Art as Counter-Attack
In 1563 the Council of Trent decreed that images must teach, move, and persuade, answering Protestant iconoclasm with emotional impact. Baroque art is that brief executed: where the Renaissance sought balance and poise, the Baroque wants impact through motion and drama.
| Renaissance | Baroque |
|---|---|
| Balanced, pyramidal, frontal | Diagonal, spiralling, off-axis |
| The calm before the action | The instant of maximum drama |
| Even, rational light | Tenebrism: dark with a shaft |
| Viewer observes | Viewer is implicated |
Tenebrism and Total Work
Caravaggio used tenebrism—near-black canvas pierced by a raking light beam—to make pictures legible across dim chapels and mimic grace arriving. His decorum scandal painted saints as peasants with dirty feet, arguing the sacred enters actual poor bodies.
Bernini created the total work of art, dissolving boundaries between sculpture, architecture, and real daylight. Baroque splendour was a religious argument funded by a Church buying back half of Europe with spectacle.