The Catholic Church welcomed the baroque style and encouraged it at every turn as they felt that the arts should communicate religious themes.

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The Baroque style contained images that played with the interaction between light and dark to create dimly lit scenes that produced a dramatic atmosphere with high-contrast between the focal points of the art vs the background. This referred to as the chiaroscuro technique. Some of the most well known painters of this period are Caravaggio, Rubens and Rembrandt. Music also flourished during the Baroque period with masters such as Bach, Handel and Vivaldi.

The later Baroque style was termed Rococo , a style characterized by increasingly decorative and elaborate works.

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Did you know?

Michelangelo Caravaggio became an almost instant celebrity at the young age of 24. However, his life was short lived, mostly due to his short temper, arrogance and habit of instigating a fight.  One of these fights ended in an accidental murder, of which Caravaggio was eventually pardoned, only to die of fever on his trip back to Rome from Naples. Read the whole story about Caravaggio, an artists many thought had the potential to surpass even Michelangelo himself.

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https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/michelangelo-merisi-da-caravaggio