Baroque

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Cultural elite of the time struggled with the mass culture of the period. And as a result of the struggle against mass culture emerged baroque style.

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Not only a struggle against decadence mannerism, but tired of the dominance constraints and the canons of the Renaissance gave birth to the emergence of the Baroque style. The architects wanted an explosion of emotions, live free art without templates that stifle the movement.

Etymology of the word "baroque" was not installed until the end. First, after the Renaissance Baroque seen as a decline, with a tinge of the negative, as a deformation of beauty. Hence the original meaning, which gives the word baroque monstrosity, the senselessness of the object. Baroque (barocco) in Italian means "strange, bizarre."

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It is possible that the main feature of Baroque is revolutionary in that period of time, the treatment forms. In Renaissance expressiveness achieved with absolute perfection of pure, natural, complete form. Quite different criteria expression in the Baroque. Baroque style creates a sense of continuous variation and extraordinary vividness with sharp dramatic conflict, contrast, extreme violence of decorative and pompous forms not completed in silhouette, are as it were in constant transformation and cause the impression of dynamic movement. So baroque referred to as "painting style", which creates the illusion of movement. This illusion is achieved by non-compliance with the proportions and mass distribution of light and shade. In baroque distortion and deformation even proportions is one of the main methods of finding expression, in contrast to the Renaissance, where law prevailed over all proportions, and nobody was allowed to violate.

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At the very beginning of its formation, baroque heavy, serious forms of nature, massive custody. This can be seen by the example of Italy, and even the example of domestic architecture. Early Petrine Baroque heavy and massive, although it used the color. In this style of pictorial mass dynamics of their movements are not so clearly expressed, although that is the main component of the style, there are more than their weight (for example - the Nakhimov Naval School in St. Petersburg).

But the massive baroque gradually reduced forms become easier and more joyful. For example, the Cathedral Smolny Convent architect Rastrelli, who looks cheerful, airy, as if detached from the ground. But in fact it is - dynamism, vitality movement, not easy.

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Renaissance, in comparison with the baroque, a graphic, linear, therefore, more flatness. In Baroque same clean lines replaced by broken contours. Individual parts, connected together, causing a feeling of indeterminate masses that vibrate under the influence of light and shadow, creating a three-dimensional feeling. Therefore, we can say so, that is the style of the Renaissance graphically-planar (two-dimensional, like a bas-relief), and the Baroque - three-dimensional (three-dimensional, reminiscent of sculpture).