Baroque Visual Rhetoric

Intricate, expressive, given to grandeur and even excess, Baroque art as a style is inseparable from the meanings it seeks to convey. Vernon Hyde Minors Baroque Visual Rhetoric probes this combination of style and message and equally importantly the methodological basis on which the critical art historian comes to establish that meaning. Drawing on a breathtaking range of critical literature, from the German founders of art history as an academic discipline to Heidegger, Derrida, and de Man, Minor considers the issue through a series of Baroque masterpieces: Berninis Baldacchino in St. Peters Basilica, the statues in the church of San Giovanni in Laterano, Borrominis church of SantIvo alla Sapienza, Baciccios frescoes in the church of Il Ges, the paintings of Philippe de Champaigne, and the Corsini Chapel in San Giovanni in Laterano.