Baroque and Rococo Architecture
In early Renaissance and even Mannerist architecture, elements were combined in rather static compositions; classic design implies a serene balance among the several components, and spaces locked into the geometry of perspective. Unsatisfied with this, the baroque architects of the 17th century deployed classic elements in more complex ways, so that the identity of these elements was masked, and space became more ambiguous and more activated. Baroque movement is understood as that of the observer experiencing the work, and of the observer’s eyes scanning an interior space or probing a long vista. Some of the later rococo works contain a richness of ornament, color, and imagery that, combined with a highly sophisticated handling of light, overwhelms the observer.
Italian Baroque Architecture
Italians were the pioneers of baroque; the best known was the architect-sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini, designer of the great oval plaza (begun 1656) in front of St. Peter’s. Francesco Borromini produced two masterpieces, both on an intimate scale, in Rome. San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (1638-41; facade completed 1667) distorts the dome on pendentives into a coffered ellipse to stretch the space into a longitudinal axis; its facade undulates, entablature and all. The plan of Sant’Ivo della Sapienza (begun 1642) is based on two intersecting equilateral triangles that produce six niches of alternating shapes; these shapes, defined by pilasters and ribs, rise through what would ordinarily be a dome, continuing the hexagonal concept from floor to lantern.
Guarino Guarini designed a church in Turin, San Lorenzo (1668-87), with eight intersecting ribs that offer interstices for letting in daylight. His even more astonishing Cappella della Santa Sindone (Chapel of the Holy Shroud, 1667-94), also in Turin, has a cone-shaped hexagonal dome created by six segmental arches rising in eight staggered tiers.
French Baroque Architecture
Seventeenth-century French architects also designed baroque churches, one of their greatest being part of Les Invalides, Paris (1676-1706), by Jules Hardouin-Mansart. The best French talent, however, was absorbed in the secular service of Louis XIV and his government. The Ch?teau de Vaux-le-Vicomte (1657-61) is a grandiose ensemble representing the collaboration of the architect Louis Le Vau, the painter Charles Lebrun, and the landscape architect Andr? Le N?tre. The Sun King was so impressed that he engaged these designers to rebuild the Ch?teau de Versailles on a truly regal scale. The Palace of Versailles became the center of government and was continuously enlarged between 1667 and 1710. Bernini submitted designs for enlarging the Louvre in Paris, but Claude Perrault was finally awarded that commission (executed 1667-79). French architecture of le grand si?cle lacks the exuberance of Italian baroque, but its designers achieved the epitome of elegance.
English Baroque Architecture
In England the rebuilding of London after the 1666 fire brought to prominence the many-talented Sir Christopher Wren, whose masterpiece is Saint Paul’s Cathedral (1675-1710). He also designed or influenced the design of many other English churches. Among other innovations, Wren introduced the single square tower belfry with tall spire that became the hallmark of church architecture in England and the United States.
Baroque Urban Design
Baroque thinking powerfully addressed the area of urban design. Michelangelo’s Campidoglio (Capitol, 1538-64) in Rome had already provided a model for the public square, and villas such as Vignola’s Villa Farnese (begun 1539) in Caprarola showed how these important buildings could extend axial ties into the townscape. Baroque church facades frequently had more to do with their accompanying piazzas than with the church interiors. Often, whole new towns were built on formal principles. Early in the 18th century Peter the Great brought Italian and French baroque architects to Russia to create Saint Petersburg. In the New World were built such large urban centers as Mexico City; Santiago, Chile; Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala; Philadelphia; Savannah, Georgia; and Washington, D.C. See Baroque Art and Architecture.
Rococo Architecture
When Louis XIV died (1715), changes in the artistic climate led to the exuberant rococo style. Once again the work of Italians-notably Guarini and Filippo Juvarra-provided the basis for a new thrust. The expression of royal grandeur has survived in Paris’s Place de la Concorde (begun 1753) by Jacques Ange Gabriel and the great axis and plazas (1751-59) by H?r? de Corny at Nancy. A more intimate and personal expression appears in Gabriel’s Petit Trianon (1762-64) at Versailles. Rococo came to full flower, however, in Bavaria and Austria. The Austrian Benedictine Abbey (1748-54) at Ottobeuren by Johann Michael Fischer is only one of a brilliant series of spectacular churches, monasteries, and palaces that includes Balthasar Neumann’s opulent Vierzehnheiligen (Church of the Fourteen Saints, 1743-72) near Bamberg, Germany, and the Amalienburg Pavilion (1734-39) by the Flemish-born Bavarian architect Fran?ois de Cuvilli?s in the park at Nymphenburg near Munich.
The many elaborate colonial churches found throughout Central and South America attest to the power and influence of the Roman Catholic church during baroque and rococo times. They include cathedrals in Mexico City, Guanajuato, and Oaxaca de Ju?rez, Mexico; Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala; Quito, Ecuador; Ouro Pr?to, Brazil; and Cuzco, Peru; as well as such northern missions as Sant’ Xavier del Bac in Tucson, Arizona, and the chain of missions on the California coast. The Spanish architect Jos? Churriguera developed an extremely elaborate decorative style that, transferred to Latin America and somewhat debased, was given the name Churrigueresque. See Latin American Art and Architecture.
