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Baroque Era Facts & Worksheets

The Baroque Era refers to the period in European history characterized by extravagant architectural style, art and music.

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The term “Baroque” refers to both a period of time and a style of art. It describes historical paintings, sculptures, architecture, and music. Since the seventeenth century, the term “baroque,” originating from the Portuguese “barroco”, meaning “oddly shaped pearl,” has been widely used.

See the fact file below for more information on the Baroque Era. Alternatively, you can download our 24-page Baroque worksheet pack to utilize within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

Baroque

  • The term “Baroque,” like other historical periods or style labels, was coined by later critics rather than by artists in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. 
  • Natural pearls that differ from the conventional, uniform shapes and lack an axis of rotation are referred to as “baroque pearls.” It is a French version of the Portuguese term “pérola barroca,” which means “irregular pearl” or “false gem.” It is worth noting that a comparable old word, “Barlocco” or “Brillocco,” is used in the Roman dialect with the same meaning.
  • The Baroque style used contrast, movement, precise detail, brilliant color, grandeur, and surprise to generate awe. The style first appeared in Rome in the early 17th century, and it swiftly spread to France, northern Italy, Spain, and Portugal, followed by Austria, southern Germany, and Russia. By the 1730s, it had evolved into the even more luxurious rocaille or Rococo style, which flourished in France and Central Europe until the mid-to-late-18th century.
  • The name “Baroque” was initially used derogatorily to emphasize the excesses of its focus, quirky repetition, and loud wealth of details, as contrasted to the clearer and sober reason of the Renaissance.  
  • In modern civilization, “baroque” is often used to describe any artistic style that is too complicated, adorned, or decorated. Despite the fact that many people are unaware of the distinction, the current baroque has nothing in common with classic baroque.
  • Mannerism refers to the time between the Renaissance and Baroque periods. The Rococo period is roughly equivalent to the latter part of the Baroque period.
  • In the arts, the Baroque period and style produced drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music via exaggerated motion and clear, readily comprehended detail. The style originated around 1600 in Rome, Italy, and quickly spread across the rest of Europe. 
  • The term “Baroque” refers to the final phase of imitative counterpoint supremacy, in which distinct voices and instruments mimic each other but at different pitches, often inverting the echo and even reversing thematic content.

Baroque Visual Art

  • Baroque painters tried hard to distinguish themselves from the painters of the Renaissance and the Mannerism period that followed. They eschewed the peaceful settings of Renaissance paintings in their arrangement and sought the times of most energy and drama.
  • Faces in Baroque paintings, in contrast to the serene faces of Renaissance art, strongly showed their emotions. They frequently exploited asymmetry, with action taking place away from the center of the image, and produced axes that were neither vertical nor horizontal but slanted to the left or right, creating a sense of instability and movement. Overall, there was a sense of movement, passion, and drama.
  • The intensity and immediacy of baroque art, as well as its individuality and intricacy (as shown in the accurate representation of cloth and skin textures), making it one of the most appealing periods of Western art.
  • Another key feature of baroque painting was a metaphor; every picture told a narrative and had a message, which was frequently encoded in symbols and allegorical characters and was supposed to be known and interpreted by an educated audience.
  • Italian artists who aimed to bring back the orderly Classicism of the Renaissance dominated the Baroque art of the 17th and 18th century.
  • Caravaggio stunned his contemporaries and started a new era in art history with his realistic treatment of the human form, which he painted from life and powerfully spotlit against a black backdrop. 
  • Nicolas Poussin and Georges de La Tour adopted a more “classical” approach with less emphasis on emotion and more attention paid to the lines in the figures rather than the color. 
  • The highly heated compositions of Rubens make scholarly allusions to ancient and Christian history. Quadratura, or works in trompe-l’oeil, which literally “fooled the eye,” was a significant area of Baroque art. These were frequently painted on the stucco of ceilings, higher walls, and balustrades and gave the appearance to people on the ground looking up that they were witnessing swarms of angels, saints, and other celestial beings in the skies. 
  • Pietro da Cortona was a 17th-century painter who used an illusionist style of painting. 
  • François Boucher created tapestries, carpets, and theater decorations in addition to painting. His art was popular with Madame Pompadour, King Louis XV’s mistress, and incorporated sensual and romantic themes.

