Baroque architecture
Baroque
• The Baroque is a period of artistic style that started around 1600 in Rome ,
Italy, and spread throughout the majority of Europe during the 17th and
18th centuries. In informal usage, the word baroque describes something
that is elaborate and highly detailed.
• The most important factors during the Baroque era were the Reformation
and the Counter-Reformation ; the development of the Baroque style was
considered to be closely linked with the Catholic Church. The popularity of
the Baroque style was encouraged by the Catholic Church, which had
decided at the Council of Trent that the arts should communicate religious
themes and direct emotional involvement in response to the Protestant
Reformation .
• The Baroque style is characterized by exaggerated motion and clear detail
used to produce drama, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture , painting,
architecture, literature, dance, and music.
• The chiaroscuro technique refers to the interplay between light and dark
that was often used in Baroque paintings of dimly lit scenes to produce a
very high-contrast, dramatic atmosphere.
BAROQUE ARCHITECTURE – General Characteristics
The Baroque style is characterized by
exaggerated motion or dynamism and clear
detail used to produce drama, exuberance, and
grandeur in sculpture, painting, architecture,
literature, dance, and music.
In the Baroque style of architecture, emphasis
was placed on bold spaces , domes , and large
masses , as exemplified by the Queluz National
Palace in Portugal.
It took the Roman vocabulary of Renaissance Typical Baroque Exterior
architecture and used it in a new rhetorical and
theatrical fashion, often to express the triumph
of the Catholic Church and the absolutist state.
It was characterized by new explorations of
form, light and shadow, and dramatic intensity.
While the Renaissance drew on the wealth and
power of the Italian courts, Baroque
architecture and its embellishments were a
visible statement of the wealth and power of Typical Baroque Interior
the Catholic Church.
Baroque
Other characteristic qualities
include curvaceousness, and an
often dizzying array of rich
surface treatments, twisting
elements, and gilded statuary.
Architects unabashedly applied
bright colours and illusory, vividly
painted ceilings.
Queluz National Palace in Portugal.
• Baroque architecture is distinguished primarily by richly sculpted surfaces.
•Whereas Renaissance architects preferred planar classicism (flat surfaces
veneered in classical elements)
•Baroque architects freely moulded surfaces to achieve three-
dimensional sculpted classicism .
•surface of a Renaissance building is typically neatly divided into sections (in
accordance with classical clarity and order)
•Baroque surface is treated as a continuous whole.
• Indeed, a Renaissance facade often consists of many similar sections,
such that one's eye is not drawn to any particular part of the building.
•A Baroque facade, on the other hand, often features an attention-
grabbing concentration of rich elements (e.g. curved walls, columns, blind arches,
statues, relief sculpture) around a central entrance.
• Churches are the most splendid form of Baroque architecture in Italy,
• Chateaux (country mansions) are the outstanding Baroque works of
France.
• England should also be noted in a discussion of Baroque architecture, for
two reasons.
•Firstly, this period featured Christopher Wren, often considered the greatest of all
English architects. Wren designed many of London's buildings after the Great Fire,
including his masterpiece, St Paul's Cathedral.
•Secondly, the Baroque age witnessed the rise of Palladian style architecture in
England, which became massively popular during the subsequent Neoclassical
period.
Examples of Baroque Architecture
Church of St.Mary, Venice
Salzburg Cathedral
Baroque examples
Stages of Baroque Architecture
Early High Late Baroque Rococo
Baroque Baroque ca. 1675- ca. 1725-
ca. 1600-25 ca. 1625-75 1725 1800
Bernini and Chateaux Austria/south
Maderno
Borromini (notably ern Germany
(facade of St
(sacred Palace of (notably
Peter's)
architecture) Versailles) churches)
Phase of the Baroque age Leading region
Early Baroque (ca. 1600-
25)
Italy
High Baroque (ca. 1625-
75)
Late Baroque (ca. 1675-
1725)
France
Rococo (ca. 1725-1800)
Early Baroque
ca. 1600-25
Generally plans of church buildings of
the Baroque period in Rome
Based on the Italian basilica with
a crossed dome and nave
But the treatment of the
architecture was very different.
One of the first Roman structures
to break with the previous
conventions of the Mannerist
style was the church of Santa
Susanna, designed by foremost
pioneer architect Carlo Maderno.
