The 10 most important baroque artists

It is difficult, if not impossible, to choose 10 artists from among the great names that the Baroque era gave us. However, in this article we are going to give it a try. we offer you a list of the top 10 baroque artists who were true geniuses of painting, sculpture and architecture, along with the (often hectic) biography of him.

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Baroque artists you should know

Of course, there are many more. The Baroque is a movement that gave splendor to the arts and left illustrious names such as Velázquez, Rubens or Bernini for posterity. Here we only leave you 10 of these most important artists, but we encourage you to investigate to meet the other baroque artists who remain in the pipeline. Enjoy the tour!

1. Diego Velazquez

Diego Rodríguez de Silva Velázquez (1599-1660) is undoubtedly one of the greatest exponents of the Baroque. He was born in cosmopolitan Seville at the end of the 16th century, one of the most dynamic economic and artistic centers in Europe. Already in his youth, fresh out of Francisco Pacheco's workshop (with the daughter of whom he had, by the way, married), Velázquez demonstrates a rare talent that is evident in works such as the

Old woman frying eggs (1618) or The waterboy of Seville (1620). The exceptional portrait of Jerónima de la Fuente, made when the painter was only 21 years old, is a wonderful example of the artist's innate mastery in capturing the psychology of his subjects.

At the age of 24 we meet Velázquez in Madrid where, with the help of his mother-in-law and some of his contacts, he is introduced to Philip IV. Soon the monarch, who is not indifferent to artistic quality, notices his work. For this monarch and his circle, the artist created authentic masterpieces, such as the series of portraits of Felipe IV, the magnificent equestrian portrait of the Count-Duke of Olivares or the highly celebrated Las Meninas, executed already in the stage of artistic plenitude of him.

Rubens, whom he knew personally, pleads with Felipe IV to send Velázquez to Italy. This first trip to the Italian peninsula provides the artist with the knowledge of the classics and the Renaissance masters. Fruit of his Italian journey is his work Vulcan's Forge (1630), one of the very few paintings with a mythological theme that we find in his pictorial corpus. During his second stay in Italy he made what will be the only nude in his work, the mirror venus (1647-1651), and which will also be one of the few nudes in Spanish painting along with the Goya's pestle.

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2. Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) is one of those overwhelming artistic personalities that appear from time to time in the history of art.

Noted sculptor, but also painter and architect, he has often been compared to Michelangelo because of his many facets, all executed with great artistic quality. The young Gian Lorenzo had been trained in his father's workshop, who was a sculptor, and soon demonstrated the innate talent he possessed. The sculptural groups commissioned by Cardinal Borghese establish him as one of the best sculptors of his generation. Indeed, in some of these works, such as The kidnapping of Proserpine either Apollo and Daphne, the artist shows off all his mastery with the chisel. The sculptures present an impressive realism and create an extraordinary illusion of movement.

Bernini develops his artistic corpus under the mandate of no less than seven popes. Starting in 1629, and at just 31 years old, Bernini took charge of the greatest monument of Christianity: the Basilica of San Pedro, whose reform had begun a few centuries before and had included authentic geniuses such as Michelangelo, Raphael and Twine. Bernini also takes charge of the impressive solid bronze canopy that adorns the main altar of the basilica and of the Chair of San Pedro (also in bronze), as well as the no less impressive Plaza de San Pedro and its colonnade. Raised to the top by Pope Urban VIII, Baroque Rome is due, in part, to his prolific and astonishing work.

3. Peter Paul Rubens

For many people, to evoke Baroque painting is to evoke Rubens (1577-1640). Indeed, he was a prolific painter who had numerous disciples and assistants in his workshop to give way to the huge demand that he received. All the aristocratic houses wanted a work by Rubens. And, among his biggest clients, was the Spanish crown of the Habsburgs.

Peter Paul Rubens was born in Westphalia, in present-day Germany. He soon settled in Antwerp, where he received pictorial and humanistic education at the hands of Mannerist artists. After a stay in Italy and, later, in Spain, where he made the famous and impressive portrait equestrian of the Duke of Lerma, trusted by King Felipe III, Rubens settled in Antwerp and married Isabel Brant. In those years, the artist was at the height of his fame, and made impressive canvases on religious themes and the exaltation of the monarchy. But probably the paintings for which Rubens is best remembered are those dealing with mythological themes.

The artist had a solid humanist training, reinforced through his trips to Italy, and he knew how to transfer this knowledge to his canvases. They are remarkable for their exquisite colors and their sensual brushstrokes. The Three Graces (1639), a work quite late in his production and featuring his second wife, Helena Fourment; the Creation of the Milky Way (1636-38) and The judgment of Paris (1638).

