Encyclopedia
- For the Baroque style in a more general sense, see Baroque.
Baroque architecture, starting in the early
17th century in
Italy, took the humanist Roman vocabulary of
Renaissance architecture and used it in a new rhetorical, theatrical, sculptural fashion, expressing the triumph of absolutist church and state. New architectural concerns for color, light and shade, sculptural values and intensity characterize the
Baroque.
Precursors and features of Baroque architecture
Michelangelo's late Roman buildings, particularly
St. Peter's Basilica, may be considered precursors of baroque architecture, as the design of the latter achieves a colossal unity that was previously unknown. His pupil
Giacomo della Porta continued this work in Rome, particularly in the
facade of the
Jesuit church
Il Gesu, which leads directly to the most important church facade of the early baroque,
Santa Susanna by
Carlo Maderno. In the
17th century, the baroque style spread through Europe and Latin America, where it was particularly promoted by the Jesuits.
Important features of baroque architecture include:
- long, narrow naves are replaced by broader, occasionally circular forms
- dramatic use of light, either strong light-and-shade contrasts, chiaroscuro effects , or uniform lighting by means of several windows
- opulent use of ornaments
- large-scale ceiling frescoes
- the external facade is often characterized by a dramatic central projection
- the interior is often no more than a shell for painting and sculpture
- illusory effects like trompe l'oeil and the blending of painting and architecture
- Architectural mythology [i]
...
Rome and South Italy
The sacred architecture of the Baroque period had its beginnings in the Italian paradigm of the
basilica with crossed dome and
nave. One of the first Roman structures to break with the
Mannerist conventions exemplified in
the Gesù, was the church of
Santa Susanna, designed by
Carlo Maderno and built in 1597-1603. The dynamic rhythm of columns and pilasters, central massing, and the protrusion and condensed central decoration add complexity to the structure. There is an incipient playfulness with the rules of classic design, still maintaining rigor.
The same emphasis on plasticity, continuity and dramatic effects is evident in the work of
Pietro da Cortona, illustrated by San Luca e Santa Martina and
Santa Maria della Pace . The latter building, with concave wings devised to simulate a theatrical set, presses forward to fill a tiny piazza in front of it. Other Roman ensembles of the period are likewise suffused with theatricality, dominating the surrounding cityscape as a sort of theatrical environment.
Probably the best known example of such an approach is trapezoidal
Saint Peter's Square, which has been praised as a masterstroke of Baroque theatre. The square is shaped by two colonnades, designed by
Gian Lorenzo Bernini on an unprecedented colossal scale to suit the space and provide emotions of awe. Bernini's own favourite design was the polychromatic oval church of
Sant'Andrea al Quirinale , which, with its lofty altar and soaring dome, provides a concentrated sampling of the new architecture. His idea of the Baroque townhouse is typified by the
Palazzo Barberini and Palazzo Chigi-Odescalchi , both in Rome.
Bernini's chief rival in the papal capital was
Francesco Borromini, whose designs deviate from the regular compositions of the ancient world and Renaissance even more dramatically. Acclaimed by later generations as a revolutionary in architecture, Borromini condemned the anthropomorphic approach of the 16th century, choosing to base his designs on complicated geometric figures . Borromini's architectural space seems to expand and contract when needed, showing some affinity with the late style of
Michelangelo. His iconic masterpiece is the diminutive church of
San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane , distinguished by a corrugated oval plan and complex convex-concave rhythms. A later work,
Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza , displays the same antipathy to the flat surface and playful inventiveness, epitomized by a corkscrew lantern dome.
Following the death of Bernini in 1680,
Carlo Fontana emerged as the most influential architect working in
Rome. His early style is exemplified by the slightly concave facade of
San Marcello al Corso . Fontana's academic approach, though lacking in the dazzling inventiveness of his Roman predecessors, exerted substantial influence on Baroque architecture both through his prolific writings and through a number of architects whom he trained and who would disseminate the Baroque idioms throughout 18th-century Europe.
