Chapter 3: Art of the world

Baroque to Romanticism

European art from about 1600 to 1850, from Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Vermeer and Velázquez to David, Goya, Turner and Constable, plus Hokusai's Great Wave from Japan.

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6 facts to know

Baroque art (about 1600 to 1750) is full of drama, movement and strong light against deep shadow. Caravaggio, Bernini, Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer and Velázquez all belong to it.
Caravaggio's tenebrism, a spotlight in a dark room, is the Baroque's best-known trick. Rembrandt used it in The Night Watch (1642, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).
Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring (about 1665) is in the Mauritshuis, The Hague. CEED 2026 labelled it Baroque.
Neoclassicism went back to calm, clear Greek and Roman forms. Its leader was Jacques-Louis David, who painted The Death of Marat (1793).
Romanticism (about 1800 to 1850) put feeling, danger and wild nature first: Goya, Géricault, Delacroix, Friedrich, Turner and Constable. Constable painted The Hay Wain (1821), asked in NIFT 2025.
The Great Wave off Kanagawa is a Japanese woodblock print by Hokusai, from around 1831. UCEED 2018 asked which country it comes from.

What changed after the Renaissance

Renaissance art, before 1600, is calm and balanced. Figures stand still, the light is even, and everything sits in its place. Around 1600, artists in Rome began to want something louder. They painted the most dramatic moment of a story, used strong beams of light against deep darkness, and made bodies twist and push out towards the viewer. This style is called Baroque. The word probably comes from the Portuguese barroco, an oddly shaped pearl, and was first used as an insult.

The Catholic Church used Baroque art to move and impress ordinary people, so it spread through Italy, Spain and Flanders (today's Belgium). In the Protestant Netherlands, painters such as Rembrandt and Vermeer worked for merchants instead, and painted portraits, homes and everyday life. This is called the Dutch Golden Age, and it is counted as part of the Baroque period.

After about 1760, artists grew tired of the frills of late Baroque and turned back to ancient Greece and Rome, in a style called Neoclassicism. Then, from about 1800, Romanticism pushed the other way, towards strong feeling, storms, mountains and revolutions.

Rome: drama in paint and marble

A dark room where men in colourful clothes sit at a table counting money; on the right, Christ points at them, and a beam of light from above falls across their faces. — Picture: Gleb Simonov. CC0.

The Calling of Saint Matthew

Where: Contarelli Chapel, church of San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome, where it was first hung
When: 1599 to 1600
Who: Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, 1571 to 1610)
Style: Baroque
Made with: Oil on canvas

Christ walks into a tax office and points at Matthew, a tax collector, calling him to follow him. Caravaggio set the Bible story in a gloomy room with men in the everyday clothes of his own time. A single beam of light cuts through the dark, following Christ's pointing hand to the men at the table. This extreme light and dark is called tenebrism, from the Italian tenebroso, "dark". Painters all over Europe copied it, and his followers were called the Caravaggisti.

Spot it by

A mostly black picture, one strong diagonal beam of light, real-looking people in plain clothes, Christ's outstretched hand on the right.

Remember

Caravaggio paints with a spotlight: tenebrism means "darkness wins".

Don't confuse

Chiaroscuro means any strong contrast of light and shade, used since the Renaissance to make shapes look solid. Tenebrism is its extreme form, where darkness fills most of the picture.

A white marble sculpture of a nun swooning on a cloud while a smiling angel holds a spear over her, in front of a burst of gilded rays, framed by green marble columns. — Picture: Livioandronico2013. CC BY-SA 4.0.

The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa

Where: Cornaro Chapel, church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome
When: Finished in 1652
Who: Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598 to 1680)
Style: Baroque sculpture
Made with: White marble, with gilded rays, coloured marble and painted stucco around it
Key works: The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa; Apollo and Daphne (Galleria Borghese, Rome); the colonnades of St Peter's Square, Vatican City

Bernini was the great sculptor and architect of Baroque Rome. Here he shows a vision described by the Spanish nun Saint Teresa of Ávila: an angel pierces her heart with a golden spear and she is overcome with joy and pain. He designed the whole chapel like a theatre, with marble members of the Cornaro family watching from boxes at the sides and light from a hidden window falling on the gold rays. He also designed the huge curved colonnades that wrap around St Peter's Square.

Spot it by

Marble that looks soft as cloth and cloud, a swooning figure, a smiling angel with a spear, gold rays, a stage-like setting.

Remember

Bernini made marble move, and turned a chapel into a theatre.

