Why Was 17th Century England So Far Behind The Rest Of Europe? | Baroque | Absolute History

this channel is part of the history hits Network [Music] getting to England was no easy Journey for the Baroque crossing the channel was difficult enough but an even Sterner barrier was the innate English resistance to emotional and flamboyant art [Music] by the time the Baroque reached here in the 1620s or so England was artistically speaking the most backward of the great European powers never mind the Baroque taking its time even the Renaissance hadn't got here yet 17th century England was still stuck in the Middle Ages a half-timbered medieval hodgepodge of higgledy-piggledy Tudor DIY [Music] and as always in these turbulent years the forces holding back progress were fiercely religious the events of the Reformation had filled the English with rabid suspicion not just of popish plots but a popish art as well as William prin the Puritan agitator would later put it there was no welcome on these Shores for the sinful the idolatrous the abominable by which he meant art [Music] so although the Baroque got here all right indeed it did great things here look at that one of the most magnificent Baroque sites anywhere in the world but it wasn't an uncomplicated arrival that it had tragic and momentous consequences [Music] this stupendous Riverside Vista at Greenwich consists of three Baroque firsts up on the hill that's Charming brick building was the Royal Observatory begun in 1675. the first purpose-built scientific establishment in the world the exciting Baroque Palace across the front isn't a palace at all but the first old people's home built to look like a palace Christopher wrens Greenwich Hospital a retirement home for wounded Sailors so successfully Posh that the old Sea Dogs were soon kicked out and their officers moved in [Music] but the key building here is the one in the middle the dinky little white one inner go Jones is Queen's house Denmark in 1617 take a good look at it because that is possibly the most important little building in the whole of British architecture [Music] although technically it belongs to the Baroque era or to the Queen's house actually constitutes is the first sophisticated bit of European building to be attempted in England it's the whole of the Renaissance as well as the Baroque rolled into one and arriving in England at last [Music] it's white it's Angelic and it's not half timbered Hallelujah but let's be honest it's not an exciting building Inigo Jones was not an exciting architect what made him special was the fact that he'd been to Italy he'd seen what architecture could do come back to England and he'd opened the floodgates [Music] history hitters like Netflix just for history fans with exclusive history documentaries covering some of the most famous people and events in history just for you whether you are looking to find out more about charismatic leaders like Cleopatra or to discover the story behind the industrial revolution history hits will have something for you we're committed to Bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you cannot find anywhere else sign up now for a free trial and absolute history fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code absolute history at checkout [Music] foreign 's house is the tiny crack through which the Baroque poured into England but the man who enlarged that crack and turned it into a giant opening wasn't an artist or an architect but a king the British Monarchy has a patchy record in matters of Art aesthetic concerns have hardly ever been a priority at one superb exception the only King with taste and the only King whose head we cut off Charles the first was an unlikely candidate to become an artistic savior a tiny man just five feet three he was born with a cluster of disadvantages he couldn't walk properly or talk till he was three and he always had a slight stutter when he was young his tutors would make him wear iron boots to strengthen his legs but he became an expert Horseman who would have suspected though that he would also turn into a man of Art in 1623 when he was 23 Charles was packed off to Spain to fulfill the so-called Spanish mission The Hope was that he would marry the daughter of the Spanish King Philip II bring peace to Europe and a huge Spanish Dowry back to London Spanish marriage plans eventually fell through thank God if you remember from the last film the one set in Spain the Spanish habsburgs had bred themselves into a genetic mess [Music] cousins had married cousins nieces had become wives and heaven knows what genetic misfortunes would have been visited upon the British Monarchy if Charles had married a Habsburg the other problem was the hugely discombobulating fact that the Spanish princess was a Catholic after all the religious turmoil that England had just been through the dissolution of the monasteries Henry VII's battles with Rome the idea of Charles marrying a Spanish Catholic was dismaying to say the least but one Splendid thing did come out of the failed Spanish mission in Madrid Charles was shown around the Royal residences where he discovered Titian titoreto Raphael and his eyes were opened to the Delights of Art [Music] also in Spain Charles came into contact with the finest and most successful Baroque painter of these dramatic times Reubens the king of Flesh so although the Spanish marriage didn't work out Charles came back to England a changed man a man who was mad about art and it was to prove his downfall [Music] that's the banqueting house in Whitehall just up from Big Ben designed Again by Inigo Jones originally as the venue for a huge party that was