You are browsing the archives of 2008 April.

Our Lady of Loreto, Prague, begun 1721
Nearer the forms of rococo, the facade of the sanctuary of Loreto - made beginning in 1721 on a design by Christoph Dientzenhofer and completed by his son Kilian is especially wide and has austere architectural forms emphasized by the elegant colouring of the cornices, with subtly undulating [...]

The Bohemian late baroque was among the richest and most original artistic periods in the history of 18th-century Europe. The initial predominance of Italian taste, French stylistic elements, and the proximity of Vienna resulted in a harmonious and heterogeneous blend of forms that was unique in Europe. Prague again rose to rank among the most [...]

James Wyatt, Fonthill Abbey, 1795-1807
Designed and built for the eccentric William Beckford, Fonthill Abbey had an enormous cruciform plan with a panoramic gallery more than 100 metres long, some of it presented in the state of ruin, the rest put to domestic uses Wyatt created a visionary delirium that proved, however, to be structurally weak [...]

The reworkings of urban areas that took place during the 17th century were almost always related to overall systems of defensive fortifications, and these systems evolved steadily in terms of form and type. In response to the increased power of artillery, bastions became lower and wider, and ditches and moats were introduced on such a [...]

In England, in the second half of the 18th century, the term Gothic was freed of the negative connotations that had been attached to it by Renaissance art critics. This was a result of the early romantic infatuation with the Middle Ages, which saw medieval art as an expression of the national spirit; it was [...]

Around 1650, baroque forms began to appear in Latin America, where they were applied atop the stylistic stratifications deposited by Spanish domination dating back to the early 16th century. There were also contributions from local traditions and hybrid forms that resulted from crosses. Despite the reception of the treatises by Vignola and Serlio over the [...]

Modena is a city situated in the mid north west of the Italian peninsula and is most famous for being the home town of the Ferrari but it’s also right in the middle of the Italian food corridor which runs from Bologna, the father of Italian food to Parma, the home of ham and down [...]