4. anton vandyck

Anton Van Dyck is one of the greats of English Baroque painting. He is considered by many authors as a disciple of Rubens, but this is a matter still subject to debate. The fact that, in the commissions they received, both painters received identical fees, makes us suppose that more than a disciple, Van Dyck was his collaborator.

Despite being an exceptional painter in all areas, Van Dyck is especially remembered for his portraits.. Charles I of England, fascinated by her work, calls him to her side and names him chamber painter in 1632, for which Flemish settles permanently in London and he married Mary Ruthwen, of whom he made, in 1639, a delicious portrait in which the lady appears dressed in a silky blue dress. Mary suffered from alopecia, and her husband does not hide this "defect" in her portrait. However, he represents the young woman with a sweetness and dignity that are characteristic of her works, in which the reality of the character is mixed with a halo of elegance and refinement.

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5. Artemisia Gentileschi

One of the most famous Baroque painters, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1656) is, however, remembered almost exclusively for the sad episode of her rape. She produced her first major work at just 17 years old, Susana and the old (1610), where she illustrates the well-known passage from the Bible in a realistic and stark way.

Trained in the workshop of her father, Orazio Gentileschi, at the age of 18 he makes a private teacher available to her, since Artemisia's status as a woman prevented her from accessing an academy. This tutor, Agostino Tassi, sexually abuses her, for which her father takes the criminal to court. Artemisia (who is, in reality, the victim), is subjected to a humiliating interrogation, a shameful gynecological inspection and, finally, to a more than horrifying torture, to "verify" what the TRUE. Artemisia stands her ground, and Tassi is sentenced to a year in prison and exile.

It has been commented that one of the artist's most famous works, Judith beheading Holofernes (1612-13), is a kind of revenge, a cry of rage thrown to the four winds to vent the pain that this episode in his life caused him. We don't know if it was exactly like that, but what is certain is that the canvas has a heartbreaking rawness, and probably surpasses the homonymous work by Caravaggio, from whom, by the way, Artemisia took its tenebrism and the magnificent and overwhelming chiaroscuro.

6. Francesco Borromini

The biography of Francesco Castelli (1599-1667), who later changed his surname to Borromini, is famous for his tragic end. On the morning of August 2, 1667, the artist, probably immersed in a serious depression, jumped on his sword. faded with him one of the brightest lights of the Italian Baroque.

An eternal enemy of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Borromini's life was a continuous struggle to stay on top. Rome was, in those days, the epicenter of European art. The popes followed one another and commissioned works one after the other, with the intention of embellishing the Eternal City and turning it into a living symbol of the Counter-Reformation. Francesco Borromini arrived in the papal city at just 20 years old, after a stay in Milan, where he had been working at the Duomo. In Rome, Borromini began working on St. Peter's, and later on the Barberini Palace, together with his later rival, Bernini.

Many authors have wondered what was the real reason that led the brilliant artist to end his life. It seems that Borromini had a melancholic character, which became accentuated as the years went by and he saw that the main papal tasks fell on his enemy. It is more than likely that this, together with his own emotional instability and the death of his friend and confidante Fioravante Martinelli, plunged him, as we have already said, into a serious depression. Be that as it may, on August 2, 1667, the world lost one of the greatest Baroque artists, author of, among other wonders, the splendid church of San Carlo alle Quattre Fontane, in Rome.

7. Michelangelo Merisi (Caravaggio)

Michelangelo Merisi, better known as "Il Caravaggio" (1571-1610) is another of those artists who, like Vermeer, has left us few examples of his magnificent work. Indeed, there are few caravaggios that are preserved in the world, partly due to his fleeting passage through the world (he died at the age of 39). caravaggio he is famous, among many other things, for being the "inventor" of tenebrism, an effect of contrasts between light and dark that were going to give a stamp of personality to all his paintings, and that would be imitated by other artists, among them the also great Artemisia Gentileschi.

When Caravaggio's family moved to Rome, the young man began to train in modest painters' workshops. The first major known work of his is the boy peeling fruit, from 1592, made when Caravaggio lived with Monsignor Colonna, whom the young painter nicknamed “Monsignor lettuce” due to the little varied diet that the clergyman offered him. Many authors have pointed out the possible sexual favors that the young painters gave in exchange for a home and protection. The fact is uncertain, but it is an entirely plausible possibility. In fact, Caravaggio's life always slipped through the lowest and most shadowy depths of society.