Baroque Sculpture

  • Groups of humans took on new significance in Baroque sculpture. There was a dynamic movement and energy to human forms—they spiraled around an empty core vortex or extended into the surrounding area. 
  • Other individuals were frequently sculpted as an audience for the action or situation represented. For the first time, Baroque sculpture offered numerous optimum viewing angles, as opposed to Mannerism’s singular “photo-friendly” viewpoint.
  • Sculptures during the Baroque era were usually made of bronze, colorful marble, and sometimes gilded with gold. The architecture was ornamented with plaster sculptures, and statues were sometimes used to replace columns.
  • Extra-sculptural features, such as concealed lighting or water fountains, were added to the typical Baroque sculpture. It was customary for the structure that housed the sculpture to be as essential as the figure, much like a frame is to a painting. 
  • The emphasis on light in the Baroque period was critical, necessitating careful design for the staging of the figures. Aleijadinho was a prominent name in Brazilian baroque sculpture, and his masterwork is the collection of sculptures at the Santuário de Bom Jesus de Matosinhos in Congonhas. Among his best works are the soapstone carvings of Old Testament prophets surrounding the terrace.
  • Bernini was the most important sculptor of the Baroque era. Bernini, in his omnipotence, managed to connect with Michelangelo, who sculpted sculptures, performed plays, worked as an architect, and painted and staged spectacles. Bernini’s sculpture was highly respected in the latter part of the twentieth century for its ability to merge the physical and the spiritual, as well as for its skill in marble carving. He was also a skilled bust portrait sculptor, and wealthy patrons admired his work.

Baroque architecture

  • The early Baroque period in architecture emerged around Italy’s first quarter of the 1600s and continued until the late Baroque or Rococo era in France.
  • The Baroque architectural style arose as a result of teachings espoused by the Catholic Church in reaction to the Protestant Reformation at the Council of Trent in 1545-63. 
  • The initial phase of the Counter-Reformation imposed an austere, scholarly style on ecclesiastical architecture, which appealed to academics but not to the general public. Instead, the Council of Trent opted to appeal to a wider audience, declaring that the arts should express Christian ideas in a straightforward and expressive manner. Similarly, Lutheran Baroque art emerged as a confessional sign of identity in response to Calvinists’ Great Iconoclasm.
  • Strong massing, colonnades, domes, light-and-shadow (chiaroscuro), ‘painterly’ color effects, and the bold play of volume and emptiness were all emphasized in Baroque architecture. 
  • Colossal stairs inspired by Baroque movement around and into a vacuum in the interiors have no precedent in earlier construction. The state apartment was another Baroque invention in worldly interiors, a processional succession of more luxurious interiors that culminated in a presence chamber, throne room, or state bedroom. The colossal steps followed by a state apartment were replicated in lower size in all aristocratic residences regardless of pretensions.
  • Baroque architecture was enthusiastically adopted in central Germany, Austria, and Russia. Sir Christopher Wren, Sir John Vanbrugh, and Nicholas Hawksmoor epitomized the pinnacle of Baroque architecture in England.
  • Many examples of Baroque architecture and urban planning may be found across Europe and Latin America. This period’s town layout included radial avenues meeting in squares inspired by Baroque garden plans. In Sicily, the Baroque produced new shapes and motifs, such as the “Basilica di San Sebastiano” in Noto and Acireale.