The
18th century saw the capital of Europe's architectural world transferred from Rome to
Paris. The Italian
Rococo, which flourished in Rome from the 1720s onward, was profoundly influenced by the ideas of Borromini. The most talented architects active in Rome — Francesco de Sanctis and Filippo Raguzzini — had little influence outside their native country, as did numerous practitioners of the
Sicilian Baroque, including
Giovanni Battista Vaccarini,
Andrea Palma, and Giuseppe Venanzio Marvuglia.
The last phase of Baroque architecture in Italy is exemplified by Luigi Vanvitelli's
Caserta Palace, reputedly the largest building erected in Europe in the 18th century. Indebted to contemporary French and Spanish models, the palace is skillfully related to the landscape. At Naples and Caserta, Vanvitelli practiced a sober classicizing academic style, with equal attention to aesthetics and engineering, a style that would make an easy transition to
Neoclassicism.
North Italy
In the north of Italy, the monarchs from the
House of Savoy were particularly receptive to the new style. They employed a brilliant triad of architects — Guarino Guarini,
Filippo Juvarra and Bernardo Vittone — to illustrate the grandiose political ambitions and the newly acquired royal status of their dynasty.
Guarini was a peripatetic monk who combined many traditions to create irregular structures remarkable for their oval columns and unconventional façades. Building upon the findings of contemporary geometry and stereotomy, Guarini elaborated the concept of
architectura obliqua, which approximated Borromini's style in both theoretical and structural audacity. Guarini's Palazzo Carignano may have been the most flamboyant application of the Baroque style to the design of a private house in the 17th century.
Fluid forms, weightless details and airy prospects of Juvarra's architecture anticipated the art of
Rococo. Although his practice ranged well beyond
Turin, Juvarra's most arresting designs were created for
Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia. The visual impact of his Basilica di Superga derives from its soaring roofline and masterful placement on a hill above Turin. Rustic ambience encouraged a freer articulation of architectural form at the royal hunting lodge of
Stupinigi . Juvarra finished his short but eventful career in Madrid, where he worked on the royal palaces at La Granja and
Aranjuez.
Among the many who were profoundly influenced by the brilliance and diversity of Juvarra and Guarini none was more important than Bernardo Vittone. This Piedmontese architect is remembered for an outcrop of flamboyant
Rococo churches, quatrefoil in plan and delicate in detailing. His sophisticated designs often feature multiple vaults, structures within structures and domes within domes.
France
- Main article: French Baroque
The centre of baroque secular architecture was
France, where the open three wing layout of the palace was established as the canonical solution as early as the 16th century. But it was the
Palais du Luxembourg by
Salomon de Brosse that determined the sober and classicizing direction that French Baroque architecture was to take. For the first time, the
corps de logis was emphasized as the representative main part of the building, while the side wings were treated as hierarchically inferior and appropriately scaled down. The medieval tower has been completely replaced by the central projection in the shape of a monumental three-storey gateway.
De Brosse's melding of traditional French elements with extensive Italianate quotations came to characterize the
Louis XIII style. Probably the most accomplished formulator of the new manner was
François Mansart, a tireless perfectionist credited with introducing the full Baroque to France. In his design for
Château de Maisons , Mansart succeeded in reconciling academic and baroque approaches, while demonstrating respect for the gothic-inherited idiosyncrasies of the French tradition.
Maisons-Laffitte illustrates the ongoing transition from the post-medieval
chateaux of the sixteenth century to the villa-like country houses of the eighteenth. The structure is strictly symmetrical, with an order applied to each story, mostly in
pilaster form. The frontispiece, crowned with a separate aggrandized roof, is infused with remarkable plasticity and the whole ensemble reads like a three-dimensional whole. Mansart's structures are stripped of overblown decorative effects, so typical of contemporary Rome. Italian Baroque influence is muted and relegated to the field of decorative ornamentation.
