ARCHITECTURE

[Samanta]

Thank you! Pictures are my favorite part because they show what you read and make it real for you.

[Samanta]

Baroque architecture - Italian Baroque architecture - Southern Italy


The Baroque Palace of Caserta in Caserta, near Naples.

Naples

The last phase of Baroque architecture in Italy is exemplified by Luigi Vanvitelli's Caserta Palace, reputedly the largest building erected in Europe in the 18th century. Indebted to contemporary French and Spanish models, the palace is skillfully related to the landscape. At Naples and Caserta, Vanvitelli practiced a sober classicizing academic style, with equal attention to aesthetics and engineering, a style that would make an easy transition to Neoclassicism.

Sicily

Sicilian Baroque is the distinctive form of Baroque architecture that took hold on the island of Sicily, off the southern coast of Italy, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The style is recognizable not only by its typical Baroque curves and flourishes, but also by its grinning masks and putti and a particular flamboyance that has given Sicily a unique architectural identity.

The Sicilian Baroque style came to fruition during a major surge of rebuilding following a massive earthquake in 1693. Previously, the Baroque style had been used on the island in a naïve and parochial manner, having evolved from hybrid native architecture rather than being derived from the great Baroque architects of Rome. After the earthquake, local architects, many of them trained in Rome, were given plentiful opportunities to recreate the more sophisticated Baroque architecture that had become popular in mainland Italy; the work of these local architects — and the new genre of architectural engravings that they pioneered — inspired more local architects to follow their lead. Around 1730, Sicilian architects had developed a confidence in their use of the Baroque style. Their particular interpretation led to further evolution to a personalised and highly localised art form on the island. From the 1780s onwards, the style was gradually replaced by the newly-fashionable neoclassicism.


The baroque Duomo of San Giorgio in Ragusa, Italy, on the island of Sicily.

The highly decorative Sicilian Baroque period lasted barely fifty years, and perfectly reflected the social order of the island at a time when, nominally ruled by Spain, it was in fact governed by a wealthy and often extravagant aristocracy into whose hands ownership of the primarily agricultural economy was highly concentrated. Its Baroque architecture gives the island an architectural character that has lasted into the 21st century (Source: Wikipedia)

[Jill]

I love the photos that you use in this folder, Samanta. It brings history to life!!

[Samanta]

Baroque architecture - Italian Baroque architecture - Northern Italy


Basilica di Superga near Turin by Filippo Juvarra

In the north of Italy, the monarchs from the House of Savoy were particularly receptive to the new style. They employed a brilliant triad of architects—Guarino Guarini, Filippo Juvarra, and Bernardo Vittone—to illustrate the grandiose political ambitions and the newly acquired royal status of their dynasty.

Guarini was a peripatetic monk who combined many traditions (including that of Gothic architecture) to create irregular structures remarkable for their oval columns and unconventional façades. Building upon the findings of contemporary geometry and stereometry, Guarini elaborated the concept of architectura obliqua, which approximated Borromini's style in both theoretical and structural audacity. Guarini's Palazzo Carignano (1679) may have been the most flamboyant application of the Baroque style to the design of a private house in the 17th century.

Fluid forms, weightless details, and the airy prospects of Juvarra's architecture anticipated the art of Rococo. Although his practice ranged well beyond Turin, Juvarra's most arresting designs were created for Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia. The visual impact of his Basilica di Superga (1717) derives from its soaring roof-line and masterful placement on a hill above Turin. The rustic ambiance encouraged a freer articulation of architectural form at the royal hunting lodge of the Palazzina di Stupinigi (1729). Juvarra finished his short but eventful career in Madrid, where he worked on the royal palaces at La Granja and Aranjuez.

Among the many who were profoundly influenced by the brilliance and diversity of Juvarra and Guarini, none was more important than Bernardo Vittone. This Piedmontese architect is remembered for an outcrop of flamboyant Rococo churches, quatrefoil in plan and delicate in detailing. His sophisticated designs often feature multiple vaults, structures within structures and domes within domes. (Source: Wikipedia)

[Samanta]

Baroque architecture - Maltese Baroque architecture


Auberge de Castille, designed by Andrea Belli in 1741–45

Maltese Baroque architecture is the form of Baroque architecture that developed in Malta during the 17th and 18th centuries, when the islands were under the rule of the Order of St. John. The Baroque style was introduced in Malta in the early 17th century, possibly by the Bolognese engineer Bontadino de Bontadini during the construction of the Wignacourt Aqueduct. The style became popular in the mid to late 17th century, and it reached its peak during the 18th century, when monumental Baroque structures such as Auberge de Castille were constructed.