supposed to follow the Spanish wedding the one that never happened banqueting house was part of a rambling Palace that Charles built on the side of the Thames an imitation of the Spanish Royals most of it was destroyed in 1698 but the banqueting house survives but inside it is the only painted ceiling by Rubens that's still in place it's been called the greatest painted ceiling north of the Alps and it's right under our noses in London foreign s came here originally on a diplomatic Mission sent by the king of Spain but Charles dug his Exquisite Royal fingers into him and he commissioned this [Music] it tells of the Union of the crowns of Scotland and England under Charles's father James the first and of the good things that resulted [Music] foreign [Music] James is going up to heaven see him there as peace crowns him with Laurel over here Bounty sits on avarice and brings goodness to England while greed Shivers nakedly over there good government tramples on Rebellion it was actually painted in Antwerp in Ruben's studio and then shipped over in bits Charles liked it so much he knighted Reubens and even gave him a hat worth 500 pounds as a thank you and also the ring from his own finger [Music] Charles himself appears on the ceiling as a little boy brought before the king to observe the union of the crowns when Charles became king in 1625 he would hold Court down here so the union of the crowns would be facing him the right way up but for the general audience who entered through that door the first thing they would see would be James the first ascending to heaven and being crowned by the Gods thereby affirming the divine right of kings who are answerable only to God although it tells the Protestant tale of the making of Great Britain and the union of the crowns there's a popeish heir to the banqueting house ceiling Rubens has turned King James into Saint James and many would have noticed that [Music] rubens's great ceiling would have been the last art that Charles saw when a few short years after it was finished Parliament decided to punish the king for his extravagances by beheading him but a lot needed to happen before we reach that tragic conclusion what matters here is the key role played by Art in these events foreign [Music] gosh [Music] Charles the first was an addict and his addiction wasn't women or wine or even power his addiction was art he would send his agents out into Europe looking for the best pictures their instruction was to buy buy [Music] there were masterpieces here by Mantegna Raphael Leonardo Charles even bought some caravaggios that's how Progressive he was and the sun caravaggio's death of the Virgin that magnificent display of Catholic mourning that now hangs in the Louvre with its fatally slumped Mary once hung here in England [Music] it wasn't just as a collector that Charles distinguished himself it was also as a patron having convinced Reubens the greatest ceiling painter north of the Alps to work for him Charles then turned his attention to Reuben's greatest pupil the arrival in Britain of Anthony Van Dyke changed everything here it ushered in the most dramatic years there have been in English painting Van Dyke opened the door and the Baroque flooded in [Music] foreign devil graceful charming eloquent masterfully diplomatic the perfect courtier ladies loved him and so did Kings [Music] Charles pursued Van Dyke furiously for nearly a decade before he finally persuaded this dashing Belgian to come to England in 1632 and become the king's painter it was like the arrival of a Ferrari at a bicycle race van dijk with his fast hands and exhilarating courtier's touch seemed to come not just from another country but from another planet suddenly Poise Elegance excitement arrogance entered British art and he made something so heroic out of Charles the first those who mistrust his work complain of chronic flattery and I don't think you can deny it in that stupendous equestrian portrait that still hangs in Buckingham Palace the little King with the Gammy legs has been turned into a heroic Knight in armor riding out on his white Steed sir Lancelot of Whitehall [Music] Van Dyke worked an even greater transformation on the French princess whom Charles successfully married after his Spanish Adventure fell through Queen Henrietta Maria a tiny bird-like woman had teeth which according to a passing Venetian Envoy stuck out of her face like ships cannons though you'd never know it from any of Van Dyke's gorgeous reimaginings of her no wonder the king showered him with favors gave him a house by the river in Black Friars knighted him and adored him foreign [Music] although the King was Van Dyke's main employer the Lesser members of the Court were soon fighting over his Services as well if you were a man who wouldn't wish to be remembered as dashingly as this if you were a woman who wouldn't Envy this kind of beauty in these guys but he was more than a flatterer yes those dashing Cavaliers of his were their nonchalant poses and there's perfectly delightful carolingian temptresses flashing their silk statue they're easy on the eye but look into their faces and there's something else there a note of sadness a touch of worry a fragility van dijk was as great a painter as he was because he couldn't keep the times he was living through out of his art and I don't think he wanted to and it's this psychological magnetism of his that makes him so baroque [Music] Van Dyke's dashing and ringletted Cavaliers with their superb nonchalance are the perfect pictorial inhabitants of these thoroughly exciting times [Music] everything about Van Dyke was poised measured successful except the manner of his dying