What is Baroque? (Panofsky, 1934)
"...It is true that in representations like these there appears a feeling that is commonly known as sentimentality. And the fact that Baroque art has been so emphatically disapproved of for almost two centuries is largely due to the impression that the feeling of Baroque figures lacked genuineness and sincerity. The beholder seemed to feel that these figures displayed theatrical poses, that they reveled in their own sensations, that they "did not mean it" so to speak, whether they exhibit their half painful, half blissful raptures, like the St. Sebastian's and St. Lawrence's, or their patient devoutness, like the Mary Magdalen by Guido Reni.
Now it is true that the psychological attitude of the figures in Baroque art is less unspoken than that of the figures in Renaissance art, let alone medieval art. But it would be unjust to doubt the genuineness of their feelings. The feeling of Baroque people is (or at least can be in the works of great masters) perfectly genuine, only it does not fill the whole of their souls. They not only feel, but are also aware of their own feelings. While their hearts are quivering with emotion, their consciousness stands aloof and "knows". Many a beholder may not like that. Only we should not forget that this psychological rift is the logical consequence of the historical situation, and at the same time the very foundation of what we call the "modern" form of imagination and thought. The experience of so many conflicts and dualisms between emotion and reflection, lust and pain, devoutness and voluptuousness had led to a kind of awakening, and thus endowed the European mind with a new consciousness. Now consciousness means, as the Bible has it, the loss of innocence, but on the other hand the possibility of being "like God", that is to say, superior to one's own reactions and sensations. Sentimentality is only a negative aspect of this new consciousness (when the individual not only becomes aware of his or her feelings but also consciously indulges in them), and another negative aspect - and the logical correlative of sentimentality - is frivolity (when the individual becomes aware of his or her feelings but belittles or even disintegrates them with a skeptical smile). There is a touch of frivolity, already realized by the contemporaries, even in the angel of Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa.
But while sentimentality and frivolity are negative aspects of the new consciousness, there are two emphatically positive ones. First, the new "critical" attitude and method of thinking as achieved by Descartes, for the famous cogito ergo sum means no less than that the human mind no longer accepts any other premise than the consciousness of its own activity, and thus claims the right to build up a system of thought entirely independent of both brute matter of fact and dogmatic belief. It is quite interesting though, that Descartes himself, for instance in a letter describing his situation in Amsterdam, could display both a slight frivolity and a slight sentimentality, both these elements transfigured by a wonderful reticence and self-irony. This leads us to the second positive aspect of that new consciousness that is the curse and the bliss of the new psychology developing in the Baroque era: the sense of humor in the true sense of the term. For the sense of humor, as it appears in Shakespeare and Cervantes - not to be confounded with wit or mere comicality - is based on the fact that a man realizes that the world is not quite what it should be, but does not get angry about it, nor think that he himself is free from ugliness and from major and minor vices and stupidities that he observes.
It is the satirist, not the humorist, who considers himself to be cleverer and better than other people. The humorist, thanks to that consciousness that keeps him at a distance from reality as well as from himself, is capable of both: of noticing the objective shortcomings of life and human nature - that is to say, the desrepancies between reality and ethical or aesthetic postulates - and of subjectively overcoming this desrepancy (therefore the sense of humor is really a Baroque quality) in that he understands it as the result of a universal, even metaphysical imperfection willed by the maker of the world. Thus the real humorist, in contrast with the satirist, not only excuses what he ridicules but deeply sumpathizes with it; he even glorifies it, in a way, because he conceives it as a manifestation of the same power that shows itself in the thing reputed to be grand and sublime, whereas they are, sub specie aeternitatis, just as far from perfection as the things reputed to be small and ridiculous...
...To sum up, the Baroque is not the decline, let alone the end of what we call the Renaissance era. It is in reality the second great climax of this period and, at the same time, the beginning of a fourth era, which may be called "Modern" with a capital M. It is the only phase of Renaissance civilization in which this civilization overcame its inherent conflicts not by just smoothing them away (as did the classic Cinquecento), but by realizing them consciously and transforming them into subjective emotional energy with all the consequences of this subjectivization. The Renaissance, when conceived as one of the three main epoches of human history - the others being antiquity and the Middle Ages - and when defined with Morey as the "period which has made man and nature more interesting than God", lasted much longer than until the end of the sixteenth century. It lasted, roughly speaking, up to the time when Goethe died and the first railroads and industrial plants were built. For not until as late as that were man and nature (meaning man as a really human being and nature as the totality of natural things not tampered with by man) doomed to become less interesting and less important than those antihuman and antinatural forces that seem to determinate our own period - the forces of masses and machines - and of which we don't yet know whether they are the manifestations of an unknown God or an unknown Devil..."
