The difference between Baroque and Rococo: in painting, architecture and furniture

The biggest difference between Baroque and Rococo is weight. The Baroque (c. 1600–1720) is monumental, symmetrical and dramatic, made for churches and royal power. Rococo (c. 1720–1770) grew out of it but is light, bright and asymmetrical, with pastel colours, shell ornament and intimate rooms. The Baroque wants to persuade; Rococo wants to please.

Facts

Same roots, different temperaments

Rococo is not the opposite of the Baroque but a continuation of it on a smaller scale. Both use curves, gilding, movement and an abundance of ornament. The difference lies in what they want. The Baroque arose in Rome around 1600, when the Catholic Church wanted an art that would grip the faithful, and then spread to the courts of princes. It is built to impress from a distance: large formats, strong symmetry and light that falls dramatically.

Rococo took shape in Paris after the death of Louis XIV in 1715. For a time the court left the strict ceremonial of Versailles, and the nobility furnished town houses with salons for conversation, music and card games. Art moved from the public to the private sphere. The ornament became smaller, the colours lighter and the symmetry broke up. Where the Baroque speaks to a congregation or a whole nation, Rococo speaks to a circle of friends.

The word Rococo is a jocular coinage from rocaille, the shell and rock forms that adorned the grottoes of Baroque gardens, and it came into use around 1800, often as a term of disparagement. By then the style was already out of fashion.

In painting: gravity against play

Baroque painting deals with grand subjects. Rembrandt's The Night Watch of 1642 is a vast group of armed citizens in motion, where the light picks figures out of deep darkness. Velázquez's Las Meninas gives the royal family a riddle instead of an ordinary group portrait. In Caravaggio and Rubens the sacred is a life-size drama, with diagonals and strong contrasts of light and shadow.

Rococo painting is smaller in format and lighter in mood. Antoine Watteau's The Embarkation for Cythera of 1717 shows elegantly dressed couples in a dreamlike landscape, on their way to the island of the goddess of love. The picture gave its name to a new genre, the fête galante, a scene of social life out of doors. Jean-Honoré Fragonard's The Swing of 1767 is a flirtation in pink and green, and François Boucher painted goddesses with pearly, luminous skin. The dramatic darkness is gone; the light is even and the colours bright.

In Sweden the shift shows in portraiture. The portraits of the Age of Great Power by David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl are solemn and heavy, whereas Alexander Roslin's The Lady with the Veil of 1768 is intimate, shimmering and full of surfaces you want to touch.

In architecture: outside against inside

Baroque buildings are large and symmetrical, with a clear central axis, powerful pilasters and often a dome. Versailles became the model for palaces across Europe, and in Sweden Drottningholm Palace and the Royal Palace in Stockholm were built in the same spirit. The façade is the most important part of the building; it is meant to be seen and to order the landscape around it.

Rococo is seldom visible on the outside. It lives in the interiors: white and pale walls with gilded framework that winds asymmetrically, mirrors that dissolve the wall and ceilings where the ornament merges into paintings. The best-known example is the hunting lodge Amalienburg in the park of Nymphenburg in Munich, designed by François de Cuvilliés in the 1730s, with a hall of mirrors in silver against pale blue. In southern Germany, churches too were given exuberant Rococo interiors, such as the Wieskirche. In Sweden, the Chinese Pavilion at Drottningholm is a pleasure palace in the Rococo taste for Chinese objects.

The architecture section describes both styles with their characteristic features and the most common confusions: Baroque and Rococo. Also read the guide to Baroque architecture.

In furniture: straight and heavy against curved and light

Furniture is often the easiest way to tell the styles apart. Baroque furniture is heavy and symmetrical. The legs are straight or turned like balusters, often joined by X-shaped stretchers, and the surfaces are filled with carving, gilding or marquetry. Louis XIV's cabinetmaker André-Charles Boulle gave his name to a technique using tortoiseshell and brass; see a Boulle cabinet in the design section.

Rococo furniture stands on curved legs, known as cabriole legs, that end in a small foot. The front of the chest of drawers bulges outwards, in the bombé form, and the gilt-bronze mounts wind like seaweed and shells. Furniture became smaller and more varied: little tables for writing and coffee, comfortable armchairs and secretaires. Compare the Rococo chest of drawers with the Baroque cabinet, and read the guide to Rococo furniture and the design history of Baroque and Rococo.

How to tell them apart in practice

Start with symmetry. If the picture, façade or piece of furniture is built around a clear centre line, with the same form on both sides, it is probably Baroque. If the ornaments are deliberately lopsided, so that a shell or a wave pulls to one side, it is Rococo. Then look at the colour: deep red, dark brown and gold point towards the Baroque; pale blue, pink, mint green and white towards Rococo.

Ask, too, who the work is addressing. The Baroque addresses many people, at a distance: a congregation, a court, a city. Rococo addresses a few, at close quarters. The boundary is nonetheless fluid. The late Baroque in Germany and Austria and early Rococo merge into one another, and many buildings have a Baroque exterior and a Rococo interior.

In the app you can place the works side by side in Compare and see The Night Watch and The Embarkation for Cythera together. The standalone guides to the Baroque and Rococo go deeper into each style, and the Swedish history is covered under the Age of Great Power and the Age of Liberty.

How to tell them apart

Exercise

A chest of drawers has curved legs and a front that bulges outwards, and its mounts wind asymmetrically. Which style is it?