The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe are often characterized by political and religious tensions driven by the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation that emerged in response. In Italy especially, the Catholic Church had significant influence not only on the religion and politics of the region but also on the artistic practice that developed alongside this cultural shift.
The Council of Trent, which the Catholic Church held in Italy in the late sixteenth century, aimed to formally respond to the criticisms of the Protestant movement. The most important of these in the development of Catholic art was a passage reaffirming the didactic role of religious images. The council affirmed that art should be direct and compelling in the depiction of biblical events. This caused a dramatic shift in the depiction of biblical narratives and Catholic art in Italy. Stylistic innovations and trends included a renewed tendency toward dramatic naturalism and the use of striking contrast between light and shadow known as tenebrism.
The Italian Baroque movement was primarily spearheaded by two artists: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610) and Annibale Carracci (1560–1609). Caravaggio took the use of tenebrism to new heights in a technique known as chiaroscuro, which emphasizes this use of light and shadow to create dramatic modeling and volume in figures. Carracci, on the other hand, was best known for his incorporation of classical tendencies in his interpretation of naturalism. Artists working in the Italian Baroque tradition were undoubtedly influenced by the trends set by these leading figures.
The Eskenazi Museum of Art’s collection includes a number of works by Italian artists from this period. Antiveduto Gramatica’s Judith with the Head of Holofernes (ca. 1625) depicts a narrative from the Book of Judith. This is interesting because while this text is excluded from the Hebrew canon and considered noncanonical in the Protestant tradition, it is included in the canon of the Catholic Church.
This painting tells the story of the virtuous Jewish heroine who saved her city of Bethulia after the Assyrian general Holofernes laid siege to it in the seventh century BCE. Judith, a beautiful widow, uses her powers of seduction to enter the tent of Holofernes, where he becomes intoxicated and falls asleep. Judith famously beheads the general, thus saving her city and asserting her femininity through her seduction of Holofernes. This narrative was popularly depicted by Renaissance and Baroque artists, including Caravaggio, who emphasized the distinct bloodiness of the beheading. Gramatica, however, downplayed this violence, relying on the audience’s previous knowledge of the account, and instead depicting Judith and her maid leaving Holofernes’s tent with his head discreetly hidden in the maid’s skirt.
Jacopo Palma il Giovane’s Saint John the Baptist Preaching (ca. 1620) depicts the titular saint from the New Testament. Saint John the Baptist was a popular subject in Renaissance painting. Great sixteenth century Venetian artists such as Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto depicted the saint in similar compositions, and they likely inspired Palma who was also based in Venice. Saint John is typically shown baptizing Christ in the Jordan River. In this painting, Palma instead depicts the saint preaching to a large group, alluding to the Jordan River behind him with his right hand. A woman in the crowd is gesturing to a standing woman behind her, presumably the patron of the painting. This, combined with the large scale of the work, suggests it was commissioned for a church, confraternity, or charitable hospice.
Finally, Francesco de Mura’s Triumph of David (ca. 1750) is a late-Baroque painting depicting the iconic narrative from the Hebrew scriptures, known in the Catholic canonical tradition as the Old Testament. In this dramatic rendering, the young shepherd has just slain Goliath. He returns triumphantly from the battlefield with the giant’s head. De Mura was a student of the prolific Neapolitan artist Francesco Solimena, and it is believed that this painting was closely modeled on a work that Solimena had produced for King Philip V of Spain.
While these paintings all depict religious figures and narratives in a highly dramatized and iconic manner, their approach and intended audience differs greatly, showing the range of which Italian painting developed in the seventeenth century. Palma’s depiction of Saint John the Baptist is innovative because it relies on an audience that is already knowledgeable about the narrative, whereas Gramatica’s rendition of Judith slaying Holofernes is more iconographically legible. The stylistic and iconographical approaches in these works can be contextualized within the Catholic Counter-Reformation, with particular attention paid to the mid-sixteenth-century Council of Trent, which sought to clarify the role of art in religious practice. By presenting these narratives in a visual form, these doctrinal messages therefore became more direct and compelling.
Michelle Mandarino
Graduate Assistant, European and American Art
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Mandarino, Michelle. "Biblical Narratives in the Baroque." Collections Online. Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, 2020. https://artmuseum.indiana.edu/collections-online/features/biblical-narratives-baroque-art.php.