he was killed by a miserable fever in 1641 and died in that house that Charles gave him in Black Friars aged just 42 tragically young but he changed British portraiture forever and he'd put an unforgettable face to his era to be a truly important artist you see it's not enough to be talented you need also to live through truly important times and your work needs somehow to embody those times now the fates up there they know this indeed they plan for it how else to explain the extraordinary fact that as soon as Van Dyke was dead the English Civil War broke out everything changed and out of nowhere it seems he appeared on the scene if you read conventional books about British art they'll tell you that the first Native genius born on these Shores was William Hogarth but that's not true [Music] british-born genius the first truly dazzling English painter was born a hundred years before Hogarth he's that handsome fellow in the middle whose name you probably won't know even though it's a fine English name William Dobson fate dropped Dobson slap in the middle of one of the most tumultuous dramatic and tragic epochs in Britain's recorded history the English Civil War and if Dobson hadn't been there and put a face to his era the truth about these dramatic times would have gone unrecorded fate gave Dobson This Magnificent moment all to himself and God made sure he was talented enough to record it unforgettably and brilliantly when the Civil War broke out in 1642 just a few short weeks after Van Dyke's death the king and his court decamped from London to Oxford and for the next four years this was to be their home foreign Souls became the royalist Arsenal [Music] INE College was where the artillery was parked [Music] was taken over by Taylors making new uniforms for the King's Men the queen lived here in Merton College the king himself moved into Christ Church College and the quad was used as a cattle pen for the soldiers later on Christopher Wren designed the famous tower [Music] poor little Oxford didn't know what a town was overrun with courtiers soldiers freeloaders drunken Cavaliers wandered the streets getting into fights and their bravado in their eyes their courageous excitement was vividly captured by William Dobson foreign [Music] the king who always prized his own aesthetic Comforts set up a traveling court for himself here in Oxford and this man Nicholas Lanier was Master of the king's music now study his face well because he also appears in that exciting self-portrait we've just been looking at by Dobson I think she thinks Dobson was made the king's official painter and he kept himself very busy painting the various notables who popped up in Oxford Mrs Dobson's rather shaky portrait of Inigo Jones and here's his magnificent Charles II the boy who would be king subduing the furies with a commanding Royal gesture as the Battle of Edge Hill rages in the distance it's a magnificent piece of Royal portraiture and it's so thoroughly English [Music] Dobson must have worked about the court before the Civil War started but there's no record of it it's as if he emerged from nowhere he obviously knew van dijk's work well and he was just as obviously his own man who brought a stubborn four-square beefiness to British portraiture those who sat for him seemed often to put on a stone and a half in his presence he made them bulkier earthier here's Endymion Porter painted by Van Dyke and here he is by Dobson here's Nicholas Lanier as van dijk saw him here's how he saw himself [Music] and here is what Dobson made of him inside every Englishman it seems there's a Henry VIII waiting to be discovered it's such Lively portraiture I can't believe Dobson is so obscure we should applaud him from every historical rafter in England he was there in the Civil War he gave it a face and history thanked him by forgetting him completely and by making sure he suffered the grubbiest of deaths foreign he died in London in 1646 an alcoholic they say penniless in debt dumped into an arms house aged just 36. the only paintings We Know by him were all done in those few short years in Oxford before the war was lost that was his moment and how vigorously he seized it after Dobson's death the king plotted on for a few more years but the fates were determined to punish him for his aesthetic extravagances and arranged an outrageously dramatic finale for him [Music] it all came to a terrible end on January the 30th 1649. [Music] the King was executed outside the very banqueting house that had ushered in his Baroque age they put up a special scaffold up there it was an unusually cold day so the king wore an extra shirt so that no one would mistake his shivering for fear [Music] by all accounts he went to his scaffold with great dignity a king ruined in part at least by his Baroque obsession with art Cromwell and the Puritans quickly set about selling off the Royal collection the Royal plumber was given a painting of Noah's flood by basano some sort of weak cromwellian joke I suppose and the hated French and Spanish courts bought up all the titians and the caravaggios and they're now found in the Louvre and The Prado so the story of painting in England more or less ground to a halt and it was time for another of the great Baroque Arts to step up and be counted it was time for architecture with a little unexpected help from the hand of God [Music] Fire of London in the devil's year of 1666 is one of the Mythic turning points in the story of the Baroque fire started in a baker's shop here in Pudding Lane run by the king's personal Baker and this Baker shop was situated here far away from the king's palaces as a deliberate safety measure