The Creation of the Rococo
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"Leblanc, too, like Mariette, preceded Winckelmann in urging a noble simplicity, from which the French of his time had departed"--The Creation of the Rococo (1943) by Fiske Kimball "As regards interiors of the new character, the first published comments are those of 1737 and 1738 in the Maisons de Plaisance of Jacques-Francois Blondel — always an advocate of the golden mean between pro and con. Regarding unsymmetrical ornaments "dans le gout du temps," which he illustrates, he speaks more than once of "la prudence dont il faut user a l'egard de ce derniers," and of "ces contrastes qui appartiennent si peu a la bonne architecture," and adds "c'est dans la decoration des petits appartemens destines au delassement que l'on peut seulement s'abandonner a la vivacite de son genie a l'egard des ornemens." He is more severe in the matter of confusion of attributes: "les plus respectables paraissent confondus avec des ornemens qui ne doivent leur naissance qu'a une imagination bisarre . . . l'on trouve partout un amas ridicule de coquilles, de dragons, de roseaux, de palmiers et de plantes, qui font a present tout le prix de la decoration interieur." In making acknowledgments for certain plates, he speaks of Pineau "que la fecondite de son genie a rendu si celebre"; and elsewhere says of such plates "on pourra s'apercevoir que les examples [sont] varies, sans avoir trop donne dans le gout de ce siecle." Fortunate it was that the timidity of academicians and critics could not stifle this taste."--The Creation of the Rococo (1943) by Fiske Kimball |
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The Creation of the Rococo (1943) is a work on rococo by Sidney Fiske Kimball.
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LIBRARY OF THE PHILADELPHIA
MUSEUM
OF ART
Purchased The Creation of the Rococo
THE CREATION OF THE ROCOCO
BY
FISKE KIMBALL
DIRECTOR PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART
PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART: 1943
Copyright, 1943, by Philadelphia Museum oj Art
The publication oj this volume has been aided by a grant jrom the American Council oj Learned Societies jrom a jund provided by the Carnegie Corporation oj New York.
OCT 2 6 1943
Printed by The Southworth-A nthoensen Press, Portland, Maine
Preface
MY chief obligation is to the officials of the French archives and libraries in the period 1932- 1938: at the Archives Nationales to M. H. Cour- teault, Director, and M. G. Bourgin, Secretary, among many others there 5 at the Bibliotheque Nationale to MM. P. -A. Lemoisne, Adhemar, Prinet and the other officials of the Cabinet des Estampes, particularly to M. Alfred M.- E. Marie, as well of the Departement des Manuscrits ; at the Louvre, to the staff of the Cabinet des Dessins; at the Bibliotheque des Arts Decoratifs; at the Biblio- theque de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts ; at the Bibliotheque d'Art et Archeologie ; at the Musee Carna valet; at the Musee de Versailles; in the Archives Departementales, especially at Versailles and at Nancy, where M. Pierre Marot was particularly helpful; at Strasbourg, especially to M. Hans Haug, then Conservateur des Mu- sees de la Ville.
Equally friendly have been the authorities in institutions outside of France: in Berlin at the Staatliche Kunstbibliothek; in Bonn at the Denkmalrat der Rhein- provinz; in Stockholm at the Royal Museum (where Professor Johnny Roosval and Dr. Arvid Baeckstrom also undertook researches for me), also at the Cooper Union and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Here the librarian, Paul Vanderbilt, the photographer, Charles Whitenack, and my secretary, Miss Elizabeth B. Kunkel have been of unwearied assistance. There are few of the major libraries of America to which I am not under obligation for the loan of rare volumes.
Among many private individuals not less kind, I feel particularly indebted to M. l'abbe Chagny at Lyon for making available to me his precious volume of drawings by Oppenord and to Madame la Duchesse de la Tremoi'lle and Miss Belle da Costa Greene for assisting me to secure photographs of rooms otherwise inac- cessible.
My gratitude is still deeper to several personal friends in France: to Andre Carl- hian for constant assistance from his immense fund of knowledge of the French interior; to Ogden Codman for the freedom of his remarkable dossiers on the cha- teaux of France; to Marcel Aubert for valuable suggestions and introductions.
After the manuscript was completed, my friends Erwin Panofsky and Lionello Venturi, with both of whom I had previously had more than one stimulating dis- cussion, were kind enough to read it, and to make several trenchant and welcome suggestions which it was not too late to turn to advantage.
[ v ]
Preface
The editors of the Gazette des Beaux- Arts , of Metropolitan Museum Studies, of the Art Bulletin, of Art in America, and of the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld In- stitutes, have indulgently permitted the inclusion of material I first published in their pages, as papers which are here revised and brought into relation, along with much else.
I should be remiss indeed if I did not gratefully acknowledge the financial as- sistance, for travel, photography and publication, of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, of the American Council of Learned Societies, and of the Carl Schurz Memo- rial Foundation.
In all these researches I have never failed to encounter a uniform courtesy from the owners and custodians of old buildings, to all of whom it is a delight once more to render thanks.
The work, pursued in Paris and elsewhere in Europe in 1932, 1935, and 1938, has since suffered from the threat and the vicissitudes of war, which twice involved packing up the volumes at the Cabinet des Estampes and have since made them, and certain documents elsewhere, unavailable for further examination and photog- raphy. Fortunately the greater part of the relevant manuscript designs had previ- ously been photographed for me. For photographs of existing works, however, it has been necessary to have recourse mainly to previous publications, reproductions from which have been held to the minimum requisite to make the text intelligible. For these I can only express here, to the authors and publishers, now inaccessible to correspondence, my deepest sense of appreciation and obligation.
Fiske Kimball
Philadelphia, September 8, 1942.
[ vi ]
Contents
PREFACE v
INTRODUCTION 3
BACKGROUND 1 1
Remoter Background: Early years of the Reign of Louis XIV, 1643- 167 8 1 1
Relations with Italy 1 1
Personalities and Undertakings 1 5
Character of the Works 20
A rchitecture 20
Ornament 2 6
Immediate Background: Central Period of the Reign of Louis XIV, 1 678-1 699 33
Personalities and Organization 3 3
Works 40
The Royal Works 40
Under Colbert 40
Under Louvois and Villacerf 46
Other Works 5 1
Summary oj Their Character 5 1
Architecture 5 1
Ornament 53
GENESIS: End of the Reign of Louis XIV, 1 699-171 5 59
The Royal Works 60
Under Mansart, Surintendant, to 1708 60
Personalities 60
Works 64
Under De Cotte, Premier Architecte, from 1708 7&
Personalities J 8
Works 79
Private Buildings 9°
Personalities <)0
Works 93
The Ornamentalists 106
Conclusions 109
[ vii ]
Contents
EVOLUTION : The Reign of Louis XV 112
Early Years of the Reign 112
The Regency, 1715-1723 . 112
The Leading Designers and Their Works 1 14
Other Designers and Their Works 1 25
The Ornamentalists 1 3 2
Aftermath of the Regency 14O
Work of the Leading Masters 14O
Other Architects and Works 147
Middle Years of Louis XV 152
The Creators of the genre fittoresque , 173 0-1735 152
Other Designers, 1 735-1 745 ! 74
The Batiments du Ro i 1 7 4-
Private Works j y g
The Mid-century I 85
The Batiments under Tournehem, 1745-1751 j 8 6
Independent Designers I cjo
Later Years of Louis XV 198
Beginnings of Reaction 19 8
The Batiments wider Marigny, from 1 7 5 1 1 9 8
Private Work 207
The Advent of Classicism and the End of the Rococo in France 207
Determining Factors 20J
Personalities 211
Works 214.
CONCLUSIONS 223
EPILOGUE 227
INDEX 233
[ viii ]
Illustrations
Figures
1. Vaux-le-Vicomte : Salle a. Manger, about 1660.
Saint-Saveur: Chateaux de France.
2. Louvre: Galerie cPApollon, 1661-1677.
Hautecoeur: Le Louvre de Louis XIV .
3. Versailles: Cabinet des Bains, 1672.
4. Versailles: Escalier du Roi, 1 674-1 678.
5. Plan for a parterre by Boyceau, 1638.
6. Embroidered border drawn by Georges Boissonet, 16 10.
7. Marble intarsia of Santa Maria del Carmine, Naples.
8. Arabesque design by Le Brun.
9. Wall panel of the Galerie d'Apollon, about 1670.
Engraved by Berain.
10. Ceiling panel of the Galerie d'Apollon, about 1670.
Engraved by Berain.
11. Clagny: Section of the gallery, 1674-1678.
12. Versailles: Plan for the Grand Galerie, 1678.
13. Versailles: Half-elevation of the gallery, 1679.
Atelier of Le Brun.
14. Detail of Figure 13.
15. Versailles: Elevation of the Salon de la Guerre.
Atelier of Le Brun.
16. Versailles: Chambre and Cabinet du Roi, 1679.
17. Versailles: Escalier de la Reine, 1680.
18. Versailles: Escalier de la Reine, 1680.
19. Versailles: Salle des Gardes de la Reine, 1 679-1 681.
Briere: Chateau de Versailles.
20. Versailles: Chambre du Roi, 1684.
21. Versailles: Cabinet du Billard, 1684.
Engraved by Pierre Lepautre.
22. Versailles: Cabinet du Conseil, 1684.
23. Versailles: Project for the Petite Galerie, 1685.
Design by Lassurance.
24. Versailles: Floor of the Petite Galerie, 1685.
25-27. Trianon: Interiors of 1686-1688. Engraved by Pierre Lepautre.
[ ix ]
Illustrations
28—31. Trianon: Appartement du Roi, Aile Gauche, 1692.
Designs by Insurance.
32. Versailles: Salon Ovale, 1692.
Design by Lassurance.
33. Trianon: Chambre de la Duchess de Bourgogne, 1698.
Design by Lassurance.
34—36. Versailles: Chateau de la Menagerie. Interiors and details, 1 698-1 699.
Designs by Lassurance.
37-38. Versailles: Chateau de la Menagerie. Appartement d'Ete, 1 698-1 699.
Designs by Lassurance.
39-41. H5tel de Mailly: Ceilings and arabesques designed by Berain.
42. Berain arabesque engraved before 1693.
43. Tapestry for the Comte de Toulouse, after designs by Berain, 1 698. 44—45. Cheminees a la royalle. Engraved by Pierre Lepautre, about 1 698.
46. Meudon: Cabinet du Dauphin, March-June, 1699.
Designed by Berain.
47. Marly: Grand Salon, as remodelled 1699 ff.
48-49. Marly: Chambre du Roi, 1699.
Designs by Pierre Lepautre.
50-52. Marly: Chimney pieces, April-December, 1699.
Engraved by Pierre Lepautre.
53-54. Versailles : Appartement de Nuit of the Due de Bourgogne, 1 699. 5S—56. Trianon: Chambre du Roi, Aile Gauche, February, 1700.
Designs by Carlier.
57. Versailles: Chimney pieces, 1 699-1 700.
Engraved by Pierre Lepautre.
58—59. Versailles: Chimney pieces, 1700.
60—61. Versailles: Chambre du Roi, 1701.
Designs by Pierre Lepautre.
62. Versailles: Chambre du Roi, 1701.
Briere: Chateau de Versailles.
63. Versailles: Antichambre de l'Oeil-de-Boeuf, 1701.
Briere: Chateau de Versailles.
64. Versailles: Cabinet du Conseil, 1 701, remodelled 1 755-1 756.
Briere: Chateau de Versailles.
65—69. Trianon: Appartement du Roi, 1703.
Atelier of De Cotte.
70-72. Trianon: Cornices, 1703- 1706.
Engraved by Pierre Lepautre.
[ X ]
Illustrations
73. Trianon: Salon de la Chapelle, 1706.
Engraved by Pierre Lepautre.
74. Trianon: Cabinet des Glaces, 1706.
Engraved by Pierre Lepautre.
75. Project for the altar of Notre Dame, 1 699.
Design by Pierre Lepautre.
76. Medal of the altar of Notre Dame, 1 699. 77-79. Projects for the Choir of Notre Dame, 1703.
Designs by Pierre Lepautre.
80. Orleans: Stalls of the Cathedral, 1 702- 1 706.
81. Detail of a salon.
Engraved by Pierre Lepautre.
82. Versailles: Project for the high altar of the Chapel, 1 707-1 708.
Design by Pierre Lepautre.
83. Versailles: Altar of the Chapel of the Virgin, 1707-1708.
Design by Pierre Lepautre.
84. Versailles: Oratories, about 1710.
Drawing by A. -J. Gabriel.
85. Versailles: Details of a door of the Chapel, 17 10.
Briere: Chateau de Versailles.
86. Versailles: Aisle of the Chapel.
Briere: Chateau de Versailles.
87. Versailles: Organ of the Chapel, 1709-17 10.
Briere: Chateau de Versailles.
88. Versailles: Pulpit of the Chapel.
89. Versailles: Project for the pavement of the Chapel.
Design by Pierre Lepautre.
90. Notre Dame: Choir, before 17 12.
Design by Pierre Lepautre.
9 1 . Notre Dame : Jube, before 1 7 1 2.
Design by Pierre Lepautre.
92. Notre Dame: Altar, 171 2.
Design by Frangois-Antoine Vasse.
93. Notre Dame: Throne, 171 1- 1 712.
Archives Photografhiques.
94. Notre Dame : Stalls, 1 7 1 o- 1 7 1 1 .
Archives Photografhiques.
95. Versailles: Salon d'Hercule, 171 1 ff.
Design by Pierre Lepautre.
96-97. Hotel de Pontchartrain (Chancellerie), 1703.
Designs by Pierre Lepautre.
[ xi ]
Illustrations
98. Bercy: Grand Salon, 1 712.
Deshairs: Chateau de Bercy.
99. Bercy: Library, 1 712.
Deshairs: Chateau de Bercy.