Baroque Theater and Dance

  • Starting with the physical architectural setting, theater develops into a multi-media experience throughout the Baroque era. 
  • Most of the modern technology we see on Broadway or in commercial plays today was created and developed during this time. In a matter of seconds, the scene transforms from a lovely garden to a palace’s interior. The entire area is transformed into a framed area that only lets viewers witness a single movement while concealing all the equipment, primarily made up of ropes and pulleys.
  • Due to its ability to unite many of the Baroque Age’s components, the theater offers a uniquely comprehensive perspective on the period. Everything about the productions—from the buildings and structures made especially for them to the sculptures, paintings, and other works of art incorporated into them to the use of Baroque music in operas—embodied the Baroque mentality.
  • Theatrum Mundi, which means “the world is a stage,” was also coined. Similar to how actors and machines show or limit what is being presented on stage, disguising some of the machinery that causes the acts to occur, the social and political arena is also subtly managed in real life. The political scope of the Baroque and its chief exponent, Louis XIV, is depicted in Theatrum Mundi, a superb German documentary.

Baroque Literature and Philosophy

  • The Baroque indeed articulated new ideals, typically characterized by the use of metaphor and allegory, which are common in Baroque writing, and in the pursuit of “maraviglia” (wonder, amazement, as in Marinism), the use of artifices. 
  • If Mannerism was the first break with the Renaissance, Baroque was the retaliatory language. The psychological agony of Man, a topic discarded following the Copernican and Lutheran revolutions in search of firm anchors, proof of an “ultimate human power,” could be seen in both Baroque art and architecture. Because the Roman Church was the primary “client,” many works dealt with religious subjects.
  • The privilege accorded to exterior forms had to compensate for and balance the absence of substance shown in many Baroque works: Marino’s “Maraviglia,” for example, is essentially made of pure, bare form. Everything revolved around the individual Man, as a direct interaction between the artist or directly between the work and its user or customer. By Maraviglia, art becomes less remote from the user and more immediately approaches him, bridging the cultural divide that formerly separated art and user.
  • The greater emphasis on the individual developed in these systems several major genres like the Romanzo (novel) and allowed popular or local forms of art, particularly dialectal literature, to be placed on display. This drive toward the solitary person (which some identify as “cultural descent,” while others believe a probable source of classical hostility to Baroque) caused Latin to be completely superseded by Italian in Italy.

Baroque Music

  • Since the seventeenth century, the term “baroque” has been used to describe the period in Western European art music period that lasted from roughly 1600 to 1750. 
  • Baroque music is distinguished by:
  1. Lengthy, flowing melodic lines with embellishment (decorative notes such as trills and turns)
  2. Comparison between loud and gentle, solo and ensemble
  3. A contrapuntal texture composed of two or more melodic lines
  4. Terraced dynamics – abrupt fluctuations in loudness, sometimes resulting in an echo effect
  5. The application of harpsichord continuo
  • Comparing some of music history’s greatest masterpieces to a malformed pearl may seem strange to us now, but to nineteenth-century critics who used the term, the music of Bach and Handel seemed too elaborate and overdone. “Baroque” is now essentially a catch-all phrase describing one of music’s richest and most diverse periods, having long shed its negative connotations.
  • The degree to which Baroque music shares aesthetic principles with the visual and literary arts of the time is still up for dispute. The love of decoration is an undeniable common characteristic. It may be necessary that when the Baroque period gave way to the Classical era, ornament’s significance in music and building significantly decreased.
  • It should be emphasized that the term “Baroque” has only recently been used to describe musical styles. Curt Sachs adopted the term “Baroque” for the first time in music in 1919, and it wasn’t until 1940 that it was first used in English. 
  • Several musical genres, like the Concerto and Symphonia, were developed at that time. Sonata, cantata, and oratoria were popular genres. Additionally, the Florentine Camerata, who developed monody, experimented to replicate the Greek theatrical traditions, and as a result, opera was established. This particular development is frequently used to indicate the start of the musical Baroque, which occurred about 1600.
  • Italy is home to many well-known figures from the early Baroque era, such as Monteverdi, Corelli, and Vivaldi. The cantata, concerto, sonata, oratorio, and opera are only a few of the genres associated with the Baroque era of music that have Italian roots (around the middle of the eighteenth century, our attention switches to the German composer’s Bach and Handel). 
  • Italy was influential in creating these genres, but when new ideas about what it meant to be a nation emerged, the need for a “national style” grew.
  • The contrast between Italy and France was especially pronounced; national differences may frequently be heard in the music of the time, both in the compositional methods and performance practices. While certain nations might have contributed more to the baroque music we hear today, every country had its share of influence. As composers and musicians went around Europe and heard one another’s music, the new customs they discovered left them with lingering memories.

