The sacred baroque in the Catholic world

Have you ever thought “this is so baroque” after seeing or experiencing something bizarre, lavish, grotesque, or over-the-top? Such terms are usually associated with the baroque style, which is in reality much more complex and diverse than popular use implies. What we call the “baroque” is an art historical period and style spanning the 17th and most of the 18th centuries that originated in Europe but manifested throughout many parts of the globe—developing into what some consider to be the first truly global style. As a result of the spread of Catholicism, colonization, and trade, materials, objects, and artists moved across more distant geographies and were more interconnected than ever before. 

The baroque is characterized by an astonishing diversity of artforms and materials, and it includes approaches as seemingly disparate as the shocking realism of a Spanish polychrome sculpture, the theatricality of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s architectural designs, the rigorous classicism of Domenichino, and the profuse ornamentation of a Mexican retablo.

It is possible that when you read the term “baroque” you immediately recalled images of violently decapitated saints, crucified Christs, enraptured Virgin Marys, and overpoweringly ornate churches, and for good reason. Religious art is an overwhelming aspect of baroque art. As a consequence of the Counter-Reformation—the Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation after the Council of Trent (1545–63)—religious images filled every realm of the expanding Catholic world. In sharp contrast to Protestants, who generally mistrusted religious images because they could lead to idolatry, Catholics zealously promoted their use as aids for teaching, persuasion, and devotion, while establishing parameters to ensure their efficacy and decorum.

This doesn’t mean that Protestants didn’t have religious images, but as seen in works such as Rembrandt’s Descent from the Cross, their approach to religious subjects was fundamentally different. In tune with Protestant ideas, here Christ’s sagging body emphasizes his humanity and is far removed from Rubens’s heroic and classically inspired figure that stresses Christ’s supernatural divinity. Rembrandt’s etching is more about how the episode from the Scriptures connects with one’s individual salvation than about the communal contemplation of the body of Christ in a church during mass. 

In this chapter, the first of two devoted to the baroque, you will learn about major developments in baroque sacred (religious) art from a global perspective, focusing specifically on Catholic art and architecture. With examples ranging from places as disparate as Rome, Mexico City, and the Philippines, we will try to answer the following questions: How did artists approach the task of creating images that could at once teach, persuade, and inspire devotion? How could they convey the idea that the Catholic Church was the most powerful and triumphant despite threats from both Protestantism and the prevailing religions in the Americas and Asia? How did churches transform to accommodate new religious and social realities during this period? What were some of the new religious iconographies? And how did themes, forms, and materials travel across the globe for the purposes of devotion?

For religious images to be effective during this period, they had to be credible, relatable, and emotionally appealing, and baroque artists developed or refined important artistic innovations within this context. 

Think of the imposing way in which three-dimensional figures appear to occupy a real space in works by Annibale Carracci and the striking hyperrealism of Spanish polychrome sculptures like Pedro de Mena’s Mater Dolorosa, made with carved wood and enlivened with paint and other media such as glass for the eyes and tears, and real hair for the eyelashes. 

The dramatic and symbolic contrast of light and dark (tenebrism) with which Caravaggio and Francisco Zurbarán imbue their holy figures is another characteristic, as is the dynamic movement (the forceful diagonals and ascending movements) often employed by artists like Peter Paul Rubens and Gianlorenzo Bernini. 

Artists like Artemisia Gentileschi and Georges de la Tour painted figures with restrained emotion but dramatic contrasts of light and dark, creating psychological intensity. More significantly, think of how all of these artists involve the viewer in their work, forcing them to empathize with the figures represented.

This section focuses on three European examples that showcase different, but coexisting, early Baroque artistic solutions to the Counter-Reformation concern with the role of images. The first essay examines Caravaggio’s Calling of Saint Matthew—revolutionary at the time for its unabashed use of live models and ordinary people, its influential tenebrism, and its use of a contemporary setting. The second essay focuses on Annibale Carracci’s Christ Appearing to Saint Peter on the Appian Way, a painting that perfectly sums up Carracci’s classicizing and quasi-archeological approach to religious imagery—that is, his concern for historical accuracy in representations of biblical episodes. The final essay looks at a hyper-realistic polychrome sculpture created in collaboration between the sculptor Juan Martínez Montañés and the painter Francisco Pacheco in Seville (Spain) that stresses direct communication between the figure represented and the believer.

How could you convey the idea of the triumph of the Catholic Church over heresy (whether it was understood as Protestantism or as the various religions practiced by Indigenous peoples outside of Europe) and its doctrines visually? Baroque artists and their patrons had no doubt: holy figures should be monumental and forceful, as if they moved with inner energy and supernatural vitality, architectural elements should be massive yet dynamic, and there should be lots of (real or seemingly) precious materials such as gold or multicolored marbles. This section looks at works that visually express the power of the Counter-Reformation Church from the early 17th to the 18th century.

Many of these developments originated in Catholic Europe in the first half of the 17th century, especially in Rome. As the headquarters of the Counter-Reformation and the domain of powerful popes, Rome was a magnet for international artists wanting to participate in the city’s renovation. The church’s attempt to reaffirm its power included urban planning, the building and decoration of new churches, and the transformation of old ones. 

The most significant was the church of Saint Peter’s, which hosts Bernini’s Baldacchino, a massive bronze structure that is neither fully architecture nor sculpture. Standing a staggering eight stories high and marking Saint Peter’s tomb under Michelangelo’s dome, the Baldacchino is one of the most brilliant visualizations of the triumphant church as it conveys the supremacy of the papacy through its sheer scale and the vibrant energy of its solomonic (or spiral) columns—a quintessentially baroque feature that encapsulates the period’s dynamism.

