Baroque and Rococo Architecture and Interiors
Baroque and Rococo Architecture
Introduction
Lecture 14 focuses on Baroque and Rococo architecture and interiors.
Various sources are used for text and images, including architectural history books and online resources.
The material is for live presentation use only and not for publication.
Baroque Architecture
Definition and Origins
The term "Baroque" describes a development rather than a specific time period.
It can be confusing because it is sometimes used to describe elaborate ornamentation.
Ornamentation is characteristic of Baroque design but not the only or most important aspect.
Rococo is a later, more delicate extension of the Baroque style, though some historians treat the terms as interchangeable.
The word "baroque" is thought to derive from the Portuguese word "barocco," which referred to distorted or irregular pearls.
The word "Rococo" derives from French and Spanish words meaning "shell-like."
Historical Context
Baroque design developed in Italy following the mannerist transition from the High Renaissance of the sixteenth century.
It flourished in Italy, Austria, parts of south Germany, adjacent regions of Europe, and Spain and Portugal in the seventeenth century.
Related work in France, England, and northern Europe may be described as Baroque, although some historians question this.
Rococo is used to describe work of the eighteenth century as it developed in France, south Germany, and Austria.
Rococo development overlaps the severely restrained design referred to as Neoclassical.
Baroque design appears more often in religious buildings, while Rococo work is more often used in secular surroundings, but there are areas of crossover.
Elements of Baroque Style
Emphasis on sculptural and painted forms.
Use of shapes from nature, such as leaves, shells, and scrolls, to enrich classical forms.
Modification of wall and ceiling shapes with three-dimensional sculptural decoration, figures, and floral elements.
Varied colors and painted settings offering illusionistic views of space.
Specific techniques include:
Quadratura: Architectural space painted in illusionistic perspective.
Quadro riportato: Images enclosed by illusionistic framing.
Di sotto in sù: Painting showing an illusionistic view upward into a seeming dome, sky, or heaven.
Stage Techniques
Stage techniques influenced Baroque and Rococo interior design.
A proscenium arch was used to frame the opening to a stage.
Stage design created illusions of space through painting on flat scenic drops.
Baroque skills in perspective and the use of light influenced stage design.
Catholic Counter-Reformation
Baroque architecture and interiors served the aims of the Catholic Counter-Reformation.
It provided exciting imagery that contrasted with the iconoclastic inclinations of the Protestant Reformation.
It offered new visual stimulus to a peasant population with little access to rich settings.
Baroque churches combined visual space, music, and ceremony to secure the loyalty of congregations.
Spatial Forms
Baroque design turned to more complex geometry in spatial forms.
Oval and elliptical shapes were preferred over square, rectangular, and circular shapes.
Curving and complex stairway arrangements and intricacy in planning offered a sense of movement and mystery.
Renaissance design changed from simplicity and clarity toward Baroque complexity, augmented by illusionistic painting and sculpture.
The Baroque in Italy
Mannerist Tendencies
Mannerist tendencies in the work of Giulio Romano and Michelangelo suggested growing impatience with the classical code of High Renaissance design.
The perfection of that code and the rules set forth by Vignola invited rebellion at limitations on creativity.
Mannerism describes the style of paintings and bronze sculpture derived from the Italian maniera, meaning "style."
Mannerism is sometimes defined as the "stylish style" for its emphasis on self-conscious artifice over realistic depiction.
St. Peter’s in Rome
Michelangelo took hold of the unfinished project begun by Bramante and gave it its final form with a gigantic order of pilasters supporting huge barrel vaults.
The provision of a clear entrance front for the west arm of the Greek cross modified the resulting biaxial symmetry.
Michelangelo simplified the floor plan and raised the dome to a much higher height than intended.
The dome has a colossal height of 131 meters.
The vast dome is built with a triple shell, reinforced with hidden chains and external buttressing.
The dome was completed, with some modifications, by Giacomo della Porta (1541–1604) in 1590, after Michelangelo’s death.
The plan was altered by the addition of two additional bays to the west to create a cruciform plan, with a façade by Carlo Maderno.
St. Peter’s embodies a full sequence of development from Early through High Renaissance into a Baroque completion.
Bernini
Bernini's St. Peter's Piazza plays an important role in Catholic ritual and is designed with two vast colonnades like arms that form an oval.
Renaissance buildings tend to stand alone, whereas Baroque architecture relates to the environment and space.
Bernini's Baldacchino in St. Peter's is a masterpiece that dominates the space and moves its internal character into the Baroque vocabulary.
It is a building made up of four huge bronze columns that support a roof or canopy at the height of a ten-story building.
The columns are twisted and encrusted with sculptured vines, cherubs, and figures.
The cathedral interior is given Baroque drama by the enormous baldacchino (canopy).
At the east end of the choir is the ceremonial chair of St. Peter; above it, a spectacular gilded sunburst.
Vignola and Il Gesù
Vignola’s design for the church of Il Gesù in Rome became a prototype for the Baroque churches that the Jesuit order built during the Counter-Reformation era.
Art, architecture, and design were intended to make the Roman church dramatic, exciting, and attractive.
High windows penetrate the nave barrel vault, and a ring of windows in the drum of the dome create effects of daylight streaming in beams.
Later painting and ornamentation of the Gesù added color and richly complex detail.
The façade was modified later by Giacomo Della Porta, decorated with acanthus leaves and divided by pilasters and columns.
Bernini’s S. Andrea al Quirinale
Bernini’s small Roman church of S. Andrea al Quirinale (1658–61) is a single domed room of oval shape surrounded by small niches.
The profile of the dome matches half of the oval of the plan.
