Spain
In Spain, the affirmation of the Baroque encountered difficulties due to the economic decline of the reign of Philip III. In the second half of the century, Philip II had ordered the construction of the important complex of the Monastery of El Escorial, built mostly according to the project of Juan de Herrera (1530-1597). Herrera is also responsible for the project of the Cathedral of Valladolid, which reinforced the concept of the central axis and which served as a model for the Cathedral of Mexico.
Progressively, the Spanish architecture of the century evolved towards the Baroque style, although it did not leave any significant examples. Most of the baroque influences were collected in an exclusively decorative way, especially in the churches. This language, which was quickly understandable even by the least educated segment of the population, was successfully exported to the American colonies.
Among the most important religious buildings of the century in Spain, we can highlight the Collegiate Church of San Isidro in Madrid, begun in 1629, the church of Santa María Magdalena "Iglesia de Santa María Magdalena (Granada)") in Granada (begun in 1677 with a longitudinal plan derived from buildings with this layout in Ancient Rome) and the Basilica of the Virgen de los Desamparados in Valencia, with an elliptical plan.
The penetration of the Baroque into its Italian architectural forms (complicated floor plans, movement of facades, abundant decoration that creates contrasts of light) is going to be slow. The presence of the religious ideology of the Counter-Reformation and the prestige of the monarchy of Philip II weighed on the art of the time: sobriety, simplicity and uniformity were preferred. There is an evident poverty of materials – brick, mud and plaster – along with a purification of lines – in the style of El Escorial. As well as a poor development of movement in plans and elevations; the straight line is preferred to the curve; There is a predominance of the Church with a single nave with chapels between buttresses - type of the Church of the Gesù of the Jesuits. The facades express the same simplicity of plans: "Of an abstract spirit, the palaces, churches and convents have facades with smooth walls based on large, slightly highlighted rectangles and interiors of diaphanous whiteness in which only the decorations of geometric squares and triangles of the vaults are clearly cut out, resulting in serious and calm sets for those who contemplate them from the outside or penetrate the interior."[25]
We have examples of this type of architecture in the Collegiate Church of San Isidro in Madrid (built by a Jesuit: it has a Latin cross plan similar to that of the Gesù, or San Andrés de Mantua by Alberti); the church of the Encarnación (Madrid); the Palace of Santa Cruz "Palacio de Santa Cruz (Madrid)") (today the Ministry of Foreign Affairs "Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Spain)"), the Casa de la Villa de Madrid, the Plaza Mayor of Madrid, the city of Lerma "Lerma (Burgos)") (Burgos); the Buen Retiro palace. These last five buildings follow the line called "Escurialense style", characterized by the sobriety of lines, compact volumes and quadrangular towers at the corners, with pyramidal roofs, spiers at the upper vertices and black slate tiles. At this time, some characteristic urban concepts of Spain stand out: the main squares. These are almost closed urban spaces, conceived as centers of religious-political spectacles—processions, autos-da-fe organized by the Inquisition, preachings, royal receptions. These squares are made up of different blocks of buildings arranged regularly, connected to the outside through passages covered by arches that lead to the peripheral streets. The most famous is the Plaza Mayor in Madrid.
The architecture becomes more complex. First, the decorative forms of the Italian Baroque penetrate – giant and Solomonic order columns, mobility of planes on the facades, among other elements – and later the spatial forms, with oval floor plans and concave-convex facades full of dynamism. Of the first group, the façade of the Granada Cathedral stands out - the work of Alonso Cano, arranged as a triumphal arch of three streets covered by semicircular arches -, the Basílica del Pilar de Zaragoza "Cathedral basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar (Zaragoza)") and the Clock Tower, by Domingo de Andrade, in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.
During the century the construction of buildings accelerated, and the full assimilation of Italian spatial forms stands out, in the style of Borromini and Bernini, in works such as the Church of San Marcos "Iglesia de San Marcos (Madrid)") and the Royal Basilica of San Francisco el Grande, in Madrid; the Puerta de los Hierros #Puerta_de_los_Hierros "Cathedral of Santa María (Valencia)") of the Cathedral and the Basilica of the Virgen de los Desamparados, in Valencia; or the Church of the Pilgrim Virgin, in Pontevedra. They are constructions in which the complexity of their plans stands out, with games of curves and countercurves, a combination of oval, tangent and secant shapes, as well as elevations in which the domes, vaults and other structural elements reveal great formal sophistication.
