UK museum to offer 'perfect tonic' to recession with celebration of Baroque style
Riches – such as a bust of Charles II by Honoré Pelle, paintings by Old Masters including Sir Peter Paul Rubens and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and one of only two surviving pieces of furniture from the Palace of Versailles from Louis XIV's reign – will be shown at the V&A when the exhibition opens next April.
Baroque has come to be regarded as kitsch in recent years, its seemingly frivolous style bastardised in endless home makeover programmes.
But behind such extreme displays of wealth and power lay "profoundly serious and often political purposes", according to Professor Nigel Llewellyn, who is co-curating the exhibition.
"Absolute rulers" such as Louis XIV had themselves painted in "heroic portraits" to reinforce the cult of their personalities, he said.
Different royal courts would try to outdo each other, not on the battlefield but in the theatre, by staging ever more lavish and complicated performances that often used sophisticated mechanical sets.
Baroque, which developed in southern Europe and in particular Rome, spread all over the world with the emergence of European colonial power and the resurgence of the Catholic church.
Prof Llewellyn said: "Baroque was the first global style".
The exhibition will be split into sections on overall style, theatre, public entertainment and the use of public spaces, religious spaces such as St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican and secular spaces such as Versailles.
On display will be silver furniture, portraits, sculpture, the bed given by Louis XIV to the King of Sweden, court tapestries and a gilded Mexican alterpiece.
It will be "the first to examine all the elements of Baroque style", according to the V&A...
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
Baroque has come to be regarded as kitsch in recent years, its seemingly frivolous style bastardised in endless home makeover programmes.
But behind such extreme displays of wealth and power lay "profoundly serious and often political purposes", according to Professor Nigel Llewellyn, who is co-curating the exhibition.
"Absolute rulers" such as Louis XIV had themselves painted in "heroic portraits" to reinforce the cult of their personalities, he said.
Different royal courts would try to outdo each other, not on the battlefield but in the theatre, by staging ever more lavish and complicated performances that often used sophisticated mechanical sets.
Baroque, which developed in southern Europe and in particular Rome, spread all over the world with the emergence of European colonial power and the resurgence of the Catholic church.
Prof Llewellyn said: "Baroque was the first global style".
The exhibition will be split into sections on overall style, theatre, public entertainment and the use of public spaces, religious spaces such as St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican and secular spaces such as Versailles.
On display will be silver furniture, portraits, sculpture, the bed given by Louis XIV to the King of Sweden, court tapestries and a gilded Mexican alterpiece.
It will be "the first to examine all the elements of Baroque style", according to the V&A...