Baroque architecture – how to recognise it

Baroque architecture, roughly 1600–1750, is recognised by movement and drama: façades that swell out and curve in, domes, oval rooms, powerful columns and pilasters, and palaces arranged along long axes with gardens. The style was born in Rome and spread to palaces and churches throughout Europe, in Sweden for example the Royal Palace in Stockholm and Drottningholm.

Facts

Rome: churches as theatre

The Baroque emerged in Rome around 1600, when the Church of the Counter-Reformation wanted to impress and move. The Jesuits' mother church Il Gesù, consecrated in 1584, became a model with its broad, unified nave and a façade with scroll-shaped transitions. During the 17th century architecture went a step further.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini designed the colonnades around St Peter's Square in the 1650s and 1660s as two arms embracing the pilgrims. His oval church Sant'Andrea al Quirinale is small but full of light and movement. The Baroque treated the building as a stage, with light, perspective and surprises.

Borromini and the undulating façade

Bernini's rival Francesco Borromini went further. At San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane the façade undulates in and out, and the dome is oval with a pattern of crosses, octagons and hexagons that shrink towards the lantern. At Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza the lantern winds upwards in a spiral.

Borromini's buildings are based on sophisticated geometry, but the impression is of movement, almost as if the stone were breathing. Concave and convex forms, broken pediments and deep shadows became the hallmarks of the Baroque.

France and the princely palaces

In France the Baroque became stricter and more classical, in the service of power. Vaux-le-Vicomte, built for the finance minister Fouquet around 1660, was so splendid that Louis XIV took the architects and the garden designer André Le Nôtre for his own project: Versailles. There palace, town and park were arranged along an immense axis, and the Hall of Mirrors took shape in the 1670s and 1680s.

Versailles became the model for palaces all over Europe, from the Zwinger in Dresden to the Würzburg Residence. In England Christopher Wren built St Paul's Cathedral after the Great Fire of London in 1666, and in Vienna Fischer von Erlach built the Karlskirche with two columns inspired by Trajan's Column.

The Baroque in Sweden

During its Age of Greatness Sweden wanted to show its new standing in Europe. The House of Nobility in Stockholm, completed in the 1670s, has a characteristic Swedish double-pitched säteri roof. Nicodemus Tessin the Elder designed Drottningholm Palace and Kalmar Cathedral.

His son Nicodemus Tessin the Younger had studied with Bernini in Rome and in Paris. After the old Tre Kronor castle burnt down in 1697, he designed the new Royal Palace in Stockholm, a Roman palazzo in the middle of the city. The building work dragged on, and the palace was ready to move into only in the 1750s.

From Baroque to Rococo

Towards the middle of the 18th century the Baroque became lighter and more playful, especially in southern Germany and Austria. Churches such as Melk Abbey and later pilgrimage churches had bright interiors in white, pink and gold. This is the transition to Rococo, which is seen above all in interior decoration.

Baroque art and architecture are closely linked: ceiling paintings, sculpture and architecture work together. Do read the guide to Baroque art as well.

How to recognise it

Exercise

Who designed the colonnades around St Peter's Square in Rome?