Don't confuse

Michelangelo's David (Renaissance) stands still before the fight. Baroque sculptures, like Bernini's, catch the most dramatic moment as it happens.

Flanders and Spain: Rubens and Velázquez

A three-panel altarpiece in a church: in the centre, muscular men strain to raise the cross with Christ nailed to it on a steep diagonal; mourners fill the left panel and soldiers on horseback the right. — Picture: Peter Paul Rubens. Public domain.

The Elevation of the Cross

Also called The Raising of the Cross

Where: Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp, Belgium
When: 1610 to 1611
Who: Peter Paul Rubens (1577 to 1640)
Style: Flemish Baroque
Made with: Oil on wood panels, as a triptych (three hinged panels)

Rubens came home to Antwerp in 1608 after eight years in Italy, where he had studied Michelangelo and Caravaggio. This huge altarpiece made his name. The cross cuts across the centre panel on a steep diagonal, and a team of straining, muscular men heave it upright. It was painted for another Antwerp church, which was later pulled down, and moved to the cathedral. Rubens ran a large workshop and also worked as a diplomat for the rulers of the Spanish Netherlands.

Spot it by

Diagonals, twisting muscular bodies, rich reds, a crowded scene that seems to burst out of the frame.

Remember

Rubens means muscle and movement: everything in his paintings is pushing.

A tall, dim palace room: a little princess in a wide silver dress stands at the centre with maids of honour, two court dwarfs and a big dog, while the painter stands at a huge canvas on the left and a small mirror on the back wall shows a king and queen. — Picture: Diego Velázquez. Public domain.

Las Meninas

Also called The Ladies-in-Waiting

Where: Museo del Prado, Madrid
When: 1656
Who: Diego Velázquez (1599 to 1660), court painter to King Philip IV of Spain
Style: Spanish Baroque (the Spanish Golden Age)
Made with: Oil on canvas

The five-year-old Infanta (princess) Margaret Theresa stands with her maids of honour, the meninas, in a room of the royal palace in Madrid. Velázquez painted himself at the left, brush in hand, working on a giant canvas we can't see. A mirror on the back wall shows King Philip IV and Queen Mariana, as if they are standing where we stand. Who is looking at whom is the puzzle that has kept people talking about it for centuries.

Spot it by

A little girl in a wide silver dress, the painter at his easel on the left, a mirror with two faint royal faces, a man in a bright doorway at the back, a sleepy dog.

Remember

Las Meninas has three audiences: the painter, the king and queen in the mirror, and you.

Don't confuse

Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait (1434) also has a mirror on the back wall, but it is a small Flemish double portrait from the Renaissance.

The Dutch Golden Age

A huge group portrait of armed men pouring out of a dark gateway with muskets, pikes, a flag and a drum; at the front, a captain in black with a red sash walks beside a lieutenant in gold, and a glowing girl stands behind them. — Picture: Rembrandt. Public domain.

The Night Watch

Also called Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq

Where: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (owned by the City of Amsterdam)
When: 1642
Who: Rembrandt van Rijn (1606 to 1669)
Style: Dutch Golden Age (Baroque)
Made with: Oil on canvas, more than 4 metres wide

The men of an Amsterdam civic guard paid to be painted together for their headquarters. Instead of lining them up in rows, Rembrandt showed them in action, as the captain orders the company to march. Light picks out the captain's hand, his lieutenant in gold, and a glowing girl, the company's mascot, with a dead chicken hanging from her belt. It is not a night scene at all: old, darkened varnish made it look like night, and the nickname stuck from the end of the 1700s.

Spot it by

A crowded, moving group, deep shadows with bursts of gold light, a captain in black with a red sash, a lieutenant in pale gold, a glowing girl, spears and a flag.

Remember

The Night Watch happens in daytime; the dirt made the night.

Don't confuse

Vermeer, also Dutch, painted small, quiet rooms with soft daylight. Rembrandt's light is dramatic and golden, in big dark spaces.

A girl against a black background looks back over her shoulder at the viewer with parted lips, wearing a blue and yellow turban and a large shining pearl drop in her ear. — Picture: Johannes Vermeer. Public domain.

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Where: Mauritshuis, The Hague, Netherlands (since 1902)
When: About 1665
Who: Johannes Vermeer of Delft (1632 to 1675)
Style: Dutch Golden Age (Baroque)
Made with: Oil on canvas, only about 45 cm tall
Key works: Girl with a Pearl Earring; The Milkmaid (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

No one knows who the girl was. The painting is a tronie, a Dutch kind of picture of a face or a character in costume, not a portrait of a named person. Vermeer painted few pictures, and slowly. He is the master of soft daylight; here the turban is painted with costly ultramarine blue, and the big "pearl" is just a few strokes of paint, probably showing a glass drop rather than a real pearl.