to make sure that no fires were started in Whitehall so instead the Royal Bakery ended up setting fire to the whole of London for three whole days it raged two-thirds of the Metropolis was destroyed for londoners it was a colossal tragedy for the Baroque it was a godsend what the great fire accidentally achieved was the purging of Tudor London Street after Street of Highly inflammable half-timbered housing was torched creating a golden building opportunity for the English Barack and as sometimes happens in Britain in times of deep National need a Great Hero stepped forward to save the day Christopher Wren didn't look like an architectural Warrior but then in these ornate Baroque times everyone's seriousness was compromised by absurd restoration wigs and powdery facial get-ups thing about Ren is that he already had a big career behind him as a scientist before he turned to architecture he was professor of astronomy at Oxford where he made important discoveries in telescope techniques and motion studies and ren was the first man successfully to introduce a foreign substance into the bloodstream of a dog thereby inventing the injection [Music] inside that huge Baroque brain of his Wren was constantly making amazing scientific connections but how these led him to architecture God only knows [Music] the fire had destroyed 87 London churches 87. no wonder it must have seemed like an act of God and when Ren stepped forward to rebuild 51 of them yes 51. he was driven by something more than mere dutifulness because beneath that powdery restoration disguise of his Sir Christopher Wren saw himself so baroqueally as an instrument of God this square mile of the city of London contains the finest concentration of Baroque architecture outside Rome 51. Baroque gems nestling among the money-making skyscrapers now obviously I can't show all of those to you at once but let's see how many a fat lump like me can get round to Sea in 15 minutes [Music] thank you his finest Creative Energy went into the Steeples the English likes their Steeples Ren knew that but rather than giving them pointy bits of Gothic that they were used to Ren came up with things like that Saint Brides you know the modern wedding cake with all the different layers that was inspired by this steeple get it Saint rides Saint Mary LeBeau to be a proper cockamey you need to have been born within earshot of that Fantastical steeple [Music] I like this one Saint vedest the way it curves and bulges Baroque me in and out [Music] Wren had to invent a new kind of church an Anglican Church before the Church of England had been happy to convert Catholic churches but he had to come up with something new from scratch [Music] the Interiors also needed complete reinvention this is Saint Margaret's loughberry the best surviving Ren interior a bold rectangle with these big wide windows and an air of elegant simplicity Protestant interior foreign churches [Music] 15 minutes fitter man than me we probably have got around 10. and of course all the time that Ren was building the London churches his greatest achievement Saint Paul's Cathedral was rising up out of the ashes of the great fire Saint Paul's took 35 years to finish and while we're waiting for that to happen we should get out of London expand our Horizons because the Baroque was much too powerful an epidemic to confine itself to the city the English stately home was one of the most distinctive and delightful inventions of the Baroque age of course other nations dotted their Countryside with big houses too but no one else was quite as Keen as the British to position excellent architecture in an excellent stretch of landscape when you look at somewhere magnificently English like Blenheim Palace you're looking at an outdoor composition in which everything has been placed just so it's a duet if you like between the house and its landscape and that sense you get here of the whole thing being one entity no one else did that that is a fine invention of the English baroque foreign ER you get to Blenheim Palace the less Rural and relaxed it begins to seem because Blenheim is the greatest and grandest creation of the full-blown English baroque oh the house itself is the handiwork of that fascinating and busy Baroque B Sir John Van Buren when you look at portraits of Van bura it's difficult to take the man seriously he had the biggest of big hairdos and a puffy pouty look to him with his velvets and his lace but underneath this powdered and billowing Baroque exterior lurked one of the most interesting creative minds that these times produced foreign looked like a Toth and he built like a Toth but he actually had Fierce Democratic leanings so much so that in 1688 he was imprisoned in the Bastille for seditious and revolutionary behavior and espionage he spent four and a half years in that French jail and when he came out he became a playwright and he wrote that marvelous restoration comedy the provoked wife which is probably playing at an AM dram somewhere near you right now [Music] he wrote poems pamphlets plays and managed somehow to become an architect too and a very quirky one Blenheim is the largest and most bombastic of Britain's country houses the only one allowed to call itself a palace [Music] built to celebrate the Duke of marlborough's famous victory over the French at the Battle of Blenheim so please was the British Monarchy with the Duke's great victory that they gave him this land and told him to build something suitable on it oh so it was always meant to be more of a war memorial than a home and that's why there is This heavyweight Grandeur and seriousness to it other English country houses settle gently