The next step in the development of European residential architecture involved the integration of the gardens in the composition of the palace, as is exemplified by
Vaux-le-Vicomte , where the architect Louis Le Vau, the designer
Charles Le Brun and the gardener
André Le Nôtre complemented each other. From the main cornice to a low plinth, the miniature palace is clothed in the so-called "colossal order", which makes the structure look more impressive. The creative collaboration of Le Vau and Le Nôtre marked the arrival of the "Magnificent Manner" which allowed to extend Baroque architecture outside the palace walls and transform the surrounding landscape into an immaculate mosaic of expansive vistas.
The same three artists scaled this concept to monumental proportions in the royal hunting lodge and later main
residence at Versailles . On a far grander scale, the palace is a hypertrophied and somewhat repetitive version of Vaux-le-Vicomte. It was both the most grandiose and the most imitated residential building of the 17th century.
Mannheim, Nordkirchen and
Drottningholm were among many foreign residences for which Versailles provided a model.
The final expansion of Versailles was superintended by
Jules Hardouin-Mansart, whose key design is the
Dome des Invalides , generally regarded as the most important French church of the century. Hardouin-Mansart profited from his uncle's instruction and plans to instill the edifice with an imperial grandeur unprecedented in the countries north of Italy. The majestic hemispherical dome balances the vigorous vertical thrust of the orders, which do not accurately convey the structure of the interior. The younger architect not only revived the harmony and balance associated with the work of the elder Mansart but also set the tone for Late Baroque French architecture, with its grand ponderousness and increasing concessions to
academicism.
The reign of
Louis XV saw a reaction against the official Louis XIV style in the shape of a more delicate and intimate manner, known as
Rococo. The style was pioneered by Nicolas Pineau, who collaborated with Hardouin-Mansart on the interiors of the royal
Château de Marly. Further elaborated by Pierre Le Pautre and Juste-Aurèle Meissonier, the "genre pittoresque" culminated in the interiors of the
Petit Château at Chantilly and
Hôtel de Soubise in Paris , where a fashionable emphasis on the curvilinear went beyond all reasonable measure, while sculpture, paintings, furniture, and porcelain tended to overshadow architectural divisions of the interior.
Netherlands
- Main article: Dutch Baroque
There is little Baroque about Dutch architecture of the 17th century. The architecture of the first republic in Northern Europe was meant to reflect democratic values by quoting extensively from classical antiquity. Like contemporary developments in England, Dutch
Palladianism is marked by sobriety and restraint. Two leading architects,
Jacob van Campen and
Pieter Post, used such eclectic elements as giant-order pilasters, gable roofs, central pediments, and vigorous steeples in a coherent combination that anticipated Wren's Classicism.
The most ambitious constructions of the period included the
seats of self-government in
Amsterdam and
Maastricht , designed by Campen and Post, respectively. On the other hand, the residences of the House of Orange are closer to a typical burgher mansion than to a royal palace. Two of these,
Huis ten Bosch and
Mauritshuis, are symmetrical blocks with large windows, stripped of ostentatious Baroque flourishes and mannerisms. The same austerely geometrical effect is achieved without great cost or pretentious effects at the stadholder's summer residence of
Het Loo.
The
Dutch Republic was one of the
great powers of 17th-century Europe and its influence on European architecture was by no means negligible. Dutch architects were employed on important projects in Northern Germany, Scandinavia and Russia, disseminating their ideas in those countries. The Dutch colonial architecture, once flourishing in the
Hudson River Valley and associated primarily with red-brick gabled houses, may still be seen in
Willemstad, Netherlands Antilles.
England
- Main article: English Baroque
Baroque aesthetics, whose influence was so potent in mid-17th century France, made little impact in England during
the Protectorate and the first
Restoration years. For a decade between the death of
Inigo Jones in 1652 and
Christopher Wren's visit to Paris in 1665 there was no English architect of the accepted premier class. Unsurprisingly, general interest in European architectural developments was slight.
