Baroque Architecture

Baroque Architecture
Arch 225
Baroque Architecture is the building style of the Baroque era, begun in late 16th-century Italy, that
took the Roman vocabulary of Renaissance 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.
Whereas the Renaissance drew on the wealth and power of the Italian courts and was a blend of
secular and religious forces, the Baroque was, initially at least, directly linked to the CounterReformation, a movement within the Catholic Church to reform itself in response to the
Protestant Reformation. Baroque architecture and its embellishments were on the one hand more
accessible to the emotions and on the other hand, a visible statement of the wealth and power of the
Church.
A synthesis of Bernini, Borromini and Cortona’s architecture can be seen in the late Baroque
architecture of northern Europe which paved the way for the more decorative Rococo style.
Distinctive features of Baroque architecture can include:
• In churches, broader naves and sometimes given oval forms
• Fragmentary or deliberately incomplete architectural elements
• dramatic use of light; either strong light-and-shade contrasts (chiaroscuro effects) as at the church
of Weltenburg Abbey, or uniform lighting by means of several windows
• opulent use of colour and ornaments (putti or figures made of wood (often gilded), plaster or stucco,
marble or faux finishing)
• large-scale ceiling frescoes
• an external façade often characterized by a dramatic central projection
• the interior is a shell for painting, sculpture and stucco (especially in the late Baroque)
• illusory effects like trompe l'oeil (an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to
create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear in three dimensions.) and the blending of
painting and architecture
• pear-shaped domes in the Bavarian, Czech, Polish and Ukrainian Baroque
• Marian and Holy Trinity columns erected in Catholic countries, often in thanksgiving for ending a
plague
Barok
Rönesans
Baroque Facades
Renaissance
Baroque
Renaissance
Baroque
Renaissance
Baroque
Baroque Axis
Il Gesu, Rome, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola, (1568-1577)
Il Gesu, Facade and Giacomo della Porta. (1573-1577), Vignola (1571)
Il Gesu
Il Gesu
St. Ignatius Chapel, Baccacia’s frescos / Il Gesu, Giovanni Battista Gaulli
S. Ignazio, Roma, Padre Andrea Pozzo (1691-94)
Cornaro Şapeli, Santa Maria della
Vittoria, Roma, Gianlorenzo
Bernini (1647-1652)
Cornaro chapel, Gianlorenzo Bernini (1647-1652)
Bernini’s design of the Piazza San Pietro in front of the Basilica is one of his most
innovative and successful architectural designs
Bernini’s design of the Piazza San Pietro
Bernini’s design of the Piazza San Pietro
St. Peter's Basilica
Re-planing of Rome by Pope Sixtus V. (1585-90), from the wall of Vatican Museum.
Piazza del Popolo
Piazza del Popolo
S. Andrea al Quirinale, Roma, Gianlorenzo Bernini (1658-1670)
S. Andrea al Quirinale
S. Andrea al Quirinale
S. Andrea al Quirinale
S. Andrea al Quirinale
S. Ivo alla Sapienza, Roma Francesco Borromini, (1642-1660)
S. Ivo alla Sapienza
S. Ivo alla Sapienza,
Borromini’s Sketch
S. Ivo alla Sapienza
S. Ivo alla Sapienza
S. Ivo alla Sapienza
S. Ivo alla Sapienza
S. Ivo alla Sapienza
S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, (S. Carlino), Rome, Francesco Borromini, (1634-1677)
S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (S. Carlino),
S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (S. Carlino)
S. Carlo alle Quattro
Fontane
(S. Carlino)
S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (S. Carlino),
S. Carlo alle Quattro
Fontane
(S. Carlino)
(1665-67)
S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane
(S. Carlino)
S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane
(S. Carlino)
S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (S. Carlino),
San Lorenzo, Torino, Guarino Guarini (1668-1687)
San Lorenzo
San Lorenzo
San Lorenzo
San Lorenzo
Vierzehnheiligen, Franconia, Johann Balthasar Neumann, (1742-1752)
Vierzehnheiligen
Vierzehnheiligen
Vierzehnheiligen
Versailles, Louis Le Vau, Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1661-1688)
Versailles Gardens
Galerie des Glaces
Versailles,
Jules Hardouin-Mansart
(1678-88)
Spanish Stairs, Rome, Francesco de Sanctis, Alessandro Specchi (1721-25)
Palace of Prens-Piskopos,
Würzburg, Almanya,
Johann Balthasar Neumann
(1737-42)
Rafael, (1510-11),
Rubens, (1610-11)
Caravaggio (1600)