on the landscape like a butterfly but Blenheim needed to land heavily like a great big ceremonial cake and you have to admit it does that impeccably Van Buren's ambition here is to find a Baroque architecture that resounds with power and might Go Round the back and it all gets a little more relaxed and playful a nice backdrop for the occasional game of cricket but that's the back at the front this is a building that demands your obedience and respect the era's finest sculptor grindling Gibbons was employed to carve these giant English Lions chewing up the pathetic French [ __ ] and at the top of the house where no one could miss him vanburer placed a giant captured bust of the defeated Sun King Louis XIV so that visitors could mock him as they entered the house [Music] while the outside of Blenheim Puffs out its chest and demands your obedience the inside Puffs out its chest and demands that you dress properly for dinner [Music] that great English warrior so Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim of course and some of its military mood was his inheritance [Music] visitors entered into here where they'd be overwhelmed by all this Mighty Baroque architecture with its militaristic air then they'd be led through here underneath the minstrel gallery into blenheim's great Saloon its most surprising sight an illusionistic Courtyard that turns the inside of Blenheim into an outside it was painted by the aptly named Louis lager a French painter whose name means in Translation Louis the war there he is up there two Prim and powdered you would have thought to be much of a painter foreign came up with an illusionistic ring of balconies on which has gathered a pretend audience of international visitors to Blenheim from the four corners of the Earth from France from Spain in China and from wherever that is [Music] they're here to watch the room's Central scene in which the mighty Duke of Marlborough rushes across the sky in his Chariot like a Marvel comic hero while the embodiment of Peace stays his militaristic arm and persuades him to stop fighting it's a decent bit of Baroque hack work and it does its job well enough faking up some Grandeur and illusionism for these stately rooms and throwing in some handy propaganda for peace but at this point in the Baroque story and we're very near the Tail End these illusionistic Ambitions are outweighing the meaningful content and the Baroque has grown slightly silly that's inside the fake interior of Blenheim and it's not something you could ever say of the palace's exterior Blenheim on the outside is a master class of Baroque invention these weird towers for instance how strange and unexpected are they or this peculiar cluster of bold architectural sculpture who on Earth came up with this oh manbra came late to architecture he was basically an amateur so he needed some professional help to achieve all this and while the Grandeur and the bomb bass that you see here is definitely Van Buren's handiwork much of the architectural Brilliance is due to someone else foreign the designer of many of the best bits was this lopsided boromini of Blenheim Nicholas hawksmore hawksmore was the most inventive and madcap architect these Shores have produced things look excitingly strange in British Baroque architecture the chances are hawksmore did it and according to some scattering bits of eccentric Baroque around London wasn't all that hawksmore did hawksmore a time-traveling murder mystery by Peter Aykroyd heat a collection of weird existential poems about hawksmore by Ian Sinclair and from Hell an extra large Gothic horror comic set in hawksmores London and all about the Ripper murders by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell [Music] tomes most mysterious Baroque builder of being the architect not just of buildings but also of evil mind you wandering around the churchyard of a hawksmore building a twilight in the Autumn is a distinctly spooky experience his buildings definitely have a psychological presence the Baroque getting inside your head again [Music] in 1711 the British Parliament passed some new legislation providing tax money to build 50 New London churches in the end only a dozen of them were finished six of them by hawk small he also designed the towers of two of the other ones and these London churches are hawksmoor's most important Baroque achievements now I've marked out their positions on this London map so over here is Saint George Bloomsbury that's the one with the strange ziggurat for a steeple and the statue of George the first on the top very peculiar building and over here is Christchurch spitalfields now it's around this church that all the Ripper murders were supposed to have taken place it's the one with the pointy Gothic steeple out here is Saint Anne's Limehouse this one here with the strange obelisk in front of it in the center of the city right in the center Saint Mary Walnut very peculiar looking building and over here think George in the East the one with a Spanish look to it now Hawkes were also designed these two towers not the whole church but the two towers for other people's churches there's Saint Luke's old Street which is over here and St John's Horsley down that was down here south of the river now according to this book here ludheat Ian Sinclair if you join up these hawksmore churches with their positions here what you get is a diagram that bears an uncanny resemblance to an ancient Egyptian hieroglyph down here last of the hawksmore churches Saint alphage Greenwich the one with the huge keystones and that's the final bit of the jigsaw which makes this mysterious symbol the Eye of Horus protector of