmitry Levitsky stands out as the only important Russian painter of the 18th century to work in the Western style.

Further westernizing occurred under the empress Elizabeth (reigned 1741–62), who had French tastes. A great number of vast and luxurious Rococo-style palaces were built, and painting was primarily concerned with their interior decoration—ceilings and walls. The work was carried on chiefly by Italians and Frenchmen.

In 1757 the Academy of Fine Arts was founded in St. Petersburg, and foreign artists—mostly French—were invited to direct the new school. They trained some remarkable domestic portraitists, such as Ivan Argunov, Anton Losenko, and Fyodor Rokotov. Their works reflected the ceremonial character of Elizabeth’s tastes and showed little evidence of native Russian sensibility.

Scandinavia

In the 17th century, Scandinavian painting derived from traditions of the Low Countries and northern Germany. The works of art carried off as loot from Prague by Swedish soldiers during the Thirty Years’ War might conceivably have broadened the outlook of Swedes at home, but the best of them were taken to Rome by Queen Christina when she abdicated in 1654. A generation later, under the influence of the fashionable Venetian pastelist Rosalba Carriera, a school of Rococo portraitists flourished in Scandinavia. One such portraitist was Carl Gustav Pilo, who, though trained in Stockholm, executed many frankly Venetian portraits during his years as court painter in Copenhagen. Another was Lorentz Pasch the Younger, who trained under Pilo in Copenhagen, although he subsequently worked mainly in Sweden. Other painters of Swedish origin were Alexander Roslin, who worked throughout Europe, and Georg Desmarées, who settled in Bavaria. The Scandinavian Rococo has a distinctive flavor that is also detectable in the work of two important miniaturists of the period, Niclas Lafrensen and Cornelius Höyer. At the close of the century the paintings of Jens Juel in Denmark bridge the transition from Rococo to Neoclassicism.