100. Petit-Luxembourg: Salon, 1710.
Vieux hotels de Paris.
10 1. Petit-Luxembourg: Chambre d'Apparat, 1710.
Vieux hotels de Paris.
102. Project for Salon of La Malgrange, by Boffrand, 171 1.
103. Chimney pieces from Le Blond's edition, Cours d* architecture, 1710.
104. Project for the altar of Notre Dame, 1699.
Design by Oppenord.
105. Altar of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, 1704.
Design by Oppenord.
106. Amiens: Altar of Saint John, 1709.
Durand: Cathedrale d' 'Amiens.
107. Project for the altar of Saint- Jacques de la Boucherie, 171 2. 108-109. Hotel de Pomponne: Wainscot, 17 14.
Collection of Madame la Duchesse de la Tremo'i'lle.
1 10. Design by Oppenord.
in. Hotel de Toulouse : Stairway, 1 7 1 4-1 7 1 5.
112. Besancon. Hotel de Grammont : Chambre, 1 7 1 4.
Atelier of De Cotte.
113-114. Meudon: Ceilings, 1699.
1 1 5. Berain arabesque, 1 699.
116. Berain arabesque of the late period.
117. Versailles: Chateau de la Menagerie, ceiling, 1700.
Design by Audran.
118. Mots grotesques, 1 708- 1 709.
Drawings after designs by Audran.
119. Palais-Royal: Chambre du Regent, 171 6.
Design by Oppenord.
120. Palais-Royal: Hemicycle of the gallery, 171 7.
1 21-123. Palais-Royal: Projects for the Salon a Pltalienne, 171 7. 124-125. Hotel de Toulouse: Projects for the gallery, 171 8.
Designs by Vasse.
126-127. Hotel de Toulouse: Gallery, 1718-1719.
128. Hotel de Toulouse: Doorway of the gallery.
Archives Photografhiques.
[ xii ]
Illustrations
30. Palais-Royal : dairies. Projects for a Salon a l'ltalienne, 1 7 1 9.
32. Palais-Royal: Grands Appartements, 1720.
33. Palais-Royal: Project for the Salon d'Angle, 17 19-1720.
Design by Oppenord.
3 5 . Palais-Royal : Plans.
37. Hotel d'Assy: Salon, 17 19.
40. La Granja( ? ) : Salon, about 1 720.
Designs by Oppenord.
41. Bonn: Electoral Palace. Chimney pieces, 1716- 171 7.
Atelier of De Cotte.
47. Bonn : Buen Retiro, 1 7 1 7.
Atelier of De Cotte.
48. Hotel de Bourvallais: Grand Salon, about 1 7 1 7.
Vieux hotels de Paris.
49. Versailles: Chambre du Regent, 1722.
Atelier of De Cotte.
51. Saverne: Appartement de Parade, 1721-1722.
Atelier of De Cotte.
53. Hotel de Cotte, 1721-1722.
Designs by Robert de Cotte.
55. Hotel de Villars: Salon, about 1 7 1 6.
Vieux hotels de Paris.
56. Hotel de Parabere, 1718-1720.
Vieux hotels de Paris.
57. Chantilly: Chambre de M. le Prince, 1722.
Anciens chateaux de Prance.
58. Chantilly: Salon de Musique, 1722.
Anciens chateaux de France.
61. Hotel d'Evreux (Elysee): Interiors, 1720.
62. Peterhof : Cabinet of Peter the Great, about 1720.
63. Pier glass by A. Le Blond.
64. Peterhof: Cabinet of Peter the Great.
65. Design by Pineau.
69. Peterhof: Cabinet of Peter the Great. Details.
70. Cartouche by Toro.
71. Portiere des Dieux, before 1722.
Engraved by Gillot.
72. Arabesque.
Design by Oppenord.
[ xiii ]
Illustrations
73. Le Berceau. Watteau iwvenit.
75. Versailles: Chambre de la Reine, 1730, 1735.
Briere: Chateau de Versailles.
76. Versailles: Salon d'Hercule, 171 1, 1 729-1 736.
Briere: Chateau de Versailles.
77. Clock, about 1735.
Design by Vasse.
78. Versailles: Cabinet en Niche de la Reine, about 1725.
Atelier of De Cotte.
79. Bibliotheque Nationale: Cabinet du Roi, 173 5-1 741.
Ballot: Le Decor interieure.
81. Hotel d'Evreux (filysee): Grand Cabinet.
Vieux hotels de Paris.
83. Sketches by Oppenord.
84. Hotel d'EVreux (filysee): Grand Salon.
Vieux hotels de Paris.
85. Hotel d'Evreux: Grand Cabinet.
86. Sketches by Oppenord.
87. Hotel de Lassay: Grand Salon, after 1725.
Vieux hotels de Paris.
89. Hotel de Lassay: Ceilings, after 1725.
Vieux hotels de Paris.
90. Chancellerie d'Orleans: Salon, about 1725.
91. Wurzburg: Project for the Bishop's apartment, 1724.
Design by Boffrand and Castelli.
95. Hotel de Roquelaure: Interiors, 1 724-1 726.
Vieux hotels de Paris.
96. Hotel de Roquelaure: Petit Cabinet, 1 724-1 726.
97. Hotel de la Fare: Cabinet.
[98. Weathervane for the Due de Mortemart by Meissonnier, 1724.
99. Monstrance for the Carmelites of Poitiers by Meissonnier, 1727.
200. Monstrance for Notre Dame, 1708.
201. Candlestick by Meissonnier, 1728.
202. Surtout and Terrines by Meissonnier, 1735.
203. Saint-Sulpice: Project for a chapel by Meissonnier, 1727. 204-205. Bayonne: Maison du Sieur Brethous, 1733.
206. Cabinet of M. Bielenski, 1734.
207. Apartment for the Baronne de Besenval, after 1736.
[ xiv ]
Illustrations
208-210. Ornaments by Meissonnier, 1734.
211. Hotel de Matignon: Antichambre, about 1 73 1 .
Vieux hotels de Paris.
212. Hotel de Matignon: Ceiling rosette of Salle a Manger, about 173
Vieux hotels de Paris.
212-216. Hotel de Rouille: Interiors, about 1732. 2 1 7-2 1 8. Hotel de Villars: Gallery, 1 733.
219. Hotel de Roquelaure: Mirror.
Design by Pineau.
220. Hotel de Roquelaure: Grand Salon, 1733.
Vieux hotels de Paris.
221. Hotel de Roquelaure: Salon Rouge, 1733.
Vieux hotels de Paris.
222. House of M. Boutin: Salle de Compagnie, 1738.
Design by Pineau.
223. Chimney piece from Blondel's Mai sons de Plaisance, 1738.
224. Hotel de Soubise: Project for a Salle de Compagnie, about 1732.
225. Chimney piece from Mariette's edition, Cours d* architecture y 1738.
226. Morceati de jantaisie by Lajoue, 1736.
227. Hotel Bonnier de la Mosson: Overdoor of Cabinet, 1734.
Painting by Lajoue.
228. Forme rocquaille by Mondon, 1736.
229. Cartouche by Cuvillies, 1738.
230. Wainscot from Cuvillies' Livre de lambris, about 1740.
231. Versailles: Cabinet a Pans, Ceiling, before 1738.
Design by Gabriel.
232. Versailles: Chambre de Louis XV, 1 738.
Briere: Chateau de Versailles.
233. Versailles: Cabinet Ovale (de la Pendule), 1738.
Briere: Chateau de Versailles.
234. Versailles: Grand Cabinet de la Reine, 1 73 8 ff.
Design by Gabriel.
235. Hotel de Soubise: Chambre du Prince, 1736.
Drawing after Boffrand.
236. Hotel de Soubise: Chambre de la Princesse, about 1737.
Vieux hotels de Paris.
237. Hotel de Soubise: Salon du Prince, about 1737.
Vieux hotels de Paris.
[ xv ]
Illustrations
238. Hotel de Soubise: Salon de la Princesse, 1 738-1 740.
Vieux hotels de Paris.
239-240. Rambouillet: Salons, about 1735.
Anciens chateaux de France.
241-242. Rambouillet: Boudoir of the Comtesse de Toulouse, about 1735.
Anciens chateaux de France.
243. Versailles: Piece a Pans de la Reine, 1746- 1747.
Design by Gabriel.
244. Versailles: Petit Cabinet de la Reine, 1746- 1747.
Design by Gabriel.
245-246. Versailles: Boudoir de la Reine, 1746- 1747. Designs by Gabriel.
247. Salon de la Princesse Czartorinska, before 1 750.
248. Hotel de Villeroy: Salon, about 1746. 249—250. Ionic capitals by Pineau.
251—252. Hotel de Maisons: Salle de Compagnie, about 1750.
Vieux hotels de Paris.
253. Panels from Briseux' Maisons de Campagne, 1743.
Engraved by Babel.
254. Hotel Chanac de Pompadour: Petite Chambre a Coucher, about 1
Vieux hotels de Paris.
255. Cartouche by Babel, about 1743.
256. Ornaments by Cuvillies about 1753.
257. Champs: Chambre a Coucher, 1747 If.
258. Bellevue. 1750-1752.
Design by Lassurance II.
259. Hotel de Seignelay: Grand Salon,
Vieux hotels de Paris. about I 752.
260. House of M. Dodun: Grand Cabinet, about 1750.
261. Hotel de Rohan: Cabinet des Singes, 1749- 1752.
Vieux hotels de Paris.
262—262- Hotel Delisle-Mansart: Interiors, about 1750.
Vieux hotels de Paris.
264. Hotel d'fivreux: Grand Salon, about 1750.
Vieux hotels de Paris.
265. Palais-Royal: Chambre de Parade, 1750- 1752.
266. Versailles: Cabinet de Madame Adelaide, 1753, 1767.
Briere: Chateau de Versailles.
267. Fontainebleau: Chambre du Roi, 1752-1754.
Guerinet.
[ xvi ]
Illustrations
268. Versailles: Cabinet d'Angle, 1 754-1 760.
Briere: Chateau de Versailles.
269. Fontainebleau: Antichambre du Roi, 1752-1754.
Guerinet.
270-271. Petit Trianon: Early project, 1762.
Designs by Gabriel.
272. Design from Robert Morris' Select Architecture, before 1 757.
273. Petit Trianon: Salle a. Manger, 1768.
Deshairs: Petit Trianon.
274. Petit Trianon: Salon, 1768.
Deshairs: Petit Trianon.
[ xvii
The Creation of the Rococo
Introduction
WE seek in this book to establish more precisely the origin and development of that phase of decorative art which, emerging in France about 1 700 and characteristic of the reign of Louis XV, dominated Europe until the advent of classicism in the latter years of the century.
The same general artistic movement had, inevitably, manifestations not only in ornament, but in painting and sculpture, as well as in architecture. In architecture these included novel treatments of the spatial and plastic form of buildings. Brilliant as were some of these mani- festations, supremely so in the painting of Watteau, the primary sphere of the movement was, to a degree almost unique in artistic history, in the realm of decoration: in the interior, whether domestic or religious, and in ornament, chiefly the ornament of surface. Thus it is not merely an arbitrary limitation when we devote our discussion to this sphere. We do not undertake to cover, on the one hand, the major arts, or, on the other, the individual crafts except when their practitioners assume a leading role in the field of decorative design generally. It is in the interior and its enrichment that we shall find the essential creative works here discussed.
The art with which we are concerned presents first of all a problem of nomenclature. We deal with things, which we hope better to understand, but also with words, to which without violence to historic or current usage, we hope to give greater precision. We realize that by adopting the word rococo, in a book published in English and dealing primarily with France, we expose ourselves to a belief, still widespread, that any art called by that name can only be trivial and "debased." A study of the history of its usage, however, should convince the reader that no other term so fully corresponds in scope with the art we are discussing, or applies so properly to its central as well as to its extreme or provincial manifestations— indeed that we are fortunate to have a term where the correspondence is of such exactness.
The contemporaries of this art, like those of many other creative movements, called it merely "modern." We find the expression "le gout moderne" applied in 1 7 1 3 1 to work of 1704. This is precisely such work as we consider belongs to the genesis of the movement. By 1 738, 2 Jacques-Francois Blondel speaks generally of such work as in "le gout de ce siecle," "le gout du siecle." By that time an extreme phase, characterized by asymmetry, was still more modern. Blondel writes of various designs for the crowns of panels: 3 "une partie est tenue symmetrisee & 1 'autre dans le gout du temps." Obviously these contemporary designa- tions, rendered obsolete by the passage of time, will not help us with our problem of choosing a general name for this work.
For subordinate aspects and elements, indeed, early usage is more helpful to us. To the limited phase characterized by asymmetry was applied the term "le genre pittoresque," which we shall adopt in that meaning. In the titles of certain compositions in this phase, from about 1734, we find the word "rocaille," both as a noun and as an adjective, acquiring gradually, by comparison with its older meaning of rock-work and shellwork for the incrustation of
1 Germain Brice: Description de Paris, 171 3 ed., II, 31.
2 De la distribution des maisons de flaisance, II, 1 738, iv, 95.
3 Ibid., 149, discussing his Plate 92.
[ 3 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
grottoes and fountains, 4 a new and wider sense as a designation of style. Thus Jacques-Fran- cois Blondel wrote in "II y a plusieurs annees qu'il sembloit que notre siecle etoit celui des Rocailles." 5 Although the word was sometimes extended to cover the work of the whole movement, 6 we shall find it wiser to restrict its application, as at first, to the later and more extravagant phase.
Among modern writers, the French — favoured by the approximate coincidence of artistic movements with their reigns— tend to employ the name of Louis XV. The relation of artistic and dynastic events is at best a superficial one, whether in causation or in time. We shall see that the movement associated with Louis XV had well begun before he came to the throne ; the neo-classic reaction which succeeded it was felt in France some years before his death.