A Corinthian order lines the space, and sculptured figures seem to be perched around the windows.
The dynamic drive of the Baroque also appears in the interest in passages and stairways.
Bernini’s Scala Regia
Bernini’s The Scala Regia (1663–6), adjacent to St. Peter’s, leads into the Vatican.
The entire passage tapers in width and height as it moves upward and the staircase proper takes the form of a barrel-vaulted colonnade.
The forced perspective of the tapered form and the contrast of light and dark spaces generate dramatic effect.
Borromini
Francesco Borromini (1599–1667) worked both for Maderno and for Bernini before undertaking independent projects in Rome.
The small monastery and monastic church of S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (1634–43) is often thought of as the archetypal Baroque achievement.
The building stands at the intersection of two streets, with fountains at each street corner.
The small monastic courtyard is a simple rectangle with corners modified by convex, cut-off corners.
The church is a tall space of complex form in plan, essentially oval, with paired columns that press inward and an apse that bulges outward.
The plan is based on a pair of equilateral triangles with a common base line; a circle inscribed in each forms the basis for the oval that dominates the plan.
Light comes from high windows at the lower edge of the dome and from windows in the lantern.
Saint Ivo della Sapienza (1642–62) is the chapel built by Borromini in the courtyard of della Porta’s building for the University of Rome.
The plan is actually based on equilateral triangles that are overlapped to form a six-pointed star.
Vertical support piers are placed at the inner angles of the star to form a circle.
Baroque Art Characteristics
Baroque art was "contorted" in that it was shockingly different from Renaissance works.
Baroque paintings were illusionistic, while sculptures and architecture were adorned with illustrations.
Baroque works created a decorative unity in the churches and other spaces.
Chiaroscuro, the use of intense light and dark contrast, became widely used.
Baroque art characteristics included radiant colors, sources of hidden light, and experiments with contrasting surface textures.
Active dates: c. 1600-1750
Stemmed from Italian word for “contorted idea”
Arose mainly as a means to promote the Catholic Church during the Protestant Reformation
Emphasizes faith in church and power in state
Dramatic contrasts of lights and darks
Emotional, often religious depictions
Baroque Architecture
Typically includes a main axis or viewpoint, such as an altar.
Entrance axes or central pavilions are the objects of immediate focus.
Includes vibrant materials like bronze and gilding, plaster, marble, and stucco.
Baroque buildings often expand to include the public squares that face them.
Theatrical structures and scenes covering ceilings and walls became ways to spread faith in the Catholic Church.
Baroque churches emphasized devout worship; Baroque palaces commanded higher power and order.
In Protestant areas, Baroque architecture was quieter and more refined.
The French Baroque style was separate and is what the French specifically call “Classicism.”
Rococo Architecture
Introduction
Developed in the 18th century, primarily in France and parts of Germany and Austria.
Often seen as a more delicate, playful extension of the Baroque.
Overlaps with Neoclassical design.
Characteristics
Elaborate ornamentation.
Asymmetrical values.
Pastel color palette.
Curved or serpentine lines.
Themes of love, classical myths, youth, and playfulness.
Pilgrimage Church of Wies
Masterpiece of Bavarian Rococo by Dominikus Zimmermann (1745–54).
Exuberant, colorful, and joyful.
Interior is largely colored white and gold.
Intricate plaster ornamentation that seems to dissolve forms into a kind of mist.
Ceiling bordered by a ring of architectural detail, partly real and partly trompe-l’oeil.
Fourteen Saints
Pilgrimage church in Franconia (1742–72) by Johann Balthasar Neumann.
Twin-towered exterior.
The plan is based on a Latin cross, but the arrangement of aisles and ovals of the low domes of the ceiling elaborate and obscure the plan form.
Pilgrimage shrine-altar dedicated to fourteen martyred saints stands in the nave beneath an oval dome.
Windows are large and the glass is white, so that light pours into the space.
White, gold, and pink are the dominant colors.
Rococo plaster sculpture and painting contributes to the theatrical sense of light and movement.
Amalienburg
Small garden palace in the grounds of the Nymphenburg Palace in Munich by François Cuvilliés (1734–9).
Restrained yet florid interior.
Central room of simple circular shape with mirrored panels on the walls.
Silver and azure blue plaster ornamentation by Johann Baptist Zimmermann.
Little painting; mostly stucco.
Angles of the mirrors create repeating reflection in kaleidoscopic complexity.
Light of the candles of the great chandelier would have been endlessly repeated in the mirrors.
Furniture and Other Interior Features
General Characteristics
Elaboration and ostentation are typical of objects made for the rooms of palaces.
Curving or bulging shapes for door or drawer fronts.
Legs were often turned on foot or on water-powered lathes to create round ball or bulbous, jug-like shapes.
Carving of plant forms, figures, allegorical images, and coats of arms were favorite forms of ornamentation.
Development of veneer made it possible to create wood surfaces in varied colors and patterns.
Ivory, tortoiseshell, and silver were sometimes used.
Techniques for simulating materials by marbling, graining, painting, and gilding were valued.
Baroque vs. Rococo Furniture
Baroque furniture tends to be large and dominated by fat and bulging forms.
Rococo design strives for delicacy and elegance.
Legs are slim and gently curved, and inlay patterns are small in scale and often very elaborate.
The Rococo style began in the 18th century, casting aside symmetry for a more aqueous and lucid style.
It focused on interiors of palatial French mansions of Louis XV's reign and into the beginning of Louis XVI's.
The popularity of the Rococo style reached its crescendo in the 1730's.
It never caught on in England as it was regarded as too