＂Unprecedented in scope like its companion volume on the High Renaissance, Transformations, this sixth volume in the Architecture in Context series traces the development of architecture and
decoration in the 17th and early 18th centuries - particularly the transformation of rationalist Classical ideals into the emotive, highly theatrical style known as Baroque and the further
development away from architectonic principles to the free-ranging decorative style known as Rococo. It begins with an outline ofthe politics of Absolutism and its opposite over the century
from the Thirty Years’ War to the War of the Austrian Succession: this is illustrated with images largely chosen from the major artists of the day; a supplementary introduction outlines the
cross-currents of painting in the early Baroque era. The first substantive section deals with the seminal masters active in Rome - Maderno, Cortona, Borromini and Bernini - and their
contemporaries there, in Venice and in Piedmont. The second section deals with the seminal French masters - above all Franis Mansart, Louis Le Vau, Andre Le Nôtre, Jules-Hardouin Mansart and
the latter’s followers who developed the Rococo style in the domestic field. The rest of the book is divided into three large sections: theProtestant North - the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden
and Britain; the Divided Centre - the Catholic powers of central Europe and southern Germany, the Protestants of northern Germany and the Orthodox Russians; the Catholic South - the Iberian
kingdoms andtheir dominions in southern Italy and the Americas＂--