Baroque Clothing: Fashion and Style

  • Aside from different forms of art, Baroque is minimally characterized by fashion and style. Men’s attire was highly influenced by the English Civil War and Thirty Years War. Women wore ornamented gowns with lace collars and virago sleeves, which reflected wealth and status almost the same as during the Renaissance. Clothes were ostentatious and exuberant following that of the monarchs and nobilities, which were markedly separate from the lower classes.

Baroque Era Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle that includes everything you need to know about the Baroque Era across 24 in-depth pages. These ready-to-use Baroque Era worksheets are perfect for teaching students about the Baroque Era, which refers to the period in European history characterized by extravagant architectural style, art, and music, that emerged from the 17th century until the late 18th century. It is the era between the Renaissance and Neoclassical styles and was largely influenced by the Catholic Church.

Complete List Of Included Worksheets

  • Baroque Era Facts
  • Famous Baroque Artists
  • History of Art
  • Baroque Style
  • B&B: Baroque Building
  • Mix & Match Music
  • Baroque by Letters
  • Cross to Cross
  • Terms to Remember
  • Facts and Figures
  • Baroque Web Mapping

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Baroque Era Known for? 

The Baroque Period is a lavish and ornate architectural, artistic, and design style that was prominent in Europe throughout the 17th and early 18th centuries. After originating in Italy, its influence quickly spread throughout Europe, making it the first visual approach to have a significant worldwide impact. It included sculpture, painting, architecture, decorative arts, and music.

What Era is the Baroque Period?

The Baroque Era was a period of innovative fashion. In the arts, the Baroque period and style produced drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music via exaggerated motion and clear, readily comprehended detail. The style originated around 1600 in Rome, Italy, and quickly spread across the rest of Europe. The term “Baroque” refers to the final phase of imitative counterpoint supremacy, in which distinct voices and instruments mimic each other but at different pitches, often inverting the echo and even reversing thematic content.

What happened during the Baroque Era?

During the Baroque Era, the use of contrast, movement, detailed detail, brilliant color, grandeur, and surprise were used. In Baroque Arts, there was a sense of movement, passion, and drama. Sculptures during the Baroque era were usually made of bronze, colorful marble, and sometimes gilded with gold. The architecture was ornamented with plaster sculptures, and statues were sometimes used to replace columns. The Baroque architectural style arose as a result of teachings espoused by the Catholic Church in reaction to the Protestant Reformation at the Council of Trent in 1545-63. Starting with the physical architectural setting, theater develops into a multi-media experience throughout the Baroque era. The Baroque indeed articulated new ideals, typically characterized by the use of metaphor and allegory, which are common in Baroque writing, and in the pursuit of “maraviglia” (wonder, amazement, as in Marinism), the use of artifices. The concerto, sonata, and opera were all new musical forms that were developed during the Baroque era.

What are the five characteristics of Baroque Music?

Baroque music is distinguished by:

  1. Lengthy, flowing melodic lines with embellishment (decorative notes such as trills and turns)
  2. Comparison between loud and gentle, solo and ensemble
  3. A contrapuntal texture composed of two or more melodic lines
  4. Terraced dynamics – abrupt fluctuations in loudness, sometimes resulting in an echo effect
  5. The application of harpsichord continuo

What types of Music were established during the Baroque Era?

Several musical genres, like the Concerto and Symphonia, were developed during the Baroque period. Sonata, cantata, and oratoria were popular genres. Additionally, the Florentine Camerata, who developed monody, experimented in order to replicate the Greek theatrical traditions, and as a result, opera was established. This particular development is frequently used to indicate the start of the musical Baroque, which occurred about 1600.

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