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The Italian Baroque style developed consistently in the architectural and sculptural arts beginning in the high Renaissance period. It followed the spiritual streams of the period and enhanced all decorative and structural details. It was marked by an accumulation of building elements, an arbitrary change of classical building forms and a tendency towards the pictorial, which led to the rejection of all straight lines. Everything that was previously horizontal was curved, canted or chamfered; even the column, the original form of the support, was altered by Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, the grand master of baroque architecture, to become sinuous and twisted, a style that had already appeared occasionally in late Roman architecture.

Rome was the epicentre of church and palace architecture in the Baroque style. It was also seen in Naples and Palermo, which can trace their architectural physiognomy only to the seventeenth century. The basis of all Baroque churches is the design of the Jesuit Church by the architect Giacomo Vignola, the successor to Michelangelo, and by Giacomo della Porta with the basic motifs applied there for the first time. It is marked by the linking of the nave and the choir with the greatest possible amount of space, ignoring the side naves; regarding the façade, further development occur with canted contours and the decoration of the cupola in its interior vaulting with frescoes. This church, with the altar of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order, along with its striking architecture, sculpture and painting, embodies the height of the Italian Baroque style. This dwarfed everything that had been produced in almost two centuries in Italy and Germany. The creator of this altar, the Trento-born Jesuit lay brother, painter, architect and sculptor Andrea del Pozzo (who also painted the Jesuit church in Frascati) was one of the greatest artists of the Baroque style.

At the beginning of this development stood men for whom dimension and proportion were integral to artistic creation. Among these were Carlo Maderno who, beginning in 1603, was one of the master builders of St. Peter’s and the leading architect after Vignola, or the Papal Architect Domenico Fontana, the builder of the façade of the Lateran Palace and the hall of columns at the north side of the San Giovanni church. Finally, this group also included the already-mentioned painter and sculptor Lorenzo Bernini who decisively influenced sculpture and architecture in Italy, Spain and the countries north of the Alps.

10. Carlo Maderno, St. Peter’s Basilica, façade, 1607–1614. Vatican.

11. Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini, Palazzo Barberini, façade, 1629–1644. Rome.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Bernini was a master in the creation of magnificent spaces with a skilled eye for perspective effects. This is displayed primarily in the square in front of St Peter’s with its surrounding columned halls, or the Scala Regia of the Vatican. After Maderno’s death, Bernini completed the façade and front hall and created the famous bronze baldachin over the high altar for the inside.

The speed of the change of mind in which the admiration for the antique waned, is illustrated by the fact that the contemporaries of this tabernacle placed it as the high point of an independent artistic style. Bernini is also to be praised for the Palazzo Barberini with its masterful staircase, and for several smaller churches. The importance of the piazza design of this time period can be seen by the positioning of the two small cupola churches Santa Maria di Monte Santo and Santa Maria dei Miracoli at the north entrance of the Corso that were designed by Carlo Rainaldi and executed by Bernini and his student Carlo Fontana. It was they who helped bring the Piazza del Popolo to its completion.

12. Francesco Borromini, Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza, façade, 1643–1660. Rome.

13. Alessandro Specchi and Francesco de Sanctis, Spanish Steps, 1723–1726. Rome.

14. Gian Lorenzo Bernini, David, 1623–1624.

Marble, h: 170 cm. Galleria Borghese, Rome.

St. Peter’s also contains Bernini’s most well-known works in the field of religious sculpture: the statue of the St. Longinus and the tombs of Popes Urban VIII and Alexander VII, both particular patrons of the arts and sciences. Bernini was most skilled in decorative sculpture and here, with his Triton fountain on the Piazza Barberini and the main fountain on the Piazza Navona, he created an imperishable memorial. With this fountain and the gods it features, Bernini reached back into the Antiquities, which were already the fundamentals in the three main works of his youth, Aeneas and Anchises, the stone-throwing David and Apollo and Daphne in the Galleria Borghese in Rome which he created as a 17-year-old.

The Fountains of Rome

As a whole, the fountains of Rome belong to the most brilliant and imaginative creations of Italian Baroque art. Bernini’s model for his fountains was the Fontana delle Tartarughe, the Tortoise Fountain, created between 1581 and 1584 by Giacomo della Porto, whose bronze figures were inspired by the Florentine Taddeo Landini. About the same time, under Pope Sixtus V, who saw to law and order in the streets of Rome, Domenico Fontana created the Fontana di Termini.

