Europe and the Baroque on the old paths of unity

Abstract

In 1957, Europe was to experience an important moment in its process towards unification. Therefore, what better way to celebrate it than with an exhibition in vogue: Il Seicento europeo, which consolidated the new multilateral action of the Council of Europe’s cultural policy and marked a new geographic dimension in European historiography despite the controversy about the Baroque and its redefinitions caused by identity sensitivities. At the same time, in a fundamental year for the Eastern bloc, 1956, reasons more political than artistic also prompted the National Museum of Warsaw to organize exhibitions about European Western painting. These exhibitions, facing those of soviet propaganda, sought to undermine the East-West borders, along with its consequent impact on the collective imaginary. Thus, the diplomacy of art had a key role in European foreign policy at the beginning of the Cold War and the art of the Old Masters played a leading role in a global design based on a supposed common cultural heritage. New exchange networks were formed at that moment in the historiography, thereby contributing to a transnational awareness which undermined the Iron Curtain and renewed the European narrative, with the Baroque playing its cards well in this international scene of interconnected histories.