Additionally, the cased domes created by Francisco Bautista in the century stand out: a double dome system in which the intrados, made of wood and plaster, is separated from the exterior, generating an intermediate hollow space that produces a greater effect of height and monumentality. Being lighter, they allow the creation of more comfortable interior spaces.
On the other hand, the architecture of the century increases the ornamental tendency to limits never achieved; This style is called churrigueresco, after the name of the family with this surname that produced greater works. It is a decoration of accumulating shapes in certain places of the building – doors, facade, etc.; They stand out for their monumentality and showiness, compared to the rest of the building with more sober lines. The Anava and Calatrava schools in Valladolid and the Plaza Mayor in Salamanca stand out. Pedro Ribera's are the Toledo Bridge in Madrid, and the Madrid Hospice. Other buildings of this style are the Palacio de San Telmo in Seville and the façade of the Obradoiro of the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, made by Casas y Novoa and which replaced the previous Romanesque one; It is a monumental façade structured like a grandiose triumphal arch in various depth planes (up to three) and great verticality.
Another complication of the Spanish Baroque is found in the spaces created to accommodate religious images such as: relics, tabernacle, sacristies and images of great devotion: theatrical effects come to combine in the use of space, indirect light and of strange origin, painting, sculpture, etc. They are small places in which baroque style explodes in its greatest degree of complexity and theatricality. Highlights include the Transparente of the Toledo Cathedral (by Narciso Tomé), the dressing room and tabernacle of the Cartuja del Paular, or the Tabernacle of the Cartuja of Granada (Francisco Hurtado Izquierdo). Another of the great schools of Spanish Baroque is the one founded at the beginning of the century by Francisco Hurtado Izquierdo, in Priego de Córdoba. In which the Sánchez de Rueda brothers, Juan de Dios Santaella, Francisco Javier Pedraxas, Remigio del Mármol and José Álvarez Cubero participated successively.
England
The architectural studies carried out in Italy by the stage designer Inigo Jones and the young Earl of Arundel constituted an initial impulse that paved the way for a fundamental reorientation of English architecture, which was still trapped in late medieval and mannerist forms. The Queen's House"), in Greenwich "Greenwich District (London)"), highlights the abrupt change in trends. The queen's palace consists of two rectangular blocks joined together by a bridge, connecting it with what was the Greenwich Hospital, today known as the Old Royal Naval College, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Above the padded ground floor rises the piano nobile, the noble floor, which opens to the garden through a large gallery with Doric columns. Apart from Jones there were very few renowned architects in this period, but among them is Isaac de Caus, who built Wilton House, with its elegant and lavish box-shaped rooms called The cube and The Double Cube.
Without a doubt, if there is an English architect who stands out for the mastery of his works, it is Sir Christopher Wren, who managed to impose Roman classicism in England. In 1666, after the great fire of London, he was summoned along with his colleagues to present proposals for the reconstruction and urbanization of what was one of the most populated cities on earth. The impressive Saint Paul Cathedral, whose silhouette is unmistakable on the city skyline, and 51 other churches are the work of master Wren. The expansion of Hampton Court Palace by order of William III of England was also carried out by him between 1689 and 1692.
John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor gave Wren's style even more monumental and, above all, more picturesque and theatrical dimensions. Starting in 1699 they were in charge of the construction of the imposing Castle Howard in North Yorkshire. The enclosure entre cour et jardin (between patio and garden) consists of a wing of rooms similar to a corridor in whose center the living room open to the garden and the large square room open to the patio stand out. In 1715 and 1717 respectively they published the two volumes of the Vitruvius Britannicus, with engravings of classical British buildings and the translation of the Quatro libri dell'architettura by Andrea Palladio, which caused a new revolutionary change: Neo-Palladianism. This trend aimed at a return to the "noble and true rules" of Antiquity as Palladio and Inigo Jones had interpreted them. The main protagonist of this movement was Lord Burlington, an art expert who, with his Chiswick House, created a building with striking resemblance to the works of Palladio. Finally, it is worth highlighting other beautiful works of British Baroque that materialize in the residence of the Dukes of Devonshire, known as Chattsworth in Derbyshire, England, by the architect William Talman "William Talman (architect)") in 1694; without forgetting of course the monumental Blenheim Palace built in 1710 by the aforementioned John Vanbrugh, for the Duke of Marlborough on behalf of Queen Anne.