Baroque architecture
This style with its lavish, heavy decoration
and curvaceous, complex forms, evolved in Rome c.1620-60 as an
expression of Catholic resurgence. Baroque was adopted in Britain with
a certain insular reserve, but finds a glorious expression in St Paul's Cathedral
by Sir
Christopher Wren. Domes were favoured.
An English Baroque school flowered from Wren's work in the hands of his assistant Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661-1738) and Hawksmoor's collaborator John Vanbrugh (1664-1726), who designed the grandiose Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard.
The style was naturally favoured by Catholics and Lulworth Castle Chapel is a good example. Designed in 1786 by John Tasker, it was the first free-standing Roman Catholic Church built after the Reformation.
Baroque was revived in the Edwardian period for some exuberantly confident public buildings.
Sources
- Calloway, S., Baroque Baroque: The culture of excess (1998).
- Hart, V., Nicholas Hawksmoor: Rebuilding ancient wonders (2002)
- Summerson, J., Architecture in Britain 1530-1830 new edn. (1994).
- Morrice, R., The Buildings of Britain: Stuart and Baroque (1982).