In this class, we will study the great Spanish Baroque painters who created Profane art that had aesthetic appeal in a non-religious context. We will look at paintings that neither denied or affirmed the existence of God, but focused on human agency.
The term comes from the Latin compound profanum, literally meaning before or outside the temple. Profane is also called Secular art because it can be defined as art that has no religious reference points.
In its most general sense, it means that which is not holy, or that which does not pertain to a place marked off or an object related to religious practice.
Through the study of the art, poetry, philosophy, and science of ancient Greece and Rome, Renaissance humanists revived the notion that man, rather than God, is the measure of all things. The dependence on the Church gave away to the confidence that humans can shape their own individual destinies and the future of the world.
As the whole of European society was moving away from the dominance of the church, 17th c. Spanish artists started turning towards the profane, depicting ordinary mundane scenes and objects to sell to merchants and enlightened patrons, as another source of revenue.
We will explore the 17th c Spanish paintings and painters who made money from their profane art by looking and analyzing Mythological themes, Oddities of Nature, Philosophers and Bodegón still life themes in this class and Historical themes, Portraits and Landscapes in another.
Fill your mind and your senses...
KarlaDarocas.com