Spot it by

A dark, plain background, a blue and yellow turban, a glance over the shoulder, a big glowing drop in the ear, a highlight in the eyes and on the lips.

Remember

Vermeer's girl looks back over her shoulder, in blue and yellow.

Don't confuse

UCEED 2015 showed a remake with E.T.'s face under the turban, and the answer was Vermeer, not Rembrandt. CEED 2026 showed the original and labelled it Baroque.

Neoclassicism: back to Greece and Rome

In the mid-1700s, excavations at the buried Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum made ancient art fashionable again. Painters wanted art to be serious, clear and moral, like Greek and Roman sculpture. Neoclassical paintings have sharp outlines, calm poses, plain backgrounds and figures lit like statues.

A dead man with a cloth wrapped round his head slumps in a bath, one arm hanging down holding a quill, a letter in his other hand, in front of a plain dark wall; a wooden box beside the bath is inscribed to Marat. — Picture: Jacques-Louis David. Public domain.

The Death of Marat

Where: Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels (a studio copy is in the Louvre)
When: 1793
Who: Jacques-Louis David (1748 to 1825)
Style: Neoclassicism
Made with: Oil on canvas
Key works: The Death of Marat (1793); Oath of the Horatii (1784, Louvre)

Jean-Paul Marat was a leader of the French Revolution and a friend of David. On 13 July 1793 a young woman, Charlotte Corday, stabbed him in his bath, where he worked because of a skin disease. David painted him within months as a calm hero, like a martyr or a dead Christ, with an arm hanging down. The upper half of the painting is almost empty, which makes the stillness feel even heavier. David signed the wooden box "To Marat, David".

Spot it by

Very little colour, a plain dark wall filling the top half, a body lit like a marble statue, a hanging arm with a quill, a simple wooden box with lettering.

Remember

Neoclassical means calm, clear and serious, even at a murder scene.

Don't confuse

Romantic painters such as Delacroix also painted revolutions, but with smoke, movement and crowds. David keeps everything still and clean.

Romanticism: feeling first

Romantic artists believed that feelings, imagination and the power of nature mattered more than rules. They painted shipwrecks, wars and storms, lonely figures in huge landscapes, and the rebels of their time. In England, landscape painting became their great subject.

At night, a row of soldiers with rifles aims at a group of Spanish men; one man in a white shirt flings his arms up in the light of a big lantern, with dead bodies on the ground in front of him. — Picture: Francisco de Goya. Public domain.

The Third of May 1808

Where: Museo del Prado, Madrid
When: Painted in 1814
Who: Francisco de Goya (1746 to 1828)
Style: Romanticism
Made with: Oil on canvas
Key works: The Third of May 1808 and its partner, The Second of May 1808, both in the Prado

In 1808 Napoleon's French army occupied Madrid. After a rising on 2 May, French soldiers shot Spanish prisoners through that night and the next morning. After the French were driven out, Goya painted the executions. The soldiers are a faceless row of rifles; the man in the white shirt raises his arms like a figure on a cross. It is one of the first great paintings to show war as horror, not glory, and later painters, Manet and Picasso among them, borrowed from it.

Spot it by

Night, a lantern on the ground, a man in a white shirt with arms raised, a line of soldiers seen from behind, blood on the ground.

Remember

Goya's soldiers have no faces; the victim has all the feeling.

A crowded wooden raft on a stormy sea: dead and dying men lie at the front, while survivors pile up towards the back, where a man waves a cloth at a tiny ship on the horizon. — Picture: Théodore Géricault. Public domain.

The Raft of the Medusa

Where: Louvre, Paris
When: 1818 to 1819
Who: Théodore Géricault (1791 to 1824)
Style: Romanticism
Made with: Oil on canvas, about 5 by 7 metres

In July 1816 the French navy ship Méduse ran aground off the coast of West Africa. About 150 people were put on a home-made raft and left to drift for nearly two weeks; only a handful survived. The disaster became a scandal in France. Géricault interviewed survivors and studied dying patients and corpses before painting this huge canvas, which he showed at the Paris Salon of 1819. It catches the moment the survivors spot a distant ship.

Spot it by

A raft at sea, a pyramid of bodies rising from the dead at the front to a man waving a cloth at the top, a tiny ship on the horizon, a dark storm.

