Baroque Architecture By Country

The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including the Iberian Peninsula it continued, together with new styles, until the first decade of the 19th century. It followed Renaissance art and Mannerism and preceded the Rococo (in the past often referred to as "late Baroque") and Neoclassical styles. It was encouraged by the Catholic Church as a means to counter the simplicity and austerity of Protestant architecture, art, and music, though Lutheran Baroque art developed in parts of Europe as well.

The Baroque style used contrast, movement, exuberant detail, deep colour, grandeur, and surprise to achieve a sense of awe. The style began at the start of the 17th century in Rome, then spread rapidly to France, northern Italy, Spain, and Portugal, then to Austria, southern Germany, and Russia. By the 1730s, it had evolved into an even more flamboyant style, called ''rocaille'' or ''Rococo'', which appeared in France and Central Europe until the mid to late 18th century.

In the decorative arts, the style employs plentiful and intricate ornamentation. The departure from Renaissance classicism has its own ways in each country. But a general feature is that everywhere the starting point is the ornamental elements introduced by the Renaissance. The classical repertoire is crowded, dense, overlapping, loaded, in order to provoke shock effects. New motifs introduced by Baroque are: the cartouche, trophies and weapons, baskets of fruit or flowers, and others, made in marquetry, stucco, or carved.

Origin of the word

The English word ''baroque'' comes directly from the French. Some scholars state that the French word originated from the Portuguese term ''barroco'' ("a flawed pearl"), pointing to the Latin ''verruca'', ("wart"), or to a word with the suffix ''-ǒccu'' (common in pre-Roman Iberia). Other sources suggest a Medieval Latin term used in logic, , as the most likely source.Robert Hudson Vincent, Modern Language Quarterly, Volume 80, Issue 3 (September 2019)

In the 16th century, the Medieval Latin word ''baroco'' moved beyond scholastic logic and came into use to characterise anything that seemed absurdly complex. The French philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) associated the term ''baroco'' with "Bizarre and uselessly complicated." Other early sources associate ''baroco'' with magic, complexity, confusion, and excess.

The word ''baroque'' was also associated with irregular pearls before the 18th century. The French ''baroque'' and Portuguese ''barroco'' were terms often associated with jewelry. An example from 1531 uses the term to describe pearls in an inventory of Charles V of France's treasures. Later, the word appears in a 1694 edition of ''Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française,'' which describes ''baroque'' as "only used for pearls that are imperfectly round." A 1728 Portuguese dictionary similarly describes ''barroco'' as relating to a "coarse and uneven pearl".

An alternative derivation of the word ''baroque'' points to the name of the Italian painter Federico Barocci (1528–1612).

In the 18th century, the term began to be used to describe music, and not in a flattering way. In an anonymous satirical review of the première of Jean-Philippe Rameau's ''Hippolyte et Aricie'' in October 1733, which was printed in the ''Mercure de France'' in May 1734, the critic wrote that the novelty in this opera was "du barocque", complaining that the music lacked coherent melody, was unsparing with dissonances, constantly changed key and meter, and speedily ran through every compositional device.

In 1762, ''Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française'' recorded that the term could figuratively describe something "irregular, bizarre or unequal".

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was a musician and composer as well as a philosopher, wrote in 1768 in the ''Encyclopédie'': "Baroque music is that in which the harmony is confused, and loaded with modulations and dissonances. The singing is harsh and unnatural, the intonation difficult, and the movement limited. It appears that term comes from the word 'baroco' used by logicians."''Encyclopedie''; ''Lettre sur la Musique Française'' under the direction of Denis Diderot

In 1788, Quatremère de Quincy defined the term in the ''Encyclopédie Méthodique'' as "an architectural style that is highly adorned and tormented".

The French terms ''style baroque'' and ''musique baroque'' appeared in ''Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française'' in 1835''.'' By the mid-19th century, art critics and historians had adopted the term "baroque" as a way to ridicule post-Renaissance art. This was the sense of the word as used in 1855 by the leading art historian Jacob Burckhardt, who wrote that baroque artists "despised and abused detail" because they lacked "respect for tradition".

In 1888, the art historian Heinrich Wölfflin