Waldemar Januszczak and the Baroque

[RonPrice]

The television series, Baroque! From St. Peter’s to St. Paul’s, written and produced by British art critic Waldemar Januszczak, is about the Baroque. The series is, for me, a rich educational experience. Januszczak has been described as a passionate art lover, art critic and writer. His presentation style is casual but informed, enthusiastic, evocative and humorous. He bumbles about on our TV screens doing for art what David Attenborough has done for the natural world. He is someone who acts, as one writer put it, “out of a refusal to present art as elitist in any way. He makes it utterly accessible and understandable."2

This three-part BBC Four documentary series is, as I say, about the painting, sculpture and architecture of the Baroque period. It was first broadcast in the UK in March 2009 and more than a year later the series is here for us to enjoy in Australia. The series is named after its opening shots in the square of Saint Peter's Basilica and the final scenes at St Paul's Cathedral.-Ron Price with thanks to 1“From St. Peter’s to St. Paul’s: Parts 1 to 3,” ABC1, 8:30-9:35, 17, 24 and 31 August 2010 and 2 Wikipedia, 18 August, 2010.

You brought it alive for me, Waldemar!!

Tonight it was Michaelangelo Caravaggio,

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Francesco Borromini

and the reinvention of religious art after the

Renaissance. Baroque made its art: tangible,

real, vivid, cinematic, believable, physical,

emotional, & propagandistic for the Counter

Reformation of those 16th and 17th centuries.1

It was a revolution that began in Rome & spread

over the known world, part of our modern world.

1 The Counter-Reformation, also called the Catholic Reformation or Catholic Revival, denotes the period of Catholic revival beginning with the Council of Trent from 1545 to 1563 and ending at the close of the Thirty Years' War in 1648. It was the Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation.

–Ron Price

Tasmania