Christopher Tadgell taught architectural history for almost thirty years before devoting himself full-time to writing and research, travelling the world to see and photograph buildings from every tradition and period.

Born in Sydney, he studied art history at the Courtauld Institute in London. In 1974 he was awarded his PhD for a thesis on the Neoclassical architectural theorist, Ange-Jacques Gabriel. He subsequently taught in London and at the Kent Institute of Art and Design in Canterbury, with interludes as F.L. Morgan Professor of Architectural Design at the University of Louisville and as a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He has lectured at academic institutions around the world, including the universities of Princeton, Harvard, Columbia and Cornell, the Graham Foundation in Chicago, and Cambridge University and the Courtauld Institute in the UK. He is a Trustee of the World Monuments Fund, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a member of both the British and American Societies of Architectural Historians.

His The History of Architecture in India (1990, several reprints, Phaidon) is the definitive one-volume account of the architecture of the subcontinent, while many publications on French architecture include the standard account in Baroque and Rococo Architecture and Decoration (ed. Blunt, 1978, Elek). He has contributed many articles on Indian and French architecture to The Grove Dictionary of Art and other major reference books.

Dynastic Conflict in the Age of Absolutism Cross Currents of Painting in a Modernist Era Part 1: Seminal Italians 1.1. Inception of the High Baroque in Rome 1.2. The Style of the Church Triumphant 1.3. Roman Baroque at its Apogee 1.4. Venice 1.5. Piedmont Part 2: Seminal French 2.1. From Richelieu to Mazarin 2.2. Louis XIV and French Ascendancy 2.3. Régence and the Early Years of Louis XV Part 3: Northern Protestants 3.1. The Dutch and Scandinavians 3.2. Britain Part 4: Divided Centre and Orthodox East 4.1. Advance of Baroque between Two Wars 4.2. Imperial Baroque and its Austrian Monastic Derivative 4.3. Advanced Baroque and the advent of Rococo 4.4. Exceptional Talent in Bohemia and Bavaria 4.5. From Augustan Dresden to Warsaw 4.6. From Berlin to Bayreuth 4.7. Russia: From Moscow to Saint Petersburg Part 5: The Catholic South and its New Worlds 5.1. Habsburg to Bourbon in Naples and Sicily 5.2. Habsburg to Bourbon in Spain 5.3. Palaces of the Southern Bourbons 5.4. The Golden Age of Portugal at Home and Abroad 5.5. Bourbon America Glossary Further Reading Index