Gerrit van Honthorst - Artemisia - Google Art Project

Early Renaissance or Quattrocento (Italian mille quattrocento, or 1400) refers to the 15th century in Florentine art. Extraordinary wealth was accumulated in Florence among a growing middle and upper class of merchants and bankers. Florence saw itself as a city-state where the freedom of the individual was guaranteed, and where a significant share of residents had the right to participate in the government. In 1400 Florence was engaged in a struggle with the Duke of Milan. Then, between 1408 and 1414 again, by the King of Naples. Both died before they could conquer Florence. In 1425 Florence won the war against Milan. The Florentine interpreted these victories as signs of God's favor and imagined themselves as the "New Rome". In this new optimistic and wealthy environment, Florentine artists immersed themselves in studies of the humanities, architecture, philosophy, theology, mathematics, science, and design. They spurred a rejuvenation of the glories of classical art in line with the humanistic and individualistic tendencies of the contemporary era. Quattrocento was followed by the High Renaissance, North European Renaissance, Mannerism, and Baroque periods. Unlike the previous proto-renaissances, the innovations that emerged in Florence would go on to cause reverberations in Italy and Northern Europe, which continue to influence culture until today.

By the last decades of the 16th century, the refined Mannerism style had ceased to be an effective means of religious art expression. Catholic Church fought against Protestant Reformation to re-establish its dominance in European art by infusing Renaissance aesthetics enhanced by a new exuberant extravagance and penchant for the ornate. The new style was coined Baroque and roughly coincides with the 17th century. Baroque emphasizes dramatic motion, clear, easily interpreted grandeur, sensuous richness, drama, dynamism, movement, tension, emotional exuberance, and details, and often defined as being bizarre, or uneven. The term Baroque likely derived from the Italian word barocco, used by earlier scholars to name an obstacle in schematic logic to denote a contorted idea or involuted process of thought. Another possible source is the Portuguese word barroco (Spanish barrueco), used to describe an irregular or imperfectly shaped pearl, and this usage still survives in the jeweler’s term baroque pearl. Baroque spread across Europe led by the Pope in Rome and powerful religious orders as well as Catholic monarchs to Northern Italy, France, Spain, Flanders, Portugal, Austria, southern Germany, and colonial South America.