Alois Riegl began lecturing on Baroque art in the 1890s at the University of Vienna. In his day, no serious scholar would be caught dead admiring Italian painting or architecture or sculpture of the 17th century, a period only significant as marking the steep decline and death of the Renaissance. Riegl set out to redeem the Baroque, and modern opinion gradually came around to his viewpoint. But anybody who wanted to read Riegl had to do it in German – until now. The Getty Research Institute has just published the first English translation in its admirable Texts & Documents series.
According to the jacket copy, "The Origins of Baroque Art in Rome brings Riegl's compelling vision of the Baroque to life. His text is full of perceptive and intuitive analyses of artists from Michelangelo to Caravaggio. Moreover, by taking the spectator into consideration, Riegl identifies the crucial, defining feature distinguishing the Renaissance from the Baroque."
I take it that Caravaggio's yellow-haired baby under the vast red drape on the front cover is intended to personify this new-born aesthetic, though of course nobody called it Baroque until long after it was over.