The dynamic rhythm of
columns and pilasters ,
central massing, and the
protrusion and condensed
central decoration add
complexity to the structure. Church of Santa Susanna
EARLY BAROQUE
• Carlo Maderno, whose masterpiece
is the facade of Saint Peter's Basilica,
Vatican City.
• Saint Peter's features a mixture of
Renaissance and baroque
components, the facade being one of
the latter.
•The facade of Saint Peter's contains
a number of typical Baroque
elements, including double
columns (close-set pairs of
columns), layered columns, colossal
columns(columns that span multiple
stories).
•All of these elements were
pioneered during the Late
Renaissance,
in mannerist architecture.
Early Baroque
Pietro de Cortona
•Illustrated by his design of
Santi Luca e Martina (of which
construction began in 1635)
with what was probably the
first curved Baroque church
façade in Rome.
•Plasticity, massing, dramatic
effects of shadow and light
•In his reworking of Santa
Maria Della Pace (1656–8) the
façade of the building, with its
chiaroscuro half-domed
portico and concave side
wings.
Santa Maria Della Pace
HIGH BAROQUE
ca. 1625-75
The two foremost names in
Baroque architecture
are Bernini and Borromini, both
of whom worked primarily in
Rome.
Two masterpieces of Gian
Lorenzo Bernini are found at St
Peter's. One is the four-
storey baldachino that stands
over the high altar. (A baldachino
is an indoor canopy over a
respected object, such as an altar
or throne.) The other is the
curving colonnades that frame St
Peter's Square.
Bernini's most famous building is
likely the small church
of Sant'Andrea al
Quirinale ("Saint Andrew's on
Quirinal Hill"). Quirinal hill is one
of the "seven hills of Rome".
High Baroque
St Peter’s plaza by Bernini
High Baroque
Francesco Borromini was the master of curved-wall architecture.
Though he designed many large buildings, Borromini's most famous and influential
work may be the small church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane ("Saint Charles at the
Four Fountains"). This building is also found on Quirinal Hill.
This church was distinguished by a complicated plan arrangement that is partly oval
and partly a cross, giving it complex convex-concave wall rhythms.
English Baroque
• The later 17th century saw Baroque
architecture come to prominence in a style
that is termed English Baroque.
– It was the architect Christopher Wren, one of the
most acclaimed English architects in history, who
was responsible for the genesis of the English
Baroque style.
– When the Great Fire of London in 1666 forced much
of the city to be rebuilt, Wren was hired to replace
many of the churches.
– His most ambitious construction, St. Paul’s
Cathedral, was a magnificent piece of architecture
and is the only English cathedral in the Classical
tradition.
• Popular from 1666 to about 1715, English
Baroque architecture is characterized by
heavy structures adorned with elaborate
decoration; compared to the contemporary
Baroque of the European continent,
however, it tends to be relatively plain, with
more Classical subtleties
LATE
BAROQUE
ca. 1675-1725
The Late Baroque marks
the ascent of France as
the heart of Western
culture. Baroque art of
France (and northern
Europe generally) tends to
be restrained, such that it
can be described as a
classical-Baroque
compromise. The most
distinctive element of
French Baroque
architecture is the double-
sloped mansard roof (a
French innovation).
Late Baroque
The most famous Baroque structures of France are magnificent chateaux
(grand country residences), greatest of which is the Palace of Versailles. One
of the largest residences on earth, Versailles was built mainly under Louis XIV,
whose patronage of the arts helped propel France to the crest of Western
culture.
Rococo
ca. 1725-1800
Rococo artists embraced
the curves and elaborate
ornament of Baroque, but
reigned in its weighty drama. The
result was a gentle, playful
style typified by pastel colours
and delicate, asymmetrical
decoration.
Though most Rococo art was
centred in France (the birthplace
of the style), Rococo architecture
culminated in Austria and
Southern Germany, especially in
the form of churches.
Rococo Church
Rococo Interiors
ca. 1725-1800
Several interior designers, painters
developed a lighter and more intimate style
of decoration for the new residences of
nobles in Paris. In the Rococo style, walls,
ceilings, and mouldings were decorated
with delicate interlacing of curves and Rococo Interiors
counter-curves based on the fundamental
shapes of the “C” and the “S,” as well as
with shell forms and other natural shapes.
Asymmetrical design was the rule. Light
pastels, ivory white, and gold were the
predominant colours, and Rococo
decorators frequently used mirrors to
enhance the sense of open space..