Remember

From despair at the bottom to hope at the top: the raft is a pyramid.

A woman in a yellow dress and red cap strides over a barricade and fallen bodies, holding up the French tricolour flag and a rifle, followed by a man in a top hat with a gun and a boy waving two pistols, in smoke. — Picture: Eugène Delacroix. Public domain.

Liberty Leading the People

Where: Louvre, Paris (cleaned in 2023 and 2024)
When: 1830
Who: Eugène Delacroix (1798 to 1863)
Style: Romanticism
Made with: Oil on canvas

This painting is about the July Revolution of 1830, three days of street fighting in Paris that drove out King Charles X, not the great French Revolution of 1789. Liberty is shown as a woman of the people in a red cap, carrying the red, white and blue flag over a barricade, with a worker, a gentleman in a top hat and a street boy behind her. She became Marianne, the symbol of France. Delacroix was the leader of French Romantic painting, known for loose brushwork and strong colour.

Spot it by

A woman holding up the French flag, a red cap, a boy with two pistols, a man in a top hat, smoke, bodies at the front, the towers of Notre-Dame in the haze.

Remember

Liberty leads in 1830, not 1789.

Don't confuse

David's Neoclassical revolution painting is still and cool. Delacroix's is all smoke, colour and movement.

A man in a dark green coat, seen from behind, stands on a rocky peak with a walking stick, looking out over a sea of fog with mountain tops rising through it. — Picture: Caspar David Friedrich. Public domain.

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog

Where: Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany
When: About 1817
Who: Caspar David Friedrich (1774 to 1840)
Style: German Romanticism
Made with: Oil on canvas

A lone man stands on a rocky summit above the clouds. We see him only from behind, so we look at the view through his eyes and share his feeling. German has a word for this kind of figure: Rückenfigur, "back figure". Friedrich painted nature as something vast and spiritual, which made people feel small. Romantics called this mix of wonder and fear the sublime.

Spot it by

A figure from behind at the centre, mountains and fog, a high viewpoint, cool colours, silence.

Remember

Friedrich's wanderer turns his back on us, so we see what he sees.

A pale old sailing warship with tall masts is towed along a river by a small black steam tug with a red-orange funnel, under a glowing sunset sky reflected in the water. — Picture: J. M. W. Turner. Public domain.

The Fighting Temeraire

Where: National Gallery, London
When: Painted 1838 to 1839; shown at the Royal Academy in 1839
Who: J. M. W. Turner (1775 to 1851)
Style: English Romanticism
Made with: Oil on canvas
Key works: The Fighting Temeraire; Rain, Steam and Speed (1844, also in the National Gallery)

HMS Temeraire had fought at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. In 1838, worn out, she was towed up the River Thames by a steam tug to be broken up for scrap. Turner turned the scene into a farewell to the age of sail, with the ghostly old ship behind the dark, smoky new machine, and the sun setting on the right. He left the painting to the nation with hundreds of his other works. Since 2020 it has been on the Bank of England's £20 note.

Spot it by

A blazing sky of yellow, orange and red, a pale ghost of a sailing ship, a small dark steam tug, light dissolving into mist.

Remember

Turner paints light and air; the ships almost melt into the sunset.

Don't confuse

Constable painted the English countryside as it really looked, with clear detail. Turner's paintings dissolve into light, colour and weather.

A horse-drawn farm wagon stands in a shallow river beside a cottage, with a dog on the bank, tall dark trees and sunny meadows beyond under a sky of big white clouds. — Picture: John Constable. Public domain.

The Hay Wain

Also called Originally shown as Landscape, Noon

Where: National Gallery, London
When: 1821
Who: John Constable (1776 to 1837)
Style: English Romanticism (landscape)
Made with: Oil on canvas

A hay wain is a farm wagon. Constable painted it crossing the River Stour near Flatford Mill in Suffolk, the countryside where he grew up; the cottage on the left belonged to a farmer, Willy Lott. Though it looks painted on the spot, he made it in his London studio from sketches done outdoors. It won a gold medal at the Paris Salon of 1824, and French painters admired its fresh greens and dabs of white light.

Spot it by

An empty wagon in a river, a cottage on the left, big trees, a wide cloudy English sky, a small dog, flecks of white paint for sparkle.

Remember

Constable's country: wagon, water, cottage and clouds.

Don't confuse

NIFT 2025 asked who painted The Hay Wain. The answer is John Constable, not Turner.