A word still earlier applied, and from the beginning specifically equated with the art we discuss, is the word rococo. Like so many designations of artistic styles— like Gothic, like baroque — it was coined in contempt, doubtless as a derivative of rocaille on the analogy of barocco. Rarely can one fix so exactly the origin of a word. Delecluze wrote, late in life, of a brilliant and short-lived fellow-student in the atelier of David: "Ces expressions: Pompadour , rococo, a peu pres admises aujourd'hui dans la conversation, pour designer le gout a la mode pendant le regne de Louis XV, ont ete employees pour la premiere f ois par Maurice Quai en 1 796-97. Alors ces locutions (on pourrait dire cet argot) n'etaient usitees et comprises que dans les ateliers de peinture." 7 We find the word rococo in literature, still close to its origin but more loosely and broadly used, in Stendhal's Promenades dans Rome, 1828 (I, 244) : "Me permettra-t-on un mot bas? Le Bernin fut le pere de ce mauvais gout designe dans les ateliers sous le non un peu vulgaire de rococo." Victor Hugo in 1 839 applies it to the architecture of Nancy, a Louis XV town beyond all others, and also to that of Lisbon, rebuilt after the earth- quake of 1755 and thus predominantly of the same moment. We see too, in what he writes, a first glimmering of aesthetic appreciation: "Les clochers de la cathedrale sont des poivrieres Pompadour. Cependant je me suis reconcilie avec Nancy ... la place de PHotel-de-Ville est une des places rococo les plus jolies, les plus gaies et les plus completes, que j'aie vues. . . . C'est une place marquise . . . [de] cette ville toute dans la style Louis XV. L'architecture du XVIIL siecle, quand elle est riche, finit par racheter son mauvais gout. Sa fantaisie vegete et s'epanouit au sommet des edifices en buissons de fleurs si extravagants et si touffus que toute colere s'en va et qu'on s'y acoquine ... La partie inferieure des edifices Pompadour est nue, morose et lugubre. Le rococo a de vilains pieds." 8
The word did not appear in the 1835 edition of the dictionary of the French Academy, but was first defined in the supplement of 1842: "Rococo se dit trivialement du genre d'orne- ment, de style et de dessin qui appartient a l'ecole du regne de Louis XV et du commencement
4 The Abbe Rouillet: 'Contribution a 1'histoire des rocailleurs," in Reunion de la societe des beaux-arts des de- fartements, XVII, 1893, 322-336, deals with this older meaning from 1540 onwards. The Abbe Lacombe in his Dit tionnaire fortatij des beaux-arts still gives the word in this sense only, even in the second edition of 1759.
5 Cours d 'architecture, III, I 772, lviii.
6 E.g. by Victor Hugo: "Franckfort et Mayence sont des cites gothiques deja plongees dans la renaissance, et meme, par beaucoup de cotes, dans le style rocaille et chinois." Le Rkin, letter XXIII, 1839.
7 M.-E.-J. Delecluze: Louis David, son ecole et son temps, 1855, 82n, kindly called to my attention by Walter Friedlaender. Cf. his H ' auftstromungen der jransdzischen Malerei von David bis Cezanne, I, 1930, 32, 5 3 ff.
8 Le Rhin, 1842, Letter XXIX, 1839, ched from the edition of 1855, II, 171.
[ 4 ]
Introduction
de Louis XVI. Le genre rococo a suivi et precede le Pompadour, qui n'est de meme qu'une nuance du rococo. Le rococo de l'architecte Opdenord. II se dit en general de tout ce qui est vieux et hors de mode dans les arts, la litterature, le costume, les manieres, etc. Aimer le rococo. Tomber dans le rococo. Cela est bien rococo." In spite of the addition of a general meaning, we see the word crystallized here as applying specifically to the characteristic work of the reign of Louis XV. So it was used by the Goncourts in 1 860, when they spoke of Ma- dame de Pompadour as "une patronne de luxe et de la rocaille ... la marraine et la reine du Rococo." 9 In the latest edition of the dictionary of the Academy, 1935, it is defined as "un genre ... a la mode au dixhuitieme siecle . . . caracterise par la profusion des ornements contournes."
Among art historians, the Germans were first to take up and fix the word as a formal desig- nation of the general period and style of Louis XV, both in France and elsewhere under French influence. The earliest such use there of which we know, in 1840, applying to Meis- sonnier, 10 is already in the sense now prevailing. Jacob Burckhardt, to be sure, employed it in 1 843 11 for what he himself later called baroque. The artistic equation rococo-Louis XV, then already adopted by French men of letters, was, however, soon permanently established also in Germany, 12 where for the past generation no disparagement of the style has been implied by this name, in spite of occasional survivals of a derogatory overtone in general parlance.
French scholars, in view of the connotation of ridicule which the word originally carried, have been loath to apply it to one of their most genial creations. 13 As late as 1894 one might still say that only in Germany was the name rococo used formally in the history of art. 14 French art-historians today are apt to employ it only for the later and more extravagant man- ifestations of the style, particularly those abroad, for which, with greater historical exacti- tude, they also use the expression style rocaille. Nevertheless with the gradual aesthetic ac- ceptance of the work itself, the broader usage of rococo is gaining ground in other languages beside German.
English use of the term began by 1836, when we read: "There are two especial new mots d'argot, rococo and decousu." 15 The Oxford Dictionary in 1909 defined it, applying to furniture or architecture, as "Having the characteristics of Louis Quatorze or Louis Quinze workman- ship, such as conventional shell- and scrollwork and meaningless decoration, excessively or tastelessly florid or ornate." In common English parlance the word is still loosely applied in a derogatory sense. Its use by art-historians, however, has tended to follow developments in Germany.
9 Les mattresses de Louis XV, 1 860, II, 1 1 0.
10 Nagler's Kiinstler-Lexikon, article Meissonnier.
11 "Uber die vorgotischen Kirchen am Niederrhein," in Lerschs Niederreinisches Jahrbuch, 1843.
12 A. Springer: "Der Rococostil," in Bildern aus den neueren Kunstgeschichte; A. von Zahn: "Barock, Rococo und Zopf," \nZeitschrijt jiir bildende Kunst, VIII, 1873. The history of usage in Germany is best summarized by H. Tietze: Die Methode der Kunstgeschichte, 191 3, 85-87.
13 H. von Geymiiller discusses French usage in Die Baukunst der Renaissance in Frankreich, 1898, I, 265 ff. Himself a nephew of the Comte de Laborde, he cites with special respect the judgment of Henri Destailleur ( 1822- 1893) of whom he writes: "Den Ausdruck Style rocaille or rococo hat er (so weit ich mich errinere) niemals gebraucht."
14 P. Jessen: Das Ornament des Rococo, 1894.
15 Fraser's Magazine, XIII, 2 1 4.
[ 5 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
The rococo has ordinarily been interpreted 16 as a specific last, extreme phase of the baroque — somewhat as the Flamboyant is of the Gothic— taking form to be sure, on French soil, but under Italian influence. Our text will be largely concerned with the relation of the baroque and rococo, and with the question of Italian influence as a factor in the genesis of the rococo in France. In our present consideration of nomenclature, we need only remark one aberrant usage, which, by exception, equates the rococo with late baroque as a whole, and thus auto- matically makes its whole origin Italian. This equation appears, to my knowledge, only in the writings of Marcel Reymond, 17 which give the word a meaning wholly foreign to other current usage. He sees in Italy from the time of Innocent XII (i.e. from 1 69 1 ) "se creer et se developper Part du rococo avec tous ses raffinements," incorporated first by Sardi at Sta. Maria Madellena at Rome, and in Santa Maria dell' Orto, the Palazzo Doria and the Palazzo del Grillo. Obviously such a usage would beg the whole question of the genesis of the rococo. The character of this indigenous late Italian baroque to which Reymond applies the word is essentially different from that of the rococo as generally understood, which, as no one doubts, reached Italy from France.
There has been a tendency in Germany to apply the term rococo to the character of later phases of artistic styles generally. This first appeared with Burckhardt, then using the word as equivalent to baroque, when he wrote, "Rokoko entsteht immer da, wo die eigentliche Bedeutung der Formen vergessen worden ist, die Formen selbst aber um die Effectes willen fortwahrend und zwar mit Misverstand benutzt werden. Es gibt sonach einen romischen, gotischen u.s.w. Rokoko." 18 This usage is linked with the effort to find a rhythmic periodicity in artistic development, pursued by such disciples of Burckhardt as Wolfflin and Schmarsow, 19 and involves a conceptual definition of the formal artistic characteristics of the rococo which must be forcibly imposed, with a vicious intellectualism, on the endless variety of individual creative works. We recognize, as others have done, 20 that such use of well-established desig- nations of a single movement to apply to tendencies present in all periods of art is apt to destroy the meaning of words which, just because they are external, cover all such variety in that movement, and thus do no violence to the complexity of artistic phenomena.
As in any broad study of artistic creation and evolution, the questions to be answered are: what? how? when? where? and who? As to the "why," we follow Goethe's sage advice, and do not ask. It is possible to point out certain relationships with political, social and economic movements, certain analogies with trends in criticism and the other arts, certain influences and derivations, but not causalities. Essentially, we shall find, the development is immanent, the miracle of creation is wrapped in the mystery of personal artistic individuality.
The question "how"— regarding the formal and aesthetic nature of works of the rococo- has received various answers. We cannot escape the conviction that many recent attempts at
16 E.g. among many others by Andreas Lindblom: "Rokokons uppkomst" (The Origin of the Rococo), in Ord och Bild, 1924, 561-577.
17 In A. Michel: Histoire de Part, VI, 1,155 ff-> Hermann Voss, in his Malerei des Barock in Rom, 1924, 614, adopts the name "Roman rococo" for late baroque painting of the eighteenth century in Rome, but fully appreci- ates the "Entwicklung des Franzosentums."
1K hoc. cit.
19 A. Schmarsow: Barock und Rokoko, 1 897, e.g. page 359.
20 E.g. Tietze, of. cit., 98-99.
[ 6 ]
Introduction
synthesis have been premature. Scholars— particularly scholars in Germany, where inventory and monographic study of their own art have indeed approached exhaustiveness— have pro- ceeded on the assumption that the philological groundwork in the fields here concerned has likewise previously been completed, and that the time has been ripe for drawing conclusions as to the sum of artistic, sociological, and national characteristics. I believe it will be appreci- ated, after what is presented here, that many fine-spun deductions as to these matters have rested on inadequate factual premises, that much of the imposing edifice of historical and aesthetic theorizing, too hastily run up, has been built upon sand. We shall leave discussion of these, as well as any new attempt at characterization, until after determination of what actually happened.
This is accordingly, in many regards, a consciously old-fashioned book, devoted in the first instance to establishing with exactness the sequence of events, the identity and role of person- alities individually concerned with them, in the genesis of the rococo and in its successive transformations. The questions regarding these have remained without adequate or convinc- ing answers. The remoter converging lines of influence have been recognized, the chronology of certain individual monuments has been well established, but as the moment of synthesis approaches the existing studies become unsatisfactory, above all in matters of sequence and of personal responsibility. To these matters, at the decisive moments, earlier scholars have given little serious study.
We here attempt to investigate more fully who were the truly creative forces, what were their real initiatives and contributions, and when these were made. It is essential, for instance, especially in the royal works, to know who were in control at any particular moment, who were their subordinates, and what were their respective shares in the making of important designs. To establish the initiative it is equally necessary to know the sequence of different works, and thus to give certain parts of the book the form of annals. We trust it will not be thought pedantry that we undertake, in some instances, a most minute dating, at moments of intense creative activity such as the great year 1699 or the lustrum 1730 to 1735.
Our problem does indeed offer difficulties, from whatever side it is attacked. The engraved models of the ornamentalists, 21 from which certain scholars have hoped to reach a solution, cannot alone furnish the necessary basis. The larger number of their plates are undated; where they are dated their execution usually lagged some years after the creation of the de- signs, the varying delay introducing a new element of confusion. To work from the en- graved models, moreover, is to run the known danger of drawing from imaginary composi- tions conclusions as to current practise. Similar dangers beset any attempt to infer the course of evolution merely from the systematic handbooks published in successive editions at short intervals during the period in question. They do not lead but follow the course of events.
Of the monuments themselves, many of the most important have been lost through re- modelling or destruction. Saint-Cloud, Clagny, Marly, Meudon, Choisy, Bellevue, and La Muette are gone, as in the Palais-Royal of the Regent. Versailles was constantly remodelled
21 Cf. H. Destailleur: Notices sur quelques artistes jrancais, i 863, and Rerueil d'estamfes relatives a Vomementa- tion des affartements, 1863 ; D. Guilmard: Les Maitres ornemenistes, 1880; P. Jessen: Der Omamentstich, 1920, Rococo Engravings, 1922; R. Berliner: Ornamentale Vorlage-Bliitter, 1925; and Katalog der Ornamentstich- Sammlung der Staatlichen Kunstbibliothek, Berlin, 1936- 1939.
[ 7 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
even in the eighteenth century, and all but the royal apartments have been swept away. The private hotels have fared little better. The churches have been denuded of their commemora- tive monuments and their woodwork. An extensive critique of modification and of restoration is necessary before conclusions can be drawn from the monuments.
The greatest difficulty, inherent in the artistic organization of the time, attends the effort to distribute personal creative responsibility. Under Mansart, in the Batiments du Roi, was de- veloped the first great modern architectural office in which the functions of director, comp- troller, inspector, architect and draughtsman were specialized. Its uniform official facade was a mask of anonymity for all but the Premier Architecte, who received all public credit. Hith- erto little attempt has been made to penetrate this mask, to distinguish the creative contribu- tion of individual designers.
