Giving Thanks for Baroque Art

By Christopher B. Lacaria 

Before the election, a friend pointed out to me that Barack Obama’s first name sounds almost identical to the British pronunciation of “Baroque.” If this proves more than a curious coincidence, and the Obama administration signals a revival of national patronage of Baroque art, architecture, and music on a grand scale, then my initial disappointment at the election results will have been an inexcusably hasty judgment.

Baroque culture in all its multifarious forms—painting, sculpture, architecture, and in particular music—represents perhaps the highest aesthetic achievement of mankind. No mortal man had ever so mastered the keyboard—and none, most certainly, ever will—as Johann Sebastian Bach, nor had any scored the angelic choirs with such accuracy as Palestrina. Baroque religious sculpture is unrivaled in expressiveness and pure passion. The stylistic excesses of Baroque cathedrals and palaces, a marked departure from the restrained classicism of the previous age, conveys a heightened awareness of the drama and mystery in life. What modern painting, on any subject so grave, can yet awe and impress as Rubens’s hunting scenes or the pastorals of Poussin?

The Baroque age in Europe—often derided today as too lavish and ornate—indeed bequeathed to Western civilization more than just a disproportionate number of masterpieces. More importantly, the Baroque offers us an inspiring historical example of overcoming adversity. As the 16th century drew to a close, Christendom—as Europe had hitherto been known—faced a crisis: the encroaching specter of Turks from the East marched as far as Vienna, while religious warfare threatened to rend it from the inside. But with the moral leadership of a reinvigorated and counter-reformed Church following Trent, Christendom rallied—if only for about a century—beating back the external threat and overcoming the nihilism of the Reformation. And as a memento of that victory, we have the timeless treasures of Handel, Caravaggio, Velazquez, and Le Brun.

Baroque art is stunning and impressive to any casual observer, but unlike most art it is not merely an attractive veneer, an embellished façade. No, rather, Baroque art plumbs the very depths of the soul, searching out and bringing to light—in all its fantastic and ineffable excess—all that is good, noble, and true. The ancients imagined perfection in terms of straight lines and symmetry, but the Baroque climax of the civilization that they begun rather discovered that the cosmos is much more complicated than that—Athena may have preferred sleek columns and sharp corners, but we now know that God prefers cupolas.

If only our benighted modern age could look back to that time, not with its typical disdain, but with admiration and a desire to emulate. The Baroque was an era when man directed his gaze higher than himself, to the mysteries his mind could not adequately comprehend or explain and to the eternity of which, at least on this orb, he could not himself hope to take part. Today, architecture is “functional,” contemporary painting is “abstract,” and popular music is in many cases little more than aural pornography. Art once uplifted man, beyond himself and this world to something greater; now, it debases him and dehumanizes him, and forces him to gaze in a museum at a canvas that not only he, but a child or even a beast, could have created with little effort in under an hour. 

We can only hope that our new President fully understands the extent of our aesthetic crisis, and will remain true to his name and lead us back to the gentler, simpler times of the past.