Baroque Style: History and its Characteristics

The baroque style, a artistic movement that flourished from the beginning of the seventeenth century until the mid-eighteenth century, represents a significant period in the evolution of European art. This style is characterized by eccentricity and excessive decoration, emphasizing the external appearance over the internal contents.

History of the Baroque style

The term "baroque" has uncertain origins, probably deriving from the French "baroque", used in the seventeenth century to describe a pearl of irregular shape. However, the concept of Baroque as an artistic style emerged after the end of the Baroque period itself, with derogatory intent on the part of neoclassical writers.

The Baroque developed in three main phases, according to the theory of the historian Riegl:

1. Initial testing phase: Characterized by innovation and the definition of new aesthetic canons, as in the Renaissance with figures such as Brunelleschi and Botticelli.
2. Classic intermediate phase: Marked by the pinnacle of the style, reaching absolute and stable perfection, as with artists such as Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo.
3. Final phase of decay: It coincides with Mannerism and Baroque, in which the style matures but is deformed into fatuous and repetitive virtuosity.

Meaning of the term Baroque

The term "baroque" does not simply indicate a historical artistic style, but it reflects a universal aesthetic category, representing everything that is eccentric and outsized. This style was used to highlight the decadence of an artistic era, but it also found application outside of its original historical context.

Main features

The Baroque style is defined by sinuous curved lines and excessive decorative patterns, creating an abundance of detail that aims to surprise the viewer. The use of chiaroscuro accentuates the dramatic effect of the works, while horror vacui fills every available space with intricate decorations.

Defining the baroque style is not very difficult. One of the first parameters is certainly the privileged use made of the curved line. Nothing proceeds in straight lines but everything must take a sinuous shape: even the legs of a chair or a table must be curved, even if this may not always be rational. The curves that a Baroque artist uses are never simple, such as a circle, but are always more complex. They range from ellipses to spirals, with a preference for all curves with a polycentric construction. Even better if the motifs are obtained by interweaving several curved patterns.

Another stylistic parameter of the Baroque is certainly complexity. Nothing must be simple, but it must appear as the fruit of virtuosity pushed to the extremes of the possible. In practice, the effect that a baroque work must arouse is always wonder. In front of it one had to remain speechless, wondering how it was possible to achieve such a thing.

Another parameter of the baroque can be considered horror vacui. This term indicates that attitude of not leaving any void in the creation of a work. In a painting, for example, every centimeter of the surface was used to insert as many figures as possible. In an architectural surface there was not even a small and hidden corner that was not filled with some golden frame or some insert of fake marble. This produces the sensation that a baroque work has too much "density": a dish with too many ingredients.

Another typical element of the Baroque is obviously the illusionistic effect. This is intimately linked to the attitude of considering art above all as decoration. Therefore fake marble or gilding were used in overabundance, to create the illusion of preciousness that was not real but only apparent. But the illusionistic effect is also used in painting and sculpture. In the first case, the great technical mastery of perspective allowed the creation of highly spectacular illusionistic effects, as often occurred in large fresco decorations. In sculpture, technical mastery bordering on the most exasperated virtuosity allowed aspects of softer materials to be imitated in hard marble with extraordinary illusionistic effects.

Finally, a final parameter of the Baroque style is the scenographic effect. Baroque works, in particular architectural and monumental ones in general, always constitute very large complexes that mark all the available space with their presence. In this way, the Baroque is the theatrical backdrop par excellence that served as a backdrop to the life of the time, which was also regulated by aspects and ceremonies characterized by great decorum.

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What distinguishes the Baroque style?

What distinguishes the Baroque style is its emphasis on illusion, eccentricity and monumentality. Baroque works, both architectural and artistic, tend to create a scenographic effect, transforming urban spaces into real theaters and involving the viewer with the abundance of details and the complexity of the shapes.

Baroque in architecture

Even in architecture the fundamental stylistic parameter was excessive and redundant decorativism, the term "decoration" meaning something that is added to embellish. This embellishment was therefore something applied, superimposed, which did not arise from the substance of things.

All this decorativism ended up creating, in reality, a scenographic effect. The facades of the buildings became the wings of a scenic space, which were the city streets and squares. The Baroque had, in fact, a different conception of urban spaces and urban planning. Here too, the regular geometries preferred by Renaissance architects, who designed cities with perfect shapes, were banned. But above all the attitude of the urban intervention technique changed.

The first phase is undoubtedly the most interesting and innovative one. It began in Rome at the beginning of the seventeenth century, thanks to some architects of notable artistic level: Francesco Borromini, Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Pietro da Cortona.

Although their buildings were the result of a continuous evolution, which found its premises in the latest Roman Renaissance architecture, they were nevertheless conceived with a revolutionary idea: that of making the plans of the buildings curved. Above all, Borromini, in some churches such as S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane or Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, decisively broke with the typologies adopted until then, inventing churches with a single hall, with absolutely original morphology and spatiality. Bernini, in designing the colonnade of St. Peter's, adopted an ellipse, and connected the colonnade to the facade with two lines that were not parallel but converging: a clear demonstration of the new baroque taste. Pietro da Cortona, in the church of S. Maria della Pace, curved the elements of the façade to such an extent that he created an unprecedented relationship between building and urban space. The curvature of the façades became one of the happiest motifs of Baroque architecture in Rome, finding notable applications throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

In Europe, Baroque architecture had a notable diffusion, especially in Latin countries. Portugal and Spain immediately adopted this style, also exporting it to their colonies in Latin America. From Mexico to Argentina, from Bolivia to Chile, baroque became the style of the new conquerors. Central-northern Europe converted to the Baroque especially at the end of the 17th century, and from France to Austria, it found extremely imaginative and rich applications.

It became the style of the Sun King, and of the Habsburgs, as well as the Bourbons, creating that world of elegance and sumptuousness in the European courts of the 18th century.

Further Reading:

• Features baroque architecture
• Baroque rococo in comparison
• Baroque architecture: characteristics and examples in the world and in Italy