Individualism In Baroque Art

The examination of a person as an individual in history has been an important aspect in understanding society and culture. The value that people in a society place on themselves as a whole has an effect on culture, art, and politics. Recognition of one’s individualism is an incredibly powerful tool for someone to possess. The role of individual, individual determination, and the value of the individual have evolved through the Baroque period to the Industrial Revolution to the Romantics.
I believe the time where there was a major first shift from focusing on higher powers to the individual is when people split off from the Catholic church to pursue their choice of religion: The Reformation. The fact that people broke apart from a strong, well-established

The goal of Baroque art is to portray god touching the lives of ordinary people - to show they too have worth. The painting by Caravaggio, The Madonna of Loreto, illustrates this concept perfectly. Madonna is portrayed as an ordinary person through making her look like a tired mother adorned in peasant clothes and her living conditions also reflect like she comes from a humbling background. The two people in the painting who come to worship her are also very obviously ordinary people and yet they are still able to have a relationship with

This means that nobility such as kings and queens are placed above the common man in level of importance. The nobility themselves and the people below truly see them as being blessed as God himself and treat him as such. The level of individual power possessed by these nobility due is very strong due to them being viewed as better than the average person. An extraordinary amount of money, taxpayer money, is used to provide a very comfortable life for the nobility. The concept behind the Hall of Mirrors, for Louis XIV of France just to walk through in the morning, is a prime example of using taxpayer money to fund these extravagant lifestyles. The nobility do live quite a sheltered life in this time period and mistakenly believe that common people live a carefree, simple life. This mindset of nobility is beautifully reflected in Rococo art which is commissioned by nobility. Rocco arts depicts the beauty and idealness of the nobility and also illustrates their separation from the common world. The painting Haymaker and the Sleeping Girl by Thomas Gainsborough shows the nobility’s skewed perspective of how the common people live: a life without struggle or worry. The pervasive ignorance and false reality the nobility live creates a divide between the rich and powerful and the common