Baroque Style

Baroque

The Baroque style originated from Italy and had influenced the rest of Europe, it was exceedingly popular in the 17th and 18th century. It is a style of European architecture, music, art and even fashion, it is characterised as opulent with ornate detail.

Foreign artists and craftsman were important contributors to this style, such as Daniel Marot who was born in Paris, 1661. Marot was an architect, decorative designer and an engraver whose designs were influential to the European styles of decoration in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Jean Marot, Daniel's father was also an architect and engraver who had inspired Daniel as well as French designers such as Jean Lepautre and Jean Berain and left France in 1685 to serve the Prince of England in Holland, where Marot was involved in the design and layout of the gardens and the decoration and furnishings of the palace interiors, as well as working with private clients. Marot later followed the Prince, at the time, William III of England to London in 1694 and returned to Holland in 1698 where he continued to work for the Prince until his death.

Baroque styled architecture, tended to be large scale-work scales of public art, such as monumental wall paintings, ceilings, vaults of palaces and churches. Baroque had replaced the straight lines of the Renaissance by painters that portrayed a strong sense of movement using swirling spirals and diagonals with the use of bold colour schemes. The brushwork usually resulted in impasto, which is a technique where paint is applied very thickly onto a surface which would be thick enough so that the brush stokes would stand out and astonish individuals.

Bibliography:

THE EDITORS OF ENCYLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA. (2015). Daniel Marot French architect and designer. Available from: http://www.britannica.com/biography/Daniel-Marot. [Last accessed 2th Oct 2015].

THE EDITORS OF ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ART HISTORY. (2015). Baroque Art Definition, Styles, History. Available from: http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/baroque.htm. [Last accessed 2nd Oct 2015].

VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM. (2015). Baroque. Available from: http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/b/baroque/. [Last accessed 2nd Oct 2015].