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Reflections on Baroque

From its beginnings in the seventeenth century, the eccentric and tumultuous forms of the Baroque spread across not only Europe but colonial Latin America and Asia as well. With Reflections on Baroque, Robert Harbison brings together discussions of aesthetics, science, mysticism, politics, religion, and culture to offer a surprising reinterpretations of the baroque style and its influences and echoes into the twentieth century.


256 pages | 93 halftones, 5 line drawings | 6-5/8 x 9-1/2 | © 2001

Art: European Art

Geography: Cultural and Historical Geography

History: European History

Table of Contents

Foreword
I. THE CASE FOR DISRUPTION
Bernini, Borromini, Mattia Preti, Milton, St Ignatius, Monteverdi, Fischer von Erlach, Costanzo Michela, Juvarra, thoroughfares, staircases, Sacred Mounts, St Teresa, plague columns, ceilings (Pozzo, Maulbertsch, Tiepolo), Marvell, Crashaw
II. TORMENTED VISION
Maulbertsch, Handel, Rubens, Sacred Mounts, the sketch, Clérisseau, Soane, Sterne, Vittone, Borromini, convents, saints, the Sacred Heart, Messerschmidt, the cult of sensibility
III. THE VIEW FROM ABOVE
Wren, Ragusa, Palermo, Rubens, Milton, Dryden, Vanbrugh, Jesuit expansion, Defoe, Querétaro, Noto, Blandford Forum, Turin, Versailles, Schönbrunn, Bucharest, Pope
IV. THE END OF HEROISM
Mozart and opera (Idomeneo, Così fan tutte, La finta giardiniera), Asam brothers (Rohr, Weltenburg, Freising), Serpotta, Watteau
V. THE WORLD AS SCENERY
Congreve, Pope, the Bibiena family, Piranesi, Soane, the Gothic novel, Venice as scenery, Canaletto, Guardi, Longhena, Vanbrugh
VI. BAROQUE NATURE
Isola Bella, Giardino Buonacorsi, Versailles, Nymphenburg, Amalienburg, Veitshöschheim, graveyards, English landscape gardens, Die Wies, Vierzehnheiligen, new and exotic species, scientific drawings, encylopedias, the Academy of Lynxes, Rameau, Waldsassen, Pianta, Hogarth, Messerschmidt, Handel, Goya
VII. COLONIAL BAROQUE
Ocotlán, tile façades, backwaters, Sagrario Mexico City, Hindu temples, Goan Baroque, St Francis Xavier, Bolivian Jesuit sacred opera, Sant’ Alessio, Santa Rosalia or The Wounded Dove, Stradella’s oratorio erotico, Tepotzotlán, Salamanca, Querétaro
VIII. NEO AND PSEUDO BAROQUE
Russian Baroque, Turkish Baroque, Persian Rococo, Edwardian Baroque, Linderhof, porcelain knick-knacks, ’50s American cars, Jeff Koons, Richard Strauss, Beardsley, Guimard, the National Trust, Bellotto and Warsaw, Baroque pearls, Japanese Baroque, Gothic Baroque, Chinese Baroque, Hellenistic Baroque, Wölfflin, Deleuze
IX. BAROQUE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Czech Cubists, Santini, T.S. Eliot, Gehry, Coop Himmeblau, Russian Constructivists, Scharoun, Ludwig Leo, Miralles
Notes
Acknowledgements
Photographic Acknowledgements
Index

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