Italian Baroque Architecture: Characteristics and Masters
Introduction to Baroque Art
The Baroque period began in the late sixteenth century and extended until the eighteenth century. It originated in Italy and spread throughout Europe. This artistic style was a product of a period of crisis. Baroque art is brilliant and flamboyant, expressing the power of great monarchs and the prosperous state of Catholicism. The variety of socioeconomic, political, and religious factors gave rise to different types of Baroque: a courtly, Catholic Baroque serving as propaganda for the Church and the absolute state (Italy, France, Spain), and a bourgeois, Protestant Baroque (England and Holland).
General Features of Baroque Architecture
Architecture is the primary manifestation of the Baroque style; other art forms are often subordinate to it to achieve an overall effect. It is defined by freedom, fantasy, and a desire for movement.
Materials
Materials vary depending on the work and location, including stone, brick, stucco, etc.
Few new building elements were introduced; classical elements were used in unorthodox ways. There is a predominance of form over function.
Walls
The wall is the primary element and possesses a dynamic character, featuring curves and undulations that allow for flexible floor plans. Windows are often opened up and may feature complex shapes.
Supports
Supports, whether freestanding or attached columns and pilasters, are widely used, often primarily for decorative purposes. Atlantes, caryatids, and brackets are employed. Two new types of supports typical of the Baroque are the solomonic column (spiral column) and the estÃpite (an inverted obelisk or pyramid shape).
Arches
Arches are varied: semicircular, elliptical, mixtilinear, oval, etc.
Roofs and Ceilings
Roofs and ceilings often feature domes, including known types and new forms like ellipsoidal or mixtilinear plans.
Decoration
Decorative elements often overwhelm the structural aspects and are abundant. These can include architectural elements (columns, scrolls, niches, pediments) as well as sculptures and paintings integrated into vaults and roofs.
Aesthetic Principles
The core aesthetic principles revolve around freedom of form and dynamism. Baroque breaks with classical canons, prioritizing the interplay of volumes and spaces over clarity. Exterior walls play a crucial role in creating movement and chiaroscuro effects. Interior spaces aim to be enveloping, mysterious, sometimes dramatic, suggesting infinity.
Italian Baroque Architecture
Rome was the most important center, and the Popes were the great patrons of the era. Architecture served the Catholic Church, aiming to guide the faithful and persuade through emotional appeal.
Lorenzo Bernini
Bernini was the quintessential Baroque architect, also excelling as a sculptor, painter, decorator, and urban planner. He embodied, perhaps better than anyone, Rome’s desire for grandeur as it reasserted its spiritual and political supremacy.
He began his career with the Baldacchino of St. Peter beneath the great dome of the basilica. It is a monumental bronze canopy supported by four solomonic (spiral) columns, which twist and turn, conveying a powerful sense of movement. This work popularized the use of such columns.
In the Scala Regia at the Vatican, Bernini masterfully employed perspective illusions. He placed rows of columns on each side of the staircase, making them convergent and progressively smaller, thus making the staircase appear longer than it is.
In the vast Piazza San Pietro (St. Peter’s Square), the huge elliptical Doric colonnade, topped with statues, seems to embrace the faithful. This creates a sense of spaciousness while simultaneously directing focus towards the basilica, achieving significant effects of movement and spatial illusionism.
In Sant’Andrea al Quirinale, he used an oval plan. The concave facade features a small convex portico crowned with a broken pediment and scrolls holding a large central coat of arms.
In civil architecture, Bernini contributed to the design of the Palazzo Barberini in Rome.
Francesco Borromini
Borromini surpassed many Italian architects in his decorative inventiveness. While Bernini generally used classical elements respecting traditional proportions and composition, Borromini broke rules, invented new forms, and designed architecture almost sculpturally. He created undulating entablatures and cornices, devised novel capitals, and employed complex ribbed vaults and arches. He achieved painterly effects on walls, manipulating light as it played across curved surfaces.
Notable works include:
- Contributions to Piazza Navona
- Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza (Rome)
- San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (Rome)
- Sant’Agnese in Agone (Church of Saint Agnes, Rome)
Baldassare Longhena
Working primarily in Venice, his masterpiece is the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute.
Guarino Guarini
Active mainly in Turin, his works include the Church of San Lorenzo.