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More information about baroque

 More information about baroque

The Baroque is an art movement that originated in Italy in cities such as Rome , Mantua , Venice and Florence. From the middle of the 16th century and ending in the middle of the 18th century .

The Baroque, which affects all areas, is characterized by the exaggeration of movement, decorative overload, dramatic effects, tension, exuberance, grandeur sometimes pompous and contrast, the same contrast of which spoke Philippe Beaussant : The Baroque era has attempted to say a world where all opposites would be harmoniously possible.

It covers all areas of art, sculpture , painting , literature , architecture , theater and music. And is spreading rapidly in most European countries.

The main features of this painting are:
• the use of warm colors;
• light contrasts
• the impression of movement given by the gestures of the characters and the draperies;
• diagonal lines of force;
• characters communicating by the look;
• very expressive characters.

Spread in Europe

It is thanks to the implantation of the Catholic Church that Baroque art spreads in Europe. It diffuses the xvii th century all over Europe , particularly in Spain, Central Europe and the Netherlands. In France for example Claude Lorrain painted Sea Port at sunset with a great work of light. And in Spain, Las Meninas de Velasquez. Today traces of this Baroque movement can still be found throughout Europe, for example the façade of Santiago de Compostela.

Seaport at sunset Baroque
Seaport at sunset


Las Meninas Baroque
Las Meninas


Santiago de Compostela Baroque
Santiago de Compostela

The popularity and success of the Baroque are encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church. When she decides that the theatricality of the Baroque style artists could promote religious themes with a direct involvement and emotional. It is an art of Catholicism as it was defined in 1545-1563 by the Council of Trent , whose most significant decree is the Decree on the innovation and relics of the saints, and on the holy images . It is therefore an aesthetic of the Counter-Reformation , found particularly in Jesuit art ; in fact, we have long assimilated “Jesuit art” and “Baroque art”. This aesthetic meets strong resistance in the countries acquired in the Reformation , where a Protestant art develops. England remains very refractory, France too.

The secular aristocracy also considered the dramatic effect of Baroque arts and architecture as a way to impress their visitors and potential rivals. The Baroque palaces consist of a succession of courtyards at the entrance, antechambers , grand staircases and reception rooms, in an order of increasing splendor. Many forms of art – music, architecture and literature – are inspired by each other within this cultural movement.

The art of Carracci is often contrasted with the art of Caravaggio by the terms classical and baroque, they are two opposing influences on the plastic level that will have a lot of influences on their successors.

Variants In Italy

The baroque style develops from the second half of the xvi th century, first in Rome and then in the rest of Italy. He first respects the Roman paradigm of the basilica cross whose choir is surmounted by a dome . In addition to the aforementioned Gesù Church , the pioneer of religious baroque architecture is considered to be Carlo Maderno with his church Santa Susanna alle Terme di Diocleziano, built between 1585 and 1603. The dynamic rhythm of the columns and pilasters, the centralized and complex facade, binding rigor and play on the classical codes of the Renaissance, the statues placed in niches and furiously recalling the structure of the scene of a Ancient Roman theater make it one of the earliest examples of Baroque. This first essay is continued by Peter of Cortona in his church Our Lady of Peace in Rome (1656) with concave wings that recall a theater scene and whose central part advances as if to occupy the small square who faces him.

Gesù Church Baroque
Gesù Church


 Santa Susanna alle Terme di Diocleziano
Santa Susanna alle Terme di Diocleziano

Santa Maria della Pace

Santa Maria della Pace

In France

The French call ” classical ” the architecture of the century of Louis XIV and his successors and reject the name, pejorative French, “baroque”. This opposition between “reasonable” French classicism and baroque “excessive” Italian is rooted in the will, asserted from the xvii th century, supplanting Rome and, in fact, this is the time when Versailles and the court of the Sun King take the place of Italy as a center of cultural influence. The turning point is the refusal of Bernini’s plans in April 1665 for the colonnade of the Louvre : the most famous architect, the most requested of Europe is rejected by the Court of France.

