Методические указания по английскому языку

Методические указания по английскому языку

для студентов II курса института дизайна и искусств,

Обучающихся по специальности «История и теория искусств»

Составители:

К. В. Кайшева

В. И. Синицына

Санкт-Петербург

Рекомендовано на

заседании кафедры

31.08.2011 г,

протокол № 1

Рецензент О. C. Муранова

Тексты предназначены для студентов, обучающихся по специальности «История и теория искусств», комплекс упражнений на основе текстов позволяет развить навыки разговорной речи.

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Contents

Unit 1. Prehistoric art: the beginning..................................................................... 5

Unit 2. Antique art: Greek and Roman.............................................................. 10

Unit 3. Medieval art: the reign of religion............................................................ 20

Unit 4. The rebirth of art: the Italian Renaissance.............................................. 28

Unit 5.The rebirth of art: the Northern Renaissance........................................... 37

Unit 6.Baroque: the Ornate Age........................................................................... 46

Unit 7. Baroque and Rococo................................................................................ 55

Unit 8. Neoclassicism............................................................................................. 63

References.............................................................................................................. 68

Unit 1

PREHISTORIC ART: THE BEGINNING

1. Discuss the following questions:

· What is art?

· What art forms do you know?

· When was art born?

· Do you know any examples of prehistoric art?

· How would you describe the distinctive features of prehistoric art?

Comment on the quotations. Do you agree with them? Explain your answers.

Read and translate the text.

The Birth of Art

Art was born around 25,000 years ago with the birth of our human ancestor Cro-Magnon man. With greater intelligence came imagination and the ability to create images in both painting and sculpture. For thousands of years three art forms – painting, sculpture, and architecture – embodied the ambitions, dreams, and values of their cultures. The history of art is not a story of progress from primitive to complex but a story of the varied forms the imagination has taken in painting and sculpture.

The oldest surviving art objects are sculptures made from bone, ivory, stone, or antlers. These were engraved (by incising an outlined figure with a sharp tool), carved in deep relief, or fully rounded three-dimensional sculptures.

The first «paintings» were probably made in caves approximately 15,000 years ago. These pictures of bison, deer, horses, cattle, mammoths symbolized good luck in hunting. Cave artists used charcoal to outline irregularities in the walls of caves that suggested forms from nature. Bulges in the rock implied hulk, and tonal shading with earth–tone pigments lent contour and perspective. Drawings were often superimposed randomly, perhaps because new images were necessary before each hunt. Almost all images represent animal figures in two-dimensional profile and seem to float in space, without background surroundings.

Mesopotamiaand its capital city Babylonare called «the navel of the world». This premier city was the cradle of ancient art and architecture, as well as the site of both the Hanging Gardens and Tower of Babel. Besides architecture, the predominant art form of Mesopotamia was bas-relief sculpture. Combined with wedge-shaped cuneiform writing, scene after scene of these wall carvings scrupulously detail military exploits. «The Dying Lioness» portrays a wounded beast, paralyzed by arrows. The figure's flattened ears and straining muscles convey her death throes with convincing realism.

Egypt is famous for the art of immortality. Considering Egyptian society's obsession with immortality, it's not surprising that Egyptian art remained unchanged for 3,000 years. Their overriding concern was assuring a comfortable after-life for their rulers, who were considered gods. Colossal architecture and Egyptian art existed to surround the pharaoh's spirit with eternal glory. In the pursuit of permanence, the Egyptians established the essentials of a major civilization: literature, medical science, and higher mathematics. Much of what we know about ancient Egypt comes from the surviving tombs. Wall paintings and hieroglyphics were a form of instant replay, life and daily activities in minute detail. Sculpture and paintings followed a rigid formula for representing the human figure. In acres of stone carvings and drawings, the human form is depicted with a front view of the eye and shoulders and profile view of head, arms, and legs. In wall paintings, the surface is divided into horizontal bands separated by lines. The spare, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped figure wears a headdress and kilt, and stands rigidly, with arms at his side, one leg advanced.

The size of a figure indicated rank, with pharaohs presented as giants towering over pygmy-size servants. Since statues were intended to last eternally, they were made of hard substances like granite and diorite. The pose was always frontal and bisymmetrical, with arms close to the torso. Human anatomy was usually, at best, an approximation. Nefertiti's husband was an artist, who encouraged a temporary loosening of artistic conventions, seen in this more naturalistic representation of his wife.

ancestor – someone who is related to you who lived a long time ago.

to embody – to be the best possible example of a particular idea, quality, or principle, especially a good one.

value – amount something is worth.

ivory – a knife with an ivory handle.

antlers – one of the horns on the head of a male deer.

to engrave –a trophy engraved with the winner’s name.

charcoal – a black substance made from burnt wood, used as a fuel, especially for cooking food outside.

bulges – a shape that curves outwards on the surface of something, often made by something under it or inside it.

hulk – the shape of something such as a large ship or building, especially after the inside of it has been destroyed by fire.

randomly – chosen or happening without any particular method, pattern, or purpose.

navel – a small round place in the middle of someone’s stomach where they were separated from their mother at birth.

cradle – a small bed for a baby that you can move gently from side to side.

convey – to communicate ideas or feelings indirectly.

pursuit – the process of trying to achieve something.

rigid –not easily changed.

acre – a unit for measuring the surface area of land, equal to4,047 square metres.

depict – to describe someone or something using words or pictures.

rigidly –not easily changed.

granite – a type of very hard stone, used especially for building.

