The Ugly Baroque

It’s hard to believe, but once, Baroque was perceived as excessive and a sign of bad taste.

Now, however, this style is admired by millions: Bach and Vivaldi compositions, Rastrelli palaces, Bernini sculptures, paintings by Caravaggio and Rubens—recognized peaks of world culture.

Evgeny Zharinov explains how attitudes toward Baroque changed and why, over time, it became associated with beauty. After all, what “ugly” can you see in this music, in the lavish architecture of Rastrelli, in Bernini’s works, in Caravaggio’s paintings, or in Rubens’s canvases, which today rank among the most expensive works in the history of art? Yet it wasn’t always like this: less than a century ago, the word “Baroque” was often used not as a name of an artistic movement, but as a dismissive label—an outright negative assessment of “strange” and “incomprehensible” art.

A new book by Evgeny Viktorovich Zharinov tells how the “ugly” turned into the “beautiful,” how Baroque formed and developed, and what impact it had on world culture—introducing a cycle of detailed studies of different eras and artistic styles.