As materials for the solution of our problems, to surmount these difficulties, the most im- portant are the original drawings of designers of the period. They show the initial form of works modified or destroyed j indeed, in successive studies, they may even show the process of creative gestation. In many instances they bear a date or can be dated by accompanying memoirs. Most important of all, they show the technique, often also the handwriting, of the actual designer. Rarely, to be sure, is there a signature, unless it be that of the official endorse- ment: "Bon a executer, Mansart." But comparison with known specimens of the handwriting of the men employed in the Batiments at the time, even the coincidence of appearance and dis- appearance of certain techniques and handwritings with the dates and duration of the employ- ment of certain artists, will often suffice to establish the authorship of the designs beyond doubt. Thus a key to the solution of our problems is the study and identification of the manuscript designs.
By far the most considerable body of them is the mass of drawings of Batiments du Roi, preserved integrally in the series O 1 of the Archives Nationales. 22 Here are nearly two thou- sand cartons, including, beside written documents, manuscript drawings to the number of many thousands, covering every royal construction of the old regime. It is not unfair to say that they have slept in their cartons little disturbed by scholars. Dussieux, Nolhac, Magnien, Deshairs, Marquet de Vasselot, the Comte de Fels and others have utilized the drawings in the study of particular works, with not much critical discrimination as to their authorship. But in general this vast body of designs has been little exploited, and it has remained neglected for the study of our problem.
Other drawings of the royal works are dispersed in the Bibliotheque de l'Institut, the Archives des Batiments Civils, and the Cabinet des Dessins of the Louvre, which has the papers of Le Brun.
Second only in importance to the archives of the Batiments are the papers of the De Cotte collection at the Cabinet des Estampes. 23 Here are more than two thousand drawings, for both public and private works, from the period crucial for us. Many which have been un- critically published as drawn by De Cotte himself may now be recognized as from the hands of his collaborators.
22 Cf. H. de Curzon: Refertoire numerique des Archives de la Maison du Roi (Serie o 1 ), 1903.
23 Cf. P. Marcel: Inventaire des fafiers . . . de Robert de Cotte . . . 1 906.
[ 8 ]
Introduction
Drawings of the principal private designers are scattered far and wide: those of Oppenord in Berlin, Stockholm, Lyons, Paris and New York, those of Nicolas Pineau (admirably pub- lished by Deshairs) 24 chiefly in Paris and Leningrad.
Of written documents the chief body is again those of the Batiments du Roi, with their im- mense wealth of memoranda and accounts. Jules Guiffrey, by publishing 25 the volumes of ac- counts for 1664 to 1 7 1 5 (0*2 129-22 15), with his exhaustive indices, provided the engine for all subsequent study of the buildings of Louis XIV, which previous writers are far from hav- ing exhausted. The accounts for the reign of Louis XV (o 1 22i6-2278) remain unpublished and unindexed. Fortunately those on Versailles have been systematically exploited by Nolhac, and those on several other royal chateaux have been embodied in documented monographs.
Rich mines of further documents have been made available by the publication of the Archives de Pari jrangais, of the Proces-verbaux of the Academies, of the correspondence of the directors of the French Academy in Rome. They are supplemented by the unexampled wealth of diaries and memoirs, from which much that has been hitherto unobserved may be brought to bear on the monuments.
In the vast field of Parisian topography only a few buildings have received really adequate documentary study. The series Les Vieux hotels de Paris, 20 which offers so much, nevertheless leaves the dates and authorship of interior features very uncertain. Here the successive edi- tions of published Paris guides and descriptions, extending at a few years' interval through- out the eighteenth century, offer many opportunities for following the construction and transformation of buildings.
All these resources and many others we shall lay under contribution.
The study of French art of the period at the hands of Frenchmen has been embodied, with few exceptions, in monographs, whether on individual artists or individual monuments. What is needed, after verification and completion of such studies, is to combine the many individual works in a single series, which alone can bring out the priority and sequence of truly creative acts. In the few instances where efforts have recently been made to combine chrono- logically the studies of individual monuments and artists, 2 ' it is obvious that the attempt has been unsuccessful, and that the task is still to be accomplished.
Whatever one's devotion to scholarship in the abstract, one obviously does not devote years of study to a body of works of art without having or gaining a keen delight in them, a deep aesthetic enjoyment. The contempt and contumely of the nineteenth century for the rococo has reserved this enjoyment as an experience for our generation. To partake in it, we must lay aside the prejudices of our grandfathers and our fathers, even many of our own: the moral prejudices which confounded artistic qualities with presumed moral qualities of the period, as "corrupt" and "frivolous" ; the older artistic prejudices in favour of purity of self- contained elements, as against dynamic unity of ensembles, the newer artistic prejudices in favour of plastic form and of spatial form as against form in line and surface ; the architectural prejudices, older and newer, that confine all merit in buildings to the expression of structure
24 Nicolas et Dominique Pineau (Dessins originaux ties mattres decorateurs) , n.d.
25 Les Comptes des Batiments du Roi sous le regne de Louis XIV, 5 vols., 1 88 1-1 901 . 29 Edited by J. Vacquier and others, 21 vols., 1908-1919.
27 E.g., in M.-J. Ballot: Le Decor interieur au XVlIle siecle, 1 930.
[ 9 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
and of "function" in a narrow sense, seeking vainly to exclude from art all free play of form, whether spatial, plastic, or linear. Finally one must overcome the historical prejudices which find an absolute "religious character," for instance, only in the buildings of the Middle Ages, forgetting that the baroque had its own intense religious experience in a Saint Ignatius Loyola, a Saint Teresa, a Saint Francis de Sales, that Louis XIV must have had more than a false bigotry or a passion for worldly fame to raise, in moments of deepest defeat, the dome of the Invalides, the chapel of Versailles, the mantle of the choir of Notre Dame, and that even the eighteenth century must have had its own passionate devotion, to bring into being the great churches— so different from those of the Gothic— of Saint-Sulpice or of Vierzehnheiligen.
This book is obviously addressed primarily to that elite of scholars whose reception of its conclusions will influence the writing of art history generally. Nevertheless we are not with- out hope that some cultivated laymen may enjoy gaining an insight into the process of artistic creation in a period of the greatest brilliance.
We have previously studied several of the crucial problems, in published discussions here embodied in their place. Many other such problems remain to be attacked here, particularly in the earlier and later phases. Above all, the solution of all these problems must be brought into relationship, if we are to understand the genesis and evolution of the rococo.
[ 10 ]
Background
THE background for the creation of the rococo in France was the architecture and ornament of the reign of Louis XIV down to the end of the seventeenth century, which we shall have first to analyse. It is vital for us to have a clear understanding of this art, its sources, its character and its evolution, to appreciate the degree of originality in the work which followed, to gauge the extent and even the nature of the creative achieve- ment, and to determine the moment and the agents of its genesis.
The remoter background of the early years of Louis XIV, during his minority (1643- 1678) and during his early personal rule ( 1661-1678), may be sketched summarily, to bring out the major forces in play. We must presume the reader has some general knowledge of baroque art in Italy and in France, so that we may confine ourselves to a brief statement of those factors relevant to our subject. The central period of the art of the reign (1678- 1699) must be discussed more fully, not only to define the character of its work but to establish the contributions of individuals, who remained upon the scene during the creative epoch of the King's last years, the first years of the new century. Even that immediate background of the central period we have naturally to discuss not for itself, not as its own end and goal, but as means and approach to the artistic movement which forms our subject proper.
Remoter Background: Early Years of Louis XIV, 1643- 167 8
In the earlier periods of the reign of Louis XIV, French art, which had previously felt the influence of mannerism and of the early baroque, was coming to terms with the newly created Roman high baroque. The time of greatest baroque influence, which had begun with Rubens' work in Paris in 1625, was in the early years of Mazarin. The calling of Bernini to France in 1665 represented the culmination of Italian prestige. His visit, however, actually marked the downfall of Italian baroque supremacy; its failure was the beginning of the end of French artistic subjection.
It is essential for us to study the infiltration of high-baroque elements into France, not to demonstrate that their adoption was the differentia or stimulus of the rococo, for we shall find that this was not the case, but because it will demonstrate that most of them had already been domesticated long prior to the genesis of the rococo, without having brought it into being.
Vouet, founder of the French school of painting, who had led the way to Rome in 161 2, had returned with many assistants in 1627. Poussin had gone in 1624, Errard, with Claude Lorrain, in 1627. Their style rests primarily on the eclectic mannerism of the Bolognese, as embodied, for instance, in the decoration of the Farnese gallery by the Carracci, 1 597-1609.
The real impact of the high baroque came in a new wave, about 1640. From 1639 to 1650 Stefano della Bella, greatest of the Italian engravers of baroque ornament, was in Paris. In 1640 Roland Freart de Chambray, with his brother, was sent to Italy to bring to France "the greatest virtuosi," 1 and to induce Poussin to return with them. Among their train was Adam
1 Frean de Chambray: Parallele de P architecture antique et de la moderne, 1 65 I , Efitre dedicatoire.
[ II ]
The Creation of the Rococo
Philippon. While Chambray was moulding the reliefs of Trajan's columns, Philippon was drawing the "beaux morceaux d'ornements," modern as well as antique, which he was after- wards to publish. Mignard was in Italy from 1636 to 16565 Puget, from 1641 to 1643, again, working with Pietro da Cortona, from 1646 to 16495 Le Brun, from 1642 to 16465 Michel Anguier from 1642 to 1652; Girardon, for a few months, in 1649 t0 1650. From 1 644 to 1 648 Romanelli, who had worked first for Pietro da Cortona, then for Bernini, was in Paris in the employ of Mazarin; he returned for the years 1655 to 1 658 in the service of the Crown.
The decisive works of the high baroque were already dazzlingly visible to French students in the Rome of the 'forties. Bernini's celebrity was fully established. His tabernacle of Saint- Peter's had been executed in 1 624-1 633, the baldachino in 1 631-1632. The Palazzo Barber- ini, on which Borromini had worked under Maderna and under Bernini, had been built in 1 626-1 632. Borromini's own San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, as yet without its facade, was constructed in 1634-1641; his San Filippo Neri, in 1637-1650; his Palazzo Falconieri, in 1 640- 1 643 ; his Sant' Ivo della Sapienza was begun in 1 642. In sculpture, Bernini's groups for Scipio Borghese, completed by 1622, had first established his fame; his Saint Theresa, un- dertaken in 1644, marked its apogee. In painting, the school of the Carracci had yielded to new tendencies, among which the classical rationalism of Poussin was less influential than the bravura of Pietro da Cortona. He decorated the great hall of the Palazzo Barberini in 1633- 1639, tne fi fst °f rooms of the Pitti Palace at Florence in 1637, tne others in 1641-1647.
We should be greatly mistaken if we assumed that the eyes of the French in Rome were turned at this period solely to works of antiquity and of the time of Raphael. Philippon's drawings of ornament, engraved by the young Jean Lepautre and issued in 1645, 2 are one concrete evidence to the contrary; more than half are baroque elements: herms and masks, trophies of arms, friezes of foliage with grotesque sphinxes, fountains with dragons. In the sculpture of Puget and, to a less degree, of Girardon, the Italian baroque influence is too ob- vious to require specification. We shall cite instances in the decorative treatment of interiors which establish how keenly Le Brun had observed works in contemporary Italy.
Of the three dominant artists of the high baroque in Rome it was Pietro da Cortona, at once painter and architect, whose influence in France was most immediate, direct, and trace- able. While he himself was still working on the decorations of the Stanze dei Planeti, his as- sistant Romanelli was already at work in Paris. Before the Sala di Apollo was completed from Cortona's designs by Ciro Ferri ( 1659- 1660), Le Brun was working in a similar manner at Vaux; the last of the series, the Sala di Saturno (1 663-1 665)/ was scarcely executed before Le Brun was engaged on the Appartement du Roi at Versailles.
We stress these relationships particularly to establish that French decoration had by no means to wait, as some have supposed, until the advent of Oppenord in Rome (1692) for an observation of high-baroque forms, nor for his return to Paris (1699) for their influence to be felt in France.
Cortona's work was not only the fullest expression of historical painting in high-baroque
2 Curieuse recherches de plusieurs beaux morceaux d'ornement antiques et modernes, tant dans la ville de Rome que autres villes, & lieux d'/talie, des sines far moi Adam Philippon . . . Paris, 1645.
3 For the dating, see H. P. Geisenheimer: Pietro da Cortona e gli ajfresc/ii del Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 1909.
[ 12 ]
Background
Rome, but was a repertory of baroque motifs of decoration scarcely less varied and advanced than we find in the architecture of Borromini. In the corner supports of the Barberini ceiling —candelabra-like in composition, with pairs of supporting figures in violent action— broken pediments, volutes, masks, cartouches, vases and garlands disguise all structural lines. Here all this is a painted simulation of plastic stucco j at the Pitti Palace the decorative elements are modelled in actual relief, with unexampled splendour of development:
The individual members, the profiling are handled with the most extreme subtlety. The old classical rules seem forgotten. The profiles are doubled and tripled, as well as overspread at pleasure with an ever changing dynamic ornament, that enlivens with daz- zling lights and deep shadows surfaces already curved in themselves. Fluttering ban- deroles, draperies, and garlands of stucco overspread otherwise vacant surfaces, unite abutting elements. Figures, shellwork, cartouches and masks hide the points of intersec- tion. Every hard even line is consciously avoided. A veritable vibration is achieved. Round arches rise against gable-segments, only to be immediately interrupted by a projection. The cartouches and shields turn and bend, curved lines predominate. Nowhere does one encounter a uniform circle or square, for its place has been taken by the more exciting forms, suggesting movement and depth, of the oval and rectangle. 4
Obviously men who knew such work were familiar with baroque principles and with the baroque vocabulary.