Read and translate the text.

Rome: the organizers

At its height, the Roman Empire stretched from England to Egypt and from Spain to southern Russia. Because of their exposure to foreign lands, the Romans absorbed elements from older cultures and then transmitted this cultural mix to all of Western Europe and Northern Africa. Roman art became the building block for the art of all succeeding periods.

At first, Romans were overwhelmed by the Greek influence. Later, however, Romans put their own spin on Greek art and philosophy. Having founded the greatest empire the world had ever known, they added managerial talents: organization and efficiency. Roman art is less idealized and intellectual than Classical Greek, more secular and functional. And, where the Greeks shined at innovation, the Romans' forte was administration.

Roman Sculpture: politics as usual. Although the Romans copied Greek statues wholesale to satisfy the fad for Hellenic art, they gradually developed their own distinctive style. In general, Roman sculpture was more literal. The Romans had always kept wax death masks of ancestors in their homes. These realistic images were completely factual molds of the deceased's features, and this tradition influenced Roman sculptors.

An exception to this tradition was the assembly-line, godlike busts of emperors, politicians, and military leaders in civic buildings throughout Europe, establishing a political presence thousands of miles from Rome. The other principal form of Roman sculpture was narrative relief. Panels of sculpted figures depicting military exploits decorated triumphal arches, under which victorious armies paraded, leading long lines of chained prisoners.

Pompeii: paintings. A black mushroom cloud rose 12 miles over the peak of Vesuvius until the villages were covered with 18 feet of ash and pumice. They remained covered and forgotten for 1,700 years, preserving an incredible hoard of nearly intact artifacts, mosaics, and wall paintings.

Pompeii was a luxurious resort community with a population of 25,000. The scientific excavation that began in the mid–1800s disclosed the whole villas in which every wall was painted with realistic still lifes and landscapes. Since the interiors of villas had no windows, ancient Romans painted make–believe windows with elaborate views of fantasy vistas. This style of wall painting ranged from simple imitations of colored marble to trompe l'oeil scenes of complex cityscapes as seen through imaginary windows framed by imaginary painted columns. Artists mastered tricks of perspective and effects of light and shadow that were unknown in world art. Walls glowed with vivid red, tan, and green panels. Mosaics made of bits of colored stone, glass, or shell (called tesserae) covered floors, walls, and ceilings. Many were as intricate as paintings. In one, fifty tiny cubes composed a one-and-a-half-inch eye.

The paintings used to trace the evolution of portrait painting after Mount Vesuvius erupted. Some aspects to note are the refined use of the brush and the spatula, soft and delicate modeling, and sensitive portrayal of the calm demeanor of its thoughtful subject.

dignity –impressive behaviour of someone who controls their emotions in a difficult situation.

clarity – the ability to be easily understood.

adorn – to decorate something.

clay – a type of heavy wet soil that becomes hard when it is baked in a kiln (=oven), used for making cups, plates, and other objects.

nude – not wearing clothes.

passion – passions run high (=people become very angry, upset etc).

fold – to bend a piece of paper or cloth and pressone part of it over another part.

swirl – to move quickly in circles, or to make something move inthis way.

spin – the Earth spins on its axis.

literal – the literal meaning of a word is its most basic meaning.

relief – a relaxed happy feeling that you get because something bad has not happened or a bad situation has ended.

hoard –a large amount of something that someone has saved orhidden somewhere.

spatula – a similar tool used for applying paint or some other substance to a surface.

Начало формы

1) The ______ period of ancient Greek art is named for the influence of Egyptian art.

A) Archaic

B) Classical

C) Geometric

D) Orientalizing

E) Transitional

Read and translate the text.

Medieval art

The Middle Ages included the millennium from the fifth to the fifteenth century, roughly from the fall of Rome until the Renaissance. During its initial period, called the Dark Ages, barbarians destroyed what had taken 3,000 years to build. But there were many bright spots in art and architecture.

Since the Christian focus was on salvation for a glorious afterlife, interest in realistically representing objects of the world disappeared. Nudes were forbidden, and even images of clothed bodies showed ignorance of anatomy. The Greco-Roman ideals of harmonious proportions and balance between the body and mind ceased to exist. Instead, medieval artisans were interested exclusively in the soul. Art became the servant of the church.

