Bravura : Virtuosity and Ambition in Early Modern European Painting

**The first major history of the bravura movement in European painting** The painterly style known as __bravura__ emerged in sixteenth-century Venice and spread throughout Europe during the seventeenth century. While earlier artistic movements presented a polished image of the artist by downplaying the creative process, bravura celebrated a painter’s distinct materials, virtuosic execution, and theatrical showmanship. This resulted in the further development of innovative techniques and a popular understanding of the artist as a weapon-wielding acrobat, impetuous wunderkind, and daring rebel. In __Bravura__, Nicola Suthor offers the first in-depth consideration of bravura as an artistic and cultural phenomenon. Through history, etymology, and in-depth analysis of works by such important painters as Franҫois Boucher, Caravaggio, Francisco Goya, Frans Hals, Peter Paul Rubens, Tintoretto, and Diego Velázquez, Suthor explores the key elements defining bravura’s richness and power. Suthor delves into how bravura’s unique and groundbreaking methods—visible brushstrokes, sharp chiaroscuro, severe foreshortening of the body, and other forms of visual emphasis—cause viewers to feel intensely the artist’s touch. Examining bravura’s etymological history, she traces the term’s associations with courage, boldness, spontaneity, imperiousness, and arrogance, as well as its links to fencing, swordsmanship, henchmen, mercenaries, and street thugs. Suthor discusses the personality cult of the transgressive, self-taught, antisocial genius, and the ways in which bravura artists, through their stunning displays of skill, sought applause and admiration. Filled with captivating images by painters testing the traditional boundaries of aesthetic excellence, __Bravura__ raises important questions about artistic performance and what it means to create art. "The painterly style known as bravura emerged in sixteenth-century Venice and spread throughout Europe during the seventeenth century. While earlier artistic movements concealed artists' craftsmanship and creative process for the sake of presenting an ideal artistic image, bravura celebrated a painter's materials, techniques, and skill. This led to innovations in techniques and a popular understanding of the artist as an impetuous wunderkind and daring rebel. Practitioners of bravura included François Boucher (1703-70), Caravaggio (1571-1610), Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), Francisco Goya (1746-1828), Frans Hals (1582-1666), Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Tintoretto (1518-94), and Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), among others. In this book, a translated, revised, and expanded edition of the author's German-language Bravura (Wilhelm Fink, 2010), Nicola Suthor offers the first sustained analysis of bravura painting as a movement, revealing its meaning as an artistic style, a term, and a cultural phenomenon. Suthor explores bravura's visible brushstrokes, sharp chiaroscuro, severe foreshortening of the body, and other forms of visual emphasis that cause the viewer to intensely feel the touch of the artist-all of which were groundbreaking inventions in visual presentation. Suthor examines bravura's etymological history, tracing its association with courage, boldness, impetuosity, and spontaneity, as well as imperiousness and arrogance, and henchmen, mercenaries, and hired thugs. Exploring bravura as a cultural phenomenon, Suthor examines the personality cult of the daring artist and the self-taught, antisocial genius who rebels against traditional education in stunning displays of skill. She also studies the ways in which bravura artists sought applause and admiration, and how they created new modes of representation, embraced the spontaneous and unpredictable, and manifested, as painter Giovanni Battista Armenini (1530-1609) wrote, the "greatness and obscurity of painting."-- Provided by publisher The painterly style known as bravura emerged in sixteenth-century Venice and spread throughout Europe during the seventeenth century. While earlier artistic movements presented a polished image of the artist by downplaying the creative process, bravura celebrated a painter's distinct materials, virtuosic execution, and theatrical showmanship. This resulted in the further development of innovative techniques and a popular understanding of the artist as a weapon-wielding acrobat, impetuous wunderkind, and daring rebel. In 'Bravura', Nicola Suthor offers the first in-depth consideration of bravura as an artistic and cultural phenomenon. Through history, etymology, and in-depth analysis of works by such important painters as François Boucher, Caravaggio, Francisco Goya, Frans Hals, Peter Paul Rubens, Tintoretto, and Diego Velazquez, Suthor explores the key elements defining bravura's richness and power. Suthor delves into how bravura's unique and groundbreaking methods--visible brushstrokes, sharp chiaroscuro, severe foreshortening of the body, and other forms of visual emphasis--cause viewers to feel intensely the artist's touch. Examining bravura's etymological history, she traces the term's associations with courage, boldness, spontaneity, imperiousness, and arrogance, as well as its links to fencing, swordsmanship, henchmen, mercenaries, and street thugs. Suthor discusses the personality cult of the transgressive, self-taught, antisocial genius, and the ways in which bravura artists, through their stunning displays of skill, sought applause and admiration. Filled with captivating images by painters testing the traditional boundaries of aesthetic