Why was the 17th century the greatest of all centuries of painting? Why did it feature so many of the masters—Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Vermeer, and dozens of others—but perhaps none more famous than Peter Paul Rubens, the inventor of the style praised and hated as “the Baroque”?

In this series of 10 lectures centered on Rubens but featuring many other renowned painters, Professor Alexander Nemerov explores the powers of Baroque art to create a sense of life. Life-size figures, swelling bodies, tumultuous and extreme action—births and betrothals, beheadings, knifings, martyrdoms—everything swells to a moment of extreme. Courting vulgarity, aiming to shock or overwhelm a person, the Baroque to this day courts bad taste and startling “jump scares” to pursue the mysterious sources of being. Created for kings and queens when monarchies were starting to die, the Baroque is the great flourishing of impossible dreams and outlandish fantasies—proclamations of power that question how absolute power really is.