CLICK TO VIEW ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHS
|
|
19th Century Italian Baroque Style Pastiglia Commodes
Pair of Unique 19th Century Italian Baroque Style Decorated and Gilt Pastiglia Commodes. Early to mid 19th century (possibly even 18th century, given age on drawers), each with rectangular top with incised decoration and gadrooned edge over three drawers painted with various biblical scenes; the sides with palmette and pendant floral relief decoration; raised on satyr mask feet. This pair of fine Italian antique furniture is 39”H, 22”W, 15.5”D. History of the Baroque tradition: era in the history of the Western arts roughly coinciding with the 17th century. Its earliest manifestations, which occurred in Italy, date from the latter decades of the 16th century, while in some regions, notably Germany and colonial South America, certain of its culminating achievements did not occur until the 18th century. The work that distinguishes the Baroque period is stylistically complex, even contradictory. In general, however, the desire to evoke emotional states by appealing to the senses, often in dramatic ways, underlies its manifestations. Some of the qualities most frequently associated with the Baroque are grandeur, sensuous richness, drama, vitality, movement, tension, emotional exuberance, and a tendency to blur distinctions between the various arts.
The term Baroque probably ultimately derived from the Italian word barocco, which was a term used by philosophers during the Middle Ages to describe an obstacle in schematic logic. Subsequently the word came to denote any contorted idea or involuted process of thought. Another possible source is the Portuguese word barroco (Spanish barrueco), used to describe an irregular or imperfectly shaped pearl, and this usage still survives in the jeweler's term baroque pearl. In art criticism the word Baroque came to be used to describe anything irregular, bizarre, or otherwise departing from established rules and proportions. This biased Neoclassical view of 17th-century art styles was held with few modifications by critics from Johann Winckelmann to John Ruskin and Jacob Burckhardt, and until the late 19th century the term always carried the implication of odd, grotesque, exaggerated, and overdecorated. It was only with Heinrich Wölfflin's pioneer study Renaissance und Barock (1888) that Baroque was used as a stylistic designation rather than as a term of thinly veiled abuse, and a systematic formulation of the characteristics of Baroque style was achieved.
|
