Baroque Architecture | Origin, Style and Characteristics

The introduction to baroque architecture is a style that goes through history, it never pretended to be understood by reason, by intelligence, but captured by the senses, it sought emotional effects in the viewer, not rational ones. The Universe was no longer the same, the world had expanded and the individual wanted to experience a new kind of contact with the divine and the metaphysical.

The exuberant forms of the Baroque, its elliptical space, definitely anti-Euclidean, were an answer to these needs. With the advance of Protestantism, the old Roman Christian order was supplanted by new worldviews and new attitudes toward the sacred.

The Church felt the need to renew itself in order not to lose the faithful and saw in the promotion of a new aesthetic the opportunity to identify with this new world. Baroque forms were promoted by the institution throughout the world, making it the Catholic style par excellence.

Revilla believes that in the 17th century baroque architecture proper emerged, characterized by the alteration of the proportions of the architectural elements, the multiplication of arch forms, broken pediments, abundant irregular and rough moldings and the appearance of the twisted or historic shaft column. For Revilla it is in the XVIII century when the style acquires maturity and then it can be given a different name than the simple baroque, it can be called churrigueresque.