However, some art historians consider the French architecture of the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV as Baroque: they believe that most French “classical” constructions, whether religious or civil, could have been built elsewhere. Europe and that they include all Baroque elements: taste for magnificence, perspective, decor

In Spain and Portugal

As Italian influence penetrates beyond the Pyrenees, it pushes back the classicizing approach in vogue until then under the rule of Juan de Herrera . In 1667, the facades of the cathedral of Granada by Alonso Cano announce the victory of the baroque in Spain. Follows the Jaén Cathedral by Eufrasio López de Rojas which integrates Baroque lessons with specifically Spanish architectural structures.



Jaén Cathedral
Jaén Cathedral


Jaén Cathedral
Jaén Cathedral

In contrast to the art of northern Europe, the Spaniards have created an art that appeals to the senses more than to the intellect. The Churriguera family , architects specializing in the design and construction of altars and altarpieces opposed the stripped style that is called “herreresque” in reference to its inventor and main promoter, Juan de Herrera, and promoted a style an exaggerated, elaborate, almost capricious one that covers every inch of surface available with a pattern and that has passed to posterity under the term “churrigueresque”. In less than half a century, the Churriguera have transformed Salamanca into a model city of the Churrigueresque style.

Portugal, under Spanish domination between 1580 and 1640, is in the sphere of cultural influence of its great neighbor and does not differ from it (which is also true for Brazil vis-à-vis the Spanish colonies of Latin America ) only by a sensible attenuation, imprinted with a Portuguese sweetness.


In the broadest sense, the Baroque period in music is considered to extend from 1600 to 1750. Baroque music being directly inspired by Baroque architecture. Baroque thus covers a broad period in the history of music and opera . It extends from the beginning of the xvii th century about the middle of the xviii th century , more or less uniform across countries. In a necessarily schematic way, baroque aesthetics and inspiration follow those of the Renaissance (apogee of counterpoint and polymelody) and precede those of classicism.(Birth of discursive elements, like the punctuated musical phrase): as in architecture, the baroque musical “figures” are supported by a very stable ” basso continuo ” (we are at the junction between counterpoint and harmony).

Called baroque music , the music school of the xvii th century, from a purely chronological point of view. But Jean-Jacques Rousseau defines baroque music such as “the harmony is confused, loaded modulations and dissonances.” This is the style of music composed during the period overlapping that of Baroque art, and also that of a slightly later period. Jean-Jacques Rousseau affirming his disagreement with the baroque music will be at the origin of the quarrel of the jesters.

 Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Subsequently composers like Jean-Philippe Rameau will perpetuate French Baroque music

It is in Italy that appears the movement of the baroque music, under the influence of the composer Monteverdi. Which with Orfeo (considered like the first opera), marks a break in the history of the music. In France the music is undeveloped, it is an Italian, Jean-Baptiste Lully who will develop it with King Louis XIV . Lully invented a kind of opera: lyrical tragedy . Subsequently composers like Jean-Philippe Rameau will perpetuate French Baroque music. With baroque music, the cantata, dance suite, develops; Current, Sarabande, German … and popular dance: The Folies d’Espagnes. In 1750, with the death of the German composer Johann Sebastian Bach , the musical period of the Baroque gives way to classical music .

Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau

Baroque musical era can be split into three different periods: the first from 1580 to 1630 Baroque, and the median baroque until the xvii th century, and the last until the death of Baroque Bach (1750). The culminating figures of Baroque music at its peak, that is to say during the last Baroque, are Corelli (1653-1713) and Vivaldi (1678-1741) in Italy, Haendel (1685-1759) in England, Bach (1685-1750) in Germany. For France, we will remember Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) orJean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764). The extent of Baroque music’s commonalities with the aesthetic principles of the graphic and literary arts of the Baroque period is still a debated issue.

René Huyghe, about the Baroque: “the classical, tending to the fixed definition, is of type” architectural “; the baroque, exciting emotional and moving perceptions, is of the “musical” type.