Medieval art was composed of three different styles: Byzantine, Romanesque, and Gothic.

Byzantine. Byzantium was the center of a brilliant civilization combining early Christian art with the Greek Oriental taste for rich decoration and color. Some of the world's greatest art, in the form of mosaics, was created during the fifth and sixth centuries. Mosaics were intended to publicize the now–official Christian creed, so their subject was generally religion with Christ shown as teacher and all–powerful ruler. Human figures were flat, stiff, and symmetrically placed, seeming to float as if hung from pegs. Artisans had no interest in suggesting perspective or volume. Tall, slim human figures with almond–shaped faces, huge eyes, and solemn expressions gazed straight ahead, without the least hint of movement. Although drawing on the Roman tradition of setting colored cubes, or tesserae, in plaster to form a picture, Byzantine mosaics were distinct from Roman.

Romanesque art: stories in stone.With the Roman Catholic faith firmly established, a wave of church construction throughout feudal Europe occurred from 1050 to 1200. Builders borrowed elements from Roman architecture, such as rounded arches and columns, giving rise to the term Romanesque for the art and architecture of the period. The exterior of Romanesque churches was rather plain except for sculptural relief around the main portal. Since most churchgoers were illiterate, sculpture taught religious doctrine by telling stories in stone. Sculpture was concentrated in the tympanum, the space beneath the arch and above the lintel of the central door.

Because Italy maintained contact with Byzantine civilization, the art of painting was never abandoned. At the end of the 13th century a flowering of technically skilled painting occurred, with masters like Giotto of Florence breaking with the frozen Byzantine style for softer, more lifelike forms. The frescoes (paintings on damp plaster walls) of Giotto di Bondone (1266–1337) were the first since the Roman period to render human forms suggesting weight and roundness.

By this time, the papyrus was replaced by the vellum (calfskin) or parchment (lambskin) codex, made of separate pages bound at one side. Manuscripts were considered sacred objects containing the word of God. They were decorated lavishly, so their outward beauty would reflect their sublime contents. Covers were made of gold studded with precious and semiprecious gems.

Gothic art: height and light. The flower of Middle Ages artistic achievement, rivaling the wonders of ancient Greece and Rome, was the Gothic cathedral. The chief forms of inspirational decoration in Gothic cathedrals were sculpture, stained glass, and tapestries.

ROMANESQUE CHURCH	GOTHICCHURCH
Emphasis	horizontal	vertical
Elevation	modest height	soaring
Layout	multiple units	unified, unbroken space
Main trait	rounded arch	pointed arch
Support system	piers, walls	exterior buttresses
Engineering	barrel & groin vaults	ribbed groin vaults
Ambiance	dark, solemn	airy, bright
Exterior	simple, severe	richly decorated with sculpture
Example

Sculptures. Cathedral exteriors displayed carved Biblical tales. The Early Gothic sculptures of Chartres and the High Gothic stone figures of Reims Cathedral show the evolution of medieval art. Sculptors for the first time since antiquity approached sculpture in-the-round.

These figures are almost detached from their architectural background, standing out from the column on pedestals.

In «The Visitation» both the Virgin Mary and her kinswoman, Elizabeth, lean primarily on one leg, their upper bodies turned toward each other. The older Elizabeth has a wrinkled face, full of character, and drapery is handled with more imagination than before.

Stained glass. Chartres Cathedral was the visible soul of the Middle Ages. Its stained glass windows, the most intact collection of medieval glass in the world, measure 26,900 feet in total area. Illustrating the Bible, the lives of saints, even traditional crafts of France, the windows are like a gigantic, glowing, illuminated manuscript.

Tapestry. Weavers in the Middle Ages created highly refined tapestries, minutely detailed with scenes of contemporary life. Large wool-and-silk hangings, used to cut drafts, decorated stone walls.

barbarian – someone from outside one of the major ancient societies such as Greece or Rome, who was considered to be violent and not educated.

ignorance –lack of knowledge or facts about a situation or a particular subject.

cease – to stop happening or continuing.

creed – a set of religious beliefs.

stiff – if you are stiff, or if a part of your body is stiff, you feel pain in your muscles and cannot move easily.

solemn – involving serious behaviour or serious attitudes

church – a building that Christians go to in order to worship.

dome – a roof shaped like the top half of a ball.

apse – a curved area at one end of a church.

lintel – a piece of stone or wood that supports the wall above a door or window.

to render – to provide a service, or to give help to someone or something.

lavishly – something that is lavish exists, is spent, or is given in a very large amount, especially if it costs a lot of money.

outward – obvious and easy to see.

precious – worth a lot of money a precious jewel historic houses with rare and precious contents.

semiprecious gems – a semi-precious stone is one that is used in jewelry and is fairly valuable but not as valuable as a precious stone such as a diamond or emerald.

tapestries – a thick heavy cloth that has pictures or patterns woven into it.

pedestals – a base on which something such as a statue stands.

