Review: Renaissance and Baroque

Renaissance and Baroque by Heinrich Wölfflin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The baroque never offers us perfection and fulfilment, or the static calm of 'being', only the unrest of change and the tension of transience. This again produces a sense of movement, though of a different kind. Tense proportional relation-ships were part of this characteristic action. The circle is for instance an absolutely static and unchangeable form, but the oval is restless and always seems on the point of change; it lacks inner necessity. The baroque sought out such free proportions as a matter of principle; everything that was self-contained and complete was contrary to its essential nature. It used the oval, not only for medallions and similar objects, but for ground plans of halls, courtyards and church interiors. The form made its appearance early, as part of an agitated composition in a painting by Correggio (1515), and this was at a time when no-one in Rome had thought of using it, either in painting or architecture. It was then taken up by Michelangelo for the plinth of the statue of Marcus Aurelius, and passed on to Vignola...

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