Features of Baroque


Baroque – a trend in literature and art in the 17-18 centuries, which came to replace the Renaissance. The word “baroque” is translated as “a pearl of irregular shape”. This name is given by chance. The main features of baroque were asymmetry, gravitation towards contrasts, to a magnificent, complicated form, splendor.

Baroque combined the art of Gothic and Renaissance. Like the art of the Renaissance, it was humanistic in its essence. But, unlike the Renaissance, Baroque artists perceived the world tragically, pessimistically, disappointed. According to the apt expression, baroque is the art of the world “left by God.” “God left this world to the mercy of fate” – this is the sense of peace of Baroque artists.

Baroque features in architecture and painting: splendor, extravagant ornamentation, splendor, strong contrasts in volumes, colorful and dynamic scenic subjects, decorative theatricality. (Caravaggio, Rubens,

Rastrelli). Typical appeal to religious subjects, hyperbolized images of martyrdom or miracles.

Baroque features in music: polyphonic style, the appearance of opera (Bach, Vivaldi).

Baroque features in the literature:

– A paradoxical combination of religious and secular motives, Christian and pagan images.

– Complex metaphors, symbols, lush rhetorical style, pathetic.

– An intensely complicated, refined and bizarre form of a literary work, for example, graphic verses, the lines of which formed drawings (poems – “crosses”, poems-emblems, for example)

– Feeling of disharmony in the world. Feeling of life as a transitory segment, where there is only one blind, meaningless rock. The sensation of man is like a meager, abandoned grain of sand in the universe.

– The real world, according to the worldview of the Baroque, resembles a dream, so the works are full of allegorical images. – The first successful combination of the tragic with the comic, sublime and vulgar.

– Development of stable small forms of poetry (madrigal, sonnet), everyday, satirical novels.

Values ​​of the Baroque: grace, etiquette, politeness, aristocracy. The art and literature of the Baroque sought to ennoble nature and man on the basis of reason.


1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

Features of Baroque