Read and translate the text.

The Renaissance

In the early 1400s, the world woke up. From its beginnings in Florence, Italy, this renaissance, or rebirth, of culture spread to Rome and Venice, then, in 1500, to the rest of Europe (known as the Northern Renaissance): the Nether­lands, Germany, France, Spain, and England.

Aided by new technical knowledge like the study of anatomy, artists achieved new heights in portraiture, landscape, and mythological and religious paintings. As skills increased, the prestige of the artist soared, reaching its peak during the High Renaissance (1500–1520) with megastars like Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael.

During the Renaissance, such things as the exploration of new continents and scientific research boosted man's belief in himself, while, at the same time, the Protestant Reformation decreased the sway of the church. As a result, the study of God the Supreme Being was replaced by the study of the human being. From the minutely detailed, realistic portraits of Jan van Eyck, to the emotional intensity of Durer's woodcuts and engravings, to the contorted bod­ies and surreal lighting of El Greco, art was the means to explore all facets of life on earth.

The Early Renaissance

Masaccio. The founder of Early Renaissance painting, which became the cornerstone of European painting for more than six centuries, was Masaccio. He was the first since Giotto to paint the human figure not as a linear column, in the Gothic style, but as a real human being. Other innovations were a mastery of perspective and his use of a single, constant source of light casting accurate shadows.

Donatello. What Masaccio did for painting, Donatello (1386–1466) did for sculpture. His work recaptured the central discovery of Classical sculpture: contrapposto, or weight concentrated on one leg with the rest of the body relaxed, often turned. Donatello carved figures and draped them realistically with a sense of their underlying skeletal structure.

Botticelli. While Donatello and Masaccio laid the groundwork for three–dimensional realism, Botticelli (1444–1510) was moving in the opposite direction.

His decorative linear style and tiptoeing, golden-haired maidens were more a throwback to Byzantine art. Yet his nudes epitomized the Renaissance.

The Italian Renaissance

In the sixteenth century, artistic leadership spread from Florence to Rome and Venice, where giants like Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael created sculpture and paintings with total technical mastery – a culmination referred to as the High Renaissance.

Leonardo Da Vinci. Leonardo was universally admired for his handsome appearance, intellect, and charm. An avid mountain climber who delighted in scaling great heights, Leonardo was also fascinated with flight. Less than twenty paintings by Leonardo survive. Mona Lisa hung in Napoleon's bedroom until moving to the Louvre in 1804. The use of perspective, with all lines converging on a single vanishing point behind Mona Lisa's head, and triangular composition established the importance of geometry in painting. It diverged from the stiff, profile portraits that had been the norm by displaying the subject in a relaxed, natural, three-quarter pose. Instead of proceeding from outlined figures, as painters did before, Leonardo used chiaroscuro to model features through light and shadow. Starting with dark undertones, he built the illusion of three-dimensional features through layers and layers of thin, semi-transparent glazes. His colors ranged from light to dark in a continuous gradation of subtle tones, without crisp separating edges. The forms seemed to emerge from, and melt into, shadows. And then there's that famous smile. To avoid the solemnity of most formal portraits, Leonardo engaged musicians and jesters to amuse his subject.

Fresco painting, The Last Supper has for five centuries been the world's most revered religious painting. His use of perspective, with all diagonal lines converging on Christ's head, fixed Christ as the apex of the pyramidal composition. Unfortunately, Leonardo was not temperamentally suited to the demands of traditional fresco painting, which required quick, unerring brushwork instead of accumulated blurred shadings. In «The Last Supper», he experimented with an oil/tempera emulsion of his own invention that failed to bond to the plaster. Even during his lifetime, the mural began to disintegrate.

Michelangelo. An architect, sculptor, painter, poet, and engineer, Michelangelo acknowledged no limitations. Michelangelo always carved his sculptures from one block. The first work to earn him renown, carved when Michelangelo was 23, was the «Pieta». The pyramidal arrangement derived from Leonardo, with the classic composure of the Virgin's face reflecting the calm, idealized expressions of Greek sculpture.

A few vines on a blue background – that's all Pope Julius II asked for, to spruce up the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. What the artist gave him was more than 340 human figures (10' to 18' tall) representing the origin and fall of man. As in his sculpture, the torsos are more expressive than the faces. His twisted nude forms have a relieflike quality, as if they were carved in colored stone. Encompassing an entire wall of the Sistine Chapel is the «Last Judgment». Its mood is strikingly gloomy. Michelangelo showed his supreme ability to present human forms in motion, as nearly 400 contorted figures struggled, fought, and tumbled into hell.

