BAROQUE ARCHITECTURE. So many different fac tors both of technique and thought went to the making of Baroque art that, not so many years ago, when comparing it with the art of other periods, critics condemned it as false, over-emphasized and seeking only to astonish. "Its architecture," they asserted, "was debased and deformed; its painting, turbid and heavy; its sculpture, empty and confused." It was inevitable that the period of reaction having run its course, history. and criticism should rectify the earlier conceptions, although not without a half cen tury of conflict.
Baroque architecture was built up naturally on the basis of the final period of the Renaissance (see RENAISSANCE ARCHITEC TURE). It arose in a world which had given itself over to an extreme self-indulgence, matching the extremes of religious as ceticism indulged in by the clergy. There was, generally, a simul taneous increase in knowledge and in superstition, in benevolence and in crime, in splendour and in misery. In this worldly atmos phere art managed to extricate itself from a dominating concourse of aesthetic, religious and social elements. Under such conditions it could not have developed otherwise than it did.
Rome was the birthplace of Baroque art and there it developed in its own surroundings, in clear conscious ness of its aims, with the support of a strong tradition. It repeated the very beginnings of the architecture of imperial Rome, just as Rome adorned herself with Byzantine, Romanesque and Renais sance buildings, because all their forms were akin to or derived from the Roman. The vaults, the cupolas, the arches, had their origin in the imperial art, even if enriched by the Byzantine, toned down by the Romanesque, softened by the Renaissance, amplified by the Baroque, subtilized by the neoclassical. On the other hand, Baroque architecture rejected resolutely the Gothic style, slender, mystical, dreamy, which substituted the tenuous aspiration of ascending lines for the practical solidity of horizontal planes and bindings. The altars, tombs, confessionals and pyxes, organs and choirs, altar-pieces and reliquaries, the palaces with their beds, mirrors, tables, divans and chairs—all had the same rich ness, the same importance. In the churches the splendour of the pictures was equalled by the polychromatic richness of the marble ; in the palaces, the wealth of the brocades and tapestries, and everywhere the splendour of the metals. In the churches the cupola took a predominant place because it lent itself better than slender bell-towers to grandiose lines. For the most part the interiors consisted of spacious naves flanked by chapels or else by two narrow aisles, supported by pillars. In palaces impor tance was attached to the principal doorway, entrance and stair way, which in the Renaissance were relatively modest. Finally the Baroque architects passed on from the palaces and churches to the vast conception of entire open squares and the perspective of streets, with stairways, colonnades and fountains.
number of Italian architects during the Baroque period was very large and hailed from every province, more especially from Upper Italy. Without naming all of note it may be mentioned that the Baroque style culminated in two great artists, Bernini (1J98-168o) and Francesco Bor romino
Rome Baroque architecture spread over all Italy and into other European countries. Italian architects, generally speaking, belonged to the school of the innovating genius of Borromino rather than to the weighty and traditional school of Bernini. They were to be found then in Spain, France, the Nether lands, Germany, and above all, in Poland and Russia. But soon in these and other lands local architects came to the front who con trived to impart a special character of their own to Baroque—a character suited to the region, the climate, the building methods and material, and above all the tastes and temperament of the country. The fiery temperament of the Spaniards carried Baroque to an extreme, first with the work of the brothers Mora and Alonso Cano, then by the revival and aggravation of the stuccoesque style of Jose Churriguera (1650-1725) who cre ated an architectural style which was bound to arrest attention by its fantasy and its undeniable beauties but which was so full of eccentricities, so overdone with ornamentations, so broken up and swamped by fantastic decoration, that the word Churrigueresque had to be coined to describe such an orgy of capricious orna mentation. France, which had become the preponderant power in Europe in the 17th century, not merely disregarded the Spanish movement but freed herself gradually from the influence of Italy, forming a style which was to win throughout the continent as many followers as the Italian Baroque, partly because it showed more regard for the practical necessities of life and paid more attention to the arrangement and adornment of the interiors. The periods of the Baroque were classified in France by a kind of court chronology; the Louis XIII. period, 1623-43, early Baroque; Louis XIV., 1643-1715, full Baroque; Regency, 1715 23, development into Rococo. The creations of French Baroque were countless—churches, palaces, castles and ornamental parks. Two great nuclei of buildings remain as outstanding examples of its quality, the Louvre and Versailles, upon which the greatest architects of the time were engaged : Lemercier
Nicolas Francois Mansart (1598-1666) (who gave the name of inansardes to the sloping roofs with upright windows used by him to interrupt the lines of his buildings and to make the top storeys more habitable), Louis Levau (1612-7o), Claude Perrault (1613 88), Jules Hardouin Mansart (1646-1708) etc. In the Nether lands among the patrons of Baroque were Peter Paul Rubens, his friend Jacques Francquart (1577-1651), and his disciple, Faid herbe (1617-97). They developed a Baroque which showed signs of various influences, Italian and French as well as Span ish and German. At first fussy and "chopped up," it acquired repose when the forms of Palladio prevailed. While these de clined and grew cold with Virigboon, in England they acquired vitality with Vanbrugh (1666-1726) who had been inspired by the sight of Versailles. Gradually in this period (1702-14) the sim plicity of the so-called Queen Anne style, especially in private architecture, came into vogue—which was to be revived with a touch of genius in the nineteenth century. Great pomp and vigour were attained by Baroque in Germany where not only was a court-like character imparted to separate buildings but to districts and to entire towns, such as Karlsruhe, Mannheim, Saar brucken, Ellangen, Potsdam, while a distinctive aspect was given also to old cities like Vienna, Dresden, Bayreuth, Wi rzburg, etc. In the Catholic south, especially Austria and Bavaria, Baroque took a warm grandiose form, full of movement in the Roman manner. Architects who became prominent were Fischer von Erlach, Hildebrandt, Prandauer, Neumann, Poppelmann and Andrea Schluter. Baroque art existed for two centuries and then faded away naturally like all the literary, philosophical and re ligious forms and habits which had combined to create and sup port it.
