A monograph on the lavish, whimsical, and inventive era in the history of architecture, from the cathedrals of Rome to the palaces of Russia. It features major styles and trends of Baroque architecture throughout Europe and beyond, and provides an account of how the Baroque developed in relation to the unique urban culture of each nation.

Focusing on the Baroque period, this book gives readers the tools they need to grasp the architectural language and building forms of this style. Part of a new, accessibly written, and generously illustrated series on architecture through the ages, this book features Baroque's most important architects, buildings and cities, interior and exterior photographs, detailed images, drawings, and plans. The book offers a general introduction to Baroque, discusses the characteristics of the style, and the commonly used techniques and materials. Originating in the late sixteenth century and continuing to the early 1900s, Baroque swept the globe, from Europe to South America. The period is distinguished by complex architectural shapes designed to heighten emotion and dramatise experience. Buildings from this period are celebrated for their grandeur, intricate embellishments, and gilded statuary. Renowned Baroque architects include Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Francesco Borromini, and Guariono Guarini. AUTHOR: Claudia Zanlungo is a curator and writer on architecture. She lives in Berlin. 200 colour images REDUCED FROM $35.00

A new approach to late Ottoman visual culture and its place in the world With its idiosyncratic yet unmistakable adaptation of European Baroque models, the eighteenth-century architecture of Istanbul has frequently been dismissed by modern observers as inauthentic and derivative, a view reflecting broader unease with notions of Western influence on Islamic cultures. In Ottoman Baroque—the first English-language book on the topic—Ünver Rüstem provides a compelling reassessment of this building style and shows how between 1740 and 1800 the Ottomans consciously coopted European forms to craft a new, politically charged, and globally resonant image for their empire’s capital. Rüstem reclaims the label “Ottoman Baroque” as a productive framework for exploring the connectedness of Istanbul’s eighteenth-century buildings to other traditions of the period. Using a wealth of primary sources, he demonstrates that this architecture was in its own day lauded by Ottomans and foreigners alike for its fresh, cosmopolitan effect. Purposefully and creatively assimilated, the style’s cross-cultural borrowings were combined with Byzantine references that asserted the Ottomans’ entitlement to the Classical artistic heritage of Europe. Such aesthetic rebranding was part of a larger endeavor to reaffirm the empire’s power at a time of intensified East-West contact, taking its boldest shape in a series of imperial mosques built across the city as landmarks of a state-sponsored idiom. Copiously illustrated and drawing on previously unpublished documents, Ottoman Baroque breaks new ground in our understanding of Islamic visual culture in the modern era and offers a persuasive counterpoint to Eurocentric accounts of global art history.

Revised translation of 2006 Italian ed. with "substantial changes" (page vii). Author added an introduction and significantly expanded or reworked chapters 4 and 5 to incorporate research published in the intervening 6 years.

"The baroque style of architecture rose up from the Mannerism of the turn of the seventeenth century, and evolved into the lighter rococo around 1750. At its height, the baroque encompassed all the arts, and the style was freighted with the message of the Counter-Reformation." "This catalogue explores every facet of baroque architecture in Europe. An international team of scholars examines such subjects as the political and religious use of architecture, the birth of the baroque in Rome, landscape, fantasies, and the education of the architect. The second part of the book, a catalogue of works exhibited, illustrates the types of baroque construction: villas and chateaux, military architecture, royal palaces, and gardens."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved