Baroque Visual Rhetoric

__Baroque Visual Rhetoric__ probes the Baroque’s combination of style and message and the methodological basis on which the critical art historian comes to establish that meaning.

Intricate, expressive, given to grandeur and even excess, Baroque art as a style is inseparable from the meanings it seeks to convey. Vernon Hyde Minor’s Baroque Visual Rhetoric probes this combination of style and message and – equally importantly – the methodological basis on which the critical art historian comes to establish that meaning.

Drawing on a breathtaking range of critical literature, from the German founders of art history as an academic discipline to Heidegger, Derrida, and de Man, Minor considers the issue through a series of Baroque masterpieces: Bernini’s Baldacchino in St. Peter’s Basilica, the statues in the church of San Giovanni in Laterano, Borromini’s church of Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza, Baciccio’s frescoes in the church of Il Gesù, the paintings of Philippe de Champaigne, and the Corsini Chapel in San Giovanni in Laterano.

Contents Illustrations Acknowledgments BAROQUE VISUAL RHETORIC 1. Introduction 2. Critical Perspectives 3. Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini and Inexpressibility 4. Death and Dying in St Peter’s Basilica: Part 1 5. Death and Dying in St Peter’s Basilica: Part 2 6. Eighteenth-Century Baroque: The Style That Did Not (Quite) Die 7. Narrative and Symbol in the Apostles Series, San Giovanni in Laterano 8. Fear and Trembling in Francesco Borromini’s Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza 9. Baroque Conceits: Domenichino and Baciccio 10. Bernini and the Metaphor of the Fiery Angel 11. Blaise Pascal, Jansenists, Jesuits, and the Lettres Provinciales 12. The Corsini Chapel: Its Sense of Place and Time Notes Bibliography Index