excellence, 'Bravura' raises important questions about artistic performance and what it means to create art The painterly style known as bravura emerged in sixteenth-century Venice and spread throughout Europe during the seventeenth century. While earlier artistic movements presented a polished image of the artist by downplaying the creative process, bravura celebrated a painter's distinct materials, virtuosic execution, and theatrical showmanship. This resulted in the further development of innovative techniques and a popular understanding of the artist as a weapon-wielding acrobat, impetuous wunderkind, and daring rebel. In Bravura, Nicola Suthor offers the first in-depth consideration of bravura as an artistic and cultural phenomenon. Through history, etymology, and in-depth analysis of works by such important painters as Fran ois Boucher, Caravaggio, Francisco Goya, Frans Hals, Peter Paul Rubens, Tintoretto, and Diego Velazquez, Suthor explores the key elements defining bravura's richness and power.0Suthor delves into how bravura's unique and groundbreaking methods-visible brushstrokes, sharp chiaroscuro, severe foreshortening of the body, and other forms of visual emphasis-cause viewers to feel intensely the artist's touch. Examining bravura's etymological history, she traces the term's associations with courage, boldness, spontaneity, imperiousness, and arrogance, as well as its links to fencing, swordsmanship, henchmen, mercenaries, and street thugs. Suthor discusses the personality cult of the transgressive, self-taught, antisocial genius, and the ways in which bravura artists, through their stunning displays of skill, sought applause and admiration.0Filled with captivating images by painters testing the traditional boundaries of aesthetic excellence, 'Bravura' raises important questions about artistic performance and what it means to create art The painterly style known as bravura emerged in sixteenth-century Venice and spread throughout Europe during the seventeenth century. While earlier artistic movements presented a polished image of the artist by downplaying the creative process, bravura celebrated a painter's distinct materials, virtuosic execution, and theatrical showmanship. This resulted in the further development of innovative techniques and a popular understanding of the artist as a weapon-wielding acrobat, impetuous wunderkind, and daring rebel. In Bravura, Nicola Suthor offers the first in-depth consideration of bravura as an artistic and cultural phenomenon. Through history, etymology, and in-depth analysis of works by such important painters as Fran ois Boucher, Caravaggio, Francisco Goya, Frans Hals, Peter Paul Rubens, Tintoretto, and Diego Velazquez, Suthor explores the key elements defining bravura's richness and power. Suthor delves into how bravura's unique and groundbreaking methods-visible brushstrokes, sharp chiaroscuro, severe foreshortening of the body, and other forms of visual emphasis-cause viewers to feel intensely the artist's touch. Examining bravura's etymological history, she traces the term's associations with courage, boldness, spontaneity, imperiousness, and arrogance, as well as its links to fencing, swordsmanship, henchmen, mercenaries, and street thugs. Suthor discusses the personality cult of the transgressive, self-taught, antisocial genius, and the ways in which bravura artists, through their stunning displays of skill, sought applause and admiration.0Filled with captivating images by painters testing the traditional boundaries of aesthetic excellence, 'Bravura' raises important questions about artistic performance and what it means to create art Cover Title Page Copyright Page Contents INTRODUCTION The Semantic Field of “Bravura” Synopsis 1 CELEBRATIONS OF VIOLENCE The Artist as Executioner Beautiful Horror: The Massacre of the Innocents by Marino, Rubens, and Poussin Swashbuckling and Warcraft Media and Immediacy in alla prima 2 THE FIGURAL TOUR DE FORCE The Art of (Fore)Shortening: Repertoire and Scorcio in Battle Paintings Sacrificial Bodies Pazzia bestialissima: Rubens’s Copy after Leonardo’s Battle of the Standard Rubens Storms the Ramparts: The Fall of Phaeton 3 THE SPATIAL TOUR DE FORCE Bending the Curve Cutting Edge Solutions The Glory of the Dome 4 BRAVURA AS PAINTERLY STYLE Sprezzatura artificiosa The Appeal of Sketchiness Tintoretto as Primus inter pares The Art of Fencing 5 COMMUNICATING ARTIFICE A Day’s Work Luca Giordano and Il far presto To Witness Painting 6 ECONOMIES OF PRACTICE Carlo Dolci’s Excessive Diligence The Incalculable Artist Vanagloria The Fragility of Fame 7 ARTE-FACTUM: THE FEMINIZING BRAVURA The Artifice of Painterly Mimesis Titian’s Vaghezza Manu-Facture Role Reversal 8 ENDANGERING THE YOUTH Caravaggio’s Realism Giuseppe Cesari Lifting Weights Blind Practice 9 THE ACADEMIC RESPONSE The Sophistication of Légèreté “Mechanick Genius” Forever Young The “Inspired Waste” of Fragonard 10 REENACTMENTS AND ECHOES Frans Hals’s Realist Bravura The Afterlife of Bravura Notes Bibliography Index Photo Credits Die Untersuchung setzt zur Hoch-Zeit der Bravura im 17. Jahrhundert an. Der Begriff wird an seiner Beschreibungskompetenz hinsichtlich einer künstlerischen Haltung bemessen, die sich in der bildnerischen Praxis artikuliert: die der ambitiösen Mutwilligkeit. Hierunter wird die Manifestation einer künstlerischen Setzung um ihrer selbst Willen verstanden, die den Rahmen der Repräsentation sprengt, um sich einen Spielraum für künstlerische Selbstdarstellung zu schaffen. In der exponierten Feier seiner selbst wird der Applaus vorausgesetzt; er ist dem Werk - wie dem musikalischen Bravourstück - bereits als Anspruch eingeschrieben.