Search results
People also ask
What is a defining characteristic of the Baroque style?
What is Baroque art & design?
Why is Baroque art important?
Was the Baroque era a cultural phenomenon?
How to tell baroque from rococo, according to Fowler: "The characteristics of baroque are grandeur, pomposity, and weight; those of rococo are inconsequence, grace, and lightness." But the two terms often used without distinction for styles featuring odd and excessive ornamentation.
The defining characteristics of the Baroque style were: real or implied movement, an attempt to represent infinity, an emphasis on light and its effects, and a focus on the theatrical.
- Baroque painting. The most prominent Baroque painters originated from the Netherlands, Italy, and Spain. Generally, they were concerned with the human subjects or subjects and depicted similar scenes.
- Baroque sculpture. Many great Baroque artists were architects as well as sculptors, and common traits can be seen in their oeuvre. A key similarity is the rejection of straight lines, resulting in increasingly pictorial sculptures where movement and expression are emphasized.
- Baroque architecture. At the start of the 17 century, Italian architects were the dominant talents of Europe. Immense competition for the contracts offered by churches and the Vatican between Gian Luca Bernini, Francesco Borromini, Baldassare Longhena and others drew the rest of Europe’s attention, soon spreading the style across the continent.
- Baroque furniture. Inspired by the Asian decorative techniques brought back to Europe by Dutch, Portuguese, and English traders and explorers in the early 17 century, the furniture makers of the Low Countries (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) combined these new techniques with those from the Renaissance to satisfy the needs and wishes of their customers.
- Rome: From the “Whore of Babylon” to the resplendent bride of Christ. When Martin Luther tacked his 95 theses to the doors of Wittenberg Cathedral in 1517 protesting the Catholic Church’s corruption, he initiated a movement that would transform the religious, political, and artistic landscape of Europe.
- The art of persuasion: To instruct, to delight, to move. While the Protestants harshly criticized the cult of images, the Catholic Church ardently embraced the religious power of art.
- The Catholic monarchs and their territories. The monarchs of Spain, Portugal, and France also embraced the more ornate elements of seventeenth century art to celebrate Catholicism.
- The Protestant North. In the Protestant countries, and especially in the newly-independent Dutch Republic (modern-day Holland), the artistic climate changed radically in the aftermath of the Reformation.
An important feature of Baroque art and design is its use of human figures. Represented as allegorical, sacred or mythological, these figures helped turn the work into a drama to convey particular messages and to engage the emotions of the viewer.
But a general feature is that everywhere the starting point is the ornamental elements introduced by the Renaissance. The classical repertoire is crowded, dense, overlapping, loaded, in order to provoke shock effects.
Baroque. Baroque was the dominant style in art and architecture of the seventeenth century, characterized by self-confidence, dynamism and a realistic approach to depiction. At its height in Rome from around 1630–1680, Baroque is particularly associated with the Catholic Counter-Reformation.
