Baroque Churches (Great Buildings of the World)
Hamlyn | 1969 | ISBN: 0600016439 | English | 190 pages | PDF | 24 MB


Today, by common consent, the term Baroque is applied loosely to the art of the 17th and 18th centuries; it therefore tends to have as much a chronological significance as a stylistic one. At first Baroque was a term of abuse, probably deriving in Italy from the word baroco, which was used by medieval philosophers to describe an obstacle in schematic logic and consequently came to describe any contorted idea or involuted process of thought. It seems also to be partly derived from the Portuguese barroco, or the Spanish barrueco, meaning an irregular or imperfectly shaped pearl. However, by the middle of the 1 8th century, the term began to be applied to art in a less derogatory fashion