The Origins of Baroque Art in Rome

Alois Riegl
Edited and translated by Andrew Hopkins and Arnold Witte with essays by Alina Payne, Arnold Witte, and Andrew Hopkins

Delivered three times between 1898 and 1902 and subsequently revised with an eye toward publication, Alois Riegl's lectures on the origins of Baroque art in Rome broke new ground in its field. In his approach and content, Riegl offered a markedly different account from that of Heinrich Wöfflin and other contemporaries: the beginning of the new artistic era extending from the 1520s to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was to be judged by its own rules and not merely as a period of decline.

This first English translation brings Riegl's compelling vision of the Baroque to life and amply illustrates his charisma as a lecturer. His text is full of perceptive observations on the most important artists of the period from Michelangelo to Caravaggio. By taking the spectator into consideration, Riegl identifies a crucial defining change between Renaissance and Baroque art and provides invaluable inspiration for present-day readers.

Andrew Hopkins is associate professor in the Department of Comparative History and Methodology of the University of L'Aquila. Arnold Witte is assistant professor in the Department of the Cultural History of Europe at the University of Amsterdam. Alina Payne is professor of the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University.

“[This book is] exemplary in its combination of a careful, scrupulous translation of one of the classic and complex texts of German art historiography around 1900 with the three well-informed, introductory essays which illuminate this text from different perspectives.”
—Journal of Art Historiography

“The translation into English of Alois Riegl’s final book, Die Entstehung der Barockkunst in Rom, is certain to be embraced with enthusiasm by specialists and students of art history and the Baroque alike. . . . Collectively these essays offer a very fine addition to a text that is certain to open further enquiry on the late ideas of this important art historian.”
—Renaissance and Reformation

“This translation of a pioneering work along with astute analyses of it clearly shows how the art of the Baroque 1550–1630 differed from but was not a decline from the early Renaissance masters.” 
—Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance