Baroque Art, Architecture and Atlantic Trade (17th–18th C)

Transatlantic Trade and Production

(1) In Europe, the benefits of trade and plunder fueled industrial growth. Textile factories employed workers and the owners of the armories produced weapons. The workers transformed raw cotton into fabrics, and guns were loaded on ships departing for Africa.

(2) In West Africa, rifles and textiles were exchanged for enslaved people. Sailing ships were then crammed with enslaved Africans bound for the Americas.

(3) In the Americas, enslaved people were sold to plantation owners. They were used as unpaid labor to grow cotton, sugar, and snuff. With the money obtained from the sale of enslaved people, traders bought ships laden with sugar, cotton, and snuff, and capital continued to grow.

Baroque Art and Cultural Context

Baroque art was born in the early seventeenth century and extended largely through the eighteenth century in Europe and Latin America. Italy was its original home and the style served to exalt the triumph of the Catholic Reformation and the power of absolute monarchy.

Baroque art opposed the equilibrium and serenity associated with Renaissance art. Its character emphasized grandeur, dynamism, strength, expressiveness, and rich decoration. The Baroque embraced novelty, a fascination with the infinite, bold contrasts, and the mixing of all the arts. Over time, the term "baroque" came to be used, in some languages, as a synonym for extravagant, deformed, unusual, or irregular.

Typical Baroque buildings included large palaces, castles, and monumental cathedral churches.

Baroque Architecture: Main Features

• Dynamic lines and movement, such as spiral columns.
• Grandeur both inside and outside buildings.
• Rich and dense decoration on walls, vaults, and domes.

Grand masters of Baroque architecture and decoration include Gian Lorenzo Bernini (notably his canopy work) and Francesco Borromini.

Baroque Sculpture: Characteristics

• Theatricality: dramatic presentation and staging.
• Motion: sculpted figures often convey movement.
• Exalted attitudes and gestures: the human body and facial expressions are intensified.

These features can be seen in the work of Bernini, for example in the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. Baroque sculptors and imagers often created lifelike saints for paintings and sculptures, frequently used as gilded altarpieces and devotional images.

Spanish Schools and Notable Works

In Spain, different regional schools developed distinctive Baroque expressions:

• Castilian School: Gregorio Fernández is known for lifelike depictions such as the recumbent Christ (Christ Yacente).
• Seville School: Artists such as Martínez Montañés produced beautiful altarpieces and polychrome sculptures.
• Granada School: Alonso Cano painted and sculpted devotional images, including works of the Immaculate Conception.

Baroque Painting: Key Traits and Artists

• Naturalism: a faithful representation of figures and daily life.
• Strong expressiveness: intense emotions and gestures.
• Intense contrast of light and dark (chiaroscuro), creating dramatic effects.

Important painters associated with these tendencies include:

• Caravaggio: naturalism and dramatic chiaroscuro.
• Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish school): compositions full of motion and color.
• Rembrandt: realism and powerful chiaroscuro.
• Spanish painters: Francisco de Zurbarán and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo contributed notable religious works; Diego Velázquez is renowned for his naturalism and for masterpieces such as Las Meninas.