Baroque: The First International Style

If you’ll be in London between now and July 19th, try to get to the V&A to see their special exhibit, 1620-1800 Baroque – Style in the Age of Magnificence.

Baroque was the first artistic style to have a significant global impact. It spread from Italy and France to the rest of Europe, and then was carried to Africa, Asia, and Latin America by Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and other European colonists, missionaries and traders. As European communities were established, craftsmen, artists and architects traveled and settled around the world. Trade in luxury goods and the distribution of art prints furthered the global dissemination of Baroque style.

Art Daily Newsletter reports today that “The magnificence and splendour of Baroque, one of the most opulent styles of the 17th and 18th centuries, is the subject of the V&A’s spring exhibition. The exhibition will reflect the complexity and grandeur of the Baroque style, from the Rome of Borromini and Bernini to the magnificence of Louis XIV's Versailles and the lavishness of Baroque theatre and performance."

Displays cover architecture, furniture, silver, ceramics, painting, sculpture, and textiles. Abnd will explore Baroque in performance and the theatre; the public city square; religious spaces including St Peter’s Basilica in Rome; and secular spaces including Louis XIV’s Palace of Versailles.

Among the roughly 200 objects on display will be religious paintings by Rubens and Tiepolo. Of particular interest to anyone who has been to Our Lady Cathedral in Antwerp is an oil sketch of the center panel of Descent from the Cross, the huge altarpiece Rubens painted for the Arquebusier Guild, which is still magnificently on view in that remarkable gothic edifice.

Mark Jones, Director of the V&A said: “Baroque is one of the most exuberant and dazzling design styles there has even been, an expression of European power and magnificence in the 17th and 18th centuries. Our exhibition will be the first to examine all the elements of Baroque including architecture, art and design and will look at how it established itself through Europe and then internationally as European power grew overseas.”

Would That I Could Get to the Getty

LOS ANGELES - To celebrate Italian Language Week, the J. Paul Getty Museum is offering a special one-hour overview -- in italiano -- of the current exhibition: Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) is considered the greatest Baroque sculptor, and his unparalleled talent as a portrait sculptor transformed the practice and earned him the patronage of the Catholic Church and nobility in 17th- century Rome. Co-organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa , Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture is the first major exhibition of Bernini's work in North America and the first ever comprehensive exhibition of the artist's portrait busts.

On view at the Getty Center through October 26, 2008 , the special exhibition also includes Bernini's portrait drawings, as well as portrait busts by other important sculptors in 17th-century Rome such as Francesco Mochi, François Duquesnoy, Giuliano Finelli, and Alessandro Algardi. If you’ve been to Rome, you know Bernini. If you’ve listened to the Jane’s Smart Art audio guide to St. Peter’s Basilica, you’re also familiar with the work of Mochi, Duquesnoy, and Algardi.

As a complement to the Baroque portraiture exhibit, the Getty Center has mounted another temporary exhibit at , Faces of Power and Piety: Medieval Portraiture -- also through October 26, 2008.

The goal of medieval portraiture was to present a subject not at a particular moment in time, but as the person wished to be remembered through the ages. “While modern portraiture strives to capture the accurate likeness of a specific person, medieval portraiture was primarily valued for its ability to express an individual’s social status, religious convictions, or political position,” says Elizabeth Morrison, curator of manuscripts, J. Paul Getty Museum.

Art Daily provides a schedule of related lectures, gallery talks, & concerts in Sept and Oct.

New operating hours and parking fees

Henceforth, the Getty Center will close at 5:30 pm (a half hour earlier than previously) on Sundays and Tuesday through Friday. Saturdays it will remain open until 9pm. The Getty Center is closed on Mondays. Ticketed events and performances will still be presented on Friday evenings, but the galleries will not be open to the general public. Getty Villa hours will remain unchanged.

Admission to both Museums remains free.

In addition, beginning on Sept. 9, parking fees at both the Getty Center and the GettyVilla increased from $8 to $10.