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1. Introduction The term Baroque defines an era within the early modern period perceived by scholarly consensus in terms of its specific aesthetic and cultural characteristics in the spheres of art, literature, and music. It is therefore not a term drawn from the era itself (as were, for instance, Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Romanticism), but a retrospective chronological and thematic construction of scholars seeking to characterize works of art, literature, and music and their particular desi…

1. Concept 1.1. Renaissance as the rebirth of classical antiquity“Renaissance” (Italian  rinascità,  rinascimento, “rebirth”) developed in the 15th century into a general term for the reception of classical antiquity (Antiquity, reception of) in Humanism. The Latin verb renasci (to be born again) is found as early as 1430 in the context of rhetoric in the work of the French Petrarch scholar Nicholas of Clémanges. The Italian rinascere then came into use around 1450 in reference to sculpture in Lorenzo Ghiberti (see below, 9.2.), and in 1460/64 for archit…