LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Baroque
built 658 days ago
Baroque painting in England was dominated by the presence of Rubens and van Dyck, who inspired an entire generation of portraitists. British sculpture was influenced equally by Italian and Flemish styles. The architect Inigo Jones studied the classicism of Andrea Palladio in Italy, as is evident in his Banqueting House (1619-1622, London), with a spectacular ceiling painting, Allegory of Peace and War (1629), by Rubens. Sir Christopher Wren ... journeyed to Italy, and his plans for Saint Paul's Cathedral (begun 1675, London) reveal his study of Bramante, Borromini, and other Italian architects. Wren, who was in charge of the rebuilding of London after the fire of 1666, influenced the course of architecture in England and its North American colonies for over a century.
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In Baroque architecture, new emphasis was placed on bold massing, colonnades, domes, light-and-shade (chiaroscuro), 'painterly' color effects, and the bold play of volume and void. In interiors, Baroque movement around and through a void informed monumental staircases that had no parallel in previous architecture. The other Baroque innovation in worldly interiors was the state apartment, a processional sequence of increasingly rich interiors that culminated in a presence chamber or throne room or a state bedroom. The sequence of monumental stairs followed by a state apartment was copied in smaller scale everywhere in aristocratic dwellings of any pretensions.
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The continuo, typically consisting of a harpsichord and a cello, provided the rhythmic and harmonic foundation of Baroque ensemble. It was usually written as a bass line with numbers under each note to designate the harmony, much like a modern jazz chart, and the performers decided how to fill out this "figured bass".
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Baroque sculptors felt free to combine different materials within a single work and often used one material to simulate another. One of the great masterpieces of baroque sculpture, Giovanni Bernini's St. Theresa from the Cornaro Chapel, for example, succumbs to an ecstatic vision on a dull-finished marble cloud in an alabaster and marble niche in which bronze rays descend from a hidden source of light. Many works of Baroque sculpture are set within elaborate architectural settings, and they often seem to be spilling out of their assigned niches or floating upward toward heaven.
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The Baroque came to Poland in the second half of the 17th century. In 1564 the Polish cardinal Stanislaw Hosius, one of the most significant figures of the Counter Reformation, invited the Jesuits to settle in the country, and soon the Protestant influence, strong during the Renaissance, began to wane.
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Baroque, a term derived from the Portuguese word "barroco" (distorted pearl), refers to "distorted fantasies" in this world. People who live in this devastated world cling to their Baroques in order to survive. These fantasies not only distort the mind, but the body as well. The term Baroque refers to both the idea that distorts the affected person and those infected by these ideas.
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