Baroque (Part Four).

Text and Illustrations from Wikipedia - the free encyclopaedia,
unless otherwise stated.

Interior of the Church of The Virgin, Birnau, Germany.

Photo: 2005.

Source: Photographed by AndreasPraefcke.

Author: AndreasPraefcke.

(Wikimedia Commons)

Two of the most eye-catching creations of Spanish Baroque are the energetic façades of the University of Valladolid (Diego Tomé, 1719) and Hospicio de San Fernando in Madrid (Pedro de Ribera, 1722), whose curvilinear extravagance seems to herald Antonio Gaudí and Art Nouveau. In this case, as in many others, the design involves a play of tectonic and decorative elements with little relation to structure and function. The focus of the florid ornamentation is an elaborately sculptured surround to a main doorway. If we remove the intricate maze of broken pediments, undulating cornices, stucco shells, inverted tapers, and garlands from the rather plain wall it is set against, the building's form would not be affected in the slightest.

Baroque Music of Bologna, Italy.

Available on YouTube at

http://youtu.be/1a0yDlIvQSw.

The combination of the Native American and Moorish decorative influences, with an extremely expressive interpretation of the Churrigueresque idiom, may account for the full-bodied and varied character of the Baroque in the American colonies of Spain. Even more than its Spanish counterpart, American Baroque developed as a style of stucco decoration. Twin-towered façades of many American Cathedrals of the 17th-Century had mediaeval roots and the full-fledged Baroque did not appear until 1664, when a Jesuit shrine,  on Plaza des Armas, in Cusco, was built. Even then, the new style hardly affected the structure of Churches.

Mexico City Cathedral, as seen from Madero Street.

Photo: December 2006.

Source: Own work.

Author: Juan Fernando Ibarra.

(Wikimedia Commons)

English: Metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary.

Mexico City Cathedral, with the Metropolitan Tabernacle to the right.

Español: Catedral Metropolitana de la Asunción de María.

Catedral Metropolitana de la Ciudad de México, 

el templo principal de la Arquidiócesis Primada de México.

Architect: Lorenzo Rodriguez.

Photo: 2005.

Source: Carlos Martínez Blando.

Author: Carlos Martínez Blando.

(Wikimedia Commons)

To the North, the richest Province of 18th-Century New Spain - Mexico - produced some fantastically extravagant and visually frenetic architecture known as Mexican Churrigueresque. This ultra-Baroque approach culminates in the works of Lorenzo Rodriguez, whose masterpiece is the Sagrario Metropolitano in Mexico City. Other fine examples of the style may be found in remote silver-mining towns. For instance, the Sanctuary at Ocotlán (begun in 1745) is a top-notch Baroque Cathedral, surfaced in bright red tiles, which contrast delightfully with a plethora of compressed ornament lavishly applied to the main entrance and the slender flanking towers.

English: The Basilica of Ocotlán, Mexico.

Español: Panoramica de la Basílica de Ocotlán, Mexico.

Source: Own work.

Author: This file is lacking author information.

(Wikimedia Commons)

The true capital of Mexican Baroque is Puebla, where a ready supply of hand-painted ceramics (talavera),  and vernacular grey stone, led to its evolving further into a personalised and highly-localised art form with a pronounced Indian flavour. There are about sixty Churches whose façades and Domes display glazed tiles of many colours, often arranged in Arabic designs. The interiors are densely saturated with elaborate gold leaf ornamentation. In the 18th-Century, local artisans developed a distinctive brand of white stucco decoration, named "alfenique" after a Pueblan candy made from egg whites and sugar.

English: Cathedral of Puebla, Mexico.

Español: Catedral de Puebla, Mexico.

Photo: 20 December 2007.

Source: Own work.

Author: Israel Espinosa López: Zeisseon.

(Wikimedia Commons)

The Peruvian Baroque was particularly lavish, as evidenced by the Monastery of San Francisco at Lima (1673). While the rural Baroque of the Jesuit Block and Estancias of Córdoba in Córdoba, Argentina, followed the model of Il Gesu, provincial "mestizo" (cross-bred) styles emerged in Arequipa, Potosí, and La Paz. In the 18th-Century, architects of the region turned for inspiration to the Mudéjar art of mediaeval Spain. The Late-Baroque type of Peruvian façade first appears in the Church of Our Lady of La Merced, in Lima. Similarly, the Church of La Compañia, in Quito, suggests a carved Altarpiece with its richly sculpted façade and a surfeit of spiral salomónica.

Notwithstanding a prodigality of sensually-rich surface decoration associated with Baroque architecture of the Iberian Peninsula, the Royal Courts of Madrid and Lisbon generally favoured a more sober architectural vocabulary distilled from 17th-Century Italy. The Royal Palaces of Madrid, La Granja, Aranjuez, Mafra, and Queluz, were designed by architects under strong influence of Bernini and Juvarra. In the realm of Church architecture, Guarini's design for Santa Maria della Divina Providenza, in Lisbon, was a pacesetter for structural audacity in the region (even though it was never built).

The Royal Palace at Mafra, Portugal.

Photo: 5 May 2013.

Source: Own work.

Author: Alvesgaspar.

(Wikimedia Commons)

In Portugal, the first fully-Baroque Church was the Church of Santa Engrácia, in Lisbon, designed by Royal architect, João Antunes, which has a Greek Cross floorplan and curved facades. Antunes also designed Churches in which the inner space is rectangular, but with curved corners (like the Menino de Deus Church in Lisbon), a scheme that is found in several 18th-Century Churches in Portugal and Brazil. The Court of King John V, on the other hand, favoured Roman Baroque models, as attested by the work of Royal architect, Ludovice, a German, who designed the Royal Palace of Mafra, built after 1715.

The Clérigos Church (Portuguese: Igreja dos Clérigos: 

"Church of the Clergymen") 

is a Baroque Church in Porto, Portugal.

Photo: 16 October 2010.

Source: Own work.

Author: Lacobrigo.

(Wikimedia Commons)

By the Mid-18th-Century, Northern Portuguese architects had absorbed the concepts of Italian Baroque to revel in the plasticity of local granite, in such projects as the surging 75-metre-high Torre dos Clérigos in Porto. The foremost centre of the national Baroque tradition was Braga, whose buildings encompass virtually every important feature of Portuguese architecture and design. The Baroque shrines and Palaces of Braga are noted for polychrome ornamental patterns, undulating roof-lines, and irregularly shaped window surrounds.

Brazilian architects also explored plasticity in form and decoration, though they rarely surpassed their continental peers in ostentation. The Churches of Mariana and the Rosario at Ouro Preto are based on Borromini's vision of interlocking elliptical spaces. At São Pedro dos Clérigos, Recife, a conventional stucco-and-stone façade is enlivened by "a high scrolled gable squeezed tightly between the Towers".

Even after the Baroque conventions passed out of fashion in Europe, the style was long practised in Brazil by Aleijadinho, a brilliant and prolific architect, in whose designs hints of Rococo could be discerned. His church of Bom Jesus de Matozinhos, at Congonhas, is distinguished by a picturesque silhouette and dark ornamental detail on a light stuccoed façade. Although Aleijadinho was originally commissioned to design São Francisco de Assis, at São João del Rei, his designs were rejected, and were displaced to the Church of São Francisco in Ouro Preto, instead.

PART FIVE FOLLOWS.