Превосходное эссе, важное добавление к Вёльфлину и критика к нему. Читаемый PDF легко находится через Google.
Now it is true that the psychological attitude of the figures in Baroque art is less unspoken than that of the figures in Renaissance art, let alone medieval art. But it would be unjust to doubt the genuineness of their feelings. The feeling of Baroque people is (or at least can be in the works of great masters) perfectly genuine, only it does not fill the whole of their souls. They not only feel, but are also aware of their own feelings. While their hearts are quivering with emotion, their consciousness stands aloof and "knows". Many a beholder may not like that. Only we should not forget that this psychological rift is the logical consequence of the historical situation, and at the same time the very foundation of what we call the "modern" form of imagination and thought. The experience of so many conflicts and dualisms between emotion and reflection, lust and pain, devoutness and voluptuousness had led to a kind of awakening, and thus endowed the European mind with a new consciousness. Now consciousness means, as the Bible has it, the loss of innocence, but on the other hand the possibility of being "like God", that is to say, superior to one's own reactions and sensations. Sentimentality is only a negative aspect of this new consciousness (when the individual not only becomes aware of his or her feelings but also consciously indulges in them), and another negative aspect - and the logical correlative of sentimentality - is frivolity (when the individual becomes aware of his or her feelings but belittles or even disintegrates them with a skeptical smile). There is a touch of frivolity, already realized by the contemporaries, even in the angel of Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa.
But while sentimentality and frivolity are negative aspects of the new consciousness, there are two emphatically positive ones. First, the new "critical" attitude and method of thinking as achieved by Descartes, for the famous cogito ergo sum means no less than that the human mind no longer accepts any other premise than the consciousness of its own activity, and thus claims the right to build up a system of thought entirely independent of both brute matter of fact and dogmatic belief. It is quite interesting though, that Descartes himself, for instance in a letter describing his situation in Amsterdam, could display both a slight frivolity and a slight sentimentality, both these elements transfigured by a wonderful reticence and self-irony. This leads us to the second positive aspect of that new consciousness that is the curse and the bliss of the new psychology developing in the Baroque era: the sense of humor in the true sense of the term. For the sense of humor, as it appears in Shakespeare and Cervantes - not to be confounded with wit or mere comicality - is based on the fact that a man realizes that the world is not quite what it should be, but does not get angry about it, nor think that he himself is free from ugliness and from major and minor vices and stupidities that he observes.
It is the satirist, not the humorist, who considers himself to be cleverer and better than other people. The humorist, thanks to that consciousness that keeps him at a distance from reality as well as from himself, is capable of both: of noticing the objective shortcomings of life and human nature - that is to say, the desrepancies between reality and ethical or aesthetic postulates - and of subjectively overcoming this desrepancy (therefore the sense of humor is really a Baroque quality) in that he understands it as the result of a universal, even metaphysical imperfection willed by the maker of the world. Thus the real humorist, in contrast with the satirist, not only excuses what he ridicules but deeply sumpathizes with it; he even glorifies it, in a way, because he conceives it as a manifestation of the same power that shows itself in the thing reputed to be grand and sublime, whereas they are, sub specie aeternitatis, just as far from perfection as the things reputed to be small and ridiculous...
...To sum up, the Baroque is not the decline, let alone the end of what we call the Renaissance era. It is in reality the second great climax of this period and, at the same time, the beginning of a fourth era, which may be called "Modern" with a capital M. It is the only phase of Renaissance civilization in which this civilization overcame its inherent conflicts not by just smoothing them away (as did the classic Cinquecento), but by realizing them consciously and transforming them into subjective emotional energy with all the consequences of this subjectivization. The Renaissance, when conceived as one of the three main epoches of human history - the others being antiquity and the Middle Ages - and when defined with Morey as the "period which has made man and nature more interesting than God", lasted much longer than until the end of the sixteenth century. It lasted, roughly speaking, up to the time when Goethe died and the first railroads and industrial plants were built. For not until as late as that were man and nature (meaning man as a really human being and nature as the totality of natural things not tampered with by man) doomed to become less interesting and less important than those antihuman and antinatural forces that seem to determinate our own period - the forces of masses and machines - and of which we don't yet know whether they are the manifestations of an unknown God or an unknown Devil..."
Превосходное эссе, важное добавление к Вёльфлину и критика к нему. Читаемый PDF легко находится через Google.