In French architecture also it was in the time of Mazarin that baroque influence was at its height, notably in the work of Louis Le Vau, born in 1612. Even though, so far as we know, he had never been in Italy, his Hotel Lambert, begun before 1642, his chateau of Vaux-le- Vicomte, constructed for Fouquet in 1 657-1 661, are rich in characteristic high-baroque spatial forms such as the concave approach, the oval room. His new constructions at the Louvre in- cluded the projecting circular Rotonde de Mars and Rotonde d'Apollon, built in 1 655-1 658. This sway of the baroque extended until Bernini's visit of 1665, which did not fail to leave one typically Italian work in France, the altar of the Val-de-Grace, as executed in modified form from his design by Mattia Rossi and Le Due, 5 with its six twisted columns, its great horizontal chaplet of palm and rose, its arcs rising to support the canopy.
The common error has been to suppose that the severely academic, anti-baroque attitude, which characterized French art after 1665, prevailed already in the 'forties and 'fifties. The founding of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1648 has been carelessly regarded as a major illustration. Actually the Academy of Painting and Sculpture, as is well known, was founded for different motives— to support the royal artists against the mattrise. The artists active with Le Brun in its foundation included such men as Guillain, with his occasional earthy realism, and Van Obstal, a Fleming strongly under the influence of Rubens. Discussions of doctrine, such as those later so typical of the Academy of Architecture, formed no part of the early deliberations of the Academy of Painting. True, its statutes from the beginning called
4 Translated from H. Posse in Jahrbuch der freuszischen Kunstsammlungen, XL, 1919, 1 6 1 . In certain of the ceilings at the Pitti, to be sure, lunettes and central panels remain unbroken semicircles and rectangles.
5 Cf. Marcel Reymond: "L'autel du Val-de-Grace," in Gazette des beaux-arts, IV e per., V, 191 1, 367-394. The altar of the Abbaye du Bee (now at Bernay), dating from 1685, is a provincial version of the design. Cf. also Rey- mond: "Autels berninesque en France," ibid., IX, 1 91 3, 207-218.
[ 13 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
for the holding of "resonnements des arts de peinture et de sculpture," but not until 1653 did the Academy remind itself of this function 8 and once more, after solemn preparations, the matter seems to have been neglected in the midst of pressing practical exigencies.
It took the insistence of Colbert to force the actual inauguration of such conferences in 1666, and the authoritative registration of their conclusions. It was then that the academic doctrine took official form, elevating to dogmas the grand gout, the drawing of Raphael and Poussin, the Roman precepts and practice of Le Brun. Even then their victory was not with- out a struggle. The partisans of color, of the Venetians, and of Rubens, led by Philippe de Champaigne, took up the cudgels in the querelle du dessin et de la couleur, of Poussinistes and Rubenistes, in 1 671-1672, in which Le Brun had for the moment the deciding word. 7
This was the moment of Colbert's foundation, in 1666, of the Academy in Rome, to reg- ularize the Italian studies which had so long been customary for ambitious French artists. Here it was indeed desired, from the very beginning, to cultivate "le bon gout et la maniere des Anciens." 8 The admiration of the Academy— inaugurated under the directorship of Errard, whose own Roman studies had antedated the high -baroque — was given in sculpture to the antique, in painting to Raphael and the Carracci, in decoration to the Loggie of the Vatican and the Farnese gallery. Its regimen, in copying Raphael and the antique, in measur- ing ancient buildings, had little relation to the contemporary art of Italy, then at the very culmination of the baroque. This insulation of the pensioners from the artistic life of Rome, often remarked, 9 was in the most striking contrast with the intimate commerce which had prevailed a generation earlier.
Similar motives of academic purism dominated in the founding of the Academy of Archi- tecture in 1 67 1, "pour conferer sur Part et les regies de Parchitecture." 10 Its principal occu- pation, from its first seance onward, was to read and comment the ancient authorities of Rome and of the Renaissance who had codified the orders and discussed ancient buildings: Vitruvius, Palladio, Alberti, Serlio, Delorme and Bullant. The same motives led Claude Per- rault, who assisted sometimes at the sessions, to publish his translation of Vitruvius in 1673. Much has been made of his contention 11 that the proportions of the orders rest, not on im- mutable laws like musical harmony, but on custom and consent. But it is a far cry from this philosophic conclusion to its modern interpretations, 12 which would make of Perrault the spiritual destroyer of the academism he in fact so actively promoted.
The academic victory over the baroque reflected the new political prestige of France, which no longer willingly accepted the leading-strings of contemporary Italy even in artistic mat- ters. It reflected the discipline which Colbert, like the King, now wished to impose in artistic
6 Proces-verbaux de V Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, ed. A. de Montaiglon, I, 1875, 72, 74, 76-77.
7 A. Fontaine: Conjerences inedites de V Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, n.d. (1903) ; Les doc- trines d'art en France, 1 909.
8 Letter of Charles Perrault, on behalf of Colbert, to Poussin, written about 1665 but not sent, in Corresfondance des directeurs de V Academie de France a Rome, ed. by A. de Montaiglon, Paris, 1887, I, I .
9 E.g., by A. E. Brinckmann: Barockskulftur, 1919, II, 328.
10 Proces-verbaux de V Academie Royale d' Architecture, ed. by H. Lemonnier, I, 1 91 1, 3.
11 Vitruvius, 1 OO, 1 02n ; Ordonnance des cinq esfeces de colonnes, 1683. Preface.
12 E.g., C. Gurlitt: Geschichte des Barockstils . . . , II, 156: "Dieser Gedanke . . . macht Perrault geistig zum Begriinder des Rococo."
[ 14 ]
Background
as well as political affairs— a discipline which in art was thought to be found only in academic grammar and rules— rules which had been flouted by the extravagances of the baroque, the licences of Borromini. More than all, however, the change reflected a purely artistic reaction against the height of baroque influence and baroque tendency which had so lately been reached in French design and French decoration themselves. While in the field of theory there was a triumph of academism ; in actual practise there followed a progressive enfran- chisement of French creative effort, soon to dominate all Europe.
By contrast with the acceptability of Le Vau's rotundas of the Louvre under Mazarin, we may note the criticism of Colbert in 1669 on similar forms proposed by Le Vau for the Cha- teau Neuf at Versailles: "les figures rondes qu'il affecte aux vestibules et salons . . . ne sont point du bon gout en architecture, particulierement pour les dehors." 13
We may illustrate the change of view by a less hackneyed example than Bernini's designs for the Louvre. In 1 662 Guarini, on the eve of his great success in Turin, had been brought to Paris to design the church of his order, the Theatins. Of this Germain Brice wrote, a score of years afterwards:
On ne doit guere regretter si l'ouvrage de leur Eglise n'est pas dans son entiere perfec- tion. La Bizarrerie du dessein dont elle est commencee ne fait rien esperer du beau. Cependant dans l'opinion ridicule que Ton ne trouveroit point d'Architecte en France assez habile pour donner des desseins de cet edifice, on fit venir expres d'ltalie le Pere Camille qui fit bien voir la forfanterie de sa Nation, & le peu de gout & d'experience qu'il avoit dans la belle Architecture. Ce Pere se voulant distinguer en s'eloignant des regies ordinaires, enterprit de suivre les extravagances du Cavalier Francois Boromini Romain, qui s'etoit fait une maniere tout particuliere, en renversant ce que l'usage & la raison avoient autorise avant lui par mille exemples: 011 l'on voit des edifices de son dessein, dans laquelle la singularite produit des efFets assez supportables; Mais ici le Pere Camille n'a imite que le plus ridicule & le plus extravagant . . . pousse sans doute par la presomption ridicule de vouloir passer pour Auteur & pour MaTtre. 1 ' 1
The reign of Louis XIV, five years of age at his succession, had opened with a long and troubled minority; it was no time for great artistic enterprises. Mazarin, favorite as well as minister, was a passionate collector of works of art. Like the Queen-mother, he loved opu- lence and gilding, but, except through his patronage of his fellow-countrymen such as Rom- anelli and Vigarini, had little influence on the evolution of creative art.
The post of authority at the head of the royal works was that of the Surintendant des Batiments, 15 which Mazarin had not disdained briefly to occupy. Since 1648 it had been filled successively by minor figures, Le Camus and Ratabon, who continued until 1664.
From the death in 1654 of Lemercier, the Premier Architecte, the leading post in the royal works had been taken by Louis Le Vau. In 1 656 he was receiving 3000 livres, the high- est stipend, as "architecte du roi." 1G By 1 664 when the main surviving series of the Comftesdes
13 Lettres, instructions et mi-moires de Colbert, ed. P. Clement, V, 1868, 286.
14 We quote from the edition of 1698, II, 302-303, the editions of 1684 and 1687 being inaccessible to us in America. Chantelou and other Frenchmen had already condemned Borromini from the later '60s onward. Paul Freart de Chantelou: Journal du voyage en France du Cavalier Bernin, 1 930 ed., 289-290, October 20, 1665.
15 Cf. R. Guillemet: La surintendance des Batiments du Roi . . . 1662-ij 15. 1912.
16 Nouvelles archives de Part jrancais, 1872, i, 37.
[ 15 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
Batiments du Roi 11 opens, he was listed as Premier Architecte at 6000 livres, a charge he had already long fulfilled in fact.
Poussin had been named by Louis XIII his "peintre ordinaire" in 1639, but, after his brief stay in Paris, 1 640-1642, had returned to Rome where he was to remain until his death in 1665. Errard was named Peintre du Roy in 1643. His real aptitude, like that of Le Brun after him, was in decoration: "II donnoit," says Guillet de Saint-Georges, ". . . quantite des dessins d'architecture et d'ornements aux meilleurs ouvriers de Paris . . . enfin c'etoit lui qui donnait tous les dessins qui se faisoient chez le roi pour la sculpture, la menuiserie, la serru- rerie, et generalement pour tout le travail qui depend du dessin." 18
As in most minorities, that of Louis was a time when undertakings for the Crown were relatively minor. At the Palais Cardinal— left to the Crown by Richelieu and thus henceforth Palais-Royal — Anne of Austria created the Appartement des Bains in 1643. From 1653, following the interval of the Fronde (1648- 1652), apartments were fitted up at the Louvre both for the Queen-mother and for the young King; in 1 655-1 658 an enlargement of the palace toward the west was undertaken, and the rooms below the Petite Galerie were deco- rated as a summer apartment for the Queen-mother; in 1660 an apartment was created for the new queen, Marie-Therese. 19 At Vincennes, in 1754, Levau began for Mazarin, already actively seconded by Colbert, the Pavilion du Roi, soon followed by other structures. 20
Paris remained also the center of activity in private building, notably so as compared both with the time of the Valois and with the later years of Louis XIV. New hotels multiplied, from the hands of Le Muet, Francois Mansart, Le Vau, and others. The engraved sections of Jean Marot show us the interiors of several of these, now destroyed. In the country around, the greatest enterprise was the chateau of Fouquet, Surintendant des Finances, at Vaux-le- Vicomte, begun in 1657, where for the first time we find Le Vau, Le Brun, and the great gar- dener, Le Notre, working together, as later for the Crown at Versailles.
With the King's assumption of personal rule in 1 661, the major artistic personalities began to serve directly the will of the monarch, expressed first through instinctive preferences, but increasingly by conscious initiative.
In the direction of art from this time, indeed, we must give first place to the King himself. The idea of Louis XIV propagated by Saint-Simon, as merely a pompous figurehead or as an artistic blunderer— insisting obstinately on ill-chosen sites, overriding Colbert's superior wis- dom, hoodwinked by his architects into costly and frivolous enterprises— is little in accord with the picture we shall derive from our study of events, and of documents annotated by the King's own hand.
Colbert, his minister in artistic as well as financial affairs, became Intendant des Finances in 1 66 1. He lost no time in reaching out for power over the Batiments. Already by 1662 he was organizing his "petit conseil," of which Charles Perrault, as his clerk, kept the proceed-
17 Ed. by J. Guiffrey, 1881-1901.
18 In Memoires inedites de I'Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, ed. L. Dussieux, etc., I 854, I, 76, 79.
19 L. Hautecoeur: Le Louvre et les Tuileries sous Louis XIV, Paris, 1 927.
20 J. Cordey: "Colbert, Le Vau, et la construction du chateau de Vincennes," in Gazette des beaux-arts, VI e per., IX, 1933, 273-293 ; Col. de Fossa: Le Chateau Historique de Vincennes, 1909; Pradel de Lamase, Le Chateau de Vincennes, 1932. Pavilion du Roy, 1654-1658; Pavilion de la Reine, 1658-1660. Of the decorations we have only one minor drawing (o ] 1899).
[ 16 ]
Background
ings. January i, 1664, he acquired the charge of Ratabon and received his appointment as Surintendant des Batiments, which he was to hold until his death in 1683. His reform and aggrandizement of the institution are well known; 21 we need enlarge on them only as they concerned trends in style and responsibility for design. While power was centralized in the person of the Surintendant, he was far from delegating such centralized power to the Pre- mier Architecte, on the contrary he circumscribed the existing powers of that functionary with whose designs he evidently soon became dissatisfied.
Colbert's failure to support Le Vau may indeed have been due partly, as has been alleged, to personal rancour, but a more fundamental cause, felt rather than analysed, lay doubtless in Le Vau's pronounced baroque trend. This was the deeper reason why, both at the Louvre and at Versailles, Colbert subjected Le Vau to the humiliation of inviting designs from other architects. In calling Bernini, Colbert may well have thought of him less as the designer of the baldachino of Saint-Peter's than of its colonnades. When the idea of a colonnade at the Louvre was adopted, even though it had been first embodied in a design by Le Vau, 22 Colbert's mistrust continued, and he charged the study of its form to a commission including also Le Brun and Claude Perrault. Its final form, from 1668, due to Perrault, had a cool classical monumentality which realized the hopes of Colbert, and made it the manifesto of the new academism. At Versailles, to salvage his control, Le Vau had again to sacrifice his proposals as to form. In the end it was not only by this sacrifice, but also by his greater respect for con- siderations of economy 23 — even stronger with Colbert than academic predilections— that the Premier Architecte was able to triumph over his rivals, and thus indemnify himself for his mortifications at the Louvre.
