{The Baroque Period [continued (8)]}[7th May 1991]

[Redbook9:288-289][19910507:0915h]{The Baroque Period [continued (8)]}[7th May 1991]

19910507:0915

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‘The little church of Sta. Bibiana in Rome harbours three of the key works which ushered in the High Baroque, all executed in 1624-26[ce]. * Gian Lorenzo Bernini's facade and the marble figures of Sta. Bibiana over the altar inside are fine examples of the height of the Baroque. Pietro da Cortona painted a fresco of “Sta. Bibiana Refusing to Sacrifice to Idols” (1624-26) on the side wall of the nave, and the rich exuberance of the composition is a prelude to the gigantic “Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power”, which he was to paint on the vault of the Great Hall of the Palazzo Barberini, Rome (1633-39). Cortona continued with this style of monumental painting for the remainder of his career, & it was destined to become the model for the international grand decorative style epitomized by those executed at the palace of Versailles in France.

**

*[From this point on, hand typing of the main ms handwritten text is largely superseded by direct conversion of handwriting to type using a smartphone camera and app followed by manual correction and editing. Currently, most marginal and foot notes are still hand-typed. Although typing the ms into the ts by hand (which could for most extracts have been superseded long ago by optical character recognition of the printed source texts) enables a better understanding of source texts and ms additions, in the end the time involved, the strain on eyesight, and particularly the dramatic improvement to handwriting reading software (presumably AI driven) have made this change irresistible.]

** – ibid [Encyclopaedia Britannica 25:] 353

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