Baroque and Rococo art

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1972, softcover, 224 pages with Index, illustrated with lots of photographs, paintings, art, sculpture, and architecture, measures about 8 1/8 inches X 5 5/8 inches. "The seventeenth century ushered in the great age of Baroque. Mannerism's fragmented and abstract virtuosities had become a restricting web, removed from common experience. The new art aimed frankly at involving the spectator, and had direct reference to nature and feeling. Baroque and Rococo ~ the style which almost imperceptibly merged with it in the following century ~ suggest images of exuberance, splendour, illusion, fantasy, and technical brilliance. Yet the seventeenth century, with its contrasting tendencies of dynamism and classicism, produced masters as diverse as Caravaggio, Bernini, Rubens, and Rembrandt; and the eighteenth century, artists of such varied inspiration as Watteau, Tiepolo, and Hogarth. Mr. Sewter does not impose unreal and rigid definitions, but considers the individuals and their work, in painting, sculpture, and architecture, in the light of both their genius and of the cultural context. He analyses the rich flow of interpenetrating influences from which the art of the period drew its vitality and intensity, and provides an incisive, sympathetic and illuminating survey of all the major artists."