Ever visited or seen pictures of the earlier churches with lavish designs, artworks, high columns and sculptures? well, you just may have been looking at a Baroque architectural work.
Baroque architecture first appeared in the late 16th and early 17th century in religious architecture in Rome as a means to counter the popular appeal of the Protestant Reformation. It was a reaction against the more severe and academic style of earlier churches, it aimed to inspire(or deceive many believed), the common people with the effects of surprise, emotion and awe.
To achieve this, it used a combination of contrast, movement and other dramatic effects, such as the use of painted ceilings that gave the illusion that one was looking up directly at the sky. The new style was particularly favoured by the new religious orders, including the Theatines and the Jesuits, who built new churches designed to attract and inspire a wide popular audience.
Church Reformation, The Printing Press And Baroque Architecture; An Intersection
Baroque architecture is famous for its detail, grandeur, and extravagance. But ever wondered why it looks like that? What inspired these artists and architects to make such elaborate and extravagant designs in the church?
Well, back in the 17th century, it was a plan by the Church which was supposed to stop you from reading too many books… Specifically religious books which criticised the Catholic Church.
In the early 16th century the Catholic Church was believed to be under attack but it wasn’t, rather it faced opposition from groups who agitated for the Reformation of the church and a return to the Biblical Church, a movement which was gaining popularity.
A German priest called Martin Luther published his 95 Theses – a systematic criticism of everything he believed was wrong with the Catholic Church.
That was in 1517, and it started a revolution. And he wasn’t alone. There was also the Frenchman John Calvin, fellow German Andreas Karlstadt, and the Swiss Ulrich Zwingli.
What united them was a belief that the Catholic Church had strayed too far from what the Bible said and what the teachings of Jesus were. But this was nothing new.
An Englishman called John Wycliffe had said the same thing in the 1300s, and a century after came the Czech reformer, Jan Hus.
Hus had many followers and they endured for a long time, but the movement he started never went beyond his homeland. So what changed? The moveable-type printing press.
It was first invented by Johannes Gutenberg in 1450 and within a few decades had become a fully established technology.
It allowed the ideas of Luther and others to reach a huge number of people – and fast. And that’s exactly what happened – the 95 Theses were published all over Europe.
Whereas previous reformers could be silenced by execution or the burning of relatively few copies of their works, the thousands of leaflets produced by printing presses were unstoppable. These reformers – the Protestants – focussed on the written word above all.
They believed the Bible contained everything necessary for Christians, and that the Catholic Church had added too much to the original scripture.
Their ideas caught on and thousands joined the Reformation. A central part of the Reformation was translating the Bible – previously only in Latin – into common languages, whether German, French, English or Spanish.
They wanted to bring religion to the people, thus circumventing the immense power of the Church. As for religious art, Luther didn’t mind it. But his contemporaries took a much more hardline view.
John Calvin, Andreas Karlstadt, and Ulrich Zwingli believed all religious art was idolatrous and sought to prohibit it. And what already existed, they said, should be destroyed. And so, for those Protestants who thought the written word was enough, a big part of their revolution involved the removal of art from churches.
Spurred on by the ideas of Calvin and Karlstadt, they tore down religious art in popular uprisings. The evidence of this iconoclastic movement has survived – statues were defaced, windows smashed, and effigies burned.
Religious art was, many of these reformers believed, all part of the corruption of Christianity. The 17th-century paintings of Pieter Jansz Saenredam show us what churches were like in the aftermath of this mass destruction of religious art, with whitewashed walls and bare interiors.
They had become humble places where words alone would suffice. The Catholic Church responded to Protestantism in several ways, not least with the creation of the Roman Inquisition in 1542, which was intended to root out and destroy heresy in Italy.
But they also started paying more attention to art as a religious and political force… Art has always been used to serve such ends, of course, but it was because of Protestant disapproval of religious art that the Catholic Church became so deeply aware of the role it played.
And so they started to exert highly conscious control over it – more so than ever before.
It was in this environment that Baroque architecture appeared in the late 1500s and early 1600s – a deeply Catholic style which stood in perfect opposition to the bare churches of the Protestants.
Here we can see a theological and cultural war played out in architecture. Whereas the churches of Calvin and Zwingli were essentially functional places for gathering, Baroque churches became palaces of aesthetic delight.
The rise of Protestantism had made the Catholic Church more deeply aware of its own identity – and so they doubled down on it.
A new religious order called the Society of Jesus – the Jesuits – was founded in 1540 as a direct response to the Reformation.
They were ardent supporters of the Pope and sought to reaffirm and defend Catholicism; Jesuit churches were the most Baroque of all: These were not churches of words, but of wonder.
Baroque architecture appealed to the emotions and senses, hence its abundance of art and detail.
All that gold and marble was supposed to convince believers with beauty rather than books.
Baroque architecture was rooted in the neoclassical style of the Renaissance – it used rounded arches, classical orders, pediments, and all the other trappings of Roman and Greek architecture.
Only with a new dynamism, decadence, scale, and lavishness never before seen. The works of the sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini epitomise all this.
It’s hard not to see the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, created in 1652, as a response – even indirectly – to those many statues defaced by iconoclasts in the previous century. Bernini also created St Peter’s Baldachin and the Chair of St Peter.
This style – with every surface covered in decadent ornamentation – couldn’t be further removed from the plain interiors of Protestant churches. Proof, if needed, of architecture’s power to send a message.
The Baroque was a total embrace of religious art, much more extravagant and opulent than anything which had existed before the Reformation.
All of which can be traced back to the revolutionary power of the printing press – Baroque architecture was a response to the written word.
Periods Of Baroque Architecture
Baroque architecture had three periods in which it flourished. They are:
1. The Early Baroque (1584–1625)
was largely dominated by the work of Roman architects, notably the Church of the Gesù by Giacomo della Porta(consecrated 1584) facade and colonnade of St. Peter’s Basilica by Carlo Maderno (completed 1612) and the lavish Barberini Palace interiors by Pietro da Cortona (1633–1639). Church of the Gesù by Giacomo della Porta (consecrated 1584), interior, and Santa Susanna (1603), by Carlo Maderno. In France, the Luxembourg Palace (1615–45) built by Salomon de Brosse for Marie de Medici was an early example of the style.
2. The High Baroque (1625–1675) produced major works in Rome by Pietro da Cortona, including the (Church of Santi Luca e Martina) (1635–50); by Francesco Borromini (San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane(1634–1646)); and by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (The colonnade of St. Peter’s Basilica) (1656–57). In Venice, High Baroque works included Santa Maria della Salute by Baldassare Longhena. Examples in France included the Pavillon de l’Horloge of the Louvre Palace by Jacques Lemercier (1624–1645), the Chapel of the Sorbonne by Jacques Lemercier (1626–35) and the Château de Maisons by François Mansart (1630–1651).
3. The Late Baroque (1675–1750) saw the style spread to all parts of Europe, and to the colonies of Spain and Portugal in the New World. National styles became more varied and distinct. The Late Baroque in France, under Louis XIV, was more ordered and classical; examples included the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles and the dome of Les Invalides. An especially ornate variant appeared in the early 18th century; it was first called Rocaille in France; then Rococo in Spain and Central Europe. The sculpted and painted decoration covered every space on the walls and ceiling. Its most celebrated architect was Balthasar Neumann, noted for the Basilica of the Fourteen Holy Helpers and the Würzburg Residence (1749–51).
