"Baroque New Worlds" traces the changing nature of Baroque representation in Europe and the Americas across four centuries, from its seventeenth-century origins as a Catholic and monarchical aesthetic and ideology to its contemporary function as a postcolonial ideology aimed at disrupting entrenched power structures and perceptual categories. Baroque forms are exuberant, ample, dynamic, and porous, and in the regions colonized by Catholic Europe, the Baroque was itself eventually colonized. In the New World, its transplants immediately began to reflect the cultural perspectives and iconographies of the indigenous and African artisans who built and decorated Catholic structures, and Europe's own cultural products were radically altered in turn. Today, under the rubric of the Neobaroque, this transculturated Baroque continues to impel artistic expression in literature, the visual arts, architecture, and popular entertainment worldwide.

Since Neobaroque reconstitutions necessarily reference the European Baroque, this volume begins with the reevaluation of the Baroque that evolved in Europe during the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth. Foundational essays by Friedrich Nietzsche, Heinrich Wolfflin, Walter Benjamin, Eugenio d'Ors, Rene Wellek, and Mario Praz recuperate and redefine the historical Baroque. Their essays lay the groundwork for the revisionist Latin American essays, many of which have not been translated into English until now. Authors including Alejo Carpentier, Jose Lezama Lima, Severo Sarduy, edouard Glissant, Haroldo de Campos, and Carlos Fuentes understand the New World Baroque and Neobaroque as decolonizing strategies in Latin America and other postcolonial contexts. This collection moves between art history and literary criticism to provide a rich interdisciplinary discussion of the transcultural forms and functions of the Baroque.

Contributors. Dorothy Z. Baker, Walter Benjamin, Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Jose Pascual Buxo, Leo Cabranes-Grant, Haroldo de Campos, Alejo Carpentier, Irlemar Chiampi, William Childers, Gonzalo Celorio, Eugenio d'Ors, Jorge Ruedas de la Serna, Carlos Fuentes, edouard Glissant, Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, angel Guido, Monika Kaup, Jose Lezama Lima, Friedrich Nietzsche, Mario Praz, Timothy J. Reiss, Alfonso Reyes, Severo Sarduy, Pedro Henriquez Urena, Maarten van Delden, Rene Wellek, Christopher Winks, Heinrich Wolfflin, Lois Parkinson Zamora

Profusely illustrated, this historical work focuses on the planning and construction of the Plaza Mayor in Madrid, Spain, during the second half of the 16th century--when Madrid went from being a mercantile town to the capital of the Hapsburg Empire. Including a detailed analysis of archived documents, architectural plans, and drawings, this study chronicles this monument's architectural and urban development, explains the symbolism associated with it, and reveals how it came to be a model for other European constructions. "Profusamente ilustrada, esta obra historica enfoca el planeamiento y construccion de la Plaza Mayor en Madrid, Espana, durante la segunda parte del siglo 16--cuando Madrid paso de ser un pueblo mercantil a capital del imperio de los Habsburgo. Incluyendo un analisis detallado de documentos archivisticos, planos arquitectonicos y dibujos, este estudio relata los progresos arquitectonicos y urbanos del monumento, explica el simbolismo asociado con ello, y revela como llego a ser un modelo para otras construcciones europeas."

The Baroque period was crucial for the development of art theory and the advancement of the artistic academy. This collection of primary sources brings this important period to life with significant documents and texts. It conveniently assembles major texts, which are otherwise available only in scattered publications. The lives of leading artists--Caravaggio, El Greco, among others---are discussed by their contemporaries, while Bellori, Galileo, Pascoli, and others write on art theory and practice. The documents provide fascinating glimpses of the period's artistic self-image.

The late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are frequently labeled the age of theater. Throughout western Europe, the dramatic arts attained new heights of cultural prestige, political importance, and commercial success. This series of essays investigates the dialogue between the newly invigorated theater and the plastic arts. Discussed are the interactions between spectator and spectacle, social performance and the staging of the individual, the shaping of space and time, and the debates over the relationship that visual and theatrical representations have to the objects they portray.

