Baroque Architecture - Precursors and Features of Baroque Architecture

Precursors and Features of Baroque Architecture

Michelangelo's late Roman buildings, particularly St. Peter's Basilica, may be considered precursors to Baroque architecture. His pupil Giacomo della Porta continued this work in Rome, particularly in the façade of the Jesuit church Il Gesù, which leads directly to the most important church façade of the early Baroque, Santa Susanna (1603), by Carlo Maderno

Distinctive features of Baroque architecture can include:

• In churches, broader naves and sometimes given oval forms
• Fragmentary or deliberately incomplete architectural elements
• dramatic use of light; either strong light-and-shade contrasts (chiaroscuro effects) as at the church of Weltenburg Abbey, or uniform lighting by means of several windows (e.g. church of Weingarten Abbey)
• opulent use of colour and ornaments (putti or figures made of wood (often gilded), plaster or stucco, marble or faux finishing)
• large-scale ceiling frescoes
• an external façade often characterized by a dramatic central projection
• the interior is a shell for painting, sculpture and stucco (especially in the late Baroque)
• illusory effects like trompe l'oeil(is an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear in three dimensions.) and the blending of painting and architecture
• pear-shaped domes in the Bavarian, Czech, Polish and Ukrainian Baroque
• Marian and Holy Trinity columns erected in Catholic countries, often in thanksgiving for ending a plague

• Elector's Palace in Trier, Germany

• Santa Susanna in Rome, Italy

• Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg, Russia

• Saints Peter and Paul Church in Krakow, Poland