Baroque and Rococo 1. Mannerism's emphasis on sub

1. Mannerism's emphasis on subjectivity, shallow space, exaggerated postures, busy surfaces, and agitated compositions was an anticlassical movement opposed to classical canons and the High Renaissance approach to the antique. The Baroque, in the works of its founding fathers, the painters Annibale Carracci (1560-1609) and Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) and the sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), represented a return to classical values. But, as the differences in the works of these men shows, the Baroque includes a variety of responses to the classical.

In painting Caravaggio's return to classical and Renaissance influence was rapidly subsumed by his personal vision. The Calling of St. Matthew (1599-1602) displays all Caravaggio's original traits. The low-life setting, the meticulous realism, and the dramatic chiaroscuro combine to produce a vision of a dramatic moment in which the essential connection that is made between the dramatically shadowed face of Christ and Matthew's brightly lit, completely surprised countenance is emblematic of the type of connection between the spiritual and the worldly that Caravaggio tried to evoke for those who were experiencing his works. Caravaggio's classicism is seen primarily in the clarity and order of the composition in which the salient elements receive due weight and the other elements support them.

The classicism of Carracci, filtered through the High Renaissance ideal, is more immed

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t foreign painters, who returned from Rome heavily influenced by Caravaggio but soon turned to local traditions and generally abandoned most aspects of Caravaggism (78). This was true of Simon Vouet (b. 1590) who spent 14 years in Italy and brought Caravaggio's style to France in 1627. Vouet's Italian paintings clearly demonstrate his ability to employ Caravaggesque naturalism and dramatic lighting (e.g., The Birth of the Virgin c. 1620). But the predominant interest in Mannerist and, later, classicizing, decorative painting led him to abandon the unpopular naturalism, though he continued to use rather superficial chiaroscuro effects (as in The Presentation of 1640 where the central lighting is a distraction rather than a means of focusing the attention). There were a number of provincial Caravaggists whose influence was limited. But the work of Georges de La Tour (b. 1593) was one of the strongest, most original uses of Caravaggio's innovations. Blunt argues that Caravaggio's influence went in two directions--either the gruesome depiction of realistic detail and heightened horror and emotion of the Neapolitans (influenced by Aremisia Gentileschi and others) or La Tour's use of Caravaggesque light and naturalism (with gener

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