It was Wren who presided over the genesis of the English Baroque manner, which differed from the continental models by clarity of design and subtle taste for classisism. Following the
Great Fire of London, Wren rebuilt fifty three churches, where Baroque aesthetics are apparent primarily in dynamic structure and multiple changing views. His most ambitious work was
St Paul's Cathedral , which bears comparison with the most effulgent domed churches of Italy and France. In this majestically proportioned edifice, the
Palladian tradition of Inigo Jones is fused with contemporary continental sensibilities in masterly equilibrium. Less influential were straightforward attempts to engraft the Berniniesque vision onto British church architecture .
Although Wren was also active in secular architecture, the first truly baroque
country house in England was built to a design by
William Talman at
Chatsworth, starting in 1687. The culmination of Baroque architectural forms comes with Sir
John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor. Each was capable of a fully developed architectural statement, yet they preferred to work in tandem, most notably at
Castle Howard and
Blenheim Palace .
Although these two palaces may appear somewhat ponderous or turgid to Italian eyes, their heavy embellishment and overpowering mass captivated the British public, albeit for a short while. Castle Howard is a flamboyant assembly of restless masses dominated by a cylindrical domed tower which would not be out of place in
Dresden or
Munich. Blenheim is a more solid construction, where the massed stone of the arched gates and the huge solid portico becomes the main ornament. Vanbrugh's final work was
Seaton Delaval Hall , a comparatively modest mansion yet unique in the structural audacity of its style. It was at Seaton Delaval that Vanbrugh, a skillful playwright, achieved the peak of Restoration drama, once again highlighting a parallel between Baroque architecture and contemporary theatre. Despite his efforts, Baroque was never truly to the English taste and well before his death in 1724 the style had lost currency in Britain.
Scandinavia
During the golden age of the
Swedish Empire, the architecture of Nordic countries was dominated by the Swedish court architect Nicodemus Tessin the Elder and his son Nicodemus Tessin the Younger . Their aesthetic was readily adopted across the Baltic, in
Copenhagen and
Saint Petersburg.
Born in Germany, Tessin the Elder endowed Sweden with a truly national style, a well-balanced mixture of contemporary French and medieval Hanseatic elements. His designs for the royal manor of
Drottningholm seasoned French prototypes with Italian elements, while retaining some peculiarly Nordic features, such as the
hipped roof .
Tessin the Younger shared his father's enthusiasm for discrete palace facades. His design for the
Stockholm Palace draws so heavily on Bernini's unexecuted plans for the
Louvre that we could well imagine it standing in Naples, Vienna, or St. Petersburg. Another example of the so-called International Baroque, based on Roman models with little concern for national specifics, is the
Royal Palace of Madrid. The same approach is manifested is Tessin's polychrome domeless
, a skillful pastiche of early Italian Baroque, clothed in a giant order of paired Ionic pilasters.
It was not until the mid-18th century that Danish and Russian architecture emancipated from Swedish influence. A milestone of this late period is Nicolai Eigtved's design for a new district of
Copenhagen centred on the
Amalienborg Palace . The palace is composed of four rectangular mansions for the four greatest nobles of the kingdom, arranged across the angles of an octagonal square. The restrained facades of the mansions hark back to French antecedents, while their interiors contain some of the finest Rococo decoration in Northern Europe.
Central Europe
In
Central Europe, the baroque period began somewhat later. Although the
Augsburg architect Elias Holl and some theoretists, including Joseph Furttenbach the Elder already practised the baroque style, they remained without successors due to the ravages of the
Thirty Years' War. From about 1650 on, construction work resumes, and secular and ecclesiastical architecture are of equal importance. During an initial phase, master-masons from southern Switzerland and northern Italy, the so-called
magistri Grigioni and the Lombard master-masons, particularly the Carlone family from Val d'Intelvi, dominated the field. However,
Austria came soon to develop its own characteristic baroque style during the last third of the seventeenth century.
Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach was impressed by
Bernini. He forged a new
Imperial style by compiling architectural motifs from the entire history, most prominently seen in his church of
St. Charles Borromeo in Vienna.
Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt also had an Italian training. He developed a highly decorative style, particularly in facade architecture, which exerted strong influences on southern Germany.
Frequently, the Southern German baroque is distinguished from the Northern German baroque, which is more properly the distinction between the Catholic and the Protestant baroque.
In the Catholic South, the Jesuit church of
St. Michael in
Munich was the first to bring Italian style across the Alps. However, its influence on the further development of church architecture was rather limited. A much more practical and more adaptable model of church architecture was provided by the Jesuit church in Dillingen : the wall-pillar church, i.e. a barrel-vaulted nave accompanied by large open chapels separated by wall-pillars. As opposed to St. Michael's in Munich, the chapels almost reach the height of the nave in the wall-pillar church, and their vault springs from the same level as the main vault of the nave. The chapels provide ample lighting; seen from the entrance of the church, the wall-pillars form a theatrical setting for the side altars. The wall-pillar church was further developed by the
Vorarlberg school, as well as the master-masons of
Bavaria. The wall-pillar church also integrated well with the
hall church model of the German late Gothic age. The wall-pillar church continued to be used throughout the eighteenth century , and early wall-pillar churches could easily be refurbished by re-decoration without any structural changes, e.g., the church at Dillingen.
However, the Catholic South also received influences from other sources, e.g., the so-called
radical baroque of Bohemia. The radical baroque of
Christoph Dientzenhofer and his son
Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer, both residing at
Prague, was inspired by examples from northern Italy, particularly by the works of Guarino Guarini. It is characterized by the curvature of walls and intersection of oval spaces. While some Bohemian influence is visible in Bavaria's most prominent architect of the period, Johann Michael Fischer, e.g., in the curved balconies of some of his earlier wall-pillar churches, the works of
Balthasar Neumann are generally considered to be the final synthesis of Bohemian and German traditions.
Protestant sacred architecture was of lesser importance during the baroque, and produced only a few works of prime importance, particularly the Frauenkirche in
Dresden. Architectural theory was more lively in the north than in the south of Germany, e.g., Leonhard Christoph Sturm's edition of Nikolaus Goldmann, but Sturm's theoretical considerations never really made it to practical application. In the south, theory essentially reduced to the use of buildings and elements from illustrated books and engravings as a prototype.
Palace architecture was equally important both in the Catholic South and the Protestant North. After an initial phase when Italian architects and influences dominated , French influence prevailed from the second decennium of the eighteenth century onwards. The French model is characterized by the horseshoe-like layout enclosing a cour d'honneur on the town side , whereas the Italian scheme presents a block-like villa. The principal achievements of German Palace architecture, often worked out in close collaboration of several architects, provide a synthesis of Austro-Italian and French models. The most outstanding palace which blends Austro-Italian and French influences into a completely new type of building is the residence at
Würzburg. While its general layout is the horseshoe-like French plan, it encloses interior courtyards. Its facades combine Lucas von Hildebrandt's love of decoration with French-style classical orders in two superimposed stories; its interior features the famous Austrian "imperial staircase", but also a French-type enfilade of rooms on the garden side, inspired by the "apartement semi-double" layout of French castles.
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
The first baroque church in
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was the Corpus Christi Church in
Niasvizh,
Belarus . It also holds a distinction of being the first domed basilica with Baroque facade in the world and the first baroque piece of art in Eastern Europe.