Long before this Charles Le Brun had been raised to a position of power in the Batiments rivalling and exceeding that of Le Vau. Entrusted in 1 661, in preference to Errard, with the decoration of the Galerie d'Apollon at the Louvre, he had been ennobled in December, 1662. The patent already alluded to him as Premier Peintre, although his formal appointment to this office is dated July 1, 1664. From 1663 he was also director of the Manufacture Royale des Meubles de la Couronne established at the Gobelins, comprising not only tapestry weav- ers but painters, sculptors, silversmiths, cabinet makers— "les ouvriers les plus excellents dans toutes sorte de manufacture." 24 His regular appointments rose to 1 2,000 livres per annum. A finished courtier, he knew how to satisfy both Colbert and the King by progressively tem- pering any baroque extreme, as well as by magical facility and promptitude of execution. Through his underlying tendencies, nevertheless, baroque influence continued to be felt in the royal interiors throughout the early personal rule of Louis XIV, and, with diminishing intensity, even down to the death of Colbert and to the completion of the enterprises then in progress.
While, in view of the great number of his surviving sketches, we cannot doubt Le Brun's personal responsibility for the motifs of decorative designs, as well as of paintings and sculp-
21 Cf. Guillemet, of. cit.
22 L. Hautecoeur in Gazette des beaux-arts, V e per., IX, 1924, I 5 I - 1 68 ; and of. cit., 166-173.
23 "II conserve ce qui est fait," wrote Colbert, in the first line of his comment on Le Vau's design of June, 1669. Lettres . . . de Colbert, V, 286.
24 Documents in H. Jouin: Charles Le Brun, 1889, 690-697.
[ 17 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
ture, he was not without assistants in this field. From 1666 we find the painter Francois Fran- cart paid "pour avoir mis uu net les desseins et autres ouvrages faits par M. Le Brunj" 25 and Baudrin Yvart, as well as Francart, was paid for such work at the Gobelins from 1664. 28
As early as 1 661 27 we find Le Vau making use of his son-in-law Francois Dorbay, in the draughting of his projects. From 1666 Dorbay's name appears in the accounts of the Bati- mentsj he was paid in July, 1669, "pour les plans et elevations des bastimens qu'il a faits . . . pendant l'annee derniere." A week after Le Vau's death in 1670 he received 1200 livres "par gratification, en consideration des plans et desseins qu'il a faits pour les bastimens du Roy pendant la presente annee." A similar gratuity was accorded in 1671. Henceforth he was carried regularly on the staff of the Batiments as Architecte, with the highest compensation, but never attained the coveted post of Premier Architecte, which remained vacant from 1670 until 1683.
Dorbay himself, on assuming the leadership, had the assistance of draughtsmen. Thus we find Antoine Desgodetz occasionally employed, from 1 67 1 ,when he was but eighteen, to 1 674, when he went to study in Rome. In the first entry of all it was "pour plusieurs dessins et plans mis au net j" by June, 1 671, it was "pour plans et eslevations de plusieurs maisons royalles," by 1674, "pour plusieurs dessins des maisons royalles"— at small but rapidly increasing rates of pay. There were also certain payments to Vigneux, likewise qualified as "dessignateur," for similar services in these years.
It was not until after the death of Louis Le Vau that Colbert, as we have seen, brought into being the Academy of Architecture, complementing those already existing for literature and for painting. The original members were Francois Blondel, as Professor, Liberal Bruand, Francois Dorbay, Daniel Gittard, Antoine Lepautre, Francois Le Vau, and Pierre Mignard as other members, with Andre Felibien as Secretary. The members had right to the title of "architecte du Roi"— henceforth denied to contractors 28 — and received 500 livres per annum for their attendance at the sessions, where their opinion was occasionally asked on matters of design and, especially, of construction. Their position as academicians, however, did not nec- essarily secure them employment in the royal works, and most of them had to look primarily to other patronage. Of them all, only Blondel and Mignard had been in Italy, and most were men of the second flight. While their deliberations took a direction of classical purism, as against baroque freedom, this tendency was already well inaugurated, so that we cannot feel they exercised at this period any decisive initiative in the evolution of French design.
Their instruction, exercised by Francois Blondel (161 8-1686) did doubtless intensify this tendency. It was he who was to codify the doctrine in his published Cours d* architecture, which appeared in five parts from 1 675 to 1 683. 29 As he wrote of the book in his preface "il regarde purement la pratique," almost the only theoretical discussion being that in which he sustains,
25 Comftes,\, I26ff. 28 Ibid., 54 ff.
27 Dorbay's handwriting appears in that year on a plan for the apartment of Colbert at the Louvre, reproduced by Marquet de Vasselot in Gazette des beaux-arts, V e per., IX, 1924, 1 5 1 - 1 68.
28 Proces-verbaux de PAcademie Royale d y Architecture, March, 1 676, I, 1 09.
29 This and other publications are discussed, somewhat superficially, in K. Cassirer's Die asthetischen Hauft- begriffe der franzosischen Architektur-T heoretiker von 1650-1780, Berlin dessertation, 1909. Cf. also Mauclaire and Vigoreux: N.-F. de Blondel, n.d.
[ 18 ]
Background
against Perrault, the value of integral proportions. He assumes the merit of the antique, and of the formulation of the classical orders by Vitruvius, Palladio, Scamozzi and Vignolaj while his Porte Saint-Denis, designed in collaboration with Le Brun, was intended as a classic triumphal arch, it was itself not free from the baroque tinge which still prevailed.
Among the artists with the official sanction of membership in the Academy of Painting and Sculpture there are figures more significant for the future evolution. Not to speak further of Le Brun or Errard we find there many other ornamentalists. Thus the painters Nicolas Loir and Georges Charmeton, members from 1663 and 1665 respectively, engraved designs of arabesques in the style of Le Brun, beside doing much decorative painting in the royal cha- teaux. Most important was the engraver Jean Lepautre (161 8-1 682). His first plate dates from 1643. Among his earliest works was the series of baroque motifs we have mentioned, sketched in Rome by his master Adam Philippon. After some years of engraving for painters, he produced a vast body of ornamental designs and motifs. The dated suites of these range from 1657 to 1667. 30 We are personally of the opinion that the bulk of the undated ones, closely related in style, were made before 1670, at which time he first appears in the employ of the Crown. The Comptes show him more and more actively engaged there from then until 1680. In 1677 he was elected to the Academy as "Designateur and Graveur." His style rests directly on that of Le Brun 5 like that, it shows, within an academic framework, a rich assem- blage of high-baroque motifs.
From the King's majority the royal works at once took the leading place in magnitude and importance. The time before the Peace of Nimwegen embraces the extension of the Louvre and the work at Versailles through the completion of the Chateau Neuf .
Colbert's first solicitude was for the completion of the Louvre. Le Vau had taken up the work on the great unfinished court already under Mazarin in 1660, and was rapidly pressing the north and south sides. The Petite Galerie, burned out internally in 1 66 r, was magnificently rebuilt from designs by Le Brun, as the Galerie d'Apollon (Figure 2). In 1663, LeVau made a second project for the east front ; it did not satisfy Colbert, nor did those of other French architects, called in next year, nor did some solicited from Italy. This was the occasion for the invitation to Bernini, who came in 1665, with the result which all the world knows. With the Louvre certain to continue overrun with workmen, Colbert had begun in 1664 to fit up apartments for the Court at the Tuileries, where, he said, the King could remain seven or eight years, and their decoration was still being actively prosecuted after 1 670.
Meanwhile, from 1661, the King had taken an initiative of his own in the embellishment of his father's hunting lodge, Versailles. It has scarcely been remarked how exclusively the splendours of the first Versailles of Louis XIV were splendours of the garden, in which Louis called on Le Notre to surpass his own first triumph for Fouquet at Vaux. While the depend- encies about the forecourt at Versailles were enlarged by Le Vau, all work on the chateau proper was confined within the existing walls, where Errard, assisted by Coypel and Claude
30 Particularly relevant to our subject, as offering a welcome addition to the executed works of this time, are the Lambris a la romaine, 1 66 1 , the Cheminees a la romaine, 1 66 1 , the Grandes cheminees a la romaine, 1663, the C heminees a Vitalienne, 1667, and the Grandes alcoves a la romaine, 1667. For the dates, many of which were omitted in the later collected edition of yombert, see H. Destailleur: Notices sur quelques artistes jrancais, Paris, 1863, 84-87. The Grandes alcoves, not listed by Destailleur, is preserved in a dated example at the Metropolitan Museum.
[ 19 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
Audran, enriched the rooms by painted ornaments, 31 and where the "Chambre aux miroirs" and the "Chambre aux filigranes," executed in 1 664-1 665, 31 ' dazzled by the richness of their materials and their contents. It is too often forgotten that Colbert's supplication to the King in 1 663 : "Quelle pitie que le plus grand Roi . . . f ut mesure a Paune de Versailles," had refer- ence merely to the Petit Chateau, as it existed at this date.
The great and decisive royal enterprise of the time, which was to remove this reproach, was the construction of the Chateau Neuf, begun in 1668. Again the work was begun by Le Vau, again other architects were called in; the design received its final form, this time from Le Vau himself, the next year. 33 Following the death of Le Vau in 1670, the general charac- ter of the interior treatment was first established by Dorbay in 1671. The Appartement des Bains was executed from designs chiefly by him, with some ornaments by Le Brun, in 1671- 1677. The Appartement du Roi, with its magnificent ceilings by Le Brun and others, was executed in 1671-1681. The Escalier du Roi, begun on a plan by Dorbay, was completed, with decorations entirely from designs by Le Brun, in 1674- 1679 (Figure 4). Wholly sur- rounded by building masses, it was the first of all rooms to be illuminated by a glass skylight.
The Trianon de Porcelaine, first of the French garden casinos, must also have been from a plan by Le Vau, rather than by Dorbay, as mirrors for the interior were already paid for in 1670.
Private works of the time were secondary in importance to those of the Crown. Saint- Cloud was built in 1660 for Monsieur, brother of the King, and wings designed by Antoine Lepautre were added by 1677. One of them was devoted to a gallery then decorated by Mignard with subjects like Le Brun's at the Louvre, chosen from the cycle of Apollo. 34 A salon at either end preceded and followed this, foreshadowing, in a measure, the relation to be adopted at Versailles. The great ministers housed themselves handsomely: Colbert by re- building Sceaux in 1673- 1674, Louvois, who acquired the old chateau of Meudon, by build- ing also, in 1 669, a vast hotel in Paris. All these buildings have been swept away, and we have little knowledge of the artistic form of their interiors. In Paris generally, aside from the Hotel de Louvois, few indeed were the important hotels built at this time.
The nature of French interior treatment in the period before 1678 may now be briefly analysed, with particular reference to its relation to baroque Italy and to future develop- ments in France.
With few exceptions the French rooms were rectangular, and, characteristically, with sides approximately equal. Oval and circular rooms were the rarest exceptions, even before 1660, as well as after. Thus even in Antoine Lepautre's Hotel de Beauvais (1656), with its plan of dazzling baroque virtuosity, most of the individual rooms preserve rectangularity.
31 P. de Nolhac: La Creation de Versailles, igoi, revised cd. 1925. Guillet de Saint-Georges in Memoir es . . . de V Academie, I, I 2, 8 1 .
32 Comptes, I, 20, 22, 79. Nolhac quotes other documents, op. cit., 122 note. The rooms were described by Mile, de Scudery, as they were in the summer of 1668, in La Promenade de Versailles, 1669.
33 Kimball: "The Genesis of the Chateau Neuf de Versailles" (awaiting publication abroad).
34 A view of the gallery in the seventeenth centurv and others before the destruction of Saint-Cloud in 1870 are reproduced by le Comte Fleury: Le falais de Saint-Cloud, Paris (1901), on pp. 62, 161, 232. Cf. Combes: Explica- tion historique de . . . Saitit-Cloud, 168 1. The fete inaugurating the decorations of the gallery took place October IO-15, 1677. Thus it preceded the undertaking of the Grande Galerie at Versailles, instead of following it as writers on Saint-Cloud have supposed.
[ 20 ]
Background
Francois Mansart made the side vestibules at Maisons oval internally. Le Vau, and Le Vau only, gave curved forms a large place. At the Hotel Lambert, Le Vau used oval vestibules in each story ; at Saint-Fargeau (1654-1657) he made a circular vestibule} in remodelling Meudon (from 1655), an oval salon through two stories; at Raincy, another. At Vaux he gave the place of honour to a great oval salon, projecting toward the garden, within a gener- ation after Bernini had placed his oval hall, within rectangular walls, in the center of the garden front of the Palazzo Barberini. At the Louvre Le Vau introduced the Rotondas, with similar projection. We have noted Colbert's later reprobation of such baroque forms for Ver- sailles. In the Chateau Neuf as built, the rooms of the Grands Appartements were all rec- tangular, most of them square or nearly square, with few of greater or less length than the rest. The height was uniform — in the main story about two-thirds of the width; the ceilings there were uniformly coved. Essentially the Grands Appartements were thus sequences of approximately equal units, without spatial differentiation or climax.