The masterpiece of all these fountains is certainly the 20-metre wide and 26-metre high Trevi Fountain by Niccolo Salvi, ordered by Pope Clement XII and integrated on the south side of the Palazzo Poli, which is based on an old Roman triumphal arch and was built between 1732 and 1762. It is the most prominent and remains the most visited fountain in the world, especially since Federico Fellini’s film La dolce Vita with its famous bathing scene of the Swedish actress Anita Ekberg. Pietro Bracci created the proud 580-centimetre high marble statue of Neptune on a sea-shell cart drawn by two sea horses in the central curved niche and a picturesque decoration of rocks over which, in front of the god of the sea, the water crashes down noisily.

The occasional over-exuberance of the Italian Baroque style can be attributed mostly to Francesco Borromini as well as to the aforementioned Andrea del Pozzo, and to Guarino Guarini who was active in Turin as an architect, philosopher, mathematician and Theatine monk. Driven by ambition, Guarini tried to outdo Bernini and often shot way past the mark. But in doing so he initiated a counter-movement that sought to return again to the simpler style and direction of the architectural theoretician Andrea Palladio.

15. Gian Lorenzo Bernini, St. Longinus, 1631–1638. Marble, h: 450 cm.

St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican.

16. Francesco Mochi, St. Veronica, 1635–1639.

Marble, h: 440 cm.

St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican.

At about the same time the Spanish Steps were built with 138 steps leading up from the Spanish square (Piazza di Spagna) to the 1590-completed Trinità dei Monte church and at whose lower end can be found the boat-shaped fountain created by Bernini in 1629.

Turin and Venice

In Turin in the years 1716–1731 Filippo Juvarra, on the wishes of Duke Vittorio Amedeo II, built a Church of the Holy Sepulchre for the princes of Savoy that the latter had designed, the Basilica of Superga that owes its name – actually it is called Basilica della Nativitá – to the fact that it is situated on a hill. In 1706 the Duke had sworn an oath that if Turin withstood a siege by the French troops he would build a church to the Holy Virgin. The result of this oath is the most beautiful example of the turning away from the excess of the Baroque and the return to stricter laws of construction. Today the Basilica della Nativitá is a much-visited pilgrimage site.

17. Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Apollo and Daphne, 1622–1625.

Marble, h: 243 cm. Galleria Borghese, Rome.

18. Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Aeneas and Anchises, 1618–1619.

Marble, h: 220 cm. Galleria Borghese, Rome.

19. Baldassare Longhena, Santa Maria della Salute, started in 1630–1631. Venice.

20. Filippo Juvarra, Basilica of Superga, 1715–1718. Turin.

21. Annibale Carracci, Madonna in Glory with Child, St. Louis, St. John the Baptist, St. Alexius, St. Catherine, St. Francis and St. Clare, c. 1587–1588.

Oil on canvas, 278 × 173 cm.

Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, Bologna.

However, the Baroque influence in Turin was only secondary. It was more significant in Venice, where the most important representative of the High Baroque, Baldassare Longhena, was active. In the palaces he designed, such as the Palazzo Pesaro, he adhered strictly to the typical Venetian façades even if he strongly accentuated his works by using strong light and shadow effects. He showed himself to be much more relaxed and independent in the Santa Maria della Salute, the most beautiful domed church in Venice, which, due to its position at the entrance of the Grand Canal became one of the most monumental landmarks of that city.

In 1630 the Signoria and the Doge of Venice pledged a church to the Madonna if she would end the plague that had been raging throughout the city since the start of the year. This plague had already cost the city a third of its population. The competition was won by the 26-year-old Longhena, who had the existing structures of the convent, church of San Trinità and residential buildings razed. This provided sufficient free space for the erection of the church, the customs station and the buildings for the Somaschi (Company of the Servants of the Poor, an order founded in 1534, whose adherents lived according to the rules of the Augustinian Monks) who cared for the church. Longhena spent almost his whole life building this church that was consecrated in 1687, five years after his death.

No architect of this period was able to ignore the overarching influence of Bernini. He was commissioned to work by popes and kings and in France he was called “The Dictator of Taste”.