Men in stately black, women with huge ruffs, children with golden rattles, old women with wizened faces, and self-satisfied artists... These are the main players in just about every portrait ever painted in the Southern Netherlands. From the15th to the 17th centuries, the tract of land that we today call Flanders was the economic, cultural, intellectual and financial heart of Europe. And money flows - with everyone who could afford it investing in a portrait. Today, these cherished status symbols of the past have largely lost their original significance. But beyond their functional and emotional aspects, these portraits turn their subjects into gateways to the past. This book takes masterpieces from the collection of The Phoebus Foundation and outlines the broad context in which they came into being, peeling back levels of meaning like the layers of an onion. Whether captured in an impressive Rubens or Van Dyck, or an intimate portrait by a forgotten artist, the persons portrayed were once flesh and blood, each with their own peculiarities, hidden agendas and ambitions. Some portraits are very personal and hyper-individual. Others are a little dusty, the ladies and gentleman being children of their time. In most cases, however, their dreams and aspirations are surprisingly timeless and soberingly recognisable. The Bold and the Beautiful is an appointment with history: a meeting through portraiture with men and women from bygone centuries. But for those willing to look closely, the border between the present and the past is paper-thin. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Blind Date. Portretten met blikken en blozen, Autumn 2020, in Snijders&Rockoxhuis Antwerp, curated by Dr. Katharina Van Cauteren & Hildegard Van de Velde with a scenography by Walter Van Beirendonck.

The Carthusian monks at San Martino began a series of decorative campaigns in the 1580s that continued until 1757, transforming the church of their monastery, the Certosa di San Martino, into a jewel of marble revetment, painting, and sculpture. The aesthetics of the church generate a jarring moral conflict: few religious orders honored the ideals of poverty and simplicity so ardently yet decorated so sumptuously. In this study, Nick Napoli explores the terms of this conflict and of how it sought resolution amidst the social and economic realities and the political and religious culture of early modern Naples. Napoli mines the documentary record of the decorative campaigns at San Martino, revealing the rich testimony it provides relating to both the monks' and the artists' expectations of how practice and payment should transpire. From these documents, the author delivers insight into the ethical and economic foundations of artistic practice in early modern Naples. The first English-language study of a key monument in Naples and the first to situate the complex within the cultural history of the city, The Ethics of Ornament in Early Modern Naples sheds new light on the Neapolitan baroque, industries of art in the age before capitalism, and the relation of art, architecture, and ornament.

Between Renaissance and Baroque is a stunning achievement - the first book to be written about the original painting commissions of the Jesuits in Rome. Offering a uniquely comprehensive and comparative analysis of the paintings and stuccoes which adorned all of the Jesuit foundations in the city during their first half century of existence, the study treats some of the most crucial monuments of late Renaissance painting including the original decorations of the church of the Ges? and the Collegio Romano, and the martyrdom frescoes at S. Stefano Rotondo.

Based on extensive new archival research from Rome, Florence, Parma, and Perugia, Gauvin Alexander Bailey's study presents an original, revisionist treatment of Italian painting in the last four decades of the sixteenth century, a critical transitional period between Renaissance and Baroque. Bailey relates the Jesuit painting cycles to the great religious and intellectual climate of the period, isolates the new stylistic trends which appeared after the Council of Trent, and looks at the different ways in which artists met the challenges for devotional art made by the religious climate of the post-Tridentine period.

Bailey also succeeds in providing the first ever written reconstructions of the Jesuit churches of S. Tommaso di Canterbury, S. Saba, and S. Apollinare, and the original novitiate complex of S. Andrea al Quirinale, the site of the most complex and original hospital decoration in late Renaissance Italy. Through these reconstructions, Bailey sheds new light on such works as Louis Riche?me's meditation manual on the paintings at S. Andrea, "Le peinture spirituelle," a lively and detailed treatise on late Renaissance art that has never before been the subject of a thorough study. Ultimately, Bailey provides us with a new understanding of the stylistic and iconographic strands which shortly afterward were woven together to form the Baroque.

This is the sixth volume in the series of catalogues of Italian drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. The leading masters of the period, such as Bernini, Maratti, Lanfranco and Domenichino, are well represented.

This comprehensive study of the sculptures of Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) follows in twelve chapters his development as an artist and the area in which he excelled: portraits, the likeness of which astonished his contemporaries; the sculptures for St Peter in Rome; his extraordinary fountains; the timeless beauty of his renderings of mythological figures. German text. Die umfassende Monographie ueber die Skulpturen Gianlorenzo Berninis (1598-1680) beleuchtet in zwolf Kapiteln die Stationen seiner Entwicklung und die Gebiete, in denen er brillierte: die Portrats, deren -sprechende- Ahnlichkeit die Zeitgenossen verblueffte, die Werke fuer den Petersdom, die grandiosen Brunnen und seine Heiligen und zeitlos schonen Gestalten der antiken Mythologie. Den ausgefuehrten Werken gegenuebergestellte Vorzeichnungen, Tonskizzen und Modelle erlauben einen faszinierenden Einblick in den kuenstlerischen Schaffensprozea.