Neoclassical Architecture
In many countries of northern Europe the elegance and dignity attainable through adherence to classic rules of composition retained appeal, while in central and southern Europe and Scandinavia, baroque and rococo ran their course. In England, the duke of Marlborough’s great Blenheim Palace, designed (1705) by Sir John Vanbrugh, emulated in rougher and reduced form the grandeur of Versailles.
A renewed interest in Palladio and his follower Inigo Jones emerged. Development of the resort city of Bath gave opportunities to John Wood and his son to apply Palladian classicism to the design of Queen’s Square (1728), the Circus (1754-70), and finally the great Royal Crescent (1767-75), in all of which the individual houses were made to conform to an encompassing classic order. Robert Adam popularized classicism, expressing it notably through delicate stucco ornamentation. Historical scholarship became more precise, and true Greek architecture-including such pure examples of Doric as the Parthenon-became known to architects through the 1762 publication by James Stuart and Nicholas Revett of Antiquities of Athens. These developments reinforced the grip of neoclassicism in England, and the resulting type of architecture became popularly known as the Georgian style.
In what was to become the northeastern United States, Peter Harrison and Samuel McIntire took their cues from English architects in their own version of Georgian architecture, which was called Federal after the United States won independence. In the Southeast, with an aristocracy predominantly rural, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Latrobe, and others derived their building style more directly from Palladio. Jefferson, whose early virtuosity had been demonstrated in Monticello (1770-84), was also moved by ancient Rome, and placed a version (1817-26) of the Pantheon at the head of his magnificent Lawn at the University of Virginia. See Neoclassical Art and Architecture.
The Industrial Age
The Industrial Revolution, which began in England about 1760, led to radical changes at every level of civilization throughout the world. The growth of heavy industry brought a flood of new building materials-such as cast iron, steel, and glass-with which architects and engineers devised structures hitherto undreamed of in function, size, and form.
Eclectic Revivals
Disenchantment with baroque, with rococo, and even with neo-Palladianism turned late 18th-century designers and patrons toward the original Greek and Roman prototypes. Selective borrowing from another time and place became fashionable. Its Greek aspect was particularly strong in the young United States from the early years of the 19th century until about 1850. New settlements were given Greek names-Syracuse, Ithaca, Troy-and Doric and Ionic columns, entablatures, and pediments, mostly transmuted into white-painted wood, were applied to public buildings and important town houses in the style called Greek Revival.
In France, the imperial cult of Napoleon steered architecture in a more Roman direction, as seen in the Church of the Madeleine (1807-42), a huge Roman temple in Paris. French architectural thought had been jolted at the turn of the century by the highly imaginative published projects of ?tienne-Louis Boull?e and Claude Nicholas Ledoux. These men were inspired by the massive aspects of Egyptian and Roman work, but their monumental (and often impractical) compositions were innovative, and they are admired today as visionary architects.
The most original architect in England at the time was Sir John Soane; the museum he built as his own London house (1812-13) still excites astonishment for its inventive romantic virtuosity. Late English neoclassicism came to be seen as elitist; thus, for the new Houses of Parliament the authorities insisted on Gothic or Tudor Revival. The appointed architect, Sir Charles Barry, was not a Gothic expert, but he called into consultation an architect who was-A. W. N. Pugin, who became responsible for the details of this vast monument (begun 1836). Pugin, in a short and contentious career, made a moral issue out of a return to the Gothic style. Other architects, however, felt free to select whatever elements from past cultures best fitted their programs-Gothic for Protestant churches, baroque for Roman Catholic churches, early Greek for banks, Palladian for institutions, early Renaissance for libraries, and Egyptian for cemeteries.
In the second half of the 19th century dislocations brought about by the Industrial Revolution became overwhelming. Many were shocked by the hideous new urban districts of factories and workers’ housing and by the deterioration of public taste among the newly rich. For the new modes of transportation, canals, tunnels, bridges, and railroad stations, architects were employed only to provide a cultural veneer.
The Crystal Palace (1850-51; reconstructed 1852-54) in London, a vast but ephemeral exhibition hall, was the work of Sir Joseph Paxton, a man who had learned how to put iron and glass together in the design of large greenhouses. It demonstrated a hitherto undreamed-of kind of spatial beauty, and in its carefully planned building process, which included prefabricated standard parts, it foreshadowed industrialized building and the widespread use of cast iron and steel. See Crystal Palace.
Also important in its innovative use of metal was the great tower (1887-89) of Gustave Alexandre Eiffel in Paris. In general, however, the most gifted architects of the time sought escape from their increasingly industrialized environment by further development of traditional themes and eclectic styles. Two contrasting but equally brilliantly conceived examples are Charles Garnier’s sumptuous Paris Op?ra (1861-75) and Henry Hobson Richardson’s grandiose Trinity Church (1872-77) in Boston.
Modern Architecture
At the turn of the century, designers appeared who refused to work in borrowed styles. Antoni Gaud? in Barcelona, Spain, was the most original; his sinuous Casa Mil? (1905-7) and the unfinished Iglesia di Sagrada Familia (Church of the Holy