Style serves to define relationships between works of art that form discernable patterns, or sets.
It is a means to help explain the creative process. Often the Baroque is taken as a broad period label, but the very term is not only a later invention, but bears a negative connotation. The course will initially explore different ideas about the fundamental concept of style, a topic that is relevant not only to every field of art history, but is one where art historical conventions have predominated in other fields, such as music and literature. Then, how the term Baroque came about will be approached through a study of art writing, from Vasari to Bellori, Woefflin to Wittkower, from the sources of the idea, to the current state of the field. As we enter the new millenium, so too did those artists after 1600 generate works of art that have come to be seen as part of a new era.