ABSTRACT
The art-historical style referred to as Baroque generally designates the time period 1600 to 1750. It began in Rome in the early decades of the seventeenth century and soon spread throughout Europe. Baroque is the French version of the Portuguese word barroco, meaning an imperfect, irregularly shaped pearl. The Reformation refers to the religious upheaval against growing abuses within the Catholic Church, which had controlled Western Christendom since the fall of the Roman Empire. The Church's response to the Reformation—the Counter-Reformation—was an attempt at internal reform with a view to reasserting Catholic domination of Europe. The Church's insistence on orthodoxy led to a conflict between religion and science that would continue into the seventeenth century. Like the Baroque artists of the following century, the Mannerists had to navigate between the rules of the Inquisition that dominated Church patronage and the earthy, sometimes perverse tastes of their private court patrons.
