ABSTRACT
The political situation which baroque Italy inherited from the sixteenth century was one where display became the means of underscoring through allegory the mediating role of the court. The secular life of the court, performed as a type of extended dramatic spectacle also employed the characteristic motifs of the baroque to represent political authority as a mediation between daily experience and the cosmos. This chapter discusses the scale of the space could only be compared with antiquity, but the artist balanced contemporary dynamic effects with an ancient gravitas. The scale of the space could only be compared with antiquity, but the artist balanced contemporary dynamic effects with an ancient gravitas. In baroque architecture, flat space can be defined as the elaboration of the qualities of surface typically involving complex material combinations and the dense layering of architectural members and figures in its use as facade articulation.
