As far back as ancient times, rulers in Europe sponsored the arts. Before the Baroque era, the artistic glories of the Renaissance were supported by powerful merchant-princes, such as the Medici family in Florence, who were determined to add luster to the city-states they ruled. But sponsorship of the arts rose to new heights in the seventeenth century, and one state loomed larger than any other in the scope and grandeur of its projects: France under Louis XIV (1638–1715), “the Sun King.”

All of French life orbited around the royal court, like planets, comets, and asteroids in the solar system. Pomp and ceremony were carried to extreme lengths: The king’s levée — his getting-up-in-the-morning rite — involved dozens of functionaries and routines lasting two hours. Artists of all kinds were supported lavishly, so long as their work symbolized the majesty of the state (and the state, in Louis’s famous remark, “is me” — “L’état, c’est moi”).

The influence of this monarch and his image extended far beyond France, for other European princes and dukes envied his absolute rule and did everything they could to match it. Especially in Germany — which was not a united country, like France, but a patchwork of several hundred political units — rulers competed with one another in supporting artists who built, painted, and sang to their glory. Artistic life in Europe was kept alive for many generations by this sort of patronage. The brilliance and grandeur of much Baroque art derives from its political function.

Art was to impress, even to stupefy. Thus Louis XIV built the most enormous palace in history, Versailles, with over three hundred rooms, including the eighty-yard-long Hall of Mirrors, and formal gardens extending for miles around. Many nobles and high-ranking churchmen built little imitation-Versailles palaces, among them the archbishop of Würzburg in Germany, whose magnificent residence was built in Bach’s lifetime. The rooms were decorated by the Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, a master of Baroque ceiling painting.

Look at the ceiling shown on page 101, and try to imagine its true dimensions. You may well be dazzled by the figures in excited motion, caught up in great gusts of wind that whirl them out of the architectural space. Ceiling painting provides a vivid example of the extravagant side of Baroque dualism.