Five Duke of the Czech Republic 2010 Baroque Proof

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This medal is from a set that includes:

2010 Czechoslovak Republic One-Decade Coin of the Art of Great Moravia
Double ducat of the Czech Republic 2010 Gothic Art
Five-Duce Czech Republic 2010 Baroque
Ten-dozen Czech Republic 2010 Art Nouveau

You can buy the whole set here.

The price of this gold medal includes a burgundy red gift box together with a certificate from the Czech Mint.

Baroque

The basic features of Baroque art are already genetically embedded in Renaissance art, as Baroque is an extension and refinement of Renaissance artistic tendencies. In a sense, however, Baroque is also a denial of the Renaissance, because it contains a component based essentially on medieval Christian thought. This component was especially pronounced after the Council of Trent. It was caused by the fact that the Renaissance, both in art and philosophy, began to exhaust itself very quickly after reaching an imaginary peak around 1520, which led to the emergence of so-called Mannerism.

The latter revelled in the grotesque, playfulness, optical illusions, etc. The emergence of the Baroque overcame this situation, because a clear and comprehensible programme of thought was formulated (among other things, by the Council of Trent), which is essentially the revival of Christianity. This is why the so-called Counter-Reformation is often referred to in this context as the "Catholic Reformation". The clear definition and formulation of the goals was then reflected in the creation of a solid and relatively consistent artistic language, which we generally call Baroque. The most prominent representative of the artistic transition from Renaissance art to Mannerism and Baroque is Michelangelo Buonarroti.

Early Baroque architecture is represented by Giacomo della Porta, Vignola and Carlo Maderno. The most important Baroque architects are a trio of Italians: the architect (also a painter and sculptor) Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Francesco Borromini and Guarino Guarini. These top Italian architects were followed by many other important Italian and Transalpine architects. First of all Pietro da Cortona, Filippo Juvara, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, Lucas von Hildebrandt, Balthasar Neumann, and also the extended Dientzenhofer family, two members of which, father Christopher and son Kilian Ignaz, worked mainly in the Czech lands. Another important architect working in the Czech lands was Jan Blažej Santini. The trio of architects working in Bohemia can then be supplemented by Giovanni Battista Alliprandi, who was undoubtedly a more capable architect than the until recently unjustly emphasised František Maxmilián Kaňka.

The most important Baroque painters are, above all, the following gentlemen: Caravaggio, Diego Velázquez, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt van Rijn, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Pietro Da Cortona, Andrea Pozzo. Among the artists working in the Czech lands, we can mention especially Karel Škréta for the early Baroque, Petr Brandl and Václav Vavřinec Reiner for the High to Late Baroque (Reiner).

Almost synonymous with Baroque sculpture is the aforementioned Gian Lorenzo Bernini. This Italian practically determined the form of Baroque sculpture with his stylistic significance. He is followed to some extent by almost all other Baroque sculptors, including our most important sculptor Matthias Bernard Braun. The second most important Czech sculptor is Ferdinand Maxmilián Brokoff, who, however, represents a more classically understood sculpture and is thus to some extent Braun's sculptural opposite.

The most important composer of Baroque music is considered to be Johann Sebastian Bach, whose death (1750) coincides with the date sometimes considered to be the end of the Baroque era. To him may be added, for example, the 'sunny Italian' Antonio Vivaldi, the creator of many Baroque oratorios, George Frideric Handel, or Claudio Monteverdi. Among Czech composers, it is certainly worth mentioning Adam Michna from Otradovice, Bohuslav Matěj Černohorský and, above all, the most important of them all: Jan Dismas Zelenka.