Architecture in the Later 16th Century

Abstract

Seven decades have passed since the publication of Heinrich Woelfflin's Renaissance and Baroque, the first attempt to define the styles of 16th century architecture in Italy. Woelfflin's unique combination of felicitous generalization and acute analysis make his book still indispensable for the student of the period; moreover, his is one of the few books written by art historians which are understood and appreciated by unspecialized readers. Impressive though Woelfflin's definitions were, they turned out to be too broad to do justice to the complexity of the Cinquecento. They were first enriched, as it were, and then replaced by a real maze of subsidiary and more refined terms, such as Late Renaissance, Proto- and Early Baroque, Classicism, Early, High and Late Mannerism. It may sufficiently illustrate the puzzling situation which confronts us that the Art Bulletin of 1935 carried an article entitled “The First Baroque Church in Rome” and that this very church, namely Il Gesu, appears as a mannerist build...