Reading Response 8: 3/14/11

The Baroque Era

Baroque architecture went against all the rules set for architecture during the renaissance.  The architecture created during this time period was considered "modern" architecture but not like the modern style that we usually think of today but to contrast it from all of the other architecture from around the time in which Baroque architecture was being built.  The architecture in this time period broke out of the renaissance norms and did everything that the renaissance architecture did.  Baroque architecture was complex, molded form, had plastic characteristics, and had a sculptural form to it.  Many people during the time thought that Baroque architecture was a disgrace and a scar in the history of architecture.  Cassiano dal Pozzo called it "the great disgrace of our age that, although it has before it such beautiful ideas and such perfect rules in venerable, old buildings, none the less it allows the whim of a few artists who wish to break away from antique to bring architecture back to barbarism."  Giovanni Pietro Bellori in referring to Baroque architecture said "everyone images in his head a new idea of architecture in his own manner..so that they deform buildings, broken and destroyed lines; they tear apart bases, capitals and columns with crowded stucco decoration and trivial ornaments and with faulty proportions, in spite of the fact the Vitruvius condemns such novelties."

Baroque architecture is:

• an architecture of the senses
• the detail and ornamentation has an emotional power over its viewers 
• had an enormous jump in scale from renaissance architecture
• sometimes the addition of so much detail and ornamentation made the proportions of the buildings seem distorted
• worked to make materials look like a material other than what they really were
• used extensive amounts of detail so that your eye would not know where to rest
• more focused on spreading horizontally and controlling the landscape than going vertically to show the importance of the relationship between man and God as was done in earlier time periods such as the Gothic

I think that despite the attacks against the architecture of the Baroque time period I think they had a great influence in history and they the buildings still stand today as a beautiful representation of a part of history.

Objects, buildings, spaces, and places from the Baroque Era:

Château de Maisons near Paris
center space with the two side wings flanking 
it in a slightly smaller scale than the 
center portion of the building
steep mansard rooftop with decorative roofline

Apollo and Daphne sculpture - cappella cornaro
stone is carved to make it look like
soft folds of fabric 

Baldacchino
heavy decoration insures that the eye wont know
where to rest and therefore wont rest on any one surface
also makes materials seem like something
other than what they truly are

Chateau de Chambord
Several clear layers represent each floor but all three seem to be
crushed under the heavily decorated and elaborate rooftop

Baroque architecture from other parts of the world:

Schloss Nymphenburg (1675) in Munich

Castle Howard (1669) in North Yorkshire

Even in other parts of the world the Baroque period of architecture is still greatly influenced by spreading out and controlling the landscape to show power by seeing how far out you can spread rather than the previous ideas of showing power with verticality.  Large amounts of decoration and ornamentation are also used in other parts of the world in this time period.

Information and quotes from Roth textbook and pictures found on google images