The Baroque style began to be replaced by neoclassical architecture and other styles in the early 19th century, when Malta was under British rule. Despite this, Baroque elements continued to influence traditional Maltese architecture. Many churches continued to the built in the Baroque style throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and to a lesser extent in the 21st century.


The High Baroque altar of Saint John's Co-Cathedral

Source: Wikipedia

by Paul Rantao (no photo)
by Quentin Hughes (no photo)

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Thank you for your adds Samanta

[Samanta]

Baroque architecture - Spanish Baroque architecture


Royal Palace of Madrid (1738-1892)

As Italian Baroque influences penetrated across the Pyrenees, they gradually superseded in popularity the restrained classicizing approach of Juan de Herrera, which had been in vogue since the late sixteenth century. As early as 1667, the facades of Granada Cathedral (by Alonso Cano) and Jaén Cathedral (by Eufrasio López de Rojas) suggest the artists' fluency in interpreting traditional motifs of Spanish cathedral architecture in the Baroque aesthetic idiom.

In Madrid, a vernacular Baroque with its roots in Herrerian and in traditional brick construction was developed in the Plaza Mayor and in the Royal Palace of El Buen Retiro, which was destroyed during the French invasion by Napoleon's troops. Its gardens remain as El Retiro park. This sober brick Baroque of the 17th century is still well represented in the streets of the capital in palaces and squares.


Plaza Mayor in Salamanca (1729-1755), Alberto and Manuel de Lara Churriguera. Andrés Garcia de Quiñones designed the city Hall

n contrast to the art of Northern Europe, the Spanish art of the period appealed to the emotions rather than seeking to please the intellect. The Churriguera family, which specialized in designing altars and retables, revolted against the sobriety of the Herreresque classicism and promoted an intricate, exaggerated, almost capricious style of surface decoration known as the Churrigueresque. Within half a century, they transformed Salamanca into an exemplary Churrigueresque city.

The development of the style passed through three phases. Between 1680 and 1720, the Churriguera popularized Guarini's blend of Solomonic columns and composite order, known as the "supreme order". Between 1720 and 1760, the Churrigueresque column, or estipite, in the shape of an inverted cone or obelisk, was established as a central element of ornamental decoration. The years from 1760 to 1780 saw a gradual shift of interest away from the twisted movement and excessive ornamentation toward a neoclassical balance and sobriety.


Palace of San Telmo (1681-1796), by Leonardo de Figueroa

Three of the most eye-catching creations of Spanish Baroque are the energetic facades of the University of Valladolid (Diego Tome and Fray Pedro de la Visitación, 1719), the western façade (or Fachada del Obradoiro) of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela (Fernando de Casas y Novoa, 1750) and Hospicio de San Fernando in Madrid (Pedro de Ribera, 1722), whose curvilinear extravagance seems to herald Antonio Gaudí and Art Nouveau. In this case, as in many others, the design involves a play of tectonic and decorative elements with little relation to structure and function. The focus of the florid ornamentation is an elaborately sculptured surround to the main doorway. If we remove the intricate maze of broken pediments, undulating cornices, stucco shells, inverted tapers and garlands from the rather plain wall it is set against, the building's form would not be affected in the slightest. However, Churrigueresque baroque offered some of the most impressive combinations of space and light with buildings like Granada Charterhouse (sacristy by Francisco Hurtado Izquierdo), considered to be the apotheosis of Churrigueresque styles applied to interior spaces, or the Transparente of the Cathedral of Toledo, by Narciso Tomé, where sculpture and architecture are integrated to achieve notable light dramatic effects.

The Royal Palace of Madrid and the interventions of Paseo del Prado (Salón del Prado and Alcalá Doorgate) in the same city, deserve special mention. They were constructed in a sober Baroque international style, often mistaken for neoclassical, by the kings Philip V and Charles III. The Royal Palaces of La Granja de San Ildefonso, in Segovia, and Aranjuez, in Madrid, are good examples of baroque integration of architecture and gardening, with noticeable French influence (La Granja is known as the Spanish Versailles), but with local spatial conceptions which in some ways display the heritage of the Moorish occupation.


