HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE // BAROQUE // #1 - introduction

The style that followed the Renaissance is commonly called Baroque. But while it's easy, by clear signs, to describe previous styles, Baroque looks very different. 

It is strange that many of the labels which we use to indicate a style were originally derogatory terms. The "Gothic" word was first used by the Italian Renaissance art critics to indicate a style that they considered barbaric and believed imported into Italy by the Goths, the destroyers of the Roman Empire and looters of its cities. The word "Mannerism" still retains many of its original significance of affectation and empty imitation, which were the accusations by critics of the seventeenth century.

The "Baroque" term was used later by critics who, against seventeenth-century trends, wanted to emphasize the ridiculous. 

Baroque takes on the meaning of absurd and grotesque, and was used by those who supported the view that the classical forms should only be used or combined in the methods adopted by the Greeks or by the Romans. 

The Baroque word actually comes from the Portuguese, "irregular river stone":  escapes, in fact, from the classic rules, adopted for two centuries. 

An important work that can be useful to describe the innovation of the Baroque is the "Go for baroque" painting by Roy Lichtenstein, the late '70s. The title comes from a review of the New York Times by the historian Francis Haskell of a writing of Paolo Portoghesi "Baroque Rome".  The title of the painting, in american, sounds like "Go for broke", ie cracking, breaking from the academic tradition precisely.

Perhaps Giulio Romano, first, became the spokesman of this break from the classic rules described before in the Treaty of Serlio (ca. 1528) and then by Vignola (ca. 1562) by painting, in 1531, "The fall of the giants" in the Palazzo Te.

For these critics overlook the strict rules of ancient architecture seemed a reprehensible lack of taste, so they stigmatized this style as baroque.