Raphael. Of the three major figures of the High Renaissance school (Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael), Raphael (1483–1520) would be voted Most Popular. Called to Rome by the pope at age 26 to decorate the Vatican rooms. Raphael's art most completely expressed all the qualities of the High Renaissance. From Leonardo he borrowed pyramidal composition and learned to model faces with light and shadow (chiaroscuro). From Michelangelo, Raphael adapted full–bodied, dynamic figures and the contrapposto pose.

Titian. He dominated the art world in the city for sixty years, used strong colors as his main expressive device. First he covered the surface of the canvas with red for warmth, then he painted both background and figures in vivid hues and toned them down with thirty or forty layers of glazes. Through this painstaking method, he was able to portray any texture completely convincingly, whether polished metal, shiny silk, red–gold hair, or warm flesh. One of the first to abandon wood panels, Titian established oil on canvas as the typical medium.

surreal – something surreal is so strange that you cannot believe it is real.

cornerstone – the basic part of something, on which everything depends.

throwback – someone or something that seems to belong to an earlier period of time or that makes you think of an earlier period of time.

stiff – if you are stiff, or if a part of your body is stiff, you feel pain in your muscles and cannot move easily.

chiaroscuro – the way that light and dark areas create a pattern, especially in drawings and paintings.

solemnity – the seriousness of someone’s behaviour or attitude.

jesters – someone in the past whose job was to entertain an important person by saying and doing funny things.

unerring – always right or accurate.

shading –lines or colours that represent areasof shadow in a drawing or painting.

ACROSS

1The appearance of space or distance in a 2–dimensional artwork.

5A big difference between 2 parts of an artwork.

6The placement of some objects to partly cover other objects.

9A design principle used to guide the viewers’ eyes around the work.

11 A pattern of squares of equal size.

12The use of shape, colour or size to make part of an artwork stand out.

DOWN

1The changing of the way an object bending or looks like stretching its shape.

2The way the parts of an artwork are put together.

3An artwork made by pressing an object covered with wet colour against the flat surface.

4A part of an artwork that seems closest.

7A darker value of a colour made by mixing it with black.

8A lighter colour made by mixing a colour and white.

10A large painting that covers a wall.

13The way an artwork makes the viewer feel, such as happy or sad.

Unit5

The rebirth of art: THE northern RENAISSANCE

Read and translate the text.

The Northern Renaissance

In the Netherlands as well as in Florence, new developments in art began about 1420. But what was called the Northern Renaissance was not a rebirth in the Italian sense. Artists in the Netherlands lacked Roman ruins to rediscover. Still, their break with the Gothic style produced a brilliant flowering of the arts. While the Italians looked to Classical antiquity for inspiration, northern Europeans looked to nature.

Without Classical sculpture to teach them ideal proportions, they painted reality exactly as it appeared, in a detailed, realistic style. This precision was made possible by the new oil medium, which Northern Renaissance painters first perfected. Since oil took longer to dry than tempera, they could blend colors. Subtle variations in light and shade heightened the illusion of three-dimensional form. They also used «atmospheric perspective» to suggest depth.

Jan Van Eyck. Credited with inventing oil painting, the Flemish artist Hubert van Eyck was idolized for his discovery. He painted convincingly the most microscopic details in brilliant, glowing color. One of the first masters of the new art of portrait painting, van Eyck included extreme details like the beginning of stubble on his subject's chin. In «The Arnolfini Wedding», he captures surface appearance and textures precisely and renders effects of both direct and diffused light.

Bosch. It's not hard to understand why twentieth–century Surrealists claimed Dutch painter Hieronymous Bosch as their patron saint. The modern artists exploited irrational dream imagery but hardly matched Bosch's bizarre imagination. Bosch's moralistic paintings suggested inventive torments meted out as punishment for sinners.

Bruegel. Pieter the Elder was influenced by Bosch's pessimism and satiric approach. Bruegel took peasant life as his subject. In his scenes of humble folk working, feasting, or dancing, the satiric edge always appeared. Besides elevating genre painting (scenes of everyday life) to the stature of high art, he also illustrated proverbs. His most famous painting, «Hunters in the Snow» shows the atmospheric perspective – from sharp foreground to hazy background – to give the painting depth.

The German Renaissance

In the first quarter of the sixteenth century, Germans suddenly assimilated the pictorial advances of their Southern peers Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Simultaneous with Italy's peak of artistic creativity was Germany's own High Renaissance.

Holbein. Hans Holbein is known as one of the greatest portraitists ever. Like Durer, he blended the strengths of North and South, linking the German skill with lines and precise realism to the balanced composition, chiaroscuro, sculptural form, and perspective of Italy. «The French Ambassadors» illustrates Holbein's virtuoso technique, with its linear patterning in the Oriental rug and damask curtain, accurate textures of fur and drapery, faultless perspective of the marble floor, sumptuous enameled color, and minute surface realism. He depicted faces with the same accuracy as Durer but with a neutral expression characteristic of Italy rather than the intensity of Durer's portraits. Holbein's exquisite draftsmanship set the standard for portraits, the most important form of painting in England for the next three centuries.

