Baroque: An Age of Magnificence

Judith Dunn

Editor’s Note: In the first of two features, Judith Dunn looks at the movement which began in Rome at the turn of the seventeenth century and spread worldwide over the next 200 years.

What is Baroque?
A good question. Baroque derives from the Portuguese “barocco,” meaning an irregularly shaped or imperfect pearl. Generally taken to mean extravagant and elaborate in decoration, the term can also imply disapproval of such extravagance. It was certainly used pejoratively by neoclassic critics describing the excesses of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian art, but it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that it came to be a label for the period. It was firmly established by Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945), a Swiss art critic, in Renaissance und Barock (1888). This was a measured overview and one of his three seminal works, still widely consulted.

Most artistic movements tend to react against whatever came before. Historically, the Baroque style succeeded the Renaissance in Europe, which had rediscovered the purity and restraint of classical antiquity. In the later sixteenth century, Mannerism took wit and intellectualism to an extreme. Baroque, by contrast, appealed primarily to the senses through simple and dramatic iconography. Its ability to appeal directly to the uneducated masses was harnessed by the church and the monarchies of Europe.

The Baroque style became a form of propaganda: it was skillfully used to evoke in the masses an emotional and sensual response that could be exploited for spiritual or political ends. The Roman Catholic Church was struggling to reassert its authority after the Protestant Reformation in northern Europe. It was in Rome that Baroque emerged as a powerfully attractive tool to reach the hearts and minds of the faithful.

There was a similar need in secular society. The consolidation of absolute monarchy in France by Louis XIV (r.1643-1715) and in Austro-Hungary by Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I (r.1657-1705) was greatly facilitated by their use of spectacle to convince the people of the divine right of rulers – while incidentally distracting them from their own dire living conditions. Absolute monarchy was imitated more or less successfully all over Europe, but it was a new phenomenon. During the Middle Ages and until the Renaissance, power had been in the hands of kings, princes, dukes or lords, each ruling over a province and busy waging war on one another. They gradually established courts in cities which became powerful city-states. National unification under a monarch or emperor moved at an uneven pace and was very slow in coming to Italy. Its city-states of Florence, Mantua, Venice and Padua – to name but a few – were centers of artistic excellence throughout the Renaissance.

Both the Catholic Church and the monarchies used to the Baroque to secure their power over the common people. Baroque then spread worldwide thanks to the missionary zeal of the Roman Catholic Church, coupled with enthusiastic empire-building by the English, the Dutch, the Spanish and the Portuguese.

Rome – Birthplace of Baroque
The Counter-Reformation was a serious business in Rome. The Vatican had no desire to see the bloody conflicts unleashed in northern Europe and in France spread to Italy or Spain. The Jesuits and a succession of Popes, notably Paul V (1605-21) and Urban VIII (1623-1644), set out to promote their religious message (and, it has to be said, their political and personal ambitions) through architecture.

The first Baroque church was Il Gesù, mother church of the Jesuits, begun in 1568. But it is Saint Peter’s Basilica, of course, which is the archetypal Baroque cathedral.

Carlo Maderno (1556-1629) became principal architect in 1603, and was commissioned to build the nave, portico and façade. The result is a massive structure in colossal order, incorporating a balcony for Papal blessings. On Maderno’s death, Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) took over and was responsible for the internal decoration. Panini’s dramatic painting of the interior shows the immensity of the interior space and its clever use of natural light from above. The majestically soaring vaults and dome dwarf clerics and visitors. Just visible before the high altar is the grandiose baldaquin representing the throne of Saint Peter. The subject matter of the lavish decoration is designed to underline the role of the Pope as direct successor to Peter, entrusted by Christ with the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. A powerful message.

From 1656, under Pope Alexander VII, Bernini was also responsible for the design of Saint Peter’s Square. The piazza was a crucial element in Baroque town planning, both ecclesiastical and secular. Approaching the basilica, the avenue leads into a square which widens out into a vast space enclosed by semicircular colonnades. The shallow stepped approach to the portico again widens slightly. The symbolism is clear: mother church is at the heart of the city, embracing all the faithful. Clearly, too, such a space lends itself to celebration and spectacle.

Baroque was also about theatre – albeit with a serious purpose – and the scale of its spectacles could be staggering. In February 1655, to take one example, a carousel was staged in the courtyard of Rome’s Palazzo Barberini in honor of Queen Christina of Sweden, who had abdicated four years earlier on converting to Catholicism. Three thousand people in specially built stands watched a fabulous parade of gods, as well as a battle between knights and Amazons. This apparently frivolous show was in reality anything but. The Queen’s conversion was a huge boost for the church, and the Barberini family, with designs on the Papacy, was vying with rivals to impress her.

Baroque sculpture and painting broke with the Renaissance tradition. Monumental dignity and classical restraint were replaced by human emotion with a direct appeal to the senses. In the period 1671-1674, Bernini produced his effigy for the tomb of Blessed Ludovica Albertoni, in the chapel of her descendant, Cardinal Paluzzo degli Altieri. The terracotta bozzetta (model), now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, captures the emotional force of the marble. Ludovica is on her deathbed, experiencing a mystical union with Christ. Her arched back and swirling drapery suggest ecstasy and would be frankly erotic if we were not aware of her beatification. It is easy to see why late eighteenth-century critics found Baroque decadent, even licentious.
Photo courtesy the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The seventeenth-century fascination with time features in this figure of Chronos, the god of time, carrying an armillary sphere on his back. The armillary sphere is a demonstrational model of the universe. Composed of several rings (armillae in Latin) and a band for the zodiac, it represents the apparent movement of the celestial sphere around the earth and marks the sun’s annual progress around the ecliptic. Armillary spheres can be traced back to antiquity, but it was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that their construction reached a peak and they became iconic instruments of science. Elaborate and decorative examples were made for princely collections and they became symbolic of astronomy in paintings and engravings of the time.
This figure is a rare Silesian parcel-gilt example, made by Jacob Mannlich in Troppau (now Opava in the Czech Republic) in c. 1630. Typical of Baroque decoration are the auricular masks on the base, framing cartouches containing allegorical scenes. It is 13.5 inches high and weighs 35.35 ounces. It features among the 700+ items in the fabulous collection of the late Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Bergé, due to be sold by Christie’s at the Grand Palais in Paris in late February 2009, estimated at US $260,000-380,000, it sold for $1,010,500.
Photo courtesy Christie’s.

Exhibition Details

The exhibition, Baroque 1620-1800: Style in the Age of Magnificence, runs at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London from April 4 to July 19, 2009. Two hundred objects will be on display and will feature architecture, furniture, silver, ceramics, painting, sculpture and textiles. Details are available at www.vam.ac.uk. A magnificent book of the same title, edited by Michael Snodin and Nigel Llewellyn, will be available in April, price US $85, from Abrams, 115 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011; (212) 206-7715; www.hnabooks.com.