Baroque Architecture - Sculpture - Painting (Ciltli)

The visual arts of the baroque -- above all its architecture -- were instruments in a production on the world's great stage. The play's first act, taking place around 1600, was set in Rome, and it was from here that this style spread across the rest of Europe. The popes, the chief patrons of baroque art, were concerned not only with celebrating their personal status but also with the glorification of God and propagation of the Catholic faith during the Counter-Reformation. Beyon this, the theatrical presentation of godlike power and splendor at the court of the "Sun King", Louis XIV was a symbolically exaggerated demonstraion of a hight centralized ideal of order. The "court of courts" strove to assign an appropriate status the ot other regions of France and to other countries, and to convey to them a sense of order -- and of subordination. Versailles became the unsurpassed modem and pattern for many of the European courts that were centers of power and culture from the second half of the seventeeth through the eigtenteeth century. Significantly, the language spoken at these courts was French. It is true that the Cathloic states and regions in the grasp of the Counter-Reformation, as well as the European courts, were the true bastions of the baroque style. At the same time, this volume illustrares the Protestant bourgeoisie's role as a patron of culture. Dutch painting in the seventeenth century, which mirrors the way of life of its cultured patrons, exemplifies how religious aspects became reinterpreted into moral and practical guidelines for everyday life. This volume discusses baroque painting of the seventeenth century and pursues the development of architecture and sculpture into the late baroque and the rococo eras, without, however, drawing precise boundaries between them. Before the ancien regime was swept away from the political stage of the glittering baroque celebraion of art had already gone out practically everywhere in Europe. The grand gesture and the emotionalism of baroque art had exhausted themselves and given way to the period of Englightenment. (Kitabın İçinden)