Durer. Albrecht Durer combined the Northern gift for realism with the breakthroughs of the Italian Renaissance. He was the first to be fascinated with his own image, leaving a series of self-portraits. In his «Self-Portrait» of 1500, he painted himself in a Christ-like pose, indicating the exalted status of the artist, not to mention his high opinion of himself. What assured Durer's reputation as the greatest artist was his graphic work. Before Durer, woodcuts were primitive studies of black and white contrasts. He adapted the form-creating hatching of engraving to the woodcut, achieving a sliding scale of light and shade. Like an engraver, he used dense lines to render differences in texture and tone as subtle as any oil painting. Durer was the first to use printmaking as a major medium for art.

Color

1. Which painting is very light?

2. When an artist mixes white with colors, the artist makes a tint. Can you show me some places in these paintings where there are tints?

3. When an artist mixes black with a color, a shade is created. Can you show me some places in this painting where there are shades?

4. Can you show me some places where tints and shades are used right next to each other? Artists call this positioning contrast.

5. Which artwork has bright colors on one side and dark colors on the other?

Value

1. Can you show me some tints in some of the artworks?

2. Can you show me some shades in some of the artworks?

3. Is there a person (or other object) in a dark room or place? Where is the light coming from in the picture?

4. Help me find some big, dark shapes that are around some objects. Can you trace in the dark shapes with your finger?

5. Which artwork uses light and dark shapes of color that look very flat?

5. Retell the text according to the plan:

1. The Northern Renaissance.

2. The German Renaissance.

3. The Late Renaissance.

4. The famous artists and the new technologies.

Unit6

Baroque: the ornate age

1. Discuss the following questions:

· What do you know about this period?

· What examples of Baroque style in architecture do you know?

· Was this style popular in Russia?

· Who are the prominent artists of the period?

· Where did it start?

During the baroque period, Europe produced a multitude of painters, architects, sculptors, landscape architects, and composers, some of whom are listed below. Choose five of the people listed below, identify each of them, and cite at least two examples of their work that people still enjoy today. What generalizations can be made, if any, regarding who set the standards of artistic taste during the baroque period?

Meindert Hobbema

Pieter de Hooch

Jacques Lemercier

André Lenôtre

Louis Le Vau

J. B. Lully

François Mansart

Bartolomé Murillo

Jean–Marc Nattier

Balthasar Neumann

Claude Perrault

Giovanni Piazetta

Matthäus Pöppelmann

Jusepe de Ribera

Jan van Ruisdael

Andreas Schlüter

Antonio Scarlatti

Heinrich Schütz

Johann Wenzel Stamitz

Georg Philipp Telemann

Giovanni Tiepolo

Georges de la Tour

Sir John Vanbrugh

Anthony Vandyke

Diego Velázquez

Jan Vermeer

Antoine Watteau

Read and translate the text.

Baroque art

Baroque art (1600–1750) succeeded in marrying the advanced techniques and grand scale of the Renaissance to the emotion, intensity, and drama of Mannerism, thus making the Baroque era the most ornate in the history of art. While the term «baroque» is often used negatively to mean overwrought and ostentatious, the seventeenth century not only produced such exceptional artistic geniuses as Rembrandt and Velazquez but expanded the role of art into everyday life. In Catholic countries like Flanders, religious art flourished, while in the Protestant lands of northern Europe, such as England and Holland, religious imagery was forbidden. As a result, paintings tended to be still lifes, portraits, landscapes, and scenes from daily life.

Italian Baroque

Artists in Rome pioneered the Baroque style before it spread to the rest of Europe. By this time, art academies had been established to train artists in the techniques developed during the Renaissance. Artists could expertly represent the human body from any angle, portray the most complex perspective, and realistically reproduce almost any appearance.

Caravaggio. The most original painter of the seventeenth century, Caravaggio injected new life into Italian painting after the artificiality of Mannerism. He took realism to new lengths, painting bodies in a thoroughly «down and dirty» style, as opposed to pale, Mannerist phantoms. He advocated «direct painting» from nature. «The Conversion of St. Paul» demonstrates Caravaggio's ability to see afresh a traditional subject. Other painters depicted the Pharisee Saul converted by a voice from heaven with Christ on the heavenly throne surrounded by throngs of angels. Caravaggio showed St. Paul flat on his back, fallen from his horse, which is portrayed in an explicit rear–end view. Caravaggio's use of perspective brings the viewer into the action, and engages the emotions while intensifying the scene's impact through dramatic light and dark contrasts. This untraditional, theatrical staging focuses a harsh light from a single source on the subject in the foreground to concentrate the viewer's attention on the power of the event and the subject’s response.

