Art: A mirror of Society

Art reveals the interest and values of society and frequently gives intimate and unique glimpses of how people actually lived. In portraits and statues, whether of saints, generals, philosophers, popes, poets, or merchants, it preserves the memory and fame of men and women who shaped society. In paintings, drawings and carving, it also shows how people worked, played, relaxed, suffered, and triumphed. Aft, therefore, is extremely useful to the historian. Especially for periods when written records are scarce. Every work of art and every part of it has meaning and has something of its own to say.

Art also manifests the changes and continuity of European life; as values changed in Europe, so didmajor artistic themes. Europeans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries remained deeply religious and showed a new interest in the world around them; their middle-class attitudes and experiences and their appreciation of agricultural life replaced the activities and interests of a small, wealthy, cultural elite as the subject matter of art. The scenes of everyday life presented in seventeenth century genre painting were considered interesting in themselves and, as the works following by Siberechts and Van Ostade support worthy of high art.

Just as Reniassance princes had used art to memorialize themselves, so in the later seventeenth century all the arts were organized to exalt and glorify the Sun King, Louis XIV. As the following (above) painting by Lebrum, Louis XIV’s visit to the Gobelin Factory, demonstrates, art served the image of the French absolute monarch as the personalization of the French State. Art thereby reflected the political ideal of the times. Knows as the court baroque style, it spread throughout France, England, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Politics had triumphed over other expression of cultural life. ~ Page 601