Baroque art followed Mannerism and was a part of the Catholic Church’s Counter Reformation. In order to win back converts to the Catholic Church and appeal to the masses, the clergy at the Council of Trent determined that art was one of the primary ways that would allow them to do so. Art would need to be visually power and didactic to convince people to remain or become Catholic. Baroque art challenged the Protestant Reformation that had reduced the power of the Church significantly. It manifested the glory and power of the church and its appeal can be seen in the way it spread to Protestant countries. It reached out to people and gave intimate and personal experiences through the action that the art often suggested. Common subjects were the heroic acts of martyrs and saints that inspired lower classes to not lose faith. Baroque art additionally was used by the absolutist monarchs to capture their total power. It embraced dynamic and complex aesthetic, relinquishing the orderly and linear fashion of the Renaissance in a manner akin to its predecessor, Mannerism. Where Renaissance art was defined, symmetrical and embraced clarity, Baroque art merged bodies, was asymmetrical and contained unclarified details. Several techniques within Baroque art made it a vivid force to contend with. Chiaroscuro was a Renaissance technique that utilized light and shadow. Baroque art used this in a dramatic fashion to convey faith and passion rather than the classical themes of reason that the Renaissance embodied. Tenebrism allowed Baroque art to make this much more riveting shift because it pronounced chiaroscuro, causing darkness to become the dominating feature of the image. Important artists who practiced Baroque art were Bernini, Caravaggio, Gentileschi and Velasquez.