The difference between Renaissance and Baroque

Renaissance art strives for balance, clear outlines and calm, symmetrical compositions, while the Baroque seeks movement, depth and dramatic light. The Renaissance shows an ideal state, the Baroque a charged moment. Between them lies Mannerism, roughly 1527–1600.

Facts

Two different ideals

The artists of the Renaissance wanted to create an ordered, comprehensible world. With linear perspective they could build a space where everything has its place, and they took their ideals of proportion and harmony from antiquity. The figures often stand still and dignified, the composition is symmetrical and the picture works like a window we look through.

The Baroque, by contrast, wants to seize the viewer. Space reaches out towards us, light falls dramatically and we see the action at its most charged moment. Where the Renaissance shows how something is, the Baroque shows what is happening.

Wölfflin's five pairs of concepts

In 1915 the Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin formulated the difference in five pairs of concepts that are still used. The Renaissance is linear, with sharp outlines, while the Baroque is painterly, with forms merging in light and shadow. The Renaissance builds the picture in planes parallel to the picture surface, the Baroque in depth along diagonals.

The Renaissance picture is closed, bounded by the frame, while the Baroque picture is open and seems to continue beyond it. In the Renaissance each part has its own value; in the Baroque the parts are subordinated to a whole. Finally, the Renaissance strives for absolute clarity, while the Baroque happily lets parts of the picture disappear into darkness. The concepts are simplifications, but they sharpen the eye.

Compare two works

In The Last Supper Leonardo da Vinci places Christ in the centre, in front of a window where all the perspective lines meet. The disciples are arranged in groups of three on either side, and despite the drama of the moment the picture is in balance. In The School of Athens Raphael builds an equally ordered space around Plato and Aristotle.

Compare this with Caravaggio's The Calling of Saint Matthew or Rubens's The Descent from the Cross. In Caravaggio the light cuts diagonally through a dark room; in Rubens the body of Christ slides down a diagonal of arms and sheets. The same difference can be seen in sculpture: Michelangelo's David stands at rest before the fight, while Bernini's David of the 1620s is caught in the middle of the throw.

Why art changed

The shift had several causes. After the Reformation the Catholic Church wanted images that moved the faithful, and the Council of Trent (1545–1563) demanded that art should be clear and affecting. At the same time new patrons emerged: princes who wanted to display their power and, in the Netherlands, burghers who bought paintings for their homes.

The artists themselves were also looking for new paths. In Bologna the Carracci brothers opened an academy in the 1580s where students drew from the living model, and Annibale Carracci painted ceiling frescoes in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome that became a model for Baroque ceiling painting. Caravaggio went another way, with naturalism and sharp light. Both paths led away from the calm balance of the High Renaissance.

Architecture and the path between them

The same difference exists in buildings. Bramante's Tempietto in Rome is a round, perfectly balanced temple, while Borromini's San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane has a façade that undulates in and out. Read more in the guides to Renaissance and Baroque architecture.

The transition was not sudden. During Mannerism, artists such as Parmigianino and El Greco stretched the Renaissance ideals with elongated figures and restless compositions. Only with Caravaggio and Carracci around 1600 did the Baroque take shape.

How to tell them apart

Exercise

A sculpture shows David in the middle of the throw, his body twisted and his gaze tense. Which period does it probably belong to?