Meanwhile in Japan: ukiyo-e

Ukiyo-e means "pictures of the floating world". From the 1600s to the 1800s, Japanese artists made woodblock prints of actors, beautiful women and, later, landscapes. Each colour was printed from a separate carved block, so prints were cheap and sold in large numbers. They reached Europe in the 1800s and changed the Impressionists' ideas of colour and composition.

A huge blue wave with claw-like white foam curls over three long boats full of rowers, while small snow-capped Mount Fuji sits low in the distance; Japanese writing is in the top left corner. — Picture: Katsushika Hokusai. Public domain.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa

Also called Under the Wave off Kanagawa

Where: Many museums own prints of it; this one is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
When: About 1830 to 1832
Who: Katsushika Hokusai (1760 to 1849)
Style: Ukiyo-e (Japanese woodblock print)
Made with: Colour woodblock print, about 26 by 38 cm

It is the most famous picture in Hokusai's series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. A giant wave towers over three fishing boats, and Mount Fuji, Japan's sacred mountain, looks tiny underneath it. Hokusai used Prussian blue, a pigment new to Japanese printing, which made the series a hit. Because it is a print, many copies were made, and they are now in museums around the world.

Spot it by

A curling wave with white claws of foam, rowers ducking in long boats, little Mount Fuji, deep blues, flat colour with crisp outlines.

Remember

The wave is big, Fuji is small, and the country is Japan.

Don't confuse

It is a woodblock print, not a painting. It is often called a tsunami, but it shows a huge wave far out at sea.

The three styles compared

	Baroque	Neoclassicism	Romanticism
When	About 1600 to 1750	About 1760 to 1830	About 1800 to 1850
Mood	Drama, emotion, splendour	Calm, serious, moral	Passion, wonder, fear
Look	Strong light and shadow, diagonals, swirling movement	Sharp outlines, still poses, plain backgrounds	Loose brushwork, rich colour, storms and fog
Subjects	Saints, kings, group portraits, Dutch home life	Heroes of Greece, Rome and the French Revolution	Shipwrecks, wars, wild landscapes, revolutions
Names	Caravaggio, Bernini, Rubens, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer	Jacques-Louis David	Goya, Géricault, Delacroix, Friedrich, Turner, Constable

Where they are now

Work	Artist	Where it is now
The Calling of Saint Matthew	Caravaggio	San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome
The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa	Bernini	Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome
The Elevation of the Cross	Rubens	Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp
Las Meninas	Velázquez	Prado, Madrid
The Night Watch	Rembrandt	Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Girl with a Pearl Earring	Vermeer	Mauritshuis, The Hague
The Death of Marat	David	Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels
The Third of May 1808	Goya	Prado, Madrid
The Raft of the Medusa	Géricault	Louvre, Paris
Liberty Leading the People	Delacroix	Louvre, Paris
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog	Friedrich	Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg
The Fighting Temeraire	Turner	National Gallery, London
The Hay Wain	Constable	National Gallery, London

Timeline

1600
Caravaggio finishes The Calling of Saint Matthew in Rome
1611
Rubens finishes The Elevation of the Cross in Antwerp
1642
Rembrandt paints The Night Watch
1652
Bernini finishes The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa
1656
Velázquez paints Las Meninas
c. 1665
Vermeer paints Girl with a Pearl Earring
1784
David paints the Oath of the Horatii, a landmark of Neoclassicism
1793
David paints The Death of Marat
1814
Goya paints The Third of May 1808
c. 1817
Friedrich paints Wanderer above the Sea of Fog
1819
Géricault shows The Raft of the Medusa at the Paris Salon
1821
Constable paints The Hay Wain
1830
Delacroix paints Liberty Leading the People after the July Revolution
c. 1831
Hokusai's Great Wave is published in Japan
1839
Turner shows The Fighting Temeraire at the Royal Academy

Test yourself

Question 1 of 8

Which of these is by Johannes Vermeer?

Question 2 of 8

Which country does this famous picture come from?

Question 3 of 8

Which of these is The Hay Wain by John Constable?

Question 4 of 8

Caravaggio lit this scene with one strong beam of light in a mostly dark room. What is this extreme light-and-dark style called?

Question 5 of 8

Which movement does this painting belong to?

Question 6 of 8

Which painting was made after the July Revolution of 1830 in Paris?

Question 7 of 8

In Velázquez's Las Meninas, where do the king and queen of Spain appear?

Question 8 of 8

Which museum displays Rembrandt's The Night Watch?

From past papers

Real exam questions on this topic, each with a full solution.

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