Cathedral Church of Saint Mary in Murcia. Main facade by Jaime Bort

In the richest imperial province of 17th-century Spain, Flanders, florid decorative detailing was more tightly knit to the structure, thus precluding concerns of superfluity. A remarkable convergence of Spanish, French and Dutch Baroque aesthetics may be seen in the Abbey of Averbode (1667). Another characteristic example is the Church of St. Michel at Louvain (1650–70), with its exuberant two-storey facade, clusters of half-columns, and the complex aggregation of French-inspired sculptural detailing.

Six decades later, the architect Jaime Bort y Meliá, was the first to introduce Rococo to Spain (Cathedral of Murcia, west facade, 1733). The greatest practitioner of the Spanish Rococo style was a native master, Ventura Rodríguez, responsible for the dazzling interior of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar in Zaragoza (1750). (Source: Wikipedia)

[Jim]

Good morning!

I would like to add a book that was part of a challenge in another Goodreads group in 2015. Given a list of words, you had to find and read books whose titles contained those words (one word per title). One of those words was architecture, for which I picked:

Architecture: Choice or Fate: Travel Size Series by Leon Krier.

Jim

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Jim thank you for your add - you were very close with the standard format you had all of the part and more (smile) - we just add the bookcover which is usually available - then the word by - then the author's photo and finally the author's link.

by Leon Krier

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Baroque Church


Façade of the Church of the Gesù, the first truly Baroque façade


Cupola frescoes of the Gesù by Gaulli

Baroque architecture is the building style of the Baroque era, begun in late 16th-century Italy, that took the Roman vocabulary of Renaissance architecture and used it in a new rhetorical and theatrical fashion, often to express the triumph of the Catholic Church. It was characterized by new explorations of form, light and shadow, and dramatic intensity. Common features of Baroque architecture included gigantism of proportions; a large open central space where everyone could see the altar; twisting columns, theatrical effects, including light coming from a cupola above; dramatic interior effects created with bronze and gilding; clusters of sculpted angels and other figures high overhead; and an extensive use of trompe-l'oeil, also called "quadratura," with painted architectural details and figures on the walls and ceiling, to increase the dramatic and theatrical effect.

Remainder of article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque...

Source: Wikipedia

More:
https://web.archive.org/web/201603250...

by Rolf Toman (no photo)

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

A History of Western Architecture

by David Watkin

Synopsis:

This highly acclaimed book, now available for the first time in the United States in simultaneous paperback and hardcover editions, is particularly valuable for its unique approach to architectural history:

The author explores structures not as separate, neatly labeled museum pieces but as part of a vital, living continuity through the ages.

Beginning with the classical origins of Western architecture and coming right up to the new millennium, the book discusses every major milestone in the development of Western architecture in probing detail.

Features of the revised edition include expanded chapters on Mesopotamian and Egyptian architecture, made possible by important recent archeological findings; and urban planning sections added throughout the book.

The latter will be of special value to the growing numbers of readers who take an active interest in the relationship between a city’s buildings and the community residents who live and work in them.

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Morality and Architecture: The Development of a Theme in Architectural History and Theory from the Gothic Revival to the Modern Movement

by David Watkin

Synopsis:

Morality and architecture has been described variously as brave, mischievous, brilliant, reactionary, and a 'time bomb'. It is undoubtedly controversial--a frank and at times fearlessly polemical exposure of progressivist ideology in architectural criticism.

Review:

"His book Morality and Architecture says that we mustn’t think in terms of the 1920s and 30s idea of there being ‘good’ architecture and ‘bad’. His basic thesis is that you can disconnect morality from architecture. Therefore, he likes the modern architects who are more playful and maybe post-modernism was something he would appreciate. That was a critique of the rather serious and austere work of the international modern movement, of which he has some criticisms." -- John Harrison to Benedict King on Five Books

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Women, Power and Art and Other Essays

by Linda Nochlin

Synopsis:

Women, Art, and Power—seven landmark essays on women artists and women in art history—brings together the work of almost twenty years of scholarship and speculation.

More:
https://fivebooks.com/best-books/art-...

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Representing Women

by Linda Nochlin

Synopsis:

Women - as warriors, workers, mothers, sensual women, even absent mothers - haunt 19th- and 20th-century Western painting.

This text brings together Linda Nochlin's most important and pioneering writings on the subject, as she considers work by Miller, Delacroix, Courbet, Degas, Seurat, Cassatt and Kollwitz, among many others.

In her partly autobiographical, extended introduction, she argues for the honest virtues of an art history which rejects methodological assumptions, and for art historians who investigate the work before their eyes while focusing on its subject matter, informed by a sensitivity to its feminist spirit.