The entire course is conducted in French , since it is an advanced course required of French majors.  Directions for the activity have been translated into English for the purpose of this e-portfolio.

Activity :

The seventeenth century in France saw two major artistic trends that oppose each other in their conception of aesthetics:

the first one -baroque- spans roughly the first half of the century , and the second -classicism-, the second half.

After studying the document below, look at the paintings, sculptures, buildings and books shown in the photo gallery above and ,determine whether they belong to the baroque or the classical vein. 

Art in 17th century France :  Baroque and Classicism

The following are the main characteristics of each trend as it affected every art form in France during that period:  literature, painting, sculpture, music and architecture both urban and religious.

BAROQUE : spans the first half of the 17th century (reign of Henri IV and Louis XIII)      

In literature: Baroque art shows great freedom of expression, rromantic  tendencies, fantasy, imagination, a taste for creating illusion, for metamorphoses, hyperboles, and metaphors.

 Exemples:  the "precious" movement in the salons of the time; the endless novels of Honoré d’Urfé, Mademoiselle de Scudéry; the poems of Théophile de Viau, Scarron, Mathurin Régnier; the play L’Illusion comique by Corneille.

In architecture:  Baroque in religious architecture -also called the Jesuit style- came  from Italy.  Its initial model was the church of the Gesù in Rome, the mother house of the Jesuit order .  Its charateristics are a dome outside, and sumptuous decoration inside, with  the use of curved lines, spiral columns   and gilded ornaments which give the illusion of movement .

Examples:  the church of the Sorbonne by Lemercier, the church of the Val de Grâce by François Mansart, the church of the  Dôme by Jules Hardouin Mansart  in the Invalides in Paris.

In painting:  Subjects are taken from the theatrical vein, they are expressionist and compositions show great movement, violent chiaroscuro contrasts  after the model of Caravaggio,as well as a propensity for creating perspective and illusion.

Examples:  Simon Vouet and his school, Claude Vignon, Jacques Blanchard and Michel Corneille;  There is  one very great painter during this period, who took his inspiration mostly from religious subjects: :  Georges de la Tour.

In sculpture:  Its characteristics are dynamism, movement, realism and a  taste for pathos and  drama in the choice of subjects.  Jacques Sarrazin, trained in Rome, introduced  baroque in sculpture under Louis XIII.  He gave us  Cardinal de  Bérulle and Condé,'s tombstones.   The greatest baroque sculptor of the century is Pierre Puget. one of his famous sculptures is Perseus  delivering Andromeda at Versailles.

In music:  music in the 17th century is dominated by the opera, and by royal entertainment, such as the  comédie-ballet  genre with Jean Baptiste Lulli and Michel Richard de La Lande.  François Couperin is a  great composer, master of the harpsicord:, and Marc Antoine Charpentier, a great master of sacred music, .

CLASSICISM: spans  the second half of the 17th century (reign of Louis XIV) 

In literature:  classicism shows in the imitation of authors from Antiquity, adherence to the strict division of genres (novels, poetry, the theatre), the respect of specific rules (poetic art was codified by Boileau , and in the theatre we have the rule of the three unities:  unity of plot, unity of time -no more than 24 hours- and unity of place -the stage is the limit) .  Classicism also shows in a taste for order and clarity, simplicity, litotes, measure, propriety, and psychological analysis rather than adventures.  

Examples:  for plays:  Corneille, Racine, Molière; for the novel Mme de La Fayette; for epistopary art:  Mme de Sévigné;f or  aphorisms:  La Rochefoucauld; for fables:  La Fontaine; for literary portraits:  La Bruyère.

In architecture: The paradigm is Greco-Roman architecture:  simple forms, straight lines, the use of columns, pilasters, statues and pediments 

Examples:  the  château of Vaux-le-Vicomte by Louis Le Vau; in the Louvre: the column ensemble by Claude Perrault, the square courtyard by Le Vau, the clock pavilion by Lemercier; in Paris  place Vendôme and the ’hôtel des Invalides by Jules Hardouin Mansart; and above all the  château of Versailles started by Le Vau and completed by Jules Hardouin Mansart.

in painting: classicism is manifested in the choice of subjects taken from ancient history or from the Bible ( examples: the paintings of Nicolas Poussin, Claude Gelée a.k.a. le Lorrain).

It is also manifested in rpaintings depicting a harsh reality , such as the life of peasants at the time  (the paintings by the three brothers Le Nain).

Also in official and academic painting (the portraits by Philippe de Champaigne, Charles Le Brun, and  Hyacinthe Rigaud)

In sculpture: Statuary imitating sculptures from the Antiquity was codified by the offical art found at Versailles and by the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture founded by Cardinal Mazarin.  This type of sculpture is meant to adorn an architectural ensemble.

  Examples:  the statues of the park at Versailles by François Girardon and Antoine Coysevox.