Oublier la Renaissance, désapprendre l’humanisme : Le premier Baroque entre exploitation des acquis et table rase imaginaire
Abstract
Art history has traditionally postulated a clear break between, on the one hand, late Mannerism, still dependent on Renaissance and humanistic culture, and, on the other hand, the artistic revolution that inaugurated the Baroque. However, art historians who have carefully studied the work of the main protagonist of the latter “revolution” know that Caravaggio, while ostentatiously claiming his indifference to tradition and the absolute novelty of his art, was in fact highly indebted to older artworks he could see first in Lombardy, then in Rome. The tension between continuity and rupture, between that which changes and that which stays the same, has always been one of the principal issues of art historical discussions. This article seeks to revise the common narrative on the birth of the Baroque, avoiding both the myth of the Tabula rasa and that of the Déjà vu. It explains how Caravaggio and those artists considered his followers – particularly Jusepe de Ribera – hoped to keep alive the memory of some important innovations in the art of their predecessors, while at the same time actively forgetting the norms, the rules and the ideals.
Keywords
