Baroque.
(perhaps from Portuguese barroco: a misshapen pearl). A
term, at first of abuse, applied to European
architecture and painting of the period approximately
1600 to 1750. B. architecture was at its height in Rome
under Bernini and Borrommi (c. 1630—80) and in S.
Germany (c. 1700—50) under Balthazar Neumann and Fischer
von Erlach. The building was planned round a series of
geometrically controlled spaces — circles, squares and
ellipses, within, imposed upon, adjoining one another,
rhythms of convex against concave curves, exterior lines
contrasted or harmonized. The actual structure forced to
conform to these patterns was heavily decorated with
relief and stucco-work and free-standing sculpture,
which burst in upon and receded from the interior space.
All the arts were enlisted and impinged on each other,
painting was highly illusionistic, sculptors such as
Bernini made full use of the play of light on surface
and contour. The ensemble made a theatrical and
emotional assault on the spectator, enmeshing him in a
spatial geometry whose lines are never still, leading
him from one enclave to the next, involving him in the
drama depicted in the picture or relief, confusing the
spatial domains of art and reality. B. became more and
more heavily ornate and gradually gave way to the
lighter and more restful style of Rococo; in Spain it
lapsed into the extravagances of churrigueresque, called
after the architect Jose de Churnguera. B. art was
intimately bound up with the Counter-Reformation and in
particular the Jesuit order. The involvement of the
spectator in the church fabric itself and the religious
narratives portrayed on its walls had an intentionally
evangelistic aim. Jesuit missionaries carried the style
wherever they went and established it in S. America,
particularly, as the dominant style in European
architecture: a position it held there until the late
19th c. In music the term is used loosely of the period
between Monteverdi (d. 1643) and J. S. Bach (d. 1750).
Aeneas flees burning Troy, Federico Barocci, 1598
