Persuasive Strategies of Baroque Architecture and its Particularities in a Mexican Facade Composition

Abstract

The initial purpose of this monograph was to present the expression of a Mexican Baroque facade model, facing the concepts and conditions of Baroque architecture in general, but also certain Spanish antecedents. However, during the bibliographic investigation, especially based on the criticism of the Italian Giulio Carlo Argan, it was noticed that an important part of the characterization of Baroque architecture was based only on the categories of “persuasion” and “imagination” (or “fantasy”). Although sufficient to understand the Baroque spirit, these two concepts do not objectively lead to compositional strategies that could serve as an analytical parameter. Therefore, the article followed a longer path, going through a literature review that
culminated in the hypothesis of six persuasive strategies of baroque architecture. Although this part of the work is autonomous from what followed, the evaluations of the Mexican facades depend entirely on it and, therefore, the last part could not be published without the first. Then,
the work followed the passage from the Baroque to Spain, as a natural route to America, revealing a Spanish Renaissance practice called “Plateresco”, essential to the understanding of the Mexican religious Baroque. Finally, the two contents, the baroque persuasive strategies and the Spanish plateresque composition, were added to build the theoretical substrate that allowed a more careful approach to the object of the work. The result, despite being heterogeneous, could serve as a new starting point for further research on Baroque architecture.