One of the international artists working in Rome was the Fleming Peter Paul Rubens. His imposing Elevation of the Cross—created for a church in Antwerp—is one of the best representatives of this new spirit as it transforms the crucifixion of Christ into a moment of monumental victory. In fact, Rubens’s works were the basis of numerous versions created in Europe and the Americas through prints.

Almost at the exact same time that European powers (such as Spain) expanded their empires through the conquest and ensuing colonization of territories in Africa, the Americas, and Asia, missionary orders (such as the Franciscans, Augustinians, and especially Jesuits) sought the opportunity to evangelize the populations who inhabited them. In this evangelization process, images were key, and with the aid of prints (like those after Rubens) disseminated by missionaries, the baroque style soon expanded and transformed across the globe—in some places well into the 18th century. 

In the Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain, Miguel Cabrera’s monumental Virgin of Apocalypse—in which the Virgin steps dynamically over a dragon and which is also based on a print after Rubens—and Jerónimo de Balbás’s gigantic gilded retablo (altarpiece) are prime examples of this triumphant baroque. The latter establishes the primacy of the estípite column, an inverted pyramid that became one of the most distinctive features of the Mexican baroque, sometimes called ultrabaroque for the profusion of ornamentation and the break with classical rules.

As the buildings in which Catholics gathered to worship together, in some cases dating back to early Christian times, churches were instrumental in creating a sense of community. It was also in churches that believers were exposed to sacred images, and that the splendor of the Catholic Church manifested most fully. In colonial contexts, churches had the added significance of being places of conversion, but they also allowed local artists, artisans, and craftsmen of various origins to enrich baroque forms with their own traditions, religious iconographies, and ways of seeing. Churches not only fulfilled a religious function but were also sources of collective pride, identity, and expression. In this section, you will learn about some of these baroque sacred spaces. 

The first video examines one of the most influential baroque Roman churches, Il Gesù, the mother church of the Jesuit order, founded by Ignatius of Loyola in Rome in 1540 with the specific mission of defending and spreading the Catholic faith around the world. While the recently renovated Saint Peter’s (whose original foundation dated from the time of emperor Constantine) represented the antiquity of the Church, Il Gesù looked into its promising future through the mission of evangelizing non-Christians, and served as a model for many other Jesuit buildings across the globe (for example, St. Paul’s College in Macau). 

The second video turns to one of the most original and experimental architects of the Italian baroque, Francesco Borromini, known for his innovative use of space and elliptical forms. The section continues with the church of San Pedro Apóstol de Andahuaylillas in Peru, which features an idiosyncratic combination of European, Islamic, and Indigenous Andean elements (sometimes known as Andean Baroque), and concludes with the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary of the Blacks, commissioned by one of the various Black Brotherhoods founded in Brazil during the 18th century and sometimes described as “Borrominian” due to its elliptical forms and structural dynamism.

The development of new iconographies was another significant feature of baroque sacred art. The Council of Trent promoted devotion to the Pope, the saints, and the Virgin Mary (which had been rejected by the Protestants), and, as a consequence, throughout the baroque era, old saints were revisited, new ones were created, and local devotions flourished—often times along a burgeoning sense of nationalistic pride. The figure of Saint Peter (who was considered the first Pope and therefore the head of the Catholic Church), for instance, appears in countless images of martyrdom and conversion. We also see distant and recent saints represented in various states of spiritual rapture, and the Virgin Mary assuming attributes for new devotions. 

Saints were particularly instrumental as they offered models of behavior for the believer, and the canonization of recent saints such as Saint Teresa of Ávila, Saint Ignatius Loyola, and Saint Rose of Lima—the first saint from the Americas—demonstrated that anyone could become a saint. The Virgin Mary, too, acquired renewed status in her role as intercessor, in some cases verging into national obsession, as was the case with the Immaculate Conception in Spain.

This section surveys some of the new religious baroque iconographies. We start with an essay about Artemisia Gentileschi’s Mary Magdalene, a sensitive portrayal of the quintessential sinner turned saint. We continue with an essay about Francisco de Zurbarán’s Martyrdom of Saint Serapion, which exemplifies the popularity of scenes of martyrdom in the baroque, especially in Spain. We then move to a video about Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Theresa, a highly influential portrayal of the recently canonized Spanish mystic at the most intense moment of her spiritual vision. 

The next essay, about Murillo’s Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables, discusses the controversial devotion to the Virgin’s Immaculacy (the belief that she was conceived without sin), its complex iconography, and its significance in the Iberian world. The section concludes with an essay about the Master of Calamarca’s Angel with Arquebus, one of the most original iconographies to develop within the Viceroyalty of Peru. 

The final section looks at precious objects of devotion that showcase the unprecedented mobility, interconnectedness, and complex geographic trajectories of materials, artists, iconographies, and styles across the Global Christian world during the Baroque. The first video examines an extraordinary ivory—a material probably brought from India—of The Christ Crucified, created in the Philippines or possibly China for a New Spanish (Mexican) or European clientele. 

The second and final essay looks at Miguel González’s The Virgin of Guadalupe, an enconchado painting made of mother of pearl that draws on both Indigenous and Japanese techniques while representing a Marian cult of tremendous religious and political significance in Mexico. Evangelization partially explains the creation of these objects, but even more important are the trade routes (such as the Manila Galleon) that made possible the flow of materials, artists, and the objects themselves. Making use of precious materials made available through global trade, these dazzling objects embody the notion of baroque luxury and opulence, but also the complexity of cultural encounters that made it possible. As these artists ingeniously altered European baroque forms, an entirely new sense of baroque magnificence, ornamental opulence, and experimentation developed in the global stage.