Written by Emilio Luppino
Inside, only gold, gaudy colors, triumphal paintings, and graceful music.
Outside, it was Dies Irae.
European culture was crumbling: Protestant Reformation and its religious divisions, the decline of the Roman Catholic Church, the erection of new lay power structures, the meeting with new lands and their cultural environments, the justification of their exploitation, the atomization of society and new ways of production, the rise of technological innovations.
The context the Baroque was born in was not the most tranquil one, and this can partially help explain the tendency of an art that seemed to represent revelry.
In the sixteenth century, the link between politics and culture tended to follow the already known forms of patronage, but in the last decades of the century, the approach of authority to the question of consent changed profoundly. Consensus became something that must be built. It compacted the aristocracy around the figure of the king. Authorities, focused on the accumulation or the consolidation of power proclaiming the era of absolutism.
The Baroque era encapsulated a diverse range of elements, encompassing both authoritative control and artistic spontaneity, the strengthening of national identity and individualistic extravagance and intensity, as well as the emergence of the scientific method alongside the promotion of an emotional connection to art. The primary objective of Baroque propaganda was not the suppression of opposing views. Instead, absolutism primarily sought to assimilate various social groups, silencing critical voices by incorporating them into its own sphere of values.
In other words, the subtle political messages that shone through Baroque’s artistic manifestations did not coincide with the hiding or negation of the truth, but with the production of “symbolic capital”.
This “symbolic capital” was not the result of a standardized operation that followed a default path based on certain dogmas. Authorities relied on the capability to molest, to win the spectator’s reason and instill, in them, a zealous enthusiasm resulting in admiration and devotion.
The goal is not to instruct, nor simply offer a set of rules; rather, it was imperative to enchant them, to “project the simulacrum of an authority outwards,” in order to effectively communicate the intended message.
Cardinal Mazarin demonstrates this baroque way of managing political affairs. Considered lacking moral scruples, his Breviarum Politicorum serves as a multifaceted work encompassing elements of political science, management principles, self-improvement guidance, as well as a discourse on strategic communication and public relations. Its central theme revolves around the art of cultivating a robust reputation through the careful management of beliefs and appearances. In brief, the book is a baroque and Machiavellian guide to power.
By which means did the Baroque artists succeed in shaping people’s beliefs and thoughts? By explaining the reality through platonic tradition, or rather, myths. Myth is shaped by politics and fills in the historical gaps in the genealogical trees of noble houses, and the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens was a pivotal figure in this, especially with the Marie de’ Medici cycle.
The cycle, at the Luxembourg Palace in Paris, represents the royal family through personifications, allusions, and analogies.
Rubens’ operation is different and radically new. The different levels of representation mix with each other, they are melted and recomposed until they become impossible to discern. The subjects, the court, and the nobles lose the ability to distinguish the goddess from the queen and vice-versa. She is elevated to a divine figure and the cycle suddenly becomes a painted hagiography. It is considered “iconoclastic and ecclesiastical” at the same time. It is not a mere act of weltschmerz, comparing the desired world with reality. Instead, it ingrains the present in the never-ending universe of the myth. It is a religion deprived of sacred texts, events, and justifications, but full of blind subjugation and mastery. Devotion to the ruler, not prayers, shall save the reign.
Unlike Diego Velázquez who, in Spain, based his style on a “realist” Baroque, Rubens painted the royal family’s part of the popular and religious culture. On the opposite, at the court of the King of Spain, everybody already knew that Philip I could have been compared to a modern Hercules. Nevertheless, it was considered scandalous to portray him naked with a lion’s skin on his head. The rigorous elegance of the royal house had to be preserved. It was neither necessary nor appropriate to resort to myth, its power was real. This intense combination of pain and pleasure that arose in that period is made explicit by the poet Giambattista Marino’s account of Guido Reni’s Massacre of the Innocents. He wrote:
“What are you doing Guido, what are you doing? The hand that paints angelic forms now treats of bloody deeds? Do you not see that while you are revivifying the bloody throng of infants you are giving them new death? O compassionate even in cruelty, gentle artificer, well you know that a tragic event is also a precious object, and that often horror goes with delight.”
A similar expression of the relationship between art and power and the use of irrationality can be found in the musical panorama. The Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin was among the pioneers in using the term “Baroque” not just for visual arts, but also for literature and music.
An example is Claudio Monteverdi, the Italian composer who attempted to create a new kind of secular music based upon the principles of Greek drama. Once again, as showed by the Hellenic tragedy’s features and imperial environment such as in L’Orfeo or L’incoronazione di Poppea, the presence of a golden past surrounded by a mythological atmosphere was central in the artistic representation.
Monteverdi’s Orpheus contains a concealed political significance. Written for his patron, Prince Francesco Gonzaga, heir to the throne of Mantua, it was intended for performance during Carnival. By adapting to the conceptual demands of absolutism and overlooking the more ambiguous aspects of Orpheus’s narrative, the story of Orpheus and Eurydice was tailored to suit the entertainment preferences of a Baroque prince. It served as an educational portrayal of his authority and grandeur, depicting the prince in association with divine figures. In this representation, the prince embodies reason, governing his subjects who are driven by mere sensuality, creating a certain distance between himself and them. Like the Prince of Mantua by his court, Orpheus is glorified by shepherds and nymphs and, contrary to the tragic fate of the original Greek myth, ends up ascending with Apollo in heaven. The ruler, away from his vile subjects, is finally celebrated as a god arriving in the empyrean world.
Rubens and Monteverdi stand therefore as merely two among a plethora of examples showcasing the extravagant political use of the Baroque aesthetic and its integration into the realm of the arts. Their works are not mere pieces of politicized art, but are manipulations of reality, manifestations of a weltanschauung impregnated with royal diegesis and respect for artistic production. They were, in other words, secular priests.
Bibliography
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Bokina, John. 1991. “Deity, Beast, and Tyrant: Images of the Prince in the Operas of Monteverdi.” International Political Science Review 12 (1): 48–66.
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Garcia, Cesar. “Cardinal Mazarin’s Breviary of Politics: Exploring Parallelisms Between the Baroque and Public Relations in a Post-Truth Society.” Public relations inquiry 9, no. 3 (2020): 295–310.
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Walker, Claire, Katie Barclay, and David Lemmings, eds. “A Cultural History of the Emotions in the Baroque and Enlightenment Age Edited by Claire Walker, Katie Barclay and David Lemmings.” London, England: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.
Wölfflin, Heinrich. Renaissance and Baroque / by Heinrich Wölfflin ; Translated by Kathrin Simon ; with an Introduction by Peter Murray. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1966.
Featured Image Credit: Livioandronico2013, English: Ecstasy of St. Teresa HDR, August 1, 2015, August 1, 2015, Own work, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ecstasy_of_St._Teresa_HDR.jpg.
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