The Architecture of the Eighteenth Century

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John Summerson

Thames & Hudson, New York, 1986, English

Nonfiction, Architecture

5.8 x 8.2 inches, paperback, 176 pages, 174 black-and-white illustrations

ISBN: 9780500202029

Suggested Retail Price: $19.95

From the Publisher. The architecture produced between 1700 and 1800 represents a classic perfection which no later age has equaled. The first half of the eighteenth century was pervaded by the spirit of the Baroque, epitomized most completely in palaces and churches: Schonbrunn in Vienna, the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, the dazzling theatrical churches and Residenzes of Germany and Central Europe. After 1750 architecture turned away from Baroque toward Neo-classicism, whose most characteristic types included private houses, institutional buildings and planned towns—Bath, Philadelphia and Washington, with their theaters, museums, hospitals and banks. Summerson provides a succinct and elegant summary of the entire period, bringing into focus not only the stunning beauty of these buildings, but also the background of ideas from which they sprang.

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