Curated playlist
Architectural styles
- Neoclassical architectureNeoclassical architecture began as a rejection of Baroque decoration. Architects reached back to ancient Greece instead.
- Baroque architectureBaroque architecture began as the Catholic Church's visual answer to Protestantism.
- Romanesque architectureThe name Romanesque began as an insult. A French archaeologist used it in 1818 for what he saw as decayed Roman work.
- Renaissance architectureEight different quarters of Florence each built one segment of Brunelleschi's cathedral dome.
- Gothic architectureGothic began as an insult, not a compliment. Builders called the style opus Francigenum, meaning French work.
- Indo-Islamic architectureIndo-Islamic architecture grew from a ruined mosque in Sindh dated to the year 727.
- Elizabethan architectureQueen Elizabeth I built no new palaces, so her courtiers paid for her stays. Each summer visit could ruin the host.
- Constructivism (art)Tatlin's Tower was meant to top the Eiffel Tower but was never built. Lack of money after the revolution stopped it.
- ModernismPicasso's 1907 painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon refuses to show its subjects from a single point of view.
- Byzantine architectureByzantine architects figured out how to set a round dome on a square room. Their solution was called pendentives.
- ManuelineManueline churches in Portugal have stone columns carved to look like coiled rope.
- MannerismYoung artists broke into Michelangelo's house and stole his drawings. Their copying helped launch Mannerism.
- Tudor architectureBolton Priory's west tower stands half-finished because royal commissioners sent the masons home in 1539.
- Palladian architecturePalladio looked at Roman ruins and saw a set of governing laws, not rubble.
- Church architectureImperial guards leveled a church in Nicomedia with axes at first light while two emperors watched.
- Empire styleThe Empire style was built to flatter Napoleon. Its eagles, bees and laurel crowns praised him and the French state.