. This war was the last great continental struggle between the the Roman Catholics and the Protestants. The Treaty of Westphalia established religious orientation throughout Europe.One of my favorite things that came from the Baroque era was the architecture. Buildings of the period were composed of great curving forms with undulating facades, ground plans of unprecedented size and complexity, and domes of various shapes, as in the churches of Francesco Borromini, Guarino Guarini, and Balthasar Neumann. Many works of baroque architecture were executed on a colossal scale, incorporating aspects of urban planning and landscape architecture. This is most clearly seen in Berninis elliptical piazza in front of St. Peters in Rome, or in the gardens, fountains, and palace at Versailles, designed by Louis Le Vau, Jules Hardouin-Mansart, and Andr Le Ntre. With the size and grandeur of the buildings, and the use of the surroundings, landscape, made the Baroque era one of the most revisited forms of architecture used today. The last form of the Baroque era that will be visited is the fine arts. Painters and sculptors built and expanded on the naturalistic tradition established during the Renaissance. Many different type of art was used such as religious painting, history painting, allegories, and portraits were still considered the most used. Caravaggio and his early followers were especially significant for their naturalistic treatment of ordinary people not just the royalty. The illison of deep space interested many painters, including Il Guercino and Andrea Pozzo. Other baroque painters opened up interior spaces by representing long files of rooms, often with extended views through doors, windows, or mirrors, as in the works of Diego Velzquez and Vermeer. Color was manipulated for its emotional effects, ranging from the clear calm tones of to the warm and shimmering colors to the more vivid hues all used to give the painting the sense as if...