Bernini.Gianlorenzo Bernini was more than the greatest sculptor of the Baroque period. Bernini's masterpiece – and the culmination of Baroque style was «The Ecstasy of St. Theresa». It represents the saint swooning on a cloud, an expression of mingled ecstasy and exhaustion on her face. The sculptor's virtuosity with textures made the white marble «flesh» seem to quiver with life, while the feathery wings and frothy clouds are equally convincing. The whole altarpiece throbs with emotion, drama, and passion.

Flemish Baroque

The story of Flemish Baroque painting is really the story of one man, Sir Peter Paul Rubens. Energy was the secret of Rubens's life and art.

His output of more than 2,000 paintings was comparable only to Picasso's. One painting that created a sensation, establishing Rubens's reputation as Europe's foremost religious painter, was «The Descent from the Cross». It has all the traits of mature Baroque style: theatrical lighting with an ominously dark sky and glaringly spot-lit Christ, curvilinear rhythms leading the eye to the central figure of Christ, and tragic theme eliciting a powerful emotional response.

Rubens was probably best known for his full–bodied, sensual nudes. His ideal of feminine beauty that he painted again and again was: buxom, plump, and smiling with golden hair and luminous skin woman. One characteristic Rubens shared with Hals and Velazquez was that his method of applying paint was in itself expressive. Rubens's surging brushstrokes made his vibrant colors come alive. Nowhere was this more evident than in his hunting pictures, a genre he invented.

Van Dyck. Van Dyck was a supreme portraitist, establishing a style, noble yet intimate and psychologically penetrating, that influenced three generations of portrait painters. He transformed the frosty, official images of royalty into real human beings. Yet van Dyck's ease of composition and sense of arrested movement, as though the subjects were pausing rather than posing, lent humanity to an otherwise stilted scene. He had an ability to flatter his subjects in paint, all becoming slim paragons of perfection, despite eyewitness accounts to the contrary. One trick van Dyck used to great effect was to paint the ratio of head to body as one to seven, as opposed to the average of one to six. This served to elongate and slenderize his subject's figure.

Dutch Baroque

Dutch art flourished from 1610 to 1670. Its style was realistic, its subject matter commonplace. But what made its creators more than just skilled technicians was their ability to capture the play of light on different surfaces and to suggest texture by the way light was absorbed or reflected. Before the Baroque era, landscape views were little more than background for whatever was going on in the front of the picture. The Dutch established landscape as deserving of its own artistic treatment.

As a genre of painting, the still life began in the Netherlands. Artists tried to achievean extraordinary realism in portraying domestic objects. Often still lifes were emblematic, as in «vanitas» paintings, with symbols like a skull or smoking candle representing the transience of all life.

Hals. Frans Hals's contribution to art was his ability to capture a fleeting expression. Whether his portraits depicted musicians, gypsies, or solid citizens, he brought them to life, often laughing. His trademark was portraits of men and women caught in a moment of rollicking high spirits. Hals's most famous painting, «The Laughing Cavalier», portrays a sly figure with a smile on his lips, a twinkle in his eyes, and a mustache rakishly upturned. Hals achieved this swashbuckling effect chiefly through his brushstrokes. Before Hals, Dutch realists prided themselves on masking their strokes to disguise the process of painting, thereby heightening a painting's realism. In this «alia prima», technique, the artist applies paint directly to the canvas without an undercoat. The painting is completed with a single application of brushstrokes. Hals transformed the stiff convention of group portraiture.

Rembrandt. Probably the best-known painter in the Western world is Rembrandt van Rijn. For the first twenty years of his career, Rembrandt's portraits were the height of fashion. During this prosperous period, he also painted Biblical and historical scenes in a Baroque style. These intricately detailed works were lit dramatically, with the figures reacting melodramatically. The year 1642 marked a turning point in Rembrandt's career. His dearly loved wife died. In his mature phase, Rembrandt's art became less physical, more psychological. He turned to Biblical subjects but treated them with more restraint. A palette of reds and browns came to dominate his paintings, as did solitary figures and a pervasive theme of loneliness. He pushed out the limits of chiaroscuro, using gradations of light and dark to convey mood, character, and emotion.

He almost carved with pigment, laying on heavy impasto «half a finger» thick with a palette knife for light areas and scratching the thick, wet paint with the handle of the brush. This created an uneven surface that reflected and scattered the light, making it sparkle, while the dark areas were thinly glazed to enhance the absorption of light.