all deities safeguarder the deepest secrets [Music] and this mad idea hawksmore deliberately planned the position of his churches so that they formed this mysterious ancient diagram reaches its Crescendo in this great big comic book where Jack the Ripper's murders and the secrets of the Freemasons and the position of hawksmoor's churches and all manner of weird Hocus Pocus that I can't begin to understand is mixed together in a mysterious Baroque soup of course it's all nonsense really silly but what isn't nonsense is the atmosphere of hawks Moore's work which is take it from me do me and unsettling someone once wrote that you can imagine funerals taking place in a Hawksmoor church but not weddings how true that is these looming oversized and madly inventive slabs of architectural sampling are some of the strangest concoctions the Baroque ever came up with what is that on top of St George's Bloomsbury and whoever saw a zigguratic pyramid atop an Anglican Church in Hawksmoor the English Baroque grows very eccentric his architecture mixes things that have never been mixed before Mexican Gothic Greek Egyptian and it's the very unexpectedness of this mix that makes it unmistakably baroque do I like it not always do I recognize genius in here of course is it the greatest achievement of the English baroque no but that's only because this is [Music] do you know how many great Cathedrals there are in the world that were actually built in the lifetimes of their architect one this one Saint Paul's Ren designed it he watched the first stone going down he watched the last Stone going down from 1675 to 1710 35 years what an achievement there was a Biblical heir to the great fire that destroyed the Old Saint Paul's the sense that God had played a deliberate part in the purging of London must have seemed inescapable the start Wren wanted to build an imposing domed Cathedral here a great church roundel to rank alongside Saint Peter's in Rome and he achieved that of course but it took a momentous piece of deception this is the giant model Wren made of Saint Paul's as he dreamed of building it is what he really wanted to do here the English clergy found wren's domed Basilica too Catholic and popish and rejected his Splendid design he was forced to come up with something else something more English more traditional so he proposed instead this Grim compromise bit of a steeple a bit of a knave a bit of a mess and when the scaffolds went up in 1675 for the new Saint Paul's this is what people were expecting to be built 35 years later however when the scaffolds finally came down look what the English Barack had actually come up with foreign had lied through his teeth about what he was going to build he promised us this and all the time he was building this Saint Paul's was never what it seems to be these high palatial walls for instance Rising grandly above the city are actually false and unnecessary they're just there for effect to the actual building from the front took off the facade would be shaped like this for the Nave two aisles down either side but what Ren's done is he's put up these false walls they're just there for show to make the building look much higher from the side so in between here there are empty spaces a dome that too is illusionistic it's actually not one Dome but three out here you have the big dome that everybody sees inside there's another Dome that you only see on the inside and then was one that you don't see at all which is a kind of conical Dome that goes at the middle and that supports the lantern so what you see on the outside is completely different from what you see on the inside so Wren got his popeish cathedral in the end he promised us an ugly English compromise instead he connived to bring us a soaring ecclesiastical Masterpiece that wouldn't look too out of place in Rome itself and that's the thing about the English Barack paper it's thoroughly Protestant in the flesh it's not so sure [Music] we began this series in Rome in front of Saint Peters and I told you that we'd follow the Baroque from Rome to London from Saint Peter's to Saint Paul's now here we are at the end of the journey and we've watched the Baroque squiggling its way through the entire 17th century always pushing expanding changing we've seen the Baroque grow thunderous and huge as it sought to batter us into submission and we've watched it Go plaintiff and sad as it tried to get inside our minds and our hearts we've watched it rope in all the other arts for support sculpture architecture this way and that it billowed through enormous spaces and tiny ones if you remember I told you that the actual word by Rock comes from this a misshapen Pearl baroco in Portuguese and if you are expecting this series to follow a straight line you'll be disappointed because the Baroque didn't do straight lines but there is something that unites all these magnificent sights and spectacles and makes them typically Baroque something powerful that brings everything together it's the need to be noticed the Baroque built Big because big things have a big impact it dazzled you with its Illusions and caught you up in its psychology because it wanted your time and your attention it was the first art movement to realize that being good wasn't enough you needed also to make an impact it's a lesson the Arts have never forgotten if you want an audience get out there and grab it

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 821,591

Keywords: history documentaries, absolute history, world history, ridiculous history, quirky history

Id: Vd-3aW9ayvM

Length: 59min 38sec (3578 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 15 2022