Unlike the Italian interior, whether mannerist or baroque, in which the walls were normally of plaster, decorated in fresco or covered with stuff, the French interior, where damask or tapestry was also not unusual, was characteristically panelled in wood. Romanelli indeed used fresco in the apartment under the Petit Galerie at the Louvre, but already by 1 663 it was dis- credited on account of its scaling as a result of dampness. 35 At the least, rooms had a panelled dado. In the early period of Louis XIV this was often of substantial height— the lambris a V hauteur du bras leve— perhaps with panels in more than one tier, decorated with landscapes, or with arabesques, as in the Cabinet de l'Amour of the Hotel Lambert. With the high chim- ney pieces and low doors then still in vogue, the top of the panelling often lined with these. This was the case in the Pavilion du Roy of the Louvre under Louis XIII, as well as in the Hotel d'Aumont, both shown by sections in Jean Marot's Architecture jranqo'ise.
Such treatment was gradually abandoned in favor of panelling the whole height of the room, which had long been employed in many instances. Notable early examples survive at the Arsenal, as well as at the Hotel Lauzun, the latter under construction in 1 657/° Here between dado and entablature we find panels, dominantly rectangular, in several tiers, richly sculptured, painted and gilded. At Vaux-le-Vicomte, 1 657-1 661, where Le Vau and Le Brun collaborated, dignity and largeness of scale were attained by the clear ordering of the panels, large central fields dominating over narrower pilaster-like tiers (Figure 1).
It was very characteristic for the panelling of the principal rooms to include an order. Such treatment appears already both in the chapel of the main story and in the great attic of the Pavilion d'Horloge at the Louvre, built by Lemercier under Louis XIII, as they are shown in Jean Marot's plates. The Hotel de Sully preserves an early example, also from the last years of Louis XIII, with carved pilasters, small single-valve doors and oval overdoor panels. Among many others, we may mention the Chambre du Roi at Maisons, after 1658, still sur- viving, and the salons of the Hotel de Jars, as shown by Marot, both works of Francois Man- sart. At Vaux several rooms have such pilaster treatment, the Galerie d'Apollon of the Louvre (Figure 2) has it at the ends only.
35 Letter of the ambassador of Modena quoted by Hautecoeur, of. cit., 49, from Arr.hivio storico deW arte, 1888, I, 279.
36 As we have remarked in previous studies, and shall develop later, the chimney pieces and pier glasses at the Hotel Lauzun are modifications of a later date.
[ 21 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
In the Chateau Neuf at Versailles, to be sure, the Grands Appartements, as first built, had plain walls entirely without any ordonnance. Even the Escalier du Roi as first proposed by Dorbay was to have not an order but large herms. As redesigned by Le Brun in 1674 it had coupled pilasters of the Ionic order.
Where there was an order, there was usually a full entablature, or at least there were frag- ments of entablature over the pilasters. It was by no means uncommon, however, for the cor- nices of rooms at this time to consist of less than a full entablature, a large bed moulding re- placing the frieze. This is true of many of the rooms at Vaux, and again of the Salle de Mer- cure, the Salle de Diane and other rooms at Versailles. The treatment which was ultimately to be most characteristic in France, with consoles in the frieze— based on Cortona's in the Pitti Palace— was first adopted by Le Brun in the Galerie d'Apollon of the Louvre, and was used at Versailles in the Cabinet des Bains, the Salle d'Apollon and the Salle de Mars.
Paintings on canvas were often incorporated as chief features in the design of the walls. Large figure compositions filled the whole wall above the high dado in the Cabinet d'Amour of the Hotel Lambert, from 1 645. In the gallery there, painted panels by Le Brun alternated with piers ornamented with plastic motifs by Van Obstal. A painting frequently occupied the panel of an overmantel, as well as the pier opposite. In numerous instances panelling was painted throughout with arabesques, in which, as well as on the mouldings, gilding played a large part. The patterns of the arabesques themselves, of great importance for the future, we shall later consider more at length.
In the Italy of the high baroque a magnificent incrustation of colored marbles frequently enlivened the architectural membering and dissolved the unity of every surface by its flaming veins. In French decoration marble was a rarity before the majority of Louis XIV, 37 employed sparingly for pavements and for certain mantels. Not before the building of the Chateau Neuf at Versailles was it more extensively used. 38 Even Dorbay's general design of 1671 for the northern files of apartments at Versailles 39 shows, aside from marble columns in the ground story, only window casings of marble, of which were also the door frames. It was in the Cabinet des Bains there, begun in 1672, that we first find a complete marble revetment (Figure 3) 40 leading to the name of Appartement de Marbre sometimes applied to the Ap- partement des Bains. While such incrustation was later widely adopted in the royal works, to which it added a splendour truly regal, the King's monopoly on the output of such quarries as.those of Campan 41 prevented any wide imitation by private individuals.
Beside marble, mirrors began to add their lustre to walls of the French interior, at a date much earlier than has generally been realized. Entries for "glaces de Venise" abound in the
37 One exceptional instance of early marble incrustation was the Salle des Antiques at the Louvre under Henri IV, as described by Sauval. Cf. Hautecoeur, Louvre, 46.
38 The Magazin des Marbres du Roi, rue Saint-Nicaise, was established in 1669 (Comptes, I, 310) and from that year the purchases of marble became immense.
39 Bibliotheque de l'lnstitut, MS. 1 307. The photographs were kindly secured for me by M. Alfred M.-E. Marie. 40 The designs, which we believe may well be from the hand of Desgodetz, are preserved at the Archives Na-
tionalc, o 1 1768, and reproduced by P. Francastel: "Quelques interieurs disparus de Versailles," Gazette des beaux- arts, VI C per., I, 1929, 285-294. Such revetments in the main story of the chateau were not to be added until later as we shall see.
41 C. Imbert: "Les marbres de Campan," in U architecture, XL, 1928, 89-96.
[ 22 ]
Background
royal accounts even from the first years for which these are preserved. The cabinets executed at Versailles in 1 664-1 665 were largely incrusted with mirrors, to a cost of 5770 livres. 42 Mile, de Scudery speaks of "pilastres de miroirs entremeles d'autres pilastres de feuillages dores sur un fond de lapis." Such cabinets became the height of fashion: in 1668, "144 glaces," to the value of 1440 livres, were furnished for the grand cabinet of Mme. laduchesse de la Valliere {Comftes I, 259) ; in 1669, mirrors to the value of 19,207 livres for the apart- ments of the Tuileries and for the Grotto of Versailles (I, 366) ; in 1670, for the apartments of Monseigneur and of Mme. de Montespan (I, 471), and for the Trianon de Porcelaine with its ten large mirrors (I, 421) ; 43 in 1 671, to the value of 11,373 livres, for the apart- ment of the King at Saint-Germain (I, 533).
Although Venetian glass was still imported on occasion as late as 1685 (II, 778), the de- mand had led in 1665 to the founding of a royal glass factory, which received large grants from 1668 (I, 286). At this time the mirrors were still made of blown glass ; the invention, at the royal works, of the pouring of plate glass did not occur until 1 6 8 8 - 1 69 1 , and was a result, not a cause, of the great use of mirrors.
August Schmarsow stressed the quality of lustre (der Glanz) as a chief characteristic of the rococo, 44 emphasizing the profusion of mirrors and gilding under Louis XV. We see that this idea involves a misconception both chronological and stylistic: A wealth of polished marble, of mirrors, and of gilding was already typical of the work of Louis XIV, even before the central period of his reign.
The doors of rooms under Louis XIII were typically ones with a single valve, and were not of great height, sometimes with cornices of free profile, sometimes with panels above hav- ing little integral relation to the doors. We still find many single doors at the Hotel Lauzun, after 1657, but also some double-valve doors— both with richly plastic frames. Double doors were uniformly employed at Vaux, 1 657-1 661, and in all other works with which Le Brun was concerned, such as the Galerie d'Apollon, from 1661. Henceforth they were universal, except for very minor openings. Le Brun commonly subsumed doorway and overdoor with- in a single outer architrave rising to the cornice. In the Chateau Neuf at Versailles, in the in- terior work begun by Dorbay in 1671, these tall door casings, as we have seen, were of marble.
Here the doors themselves offered almost the only woodwork which can give us an idea of the style of carved ornament. Those of the Escalier du Roi (Figure 4) carved for Le Brun in 1678 by Philippe Caffieri, led to the provision of similar doors by his atelier in the Ap- partement du Roi, in 1 679-1 681. The rails were broken in arches which gave a concave form, at top and bottom, to the major panels. Within these was a second border, broken at the cardi- nal points by paired scrolls, framing a field with circular medallions. A similar border had already been used in the shutters of the Appartement des Bains in 1672.
As always in the North, the chimney piece was the focus of the room, the principal fea- ture of the decorative treatment of the wall. The Renaissance chimney piece both in Italy and in France had taken its departure from the overhanging chimney piece of the Gothic, with
42 Com ft es, I, 21, 22, 79. The reports to Colbert cited by Nolhac, Creation de Versailles, 1925 ed., 122 note, make apparent that the mirrors in these rooms were quite numerous, if indeed they did not cover the walls.
43 These were to be supplemented in 1680 by "vingt-quatre glaces de 26 pouces" (I, 1 3 1 8 ) . The Mercure of November, 1686, remarked "le murailles . . . toutes couvertes de glaces."
44 Darock u?id Rokoko, 355-356.
[ 23 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
hood or breast rising to the ceiling. The overhanging members were at first transformed into an entablature resting on consoles and pilasters. In Italy after 1 500, in France after 1 600, this entablature retreated to the plane of the supports. In the hands of the mannerists the fire- place opening was surrounded by an architrave of classical or free profile, often flanked by herms or consoles.
In the French Renaissance it was typical for the chimney breast to be carried up vertically to the ceiling, creating an overmantel, which, like the mantel itself, was framed with the elements of the orders. Such a projecting chimney breast was long retained in France, and gave rise to the distinction cited by Francois Blondel in his Cours d* architecture, 1683:
Scamozzi dit qu'il y a de trois especes de Cheminees sgavoir a la Romaine, a la Lombarde, & a la Frangoise. Les Cheminees a la Romaine sont prises entierement dans l'epaisseur du mur; celle qui sont a la Lombarde ont la moitie de leur enforcement au dedans du mur, & l'autre moitie en dehors; Mais a la Francoise, ellessont, dit-il, entierement hors du mur.
Already under Louis XIII, however, we find certain French chimney breasts flush with the wall, 45 thus making possible simple cubic spaces.
At the same period orders tended to be abandoned on the overmantel, where was placed a panel for painting or sculpture, often round, oval, or octagonal. The chimney piece itself, following Italian baroque models, frequently suggested the recession of the flue by a reced- ing frieze, or by some receding moulding or pedestal with bust or vase above the cornice. Both types were given rich baroque treatment, often with broken or scrolled pediments and figural supports. During the minority of Louis XIV, the receding form persisted: fine examples of it survive at Sucy-en-Brie by Le Vau, built 1 641 -1643. The receding mouldings, however, tended to be replaced by a vertical frieze or attic with a bas relief or painted arabesque, as at Maisons by Francois Mansart, 1 642-1 651.
The use of marble for the chambranle de cheminee or mantelpiece proper, adopted at the Tuileries in 1666 {Comptes I, 124) and at Versailles after 1668, gradually became general, and tended to distinguish it from the overmantel, which became rather a feature of the wall treatment.
While suspended ceilings of Italian type, coffered and carved, had been occasionally exe- cuted earlier, as that of Henri IV in the Antichambre du Roi at the Louvre, 46 ceilings in which the joists rested on heavy beams remained common until the middle of the century, when Le Muet is credited with the initiative of unifying the surface. 47
More characteristic, in major rooms, was the adoption of vaults ornamented by paintings and stuccos. Already under Francis I such a treatment, of mannerist character, had been given by Niccolo dell' Abbate to the room at Fontainebleau now housing the Escalier du Roi. In the upper story of buildings the use of coved ceilings became general, while in the ground story there were flat ceilings, even in the Chateau Neuf at Versailles. For the vault of the Grande Galerie du Louvre, Poussin proposed in 1 640 an incrustation including casts of antique orna-
45 H. Sauval in his Histoire et antiquites de la ville de Paris, written in the 1650's and '6o's but published in 1724, states (III, 6) that this innovation was made by Le Muet in the Hotel Tuboeuf, which is illustrated in the second edition of Le Muct's Maniere de bien bastir, 1647, but there were earlier examples, as in the Hotel de Sully.
46 Cf. the view of the room (Salle Henri II) by Silvestre, reproduced in Hautecoeur, Louvre, PI. XIII.
47 Sauval, loc. cit.
[ 24 ]
Background
ments. 48 Feeling himself little at home in the role of decorator, he seems to have merely re- flected ideas of an earlier time in this field.
It was Romanelli who introduced in France the decoration of vaulted ceilings in the manner of Pietro da Cortona, though with a more restrained, less extreme baroque character. Mazarin employed him to adorn his gallery, newly built by Francois Mansart in 1644, sur- viving as part of the Bibliotheque Nationale. It appears in Nanteuil's engraving of the Cardi- nal seated among his collections, and has lately been restored. As in the Farnese gallery, the vault was a cloister vault, henceforth characteristic in France. Here the ceiling was painted, with panels of geometrical outline— circles, and rectangles cut or crowned by circular arcs — as yet with little inter-penetration.
The first of the great ceiling decorations of Le Brun were those of the Galerie d'Hercule of the Hotel Lambert, begun about 1650. Again the architecture was simulated, but here it was freely overflowed by floating figures in the manner of Cortona in the Barberini ceiling. In 1655 to 1 658, Romanelli, following his return to France, executed the vaulted ceilings of the Appartement d'Ete de la Reine-Mere at the Louvre, 49 now, as at the Pitti Palace, with bold stucco frames, executed by Michel Anguier. The first room to be attacked was the Grand Cabinet (Salle de Severe). The outlines of the major panels are geometrical and little broken. In the corners, as in those of the Barberini ceiling of Romanelli's master, are pairs of figures supporting medallions, here in relief. Although these motifs with central candelabrum, scrolled pedestal and cartouche, and fragments of curved pediment at the base are here, by contrast with their wild overflow in the Palazzo Barberini, confined almost wholly within the major architectural lines, they are derivative throughout from the Italian models, which thus became generally familiar in France.