From these environments he took the models for his paintings, and for this reason we find in his works that air of reality and naturalism that moves us. In fact, some of his works were rejected by his patrons for their accentuated naturalism, which sinned against the "decorum" (the name given to the correct way of representing the scenes religious). A well-known case is The death of the Virgin (1604), for which Caravaggio modeled a prostitute drowned in the Tiber.

Caravaggio himself did not escape the harmful influence of the shady circles he frequented. Famous for his rows and violent drunkenness, in 1607 he kills a man in a scuffle and must flee Rome. From then on, his life will be a continuous pilgrimage until his own death, which occurred in 1610.

8. Luisa Roldán (“La Roldana”)

Luisa Roldán (1652-1706) is one of the female names that should be framed with gold letters in the history of art. Unjustly forgotten in the books, like most of her classmates, Luisa ran a sculpture workshop in the middle of the 17th century. She was born in the hectic and dynamic Seville of the 17th century, which also saw other greats such as Velázquez or Murillo develop, and was trained in the workshop of her father, Pedro Roldán. During her early years, she Luisa sculpted imposing life-size figures that followed the guidelines of the Catholic Counter-Reformation; most of them destined for Andalusian processions. It is also famous for its production of terracotta figures for the Neapolitan-style nativity scenes that were so all the rage at the time.

Luisa lived with her husband in Seville (whom she had married at the age of 19 without parental consent) until 1686, the year in which they moved to Cádiz. Luisa Roldán's stage of fullness is, however, her stage in Madrid, a city that she arrived in 1689, accompanied by her husband and her children. In 1692 her long-awaited appointment arrived: King Carlos II named her chamber sculptor. Her small-format terracotta works from this Madrid period are intended for noble and bourgeois families for private devotion. As she often is with most women artists, until recently much of her work had been attributed to her father or her husband. Fortunately, currently new studies have put the dots on the i's and have demonstrated the prolific production of this Sevillian artist, one of the great sculptors of the Hispanic Baroque.

9. Bartolome Esteban Murillo

If something is remembered at the popular level of this excellent Spanish Baroque artist, it is his Immaculate Conception and his beautiful Children Jesus and Saint John.

Indeed, the work of Murillo (1617-1682) escapes from the famous baroque monumentality and introduces us into a world of intimate sweetness that seems taken from the strictest daily life. A great example of this "descent of the religious to earth" which, on the other hand, is typical of baroque language, is his famous painting The Holy Family of the little bird, where we are shown an ordinary family, delivered to daily chores. The Virgin, in the background, watches Saint Joseph playing with the Child. There is nothing in the scene that tells us that the characters are saints, nor that the child is a child of God. It is a snapshot of an ordinary family in 17th century Spain. And that is the true value of Murillo's work.

The Sevillian artist also includes in his work, in parallel with the characteristic Baroque naturalism, a refinement that almost augurs the Rococo aesthetic of the following century. His naturalistic paintings extract motifs and characters from everyday life, as Caravaggio and Velázquez did. on his canvas Children eating grapes and melon, we see two little boys who are entertained by devouring fruit, possibly one of the few foods that they will be able to access in several days. His dirty little feet and torn clothes are notes of realism with which Murillo points out the poverty of the boys. On the other hand, his famous Immaculate Conceptions, a symbol of the Counter-Reformation, pose at the same time monumentality and sweetness, and the faces of these virgins are among the most beautiful in the Spanish painting.

10. Johannes Vermeer

Vermeer (1632-1675) is, along with Caravaggio, one of the painters who has left us the smallest body of art. Barely thirty works are disseminated among the best museums in the world, but this scarce enough production to realize that we are dealing with one of the great geniuses of painting universal.

Johannes Vermeer was born in Delft in the fall of 1632. In those years, the so-called United Provinces were already independent of the Spanish crown, and in the country an extraordinary artistic production is developed, which has been called the Golden Age of the Countries Low. The great patrons, unlike in Catholic countries, were the bourgeois and merchants of the cities. That is why in Holland we find another type of pictorial language, which has nothing to do with the southern Baroque.

The Dutch bourgeoisie, which was also Protestant, did not want large canvases of Biblical apotheosis, but preferred scenes of everyday intimacy. And that is what Vermeer was a true master of.

Vermeerian interiors are exquisite, despite the fact that almost all of them take place in the same room, of which only the position of the elements changes. In all his works, the characters seem taken by surprise as they carry out their day-to-day activities. We see a young woman absorbed in reading a letter in the play girl reading a letter (1657), who has not noticed our presence, or another young woman who, resting her head on her hand, takes a short nap (sleeping girl, 1657). In all of Vermeer's works we have the feeling of entering a world that does not belong to us.