Peter Paul Rubens 076 - The Yorck Project Masterpieces of Painting

By the last decades of the 16th century, the refined Mannerism style had ceased to be an effective means of religious art expression. Catholic Church fought against Protestant Reformation to re-establish its dominance in European art by infusing Renaissance aesthetics enhanced by a new exuberant extravagance and penchant for the ornate. The new style was coined Baroque and roughly coincides with the 17th century. Baroque emphasizes dramatic motion, clear, easily interpreted grandeur, sensuous richness, drama, dynamism, movement, tension, emotional exuberance, and details, and often defined as being bizarre, or uneven. The term Baroque likely derived from the Italian word barocco, used by earlier scholars to name an obstacle in schematic logic to denote a contorted idea or involuted process of thought. Another possible source is the Portuguese word barroco (Spanish barrueco), used to describe an irregular or imperfectly shaped pearl, and this usage still survives in the jeweler’s term baroque pearl. Baroque spread across Europe led by the Pope in Rome and powerful religious orders as well as Catholic monarchs to Northern Italy, France, Spain, Flanders, Portugal, Austria, southern Germany, and colonial South America.

According to the Bible, Sodom and Gomorrah were two cities in the ancient land of Canaan that were destroyed by God because of their inhabitants' wickedness and lack of hospitality. The exact location of these cities is unknown, but they are traditionally believed to have been located near the Dead Sea in modern-day Israel. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is told in the book of Genesis. It is said that the cities were filled with immoral and sinful people, who were unkind to travelers and refused to show hospitality. God decided to destroy the cities and sent two angels to warn Lot, a righteous man who lived in Sodom, to flee with his family. The angels also struck the men of the city with blindness, so that they could not harm Lot and his family. After Lot and his family escaped, God caused a rain of fire and sulfur to fall from the sky, destroying Sodom and Gomorrah and all their inhabitants. The cities were never rebuilt, and the area remains desolate to this day. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah serves as a warning against wickedness and lack of hospitality.