Crossword Dictionary

Baroque 

Baroque art and architecture, the visual arts and building design and construction produced during the era in the history of Western art that roughly coincides with the 17th century. The earliest manifestations, which occurred in Italy, date from the latter decades of the 16th century, while in some regions, notably Germany and colonial South America, certain culminating achievements of Baroque did not occur until the 18th century. 

The work that distinguishes the Baroque period is stylistically complex, even contradictory. In general, however, the desire to evoke emotional states by appealing to the senses, often in dramatic ways, underlies its manifestations. Some of the qualities most frequently associated with the Baroque are grandeur, sensuous richness, drama, vitality, movement, tension, emotional exuberance, and a tendency to blur distinctions between the various arts.

The term Baroque probably ultimately derived from the Italian word barocco, which philosophers used during the Middle Ages to describe an obstacle in schematic logic. Subsequently the word came to denote any contorted idea or involuted process of thought. Another possible source is the Portuguese word barroco (Spanish barrueco), used to describe an irregular or imperfectly shaped pearl, and this usage still survives in the jeweler’s term baroque pearl.

In art criticism the word Baroque came to be used to describe anything irregular, bizarre, or otherwise departing from established rules and proportions. This biased view of 17th-century art styles was held with few modifications by critics from Johann Winckelmann to John Ruskin and Jacob Burckhardt, and until the late 19th century the term always carried the implication of odd, grotesque, exaggerated, and overdecorated.