Renaissance and Baroque

Abstract

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITIONThe subject of this study is the disintegration of the Renaissance. It is intended to be a contribution to the history of style rather than of individual artists. My aim was to investigate the symptoms of decay and perhaps to discover in the 'capriciousness and the return to chaos' a law which would vouchsafe one an insight into the intimate workings of art. This, I confess, is to me the real aim of art history.The transition from Renaissance to Baroque constitutes one of the most interesting chapters in the story of the art of more recent times. I trust that I do not need to justify myself in advance for having dared to conceive this transition in psychological terms, but I ask the reader to be forbearing in his judgment. This work is in every way an experiment, and I beg him to regard it as such.At the last moment I dropped my original plan to include a parallel study of baroque in ancient art, because it would have made the book too weighty ; but I hope however to pursue this curious parallel on some other occasion.TRANSLATOR'S PREFACEThis translation has been made from the first edition of Renaissance und Barock, which appeared in 1888. The expanded editions of 1906, 1908, and 1924 were produced with Wolfflin's permission, but not under his supervision.Parts of Renaissance und Barock are written in the abbreviated style of lecture notes, with examples attached inside brackets. I have tried to assimilate the tone of these passages to that of the rest of the book to the extent of sometimes adding articles and verbs. The italics correspond to double-spaced phrases and headings in the original.I am indebted to Dr. Peter Murray for his generous help with selecting and obtaining the illustrations to this book and also to Dr. Michael Podro, who checked most of the translation sentence by sentence. Without his patience and his knowledge of the intellectual background to Wolfflin's ideas and terminology this translation would hardly have been completed. Errors and omissions remain the translator's.n

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