Baroque vs. Rococo

The Baroque style in art dates its earliest manifestations to the later years of the 16th century, when the Catholic Church launched the Counter-Reformation. Faced with the growing wave of simple, unsophisticated art style promoted by Protestantism and the Reform, the Catholic Church opposed an opulent style, full of richness and grandeur. In architecture, for example, the constructions dating from the Baroque period are richly decorated, statues, sculptures, paintings, all gathered to meet the final scope of the Baroque style: achievement of a structure meant to bring forward the glory of the Church. As the Baroque swept into other countries, such as France, it gave way to memorable architectural realizations, such as Versailles, used to express royal glory. Baroque predominated in Catholic countries, including here Flanders with the perfect Rubens expression, but never gained ground in Protestant countries such as Holland or England, where at that time,...
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