The Baroque Style in Western Europe

The Baroque style corresponds roughly to the closing years of the sixteenth century, overlapping Mannerism and lasting, in some areas, unti around 1750. Religious and political conflicts, especially between Catholics and Protestants, continued in the seventeenth century The Thirty Years War (1618-48) sapped the power of the Holy Roman emperor. Holand rebeled against the repressive Catholic domination of Spain. As a result, what had previously been the Netherlands was separated into Protestant Holland and Catholic Flanders (modern Belgium). From 1620 the Puritans fled religious persecution in Europe and sailed to New England. In 1649 England beheaded King Charles I and introduced parliamentary rule.
In science and philosophy, the seventeenth century made great strides-though not without controversy. In England, William Harvey established the system of blood circulation. Isaac Newton discovered the laws of gravity, which brought him into conflict with the Catholic king, James II. Rene Descartes, the French philosopher, based his philosophy on a method of systematic doubt. He emphasized clear, rational thought, embodied by the humanist phrase "i think, therefore I am." Descartes avoided conflict with the Church only by acknowledging that God was the source of the original impulse to reason
In Rome, the Inquisition forced Galileo to recant and banned his book. Scientific advances were paradoxically accompanied by a rise in relgious Fundamentalism. Superstition and fear of the Devil and the Antichrist swept Europe. In America aswell as in Europe, these fears led to devastating waves of witch-hunts.
Baroque - a French variant of the Portuguese word barroco,meaning an irregular, and therefore imperfect, pearl. Although Classical themes and subject matter continued to appeal to artists and their patrons, Baroque tended to be relatively overtly emotional, and more energetic than earlier style. Baroque artists rejected aspects of Mannerist virtuosity and stylization, while absorbing the Mannerists taste for chiaroscuro and theatrical effects. Baroque art achieves a new kind of nauralism that reflects some of the scientific advances of the period. There is also a new taste for dramatic action and
violent narrative scenes, and emotion is given a wide range of expression-a departure from the Renaissance adherence to Classical restraint. Baroque color and light are dramatically contrasted, and surfaces are richly textured. Baroque space is usually asymmetrical and lacks the appearance of trolled linear perspective: sharply diagonal planes generally replace the predominant vertical and horizontals of Renaissance compositions. Landscape genre, and still life, which had originated as separate but minor categories of painting in the sixteenth century gained new status in the seventeenth.
Baraque art began in Italy, particularly Rome.
At the end of Baroque period Paris emerged as the artistic center of Europe, a position it would retain until WWII.
Two major Baroque architectures - St Peter's in Rome and Versaille (Louis XIV - the Sun King)
Bernini - St Peter's
Borromini 
Caravaggio
Spainish Baroque painter - Velazquez