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the program. Hello what do the music of Bach the colonnades of St Peter's in Rome the paintings of

Caravacho and the rebuilding of Prague

having common. One answer is the Baroque, a term used to describe a vast array of

painting, music, architecture and sculpture from the mid-17th to the end of the 18th centuries.

The word Baroque originally meant an irregularly shaped pearl and that Baroque's often characterised

as an art of sensuality and excess. The more we examine the Baroque the more subtle

mysterious it becomes. It's impossible to discuss 17th century Europe without it and yet it's

sometimes hard to say what it is. It's been a term both the praise and opprobium, an historical

era and a style that transcends history. With me to unpick the Barocca Helen Hills

professor in art history at the University of York, Nigel Aston, Reader in Early Modern History

at the University of Leicester, and Tim Blanning, Professor of Modern European History and a fellow

of Sydney Sussex College University of Cambridge.

Tim Blanning, can you start us off with a working definition of the Baroque as we might understand

it now?

...