In the early 17th century, the Baroque style spread over the Commonwealth. Important baroque churches include the Waza Chapel in the
Wawel Cathedral, the SS. Peter and Paul, St. Anna and the Wizytek church in
Kraków, SS. Peter and St. Paul church, St Casimir's Chapel and St Casimir's Church in
Vilnius,
Pažaislis monastery in
Kaunas the Dominican and St George Church in Lwów, the Jesuit church in
Poznan, the Xavier cathedral in
Hrodno, the Royal Chapel in
Gdansk, and last but not least the Swieta Lipka in
Masuria. In Warsaw, which before
WW2 was filled with Baroque residences, churches and houses, and where
Tylman van Gameren was active, survived few important buildings -
Wilanów Palace, Krasinski Palace, Bernardines church in Czerniaków and Late-baroque Wizytek church.
Architects such as Jan Krzysztoff Glaubitz were instrumental in forming the so-called distinctive "Vilnius Baroque" style, which spread throughout the region.
By the end of the century, Polish baroque influences crossed the
Dnieper into the Cossack Hetmanate, where they gave birth to a particular style of Orthodox architecture, known as the
Cossack baroque. Such was its popular appeal that every medieval church in
Kiev and the Left-Bank Ukraine was redesigned according to the newest fashion.
Russia
In
Russia, the baroque architecture passed through three stages - the early
Moscow baroque, with elegant white decorations on red-brick walls of rather traditional churches, the mature
Petrine baroque, mostly imported from Low Countries, and the late
Rastrelliesque baroque, in the words of William Brumfield, "extravagant in design and execution, yet ordered by the rhythmic insistence of massed columns and baroque statuary."
Portugal and Brazil
Nothwithstanding a prodigality of sensually rich surface decoration associated with Baroque architecture of the Iberian Peninsula, the royal courts of
Madrid and
Lisbon generally favoured a more sober architectural vocabulary distilled from seventeenth-century Italy. The
royal palaces of Madrid, La Granja,
Aranjuez,
Mafra and
Queluz were designed by architects under strong influence of Bernini and Juvarra. In the realm of church architecture, Guarini's design for Sta. Maria della Divina Providenza in Lisbon was a pace-setter for structural audacity in the region . The first fully baroque church in Portugal was the
Church of Santa Engrácia , in Lisbon, designed by royal architect João Antunes.
By the mid-eighteenth century, northern Portuguese architects had absorbed the concepts of Italian Baroque to revel in the plasticity of local granite in such projects as the surging 75-metre-high Torre dos Clérigos in
Porto . The foremost centre of the national Baroque tradition was
Braga, whose buildings encompass virtually every important feature of Portuguese architecture and design. The Baroque shrines and palaces of Braga are noted for polychrome ornamental patterns, undulating rooflines, and irregularly shaped window surrounds.
Brazilian architects also explored plasticity in form and decoration, though they rarely surpassed their continental peers in ostentation. The churches of Mariana and the Rosario at
Ouro Preto are based on Guarini's vision of interlocking oval spaces. At São Pedro dos Clérigos,
Recife , a conventional stucco-and-stone facade is enlivened by "a high scrolled gable squeezed tightly between the towers".
Even after the Baroque conventions passed out of fashion in Europe, the style was long practised in Brazil by
Aleijadinho, a brilliant and prolific architect in whose designs hints of Rococo could be discerned. His church of Bom Jesus de Matozinhas at
Congonhas is distinguished by a picturesque silhouette and dark ornamental detail on a light stuccoed facade. For São Francisco de Assis,
São João del Rei, Aleijadinho created a curved pattern of gables, towers, and rounded corners in harmony with the exquisite sculptural decoration, also executed to his designs.
Spain and Belgium
- Main article: Spanish Baroque
As Italian Baroque influences penetrated across the
Pyrenees, they gradually superseded in popularity the restrained classicizing approach of
Juan de Herrera, which had been in vogue since the late sixteenth century. As early as 1667, the facades of
Granada Cathedral and
Jaen Cathedral suggest the artists' fluency in interpreting traditional motifs of Spanish cathedral architecture in the Baroque aesthetic idiom.
In contrast to the art of Northern Europe, the Spanish art of the period appealed to the e
