ROCOCO April 4, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Australia, Austria, Brazil, England, Europe, France, Germany, Greece, Hotels, India, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Peru, Portugal, Russia, Spain, The Nile, USA, Wellington , add a commentAfter the great days of Baroque, the High Renaissance, led by Bernini and Borromini, and followed variously by Mansart and le Vau in France, Fischer von Erlach and von Hildebrandt in Austria, Zimmerman in Germany, Churriguera in Spain, and Wren,Hawksmoor and Vanbrugh in England, and before a period of Revivalism, France emerged from the reign of Henri IV (reigned 1589-1610) to establish a wealthy bourgeoisie under the political patronage of high taste in the salons of country chateau and hotels. In the next century, during the transitional period from Louis XIV (1638-1715) to the regency of his great grandson, Louis XV (1710-74), a demand for comfort, intimacy and ornament led to the late Baroque variant of Rococo.
The word Rococo derives from the French word rocaille, meaning sea rocks and shells, and it is applied to the highly ornamental and decorative strain of late Baroque architecture. (more…)
BAROQUE April 4, 2008
Posted by dodo in : England, Europe, France, Greece, Hungary, London, Poland, Russia , add a commentWhile Europe celebrated the dawn of the 17th century with a new Baroque architecture that was to survive for 200 years, Jones followed his mentors, Alberti and Palladio, to Rome, where he studied neoclassical buildings in the company of his patron, the Earl of Arundel. His return to England led to an extraordinary paradox. While Europe had moved from the austerity of Bramante’s classicism, through the French “Fontainebleau style“, to the decorated sensuality of Baroque architecture, England emerged from a stone, timber and brickwork craft tradition to embrace an apparently revolutionary style, which, under Jones’s hand, returned the Renaissance to the rigour and scholarship of the early period.
From 1618 until his death in 1652, Inigo Jones dominated architecture, and he left to the Stuart period of English history a new tradition of classicism or Palladianism, which challenged the Dutch-influenced brick and stone style and established a platform on which Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723) continued to build. After a distinguished career at Oxford University as Professor of Astronomy, Wren was appointed surveyor- general of the King’s Works. He was influenced by the French Baroque, a style that is evident in many of his great buildings, especially those designed after the devastations of the Great Fire of London in 1666. (more…)
