Transcript PowerPoint Presentation - The Baroque in Italy and

The Baroque in Italy and
Classicism in France
Architecture and Art
in the Service of Church and State in
the 17th Century
The Church of Il Gesu, Mother
Church of the Jesuit Order,
signals a new era in Italian
architecture and its relationship
to the Roman Catholic Church.
Giacomo Vignola
(1568-1576)
Giacomo della Porta
As a symbol of the Counter-Reformation,
the Gesu solution for façade and interior
provides a flexible “corporate” image for
the Church in small and large structures
alike.
Sta. Susanna by Carlo
Maderno, 1597-1603
St. Peter’s Basilica,
façade & nave by Carlo
Maderno, 1606-12
St. Peter’s Basilica, nave
Dome and Altar of St. Peter
Gianlorenzo Bernini
At St. Peter’s
St. Longinus
The Baldacchino
(or Ciborium)
The High Altar with the Doctors of the Church and the Cathedra Petri
Bernini’s symbolism of the
Church Triumphant and
the new Rome: the
vivification of the main
processional axis
The Piazza and Colonnade: the Church
embraces the world
The power of the Church as an
institution takes expression in the
new churches of the 17th century.
Along with it other kinds of forces
also appear, including dynamism
(energy and motion), spatial
fluidity, and the destruction of
limits and boundaries leading to
the notion of “continuum.”
Ss. Luca e Martina, by Pietro da
Cortona, 1634-69
Energy can be perceived in the
nervous perimeter established by
the entablature over the wall
columns. The interior becomes
part of a continuum that is not
clearly bounded in the layered
wall system. The interior is no
longer a container delimited by
wall planes but a locus of forces.
San Carlo alle
Quattro Fontane
(St. Charles at the
Four Fountains)
by Borromini,
1634ff
The dynamic energies of Italian
Baroque architecture were explored
by many designers and artists.
St. Ivo della Sapienza by Francesco
Borromini, 1642ff
Chapel of the Holy Shroud,
Turin by Guarino Guarnini,
1667ff
San Lorenzo, Turin, by Guarino
Guarnini, 1668-80
Although the Renaissance was a 15th-century phenomenon in Italy,
it reached the rest of Europe, including France, mainly in the 16th
century. The Square Court of the Louvre, built in 1546, brought
French architecture to the point Italian architecture had reached
theoretically 100 years earlier in Alberti’s design for the Palazzo
Rucellai in Florence (1446).
On the other hand, much contact existed between Italian artists and
French patrons, even at the level of royal commissions. Francis I
invited Leonardo da Vinci to work for him at the Chateau of
Fontainebleau where Leonardo died. Other Italian artists,
especially practitioners of the Mannerist style also worked in
France, even at Fontainebleau for the king.
By the 17th century, French art and architecture had absorbed many
of the lessons of the Renaissance revival but without losing a
distinctive gallic quality based on tradition as well as the
pragmatics of climate and taste.
Square Court of the Louvre
by Pierre Lescot, 1546
By the 17th century, French architecture had reached a level of
maturity that exceeded mere imitation of Italian models. An
outstanding example of that stylistic level is the Chateau Vauxle-Vicomte, collaboration by three of the best French designers.
Characteristically, the French
Chateau retained steeply pitched
roofs and tall windows for climatic
reasons and the Court of Honor for
cultural reasons.
Court of Honor
Plan and Garden façade, 16571661
For Nicolas Fouquet,
Superintendent of Finance under
Louis XIV
Architect:
Louis LeVau
Garden architect:
Andre LeNotre
Interior designer:
Charles Lebrun
Central pavilion of the garden façade
and interior of the garden Salon
Bedroom for Louis XIV
Project for the East
Façade of the Louvre
by Louis LeVau, 1664
Project for the East Façade by Gianlorenzo Bernini, 1665
Bernini’s last
solution for the
East Façade, 1666
East Façade design and
completed construction
by Louis Le Vau,
Charles Lebrun, and
Claude Perrault, 166770
Portraits of Louis XIV by Bernini
The equestrian portrait is in bozzetto
(or model) form