In the 1600s and 1700s, godlike royals clung to the old medieval order while new ideas bubbled beneath the surface. The art of “divine” kings and popes—and that of the revolutionaries and Reformers who countered them—tells the story of a Europe in transition. In the Catholic south, Baroque society favored fanciful decoration, high drama, and exuberant emotion. In the Protestant north, art was more sober and austere. And in France, the excesses of kings gave way to revolution, Napoleon, and the cerebral art of Neoclassicism.