In other rooms of the apartment the character is similar. Subjected to clear geometric dis- position of the major lines are large fluted shells, or cartouches with masks, uniting the bor- ders, pairs of volutes filling the concave corners at the head of panels with segmental arches— a multitude of characteristic high -baroque motifs.
At the Hotel Lauzun, immediately afterwards, the vaults have similar treatment, but with simulated architecture and sculpture.
At Vaux, completed in 1661, the vaulted ceilings of Le Brun follow the Louvre in having a sculptural framework. In their design Le Brun depends partly on Romanelli, partly on the ultimate Italian models. The vault of the royal chamber has its lunettes flanked by stucco fig- ures supporting the central panel, here an unbroken circle. Shells which unite this with the lunettes are less pronounced in the French example, the great cartouches of the Pitti are lacking in it. The vast volutes at the base of the lunettes at Vaux, however, perhaps suggested by Romanelli's in the Antichambre de la Reine-Mere, have a baroque swing almost as pro- nounced as that of the Tritons and dolphins on the Pitti cornice. The design of the cove in the corresponding room in the opposite apartment is suggested, like that of Romanelli's Anti- chambre, by that of the Palazzo Barberini, with its standing motifs in the corners, though
48 Freart de Chambray, of. cit. The other documents regarding Poussin and the Grande Galerie are best as- sembled in E. Magne: Nicolas Poussin, Paris, 1914, 123-124. No drawing survives to show the form of this decora- tive treatment, which J. F. Blondel speaks of in 1756 as ruinous. Cf. Bulletin de la Societe de Vhistoire de fart jrancais, 1925, 210, 1931,40-44.
49 Cf. L. Hautecoeur: Louvre, 36-49.
[ 25 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
again the central panel is simpler in outline and the whole movement is much less violent than in the Italian example.
In the Galerie d'Apollon of the Louvre (Figure 2), Le Brun's barrel-vaulted ceiling, from 1 663, again is membered by stuccoes in bold relief. The disposition of the panels, for all their variety, is of ordered clarity, but again the multiplied elements offer a rich repertory of baroque plastic forms. We need, perhaps, no longer labor the point of their familiarity, which was only reinforced by Le Brun's ceilings at Versailles, from 1671 onward, which ring the changes on the types already established. We may note a diminution of baroque character, in order of execution, from the Salle d'Apollon to the Salle de Mars and beyond, as well as in the Appartement de la Reine. 50 The painted compartments of Mignard's gallery at Saint- Cloud, more conservative in their major outlines, did not differ in essence from those of Le Brum 51
In these early years of the reign of Louis XIV, floors received an elaboration comparable with that of walls and ceilings. While the earliest reference in the first years of the royal ac- counts, 1664, is to "parquets de chene" at Fontainebleau, we soon find "parquets de bois de rapport" and, frequently, "parquets de marqueterie"— many, toward the end of the period, of ebony with pewter, copper, and latten, particularly for the Louvre, with some for the Cabi- nets at Versailles. None of this type, to my knowledge, is preserved in France. In the vesti- bules at the Hotel Lambert, and in a number of the inhabited rooms at Vaux, there was a pavement of marble, mostly in alternating squares of light and dark, laid diagonally. Marble was adopted at first for the Grands Appartements of the Chateau Neuf at Versailles, where the floor was at this time in "riches compartiments." The true decoration of the floors, in harmony with the treatment elsewhere, was by the Savonnerie carpets, no longer "facon de Turquie," but from patterns in the style of Le Brun, from cartoons by Francart and Yvart. 52 Those for the galleries of the Louvre, woven in 1 664-1 683, are in compartments of baroque outline, closely related to the design of the ceilings, with rich acanthus foliage. 53
Three motifs of ornament of particular importance for the future rococo call for special discussion: the cartouche, the trophy, and the arabesque.
The cartouche, essentially a shield with its field surrounded by a border or frame, while corresponding in use to the antique medallion or tablet, was essentially a modern invention of the Italian mannerists. The very derivation of its name, cartoccio, from carta, paper, sug- gests its original and characteristic form, with a frame of rollwork: paper, card, or carton, its scrolls pushing forward. The baroque cartouche, heavily plastic, was already domesticated in France under Henry IV, as we may see in the vestibule and tribune of the chapel at Fontaine- bleau, and under Louis XIII, as in Barbet's Livre . . . d'autels et de cheminees, 1632. The high- baroque forms, at the apogee of their fire and complexity, were embodied in Stefano della Bella's Raccolta di varii capricii, and his Nouvellcs inventions de cartouches, published in Paris in
50 In the Galerie des Tuileries were installed in 1 670- 167 1 copies of the paintings of the Farnese gallery exe- cuted by the pensioners of the Academy in Rome, but we have no knowledge of the form of the borders and other ornaments.
51 Fleury, loc. cit.
52 Comptes, I, 386, 446, 1 1 10.
53 J. Prentice: "A Savonnerie Carpet from the Grande Galerie du Louvre," Burlington Magazine, LXXIX, 1941, 25-27.
[ 26 ]
Background
1646 and 1647. His cartouches offer every variety of border, including even the rim of shell which was ultimately to have such a great fortune at the height of the rococo.
Compared with these last engraved models the executed examples in the work of Roma- nelli and of Le Brun were far from representing any advance in style ; indeed, as generally in their work, these artists were apt to return to more classical forms of the medallion, itself found, like the cartouche, in the protean vocabulary of Pietro da Cortona. Henceforth under Louis XIV the cartouche was rarely employed except in its basic usage as a shield for arms, cyphers, or devices. A form frequently used for such purposes was the winged cartouche, which goes back at least to Borromini, 54 as over the main doorway of the nave of Saint John Lateran. Le Brun adopted it in the borders of his tapestry suite UHistoire du Roi, 1668 j it appears in the overdoors of the Salles de Venus and de Diane, also, for instance, in a manu- script design for interior doors for Versailles (o 1 1768, No. 45), with the date 168 1. These, characteristic of Le Brun, have oval medallions for their central fields, instead of the bulbous forms of the many Italian baroque examples.
French ornament, like the Italian, from the early Renaissance onward, had made use of the trophy, usually in its classical type of the trophy of arms, but also occasionally in types of the "trophy of peace"— with instruments of music, of the chase, and— more rarely— of hus- bandry and of the arts. Under Le Brun such trophies became a major motif of ornamental sculpture, and they replaced arabesque motifs in the borders of many of his tapestries. He not only used suspended and standing trophies, but heaped similar elements at the base and in the lower borders, choosing always such elements as comported with the subject.
Francois Blondel, after discussing the antique type of trophy of arms, codified the prac- tice of Le Brun in giving greater appositeness and variety of subject to the trophy: 55 "II s'en fait en diverses autre manieres a cette imitation. II y a dans le Livre d'Albert Durer des des- seins de Trophees faits de pieces de menage rustique & d'instruments servans au labourage arangez avec grand art. . . . L'on en fait en maniere de pantes ou de festons, non seulement sous la figure de Trophees d'armes ou de guerre, mais raeme sous celle des Trophees de Paix: comme des Sciences, des Arts, des divertissemens &c, arrangeant par exemple divers instru- mens de musique: ce qui sert aux Sciences, comme Livres, Sphere, Globes, instrumens de Mathematique: Les principaux ornemens du Bal & de la Comedie: des Equipages de Chasse ou de Peche, & mille autres de cette nature, dont la beaute consiste principalement dans le choix & la disposition, & dans le rapport, que ces ornements doivent avoir au dessein general de Pedifice."
Conspicuous early examples of sculptured trophies at this period were those of scientific instruments on Perrault's Observatoire, 1 667, and the military ones of the Porte Saint-Denis, begun in 1672, on which Le Brun and Michel Anguier collaborated with Francois Blondel. In interiors we find many examples both painted and in relief, such as those of Lesueur in the vestibules at the Hotel Lambert, and in the gallery of Frangois Mansart's Hotel de la Vrill- iere, decorated by Francois Perrier. Jean Lepautre engraved several suites, including his
54 We find winged circular cartouches or medallions as early as the decoration of the dome of San Pietro in Montorio.
55 Cours a" architecture, \b%l, 2 me fartie, 173-175.
[ 27 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
Montans de trophees d'armes a l y antique y 1 659. The culmination of the use of the trophy at this period came in Le Brun's decorations of the Escalier du Roi at Versailles, with heaped trophies of gilded metal in the four niches, painted standing trophies at the corners of the ceiling. While in all such compositions there was freedom in the collocation of individual ele- ments, the major units at this time remained generally symmetrical.
The most characteristic form of surface decoration was the grotesque — from the later sev- enteenth century in France called arabesque, 56 in spite of its classical origin— that playful, transitory, dreamlike ornament which permitted the most fanciful union of varied elements, its very essence lying in its irreality. The arabesque in France was gradually to take a charac- teristic national turn, and was ultimately to play a role of decisive importance in the genesis of the rococo. Although this turn still lay in the future, it is important for us to observe with particular attention the arabesque from the time of Mazarin onward, and to note its trans- formations.
Prior to the mid-seventeenth century there had already been three chief successive phases in the evolution of the arabesque. Following classical suggestions, the early Renaissance, both in Italy and elsewhere, had used it as a carved ornament, in narrow vertical panels such as those of pilasters, basing its form primarily on a central stem or candelabra, with branching scrolls of light foliage. Raphael in the Loggie of the Vatican, gave the classic expression to a new initiative, 57 stimulated more directly by the painted and modelled ornament of buried Roman buildings, the "grottoes," which gave the name of grotteschi, or grotesques. Raphael's arabesques were chiefly painted, although they incorporated stucco medallions in relief ; they preserved the character of narrow panels and bands. In the hands of the Roman mannerists the painted arabesques were transformed by application to broad surfaces, sometimes with three-dimensional central scenes, light baldachinos framing mythological figures, the sur- rounding surface patterns being often of the greatest attenuation. There was frequent em- ployment of flat bars or bands, often disjointed, parallel to the borders or in step-like angles, reflected in France in Ducerceau's grotesque suite of 1566. In stuccoes at the Villa di Papa Guilio we even find, by exception, such bands combined with opposite scrolls. In Rome also, as a frame for the central composition, appeared the cartouche, at first modelled in relief, with a frame of rollwork, its scrolls curling forward.
In northern Europe the carved arabesques of the Early Renaissance had been followed immediately by the mannerist forms. In the School of Fontainebleau they acquired a distinc- tive character, with broad central fields, often painted, surrounded by borders of varied orna- ments of plastic character, including much rollwork as well as interlaces of continuous flat bands in geometrical patterns. In the engraved arabesques of Flemings and Dutchmen such as Cornelis Floris and Vredeman de Vries (the activity of the latter extending into the seven- teenth century) there was a great development of the rollwork as pierced strapwork, some- times with C-scrolls united by short straight bars— characteristically, but not without excep-
56 The Italians of the sixteenth century already used "rabeschi" to describe the pilaster ornaments of acanthus foliage. In France we find in 1684 "Rabesques d'apres Raphael" used in the present sense.
57 Regarding its origins cf. Schmarsow: "Der Eintritt der Groteske in die Dekoration der italienischen Renais- saince," in Jahrbuch der freuszischen Kunst 'sammlungen, 1 88 1 , II, 131, and later discussions well summarized by W. K. Zulch: Enstehung des Ohmiuschelstiles, 1932, 1 2 ff.
[ 28 ]
Background
tion, curling forward. None of the forms of handwork so far mentioned has any close anal- ogy with that which we shall find in the later French arabesque.
Independent of all these were the continuous bands appearing in the veritable "moresques" of Islamic derivation. The title Passements de moresques, of an anonymous work of 1563, 58 shows the analogy to the braids and galloons of embroiderers, who were in fact some of the chief users of such patterns, and who found handwork patterns specially adapted to the tech- nique of applique. While the -passements de moresques of 1563 are in interlaces of continuous bands, in lozenge, trefoil and other patterns, we find numerous actual embroideries of the later sixteenth century with passements, fillets or braids in opposite C-scrolls, united by short straight bars. 59 While it is difficult to date these executed specimens exactly, we have manu- script designs and sketches by Georges Boissonet of Rheims, b0 dated as early as 16 10 (Figure 6), of embroideries which include similar forms approaching those characteristic of the future development in France. This is fortunate, for it is at just this moment that the publica- tion of model-books, which had propagated Renaissance designs of lace, basically Italian, comes to an end with the passage of the vogue of such designs, 61 so that none of such model- books includes handwork of the sort we are discussing. Moreover the chief engraved French designs of the century for embroideries and woven stuffs, those of Paul Androuet Ducerceau (1630- 1 7 10), while they contain such scrolled bands in connection with acanthus foliage, were published too late to bear on the date of adoption of these forms. Clearly, however, the forms were in common use by French embroiderers early in the seventeenth century. 62
Such forms were adopted also in French garden design under Henry IV and Louis XIII, with a name which indicates their relation to embroidery. From earlier times there had been occasional use in parterres of armorial bearings and of cyphers. Claude Mollet, Premier Jar- dinier under these kings, lays claim, very circumstantially, to the invention of "parterres et compartmens en broderie," of which numerous designs, prepared by his sons during his life- time, are included in his Theatre des plans et Jar dinages* 3 issued posthumously in 1652. Sub- stantially identical in style with these are the parterres of Jacques Boyceau— who as Inden- dant des Jardins of Louis XIII, laid out the first gardens of Versailles— appearing in his posthumous Traite de Jardinage, 1638 (Figure 5). Both include handwork as well as foliage. Indeed it is in their garden designs, among all the engraved surface patterns of whatever sort known to me, that we first find handwork combined with acanthus foliage in the general man- ