s of its forms. The style of his ceiling Fresno in the gallery of the Farnese Palace (1597-1601) is reminiscent of Michelangelo’s “Sistine ceiling” and Raphael’s “Galatea”. But the illusionistic scheme reflects Annibale’s knowledge of Coreggio and the great Venetians. The greatest representative of the Late Baroque was the Neapolitan painter Luca Giordano (1634-1705). He began his career as an imitator of Ribera but soon became the leading decorative painter in Italy. He absorbed a host of influences and was able to imitate other artists' styles with ease. His work also varied in subject matter, although he was primarily a religious and mythological painter. His “The Abduction of Europa” (1686) shares the graceful style of Cortona and the rich tonalism inherited from Lanfranco.Two of the greatest Baroque architects were Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) and Francesco Borromini (1599-1667). Buildings of the period are composed of great curving forms with undulating facades, ground plans of unprecedented size and complexity, and domes of various shapes. At St. Peter’s, Rome, Bernini molded the open space of the faade into a magnificent oval piazza. In addition, the huge scale of the building can only be compared with the ancient Roman sanctuary at Palestrina. Borromini started out as an assistant to Maderno and the to Bernini himself, but he later began work as an independent architect with his reconstruction of the monastery and church of “St. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane” (1665-1667). Borromini used concave and convex surfaces to make the entire structure seem elastic. He merged architecture and sculpture in a way that had not been attempted since Gothic art. Gianlorenzo Bernini was also one of the great Baroque sculptors. While his “David” (1623) is reminiscent of “The Laocoon Group,” what makes it Baroque is the implied presence of Goliath. Be...
