Baroque architecture
From Free net 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.
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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 (e.g. church of Weltenburg Abbey), or uniform lighting by means of several windows (e.g. church of Weingarten Abbey)
- opulent use of ornaments (puttos made of wood (often gilded), plaster or stucco, marble or faux marbling)
- 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 (especially in the late baroque)
- illusory effects like trompe l'oeil and the blending of painting and architecture
- in the Bavarian, Czech, Polish, and Ukrainian baroque, pear domes are ubiquitous
In Italy and France
Image:Syracuse dome Sicily.jpg The sacred architecture of the baroque was mainly influenced by Italy, especially Rome and the paradigm of the basilica with crossed dome and nave. 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 (built 1615-1620) by Salomon de Brosse that established the paradigm of baroque architecture.
For the first time, the Corps des Logis was emphasized as the representative main part of the building, while the side wings were lower. The tower has been completely replaced by the central projection. The next step of development was the integration of the gardens in the composition of the palace, as is exemplified by Vaux-le-Vicomte (built 1656 - 1661) near Paris, where the architect Louis Le Vau and the gardener André Le Nôtre complemented each other. The same two artists scaled this concept to monumental proportions in the royal hunting lodge and later main residence of Palace of Versailles (extended 1661 - 1690). Versailles was the model of many other European residences including Mannheim, Nordkirchen, and Caserta, among others.
See also:Sicilian Baroque
In Central Europe
In Central Europe, the baroque period began somewhat later. Although the Augsburg architect Elias Holl (1573 - 1646) 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. Image:Augustusburg.jpg 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 (1610-17): 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 (usually transverse barrel-vaults) 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 (e.g., even in the early neo-classical church of Rot a der Rot), and early wall-pillar churches could easily be refurbished by re-decoration without any structural changes, e.g., the church at Dillingen. Image:Mikulas.jpg 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 (e.g., on Protestant church architecture) 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 (Vienna, Rastatt), 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 (courtyard) on the town side (chateau entre cour et jardin), whereas the Italian (and also Austrian) 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 "appartement semi-double" layout of French castles.
In Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
The first baroque church in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was the Corpus Christi Church in Niasvizh, Belarus (1587). 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 Poznań, the Xavier cathedral in Hrodno, the Royal Chapel in Gdańsk, and last but not least the Święta 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, Krasiński 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.
In England and Russia
Image:Dubrovitsy.jpg
In England the culmination of Baroque architecture comes with Sir Christopher Wren, Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor. Many examples of Baroque architecture and town planning are found in other European towns, and in the Spanish Americas. Town planning of this period featured radiating avenues intersecting in squares, which took cues from Baroque garden plans.
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."
In Northern America: Mexico and California
Plateresque and Churrigueresque Baroque in Mexico: The baroque in Mexico derives from Plateresque and Churrigueresque architecture.
Late fifteenth-century Plateresque freely borrowed the decorative motifs of the intricately detailed work of silversmiths, the “Plateros.” In the seventeeth century, after the restrained Juan de Herrera interlude, decorated architecture in Spain reached an apotheosis in the exuberant —some would say capricious— Churrigueresque baroque, named after the Churriguera, a family chiefly known in its day for the design of altars.
Characteristic of both the Plateresque and Churrigueresque are the elaborate frontispieces that are then applied to an otherwise flat facade. The architectural elements in these decorations, columns, entablatures, pediments et al play a purely decorative role. With the Plateresque and Churriguerresque, Spain’s Gothic moment, based like all Gothic on structural purism, met its end.
The Spaniards eventually exported their decorated architecture to Southern Italy and to their colonies in the Americas. In the 18th century the Churrigueresque set roots in Mexico, while a native brand of Plateresque, the Mexican Plateresque, less exact in the carving of ornamental details than its Spanish forebear, emerged.
Being Mexico the most important colony of the New Spain, the trend of this Mexican Churrigueresque and Plateresque Baroque style in architecture would come to define Spanish Colonial architecture in North America with grand buildings masterfully carved, specially visible in the rich silver mining towns and the grand capital: Mexico City. This trend even included few, but much more humble and simplistic works of the small California Missions in the United States, when its territory still belonged to Mexico.
See also
it:Architettura barocca he:אדריכלות הבארוק nl:Barokke architectuur ja:バロック建築 pt:Arquitectura do barroco sv:Barockens arkitektur zh:巴洛克建筑