The Baroque Vortex

The Baroque Vortex Synopsis

If we look at the plays of Pedro Calderon de la Barca and the paintings of Diego Velazquez, the years 1635 to 1680 arguably mark the creative apex of Spain's Golden Age. In subtle portraiture and court plays, classical imagery combined with Church orthodoxy connecting antiquity's glories to Spain's Habsburg rule. The works of Baltasar Gracian, his allegorical Criticon (1651) and his prescriptive Agudeza y arte de ingenio (1648), offered other examples, and, in the case of the latter, explained this imagery.

In these works, Gracian shares many of the same iconographic resources with Calderon and Velazquez. Commonalties in their historical, mythological, and religious subjects reveal the united and vigorous facade that Spain attempted to project through her art. The Baroque Vortex compares some of the similarities and differences to be found in the works of these three contemporaries.