Baroque architecture began in Rome with Bernini and Borromini and spread to palaces and churches all over Europe. Kings borrowed the style for the same reason the popes used it: grand, theatrical spaces impress visitors and announce power.
Versailles
The Palace of Versailles, about 20 kilometers southwest of Paris, began as a modest hunting lodge built for King Louis XIII around 1623. From the early 1660s his son, Louis XIV, enlarged it again and again with the architects Louis Le Vau and later Jules Hardouin-Mansart, the painter Charles Le Brun and the garden designer André Le Nôtre. In 1682 Louis moved his court and government there. The Hall of Mirrors (1678 to 1684) is 73 meters long, with 357 mirrors facing tall windows onto the gardens. The gardens stretch out along straight axes, with fountains, clipped hedges and a long canal, so that nature itself seems to obey the king.
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Looking closely: St. Paul's Cathedral
Describe. The Great Fire of London in 1666 destroyed the medieval cathedral. Christopher Wren, a scientist turned architect, designed the new one. The west front has two stories of paired columns, two towers, and above them a great dome on a ring of columns. Analyze. The towers, with their curving, layered tops, show Borromini's influence; the calm paired columns and the dome on its drum recall Renaissance models such as Bramante and Michelangelo's St. Peter's. The building rises 111 meters (365 feet) to the cross on top of the dome. Interpret. This is an English Baroque, more restrained than Rome's, built for a Protestant city that wanted grandeur without excess.
Worked example: How do we date it?
- Wren began building in 1675.
- The cathedral was finished in 1710, and the dome was among the last parts completed.
- An engraving of the finished dome must be from about 1710 or later, unless it copies a design drawing.
Answer: Probably not: a view of the finished building dates from about 1710 or later.