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This week: Baroque and Rococo art at the Wadsworth. For previous posts on the Wadsworth, click here.

Hals, Portrait of Joseph Coymans, 1644

Hals (ca. 1581-1666) is renowned for his virtuoso brushwork, which makes even sober merchants like this one seem energetic. The artist painted at least four other portraits of members of the Coymans family, including one of my favorites, now at the National Gallery in Washington.

The Coymans were a prominent merchant family in Amsterdam and Haarlem, during the period when Holland was the foremost commercial power in Europe. The Dutch Golden Age (roughly the seventeenth century) was spurred by an influx of highly skilled workers fleeing religious persecution elsewhere in Europe, by the availability of cheap energy (windmills!), by a relatively free political system (no royal ruler), and by the energetic efforts of manufacturers, merchants and traders such as the Coymans family. The rising wealth of the Coymans and other members of the upper-middle class spurred the demand for artworks of high quality. Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Hals were painting portraits and narratives in Holland at this time. So were Willem Kalf and William Claesz. Heda, one of whose gorgeous still lifes we saw in last week’s post.

Canaletto, The Square of St. Mark’s and the Piazzetta, ca. 1731

In the mid-eighteenth century, Canaletto (1697-1768) painted views of Venice as mementos for wealthy travelers. His paintings are filled with sunlight: the sort of weather one always wishes for on a vacation! I’ve seen Canalettos in the Flagler Museum, the Ringling, and of course in the Metropolitan Museum.

Guardi, View of the Piazzetta, ca. 1770-1780

Canaletto and Guardi (1712-1793) were the most popular painters of Venetian scenes in the mid-eighteenth century. In the Wadsworth, this painting by Guardi is hung right next to a Canaletto, so we can see the difference between the two artists. Most notably: Guardi uses looser brushstrokes, which gives his work a more spontaneous (but also less exact) feel. You can see the same effect in a Guardi painting at the Gardner Museum in Boston.

Bellotto, View of Pirna in Saxony, 1763

Bellotto (1721-1780) worked in Venice with Canaletto (his uncle) until 1747, when he moved to the German courts in Munich, Dresden, Vienna, and Warsaw. This view is from a town near Dresden. The buildings are in a German style, but the light somehow feels Italian …

Kaendler / Meissen Porcelain, Busts of Two Monks, 1743

These busts from the famous Meissen Factory prove that porcelain can be used to create monumental objects as well as small, decorative ones. They belonged to a set of more than ten busts created by order of the pope at the Meissen Factory in Dresden. Dresden was a Catholic enclave in the mostly Protestant German-speaking countries.

Kaendler / Meissen Porcelain, Judgment of Paris, ca. 1762

This group showing Paris’s choice of the fairest goddess (which led to the Trojan War) seems to have been the centerpiece of an ensemble with eight other groups of mythological couples. The complexity of these porcelain pieces and the intricacy of the painted decoration are amazing. I still find it difficult to look at Meissen porcelain with a fresh eye: even today there are so many knock-offs of it for sale. What happened to Meissen porcelain is similar to what happened with Le Lorrain and Parrish. Successful artists are frequently copied, and their style becomes so ubiquitous that it’s difficult to appreciate the originals. (See last week’s post.)

Next week: French porcelain, quite different from German.

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