Baroque Architecture: Italy, France, and Spain
1. Introduction: Urban and General Characteristics, Baroque Architecture in Italy, Bernini and Borromini, The Palace of Power: Versailles
Introduction to Baroque: The seventeenth century in Europe was a time of general crisis. After the Council of Trent (1545-1648), the final split of Christendom occurred into two rival blocs: Protestants and Catholics. This art was developed through two currents: the Church and the European powers. By the first third of the eighteenth century, the Rococo style appeared, markedly decorative and widespread in France.
It would be a religious art in Italy and Spain, palatial to demonstrate the power of the monarchy in France, and bourgeois and Protestant in Holland and Flanders, used to express the strengthening of the bourgeoisie of northern Europe.
Urban and General Characteristics of Baroque Architecture
Urbanism: Cities became a symbol of power for the Church and the monarchies that created them. Significant centers with monumental buildings and spaces, temples of attractive facades, majestic palaces, and spectacular plazas presided over by a statue of the king in a colorful fountain sculpture.
These significant centers were connected by means of straight and regular streets. Thus, Baroque urbanism ordered the space of the city, offering a scenic view and propaganda of the symbols of political or religious power.
Baroque architecture, in general, is characterized by:
- In Baroque buildings, imbalance, movement, light changes, and perspectives dominate.
- Spatial illusions are created.
- All the arts are integrated into the same building.
- Prevalence of decoration over the structural.
- Use of a variety of materials: stone and brick. Coating materials such as stucco, frescoes, marble, mosaics, and bronzes are commonly used.
- The plants are varied and complicated.
- The wall mainstay acquires a dynamic character; it bounces and tends to break. Free or attached brackets are used, even acquiring an essentially decorative order. The arches, also of great variety, are semicircular, elliptical, or mixtilinear.
- Covers are preferably domed, sometimes with lunettes. The domes have a great interest in space as they create plastic outer volumes inside.
- The facade takes on a very important role, with a theatrical sense in relation to the urban environment.
- The decorative elements dominate the constructive; they are generally abundant and rich. Their nature is varied:
Architecture: columns, pillars, pilasters, scrolls, niches, cornices, moldings, pediments, and entablature.
Sculptures: reliefs or round lumps, vegetable or figurative themes.
Pictorial: fresh, specially located in vaults and roofs.
- Plastic values revolve around two principles: anti-classicism and dynamism, both in plan and wall. The interiors present a new character that points to an illusion, achieved by the contrasts of light, outlook, and the use of color. Exteriors are often endowed with great movement.
Baroque Architecture in Italy and the Palace of Versailles
The Baroque was born in Italy in the seventeenth century; hence, its main religious art forms were built at the request of the Vatican. But it would also be a civil Baroque: Bernini would beautify the city of Rome with palaces, fountains, plazas, bridges, etc.
The Italian Baroque is revolutionary in terms of creating new building plans and new ways, but it keeps the spatial scheme and previous religious iconography. The figures are fully Baroque: Bernini and Borromini.
Lorenzo Bernini used the classical language but with new solutions. A great town planner, fountains became an essential element of his urban spaces. Their most important characteristics are the continuity of the Basilica of San Pedro, the treatment of architecture as if it were sculpture, making them merge, a preference for centralized plants, a Greek cross, elliptical, use of giant order, and alternating straight and curved gables.
His first major work, and the most dynamic, is the Baldacchino of St. Peter, which would affect Spanish Baroque altarpieces. The Plaza de San Pedro del Vaticano is closed by a colossal colonnade.
Borromini is the great figure of Italian Baroque architecture. He conducted dynamic works that undulate entablature, cornice, and walls, which lead him to achieve greater contrasts of light and shadow. His buildings tend to disequilibrium, a new sense of movement. He created decorative elements and very personal plants; they are new forms: elliptic, mixtilinear, with curves and counter-curves. His most famous work is San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane.
In the eighteenth century, Baroque in Italy took a double slope: the Rococo and, on the other hand, the classical side represented by Juvara, following the Roman tradition of Bernini.
The Palace of Power: Versailles. A feature of French Baroque architecture was its courteous nature, as the main achievements were mainly residential civil buildings, commissioned by kings or important people.
The palace became the symbol of the absolute power of the French monarchy, which had undisputed hegemony in Europe during the second half of the century.
Faced with curved lines and surfaces, features of the ornate decoration of the European Baroque, France concentrated on a monumental style that dominated straight lines, horizontal and vertical. The Palace of Versailles is the finest example of French Baroque architecture, conceived as a great court city, combining two functions: a royal residence and seat of government. It is located on the outskirts of Paris and was built in the second half of the seventeenth century.
Spanish Baroque Architecture: Plaza Mayor to Bourbon Palace
If the seventeenth century was a century of crisis for Europe, it was especially so for Spain. Despite this, the seventeenth century would be the Golden Age of culture and the Spanish arts.
Since the late seventeenth century, a process of change in economic conditions opened a very different eighteenth century. Spanish Baroque architecture has some features:
- The little urban development, particularly in the seventeenth century, whose only original contribution would be the main squares.
- The limited movement in its plans and elevations.
- The predominance of the ornamental.
- The use of encamonadas domes.
- The appearance of needle towers.
- Poverty of dressing materials.
The Herrera Influence: Spanish Baroque architecture of the early seventeenth century is marked by the influence of Herrera and especially by El Escorial. Notable examples are the Clergy of Salamanca and the Convent of the Incarnation in Madrid, both by Gómez de Mora.
Civil architecture around the court developed a kind of palace architecture directly linked to El Escorial. Among the most important, we find the Palacio de Santa Cruz and the City Hall of Madrid.
Within civil architecture, the plazas stand out as a unique urban intervention in Spain during the Baroque. These places are treated as a large shopping and entertainment district, so they are surrounded by porticos for the former and a large number of balconies for the latter. The great square of the seventeenth century is Madrid’s.
Full Baroque: Since the second half of the seventeenth century, with the overcoming of some of the country’s problems, a boost in architectural activity was experienced. An increase in decoration based on natural elements of large fleshy leaves, or geometric and broken trim, and twisted columns occurred. The work that marks the transition to this moment is the facade of Granada’s Cathedral, designed by Alonso Cano.
The eighteenth century would see the architectural development of two trends: one national and one palatial.
- The national current charged a growing trend that began in the late seventeenth century, highlighting the following areas:
Castilla: In Salamanca, the Churriguera brothers are the creators of the so-called Churrigueresco style, characterized by its great decorative fervor but under traditional structures. It had wide circulation throughout Spain. Albert Churriguera’s works at the Plaza Mayor of Salamanca, inspired by Madrid, stand out. In Madrid, the most refreshing works of the Baroque are by architect Pedro de Ribera, who worked as an architect of the city. He made a number of civil and religious works, and even bridges such as the Puente de Toledo. Among his works is the facade of the Old Hospice of Madrid. In Toledo, the architect-decorator Narciso Tomé stands out. He performed Transparent at the Toledo Cathedral. In Galicia, rich materials such as granite are used, which gives the buildings great austerity. The architect Casas y Novoa, builder of the Obradoiro Facade of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, stands out.
- The palatial architecture, developed by foreign architects, creates complicated but simple, very classical, two-story buildings with little decoration. Felipe Juvara traced the Royal Palace in Madrid, which was continued by his disciple Sacchetti.