As part of a season of events celebrating the Baroque, the V&A has curated an exhibition entitled ‘Style in the Age of Magnificence’. Drawn from all over the world, this collection of relics, artefacts and images is impressive in scope, but somehow fails to convey the essence of the movement itself.

© V&A, photography by John Ross

The displays are organised by themes (‘architecture and performance’, ‘the theatre’, ‘sacred spaces’) rather than countries or eras. This is no doubt to emphasise the global nature of the Baroque – although it started in Italy it quickly spread and adapted to existing conditions wherever it landed. The V&A have sourced some stunning pieces – altarpieces, theatrical costumes, children’s toys, jewellery, royal beds, theatre sets and my personal favourite – an extravagant silver chandelier.

However the experience of walking through the exhibition felt sadly sterile. This is a survey, a cataloguing, an inventory of found objects that display Baroque properties, and as such it is a little disappointing. The achievement of the Baroque in the 17th and 18th centuries was its the over-the-top, all-encompassing, genre-defying attitude to space-making and decoration, where every object is a part of the ornate whole. Architects and artists worked together to invent rooms where the walls become sculpture and frescoes give the illusion of neverending space. The Church of Il Gesu in Rome is a perfect example. To remove individual pieces and place them, detached, in the blank space of an art gallery, without context, is to denude them of meaning. It’s taking a scientific approach to an emotional subject.

Frescoed ceiling of Il Gesu

In their press information, the V&A claims, ‘The exhibition reflects the complexity and grandeur of the baroque style’. Well, no. It tells you about it in words, in tidy little panels below each display. But in the end it fails to convey any feeling. Admittedly it is hard to imagine how this could be achieved in a museum: maybe it’s just too ambitious a topic.

So for a more comprehensive and enveloping impression of the Baroque, try watching the BBC2 series by Waldemar Janusczcak. The medium of television is altogether better suited to this purpose – the presenter takes viewers with him all over Europe to the spaces and places of the Baroque, and his unfettered enthusiasm for the subject does justice to its allure.