Volume 34, Number 6 · April 9, 1987
Concerto Barocco
By J.H. Elliott
Culture of the Baroque: Analysis of a Historical Structure
by José Antonio Maravall, translated by Terry Cochran
University of Minnesota Press, 330 pp., $14.95 (paper)
A style, or an age? We all know (or think we know) a baroque building or painting or sculpture when we see one, but, after that, the difficulties begin. Since Burckhardt and Wölfflin first sought to identify and analyze a distinctive style of the baroque, generations of scholars in pursuit of the baroque have suffered all the frustrations of Bernini's Apollo in pursuit of Daphne. If, as has been argued in recent times, we are pursuing not merely a style but a 'mentality,' the pursuit becomes still more complicated. It presupposes the existence of certain common traits in European civilization over a given span of years, transcending national or religious boundaries. These traits in turn demand explanation, and there has been no lack of attempts at explanation, from the political and religious to the socioeconomic.
Review, 3488 words
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