Vermeer. The painter Johannes Vermeer is now considered second only to Rembrandt among Dutch artists. While other artists used a gray/green/brown palette, Vermeer's colors were brighter, purer, and glowed with an intensity unknown before. Besides his handling of color and light, he balanced compositions of rectangular shapes lend serenity and stability to his paintings. A typical canvas portrays a neat, spare room lit from a window on the left and a figure engrossed in a simple domestic task. But what elevates his subjects above the banal is his keen representation of visual reality, colors perfectly true to the eye, and the soft light that fills the room with radiance. He used a «camera obscura» to aid his accuracy in drawing. This was a dark box with a pinhole opening that could project an image of an object or scene to be traced on a sheet of paper. His handling of paint was also revolutionary.

ornate – decorated with complicated patterns or shapes.

explicit – said or explained in an extremely clear way, so that you cannot doubt what is meant.

quiver – to shake with short quick movements.

throb – if a painful part of your body throbs, the pain comes and goes again and again in a regular pattern.

buxom – a buxom woman is rather fat in an attractive way, with large breasts.

flatter – to praise someone in order to get something that you want, especially in a way that is not sincere.

paragon – someone who is perfect or who is the best possible example of a particular quality.

swashbuckling –used about a character in a story, film etc who has a lot of fights and exciting experiences.

chiaroscuro – the way that light and dark areas create a pattern, especially in drawings and paintings.

serenity – a feeling of being calm or peaceful.

Rembrandt's nearly 100 self-portraits over the course of forty years were an artistic exploration of his own image. They ranged from a dewy-eyed youth to an old man stoically facing his own physical decay. Compare the two paintings.

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English Baroque

While in literature the 1600s was an era of extraordinary creativity (Shakespeare, Donne, Milton), the visual arts in England lagged far behind. Since religious art was forbidden in Puritan churches and the taste for mythological subjects never caught on, English art was limited almost exclusively to portraits.

Hogarth. William Hogarth invented a new genre – the comic strip – or a sequence of anecdotal pictures. He could also be considered the first political cartoonist. He drew his targets from the whole range of society, satirizing with equal aplomb the idle aristocracy, drunken urban working class (a first in visual art), and corrupt politicians.

Gainsborough. Gainsborough worshiped van Dyck learned from the master how to elongate figures to make them seem regal and set them in charmingly negligent poses to make them seem alive. Gainsborough refreshed British art with his loving portrayal of landscape backgrounds. He painted landscapes for his own pleasure, constructing miniature scenes in his studio of broccoli, sponges, and moss to simulate unspoiled nature. In «Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan» the natural beauty of both the landscape and subject harmonize perfectly. The framing tree at right arcs into the painting to lead the eye back, while the curves of clouds and mid–ground tree, skirt bring the focus back to the sitter's face. This Baroque swirl of encircling eye movement repeats the oval of her face. The leafy look of Gainsborough's paintings helped establish the concept, that nature was a worthwhile subject for art.

Reynolds. Reynolds was a champion of idealizing reality. He so idolized such masters as Raphael, Michelangelo, Rubens, and Rembrandt he even painted his self–portrait costumed as the latter. His portraits succeeded in spite of his pedantic self. Ironically, in his best portraits Reynolds ignored his own rules. Instead of idealizing what he termed «deficiencies and deformities» he relied on an intimate, direct style to capture the sitter's personality.

Spanish Baroque

Spain's major gift to world art was Diego Velazquez. Extraordinarily precocious, while still in his teens he painted pictures demonstrating total technical mastery. Velazquez's royal portraits were masterpieces of visual realism, but opposite of linear precision. No outlines are visible in his portraits; he created forms with fluid brushstrokes and by applying spots of light and color, a precursor of Impressionism. Velazquez differed from most Baroque artists in the simplicity and earthiness of his work. He never succumbed to the pompous style of strewing allegorical symbols and Classical bric-a-brac about his paintings. Instead, he depicted the world as it appeared to his eyes. His early paintings portrayed even holy or mythological figures as real people, drawn against a neutral background. He presented his subjects with dignity and, in all cases, factuality. His approach humanized the stiff, formal court portrait tradition by setting models in more natural poses without fussy accessories. Although Velazquez is considered a master of realism, he achieved his effects with loose brushstrokes that, when scrutinized at close range, seem to melt into blurred daubs of paint.

French Baroque

In the seventeenth century, France was the most powerful country in Europe, and Louis XIV tapped the finest talents to glorify his monarchy with a palace of unparalleled splendor.

Poussin. The most famous French painter of the seventeenth century, Nicolas Poussin worked not in France but in Rome. He based his paintings on ancient Roman myths, history, and Greek sculpture. The widespread influence of Poussin's work revived this ancient style, which became the dominant artistic influence for the next 200 years. Left to his own devices, Poussin chose to paint in what he called «la manieramagnifica» (the grand manner) – is that the subject and the narrative should be grandiose, such as battles, heroic actions, and religious themes.

The pinnacle of Baroque opulence was the magnificent chateau of Versailles, transformed from a modest hunting lodge to the largest palace in the world. Versailles' hundreds of rooms were adorned with crystal chandeliers, multicolored marble, solid–silver furniture, and crimson velvet hangings embroidered in gold. The king himself, covered in gold, diamonds, and feathers, received important guests seated on a nine–foot, canopied silver throne. His royal rising (lever) and retiring (coucher) were attended by flocks of courtiers in formal rituals as important to the