The Sicilian Baroque style came to fruition during a major surge of rebuilding following a massive earthquake in 1693. Previously, the Baroque style had been used on the island in a naïve and parochial manner, having evolved from hybrid native architecture rather than being derived from the great Baroque architects of Rome.

After the earthquake, local architects, many of them trained in Rome, were given plentiful opportunities to recreate the more sophisticated Baroque architecture that had become popular in mainland Italy; the work of these local architects and the new genre of architectural engravings that they pioneered, inspired more local architects to follow their lead.

Around 1730, Sicilian architects had developed a confidence in their use of the Baroque style. Their particular interpretation led to further evolution to a personalized and highly localized art form on the island. From the 1780s onwards, the style was gradually replaced by the newly-fashionable neoclassicism.

The highly decorative Sicilian Baroque period lasted barely fifty years, and perfectly reflected the social order of the island at a time when, nominally ruled by Spain, it was in fact governed by a wealthy and often extravagant aristocracy into whose hands ownership of the primarily agricultural economy was highly concentrated. Its Baroque architecture gives the island an architectural character that has lasted into the 21st century.

Notable architects of Sicilian Baroque

• Antonello Gagini
• Rosario Gagliardi
• Andrea Giganti
• Guarino Guarini
• Stefano Ittar
• Paolo Labisi
• Giulio Lasso
• Giuseppe Venanzio Marvuglia
• Tomasso Napoli
• Andrea Palma
• Vincenzo Sinatra
• Giovanni Battista Vaccarini

Links

• Sicilian Baroque – Wikipedia
• Photographs of some Sicilian Baroque churches
• The Sicilian Aristocracy

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The word Rococo is seen as a combination of the French rocaille, or stone garden (refering to arranging stones in natural forms like shells), and the Italian barocco, or Baroque style. Due to Rococo love of shell-like curves and focus on decorative arts, some critics used the term to derogatively imply that the style was frivolous or merely modish; when the term was first used in English in about 1836, it was a colloquialism meaning "old-fashioned".

However, since the mid 19th century, the term has been accepted by art historians. While there is still some debate about the historical significance of the style to art in general, Rococo is now widely recognized as a major period in the development of European art. Solitude Palace in Stuttgart and Chinese Palace in Oranienbaum, the Bavarian church of Wies and Sanssouci in Potsdam are examples of how Rococo made its way into European architecture.

A few anti-architectural hints rapidly evolved into full-blown Rococo at the end of the 1720s and began to affect interiors and decorative arts throughout Europe. The richest forms of German Rococo are in Catholic Germany. Rococo plasterwork by immigrant Italian-Swiss artists like Bagutti and Artari is a feature of houses by James Gibbs, and the Franchini brothers working in Ireland equaled anything that was attempted in England.

In general, Rococo is an entirely interior style, because the wealthy and aristocratic moved back to Paris from Versailles. Paris was already built up and so rather than engaging in major architectural additions, they simply renovated the interiors of the existing buildings.

Links

• Rococo – Wikipedia
• Rococo Examples

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Named for the Churriguera family of Salamanca, its origins can be traced back to an architect and sculptor named Alonso Cano, who designed the facade of the cathedral at Granada in 1667.

The development of the style passed through three phases. Between 1680 and 1720, the Churriguera popularized Guarino Guarini’s blend of Solomonic columns and composite order, known as "supreme order". Between 1720 and 1760, the Churrigueresque column, or estipite, in the shape of an inverted cone or obelisk, was established as a central element of ornamental decoration. The years from 1760 to 1780 saw a gradual shift of interest away from twisted movement and excessive ornamentation toward the Neoclassical balance and sobriety.

Among the highlights of the style, interiors of the Granada Charterhouse offer some of the most impressive combinations of space and light in 18th-century Europe. Integrating sculpture and architecture even more radically, Narciso Tomé achieved striking chiaroscuro effects in his Transparente for the Toledo Cathedral. Perhaps the most visually intoxicating form of the style was Mexican Churrigueresque, practised in the mid-18th century by Lorenzo Rodriguez, whose masterpiece is the Sagrario Metropolitano in Mexico City (1749-69).

A distant precursor (early 1400s) of the overwrought style can be found in the Lombard Charterhouse of Pavia; yet the sculpture-encrusted facade still has the Italianate appeal to rational narrative. The Churrigueresque style appeals to the proliferative geometry, and has a more likely ancestry in the Moorish architecture or Mudéjar architecture that still remained through south and central Spain. The interior stucco roofs of for example the Alcazar de Granada flourish with detail and ornamentation.

The style enjoyed a resurgence after Bertram Goodhue’s designs for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in Balboa Park, San Diego, California included Churrigueresque ornament.

Links

• Spanish architecture

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New architectural concerns for color, light and shade, sculptural values and intensity characterize the Baroque. But whereas the Renaissance drew on the wealth and power of the Italian courts, and was a blend of secular and religious forces, the Baroque was, initially at least, directly linked to the Counter-Reformation, a movement within the Catholic Church to reform itself in response to the Protestant Reformation. The Council of Trent (1545–1563) is usually given as the beginning of the Counter-Reformation.

The Baroque played into the demand for an architecture that was on the one hand more accessible to the emotions and, on the other hand, a visible statement of the wealth and power of the Church. The new style manifested itself in particular in the context of new religious orders, like the Theatines and the Jesuits, which aimed to improve popular piety.

By the middle of the 17th century, the Baroque style had found its secular expression in the form of grand palaces, first in France—as in the Château de Maisons (1642) near Paris by François Mansart—and then throughout Europe.

Important features of Baroque architecture include:

• Long, narrow naves are replaced by broader, occasionally circular forms
• Dramatic use of light, either strong light-and-shade contrasts, chiaroscuro effects (e.g. church of Weltenburg Abbey), or uniform lighting by means of several windows (e.g. church of Weingarten Abbey)
  opulent use of ornaments (puttos made of wood (often gilded), plaster or stucco, marble or faux finishing)
• Large-scale ceiling frescoes
• External façade is often characterized by a dramatic central projection
• Interior is often no more than a shell for painting and sculpture (especially in the late Baroque)
• Illusory effects like trompe l’oeil and the blending of painting and architecture
• In the Bavarian, Czech, Polish, and Ukrainian Baroque, pear domes are ubiquitous
  Marian and Holy Trinity columns are erected in Catholic countries, often in thanksgiving for ending a plague

Links

• List of examples of typical Baroque architecture

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