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Baroque art is the painting and sculpture associated with the Baroque cultural movement, a movement often identified with Absolutism and the Counter Reformation. Baroque art is characterized by great drama, rich deep color, and intense light and dark shadows. As opposed to Renaissance art, which usually showed the moment before an event took place, Baroque artists chose the most dramatic point, the moment when the action was occurring. Michelangelo, working in the High Renaissance, shows his David composed and still before he battles Goliath; Bernini's baroque David is caught in the act of hurling the stone at the giant. Baroque art was meant to evoke emotion and passion instead of the calm rationality that had been prized during the Renaissance. Because the Roman Catholic Church demanded that paintings and sculptures in church contexts should speak to the illiterate rather than to the well-informed, baroque art tends to focus on Saints, the Virgin Mary, and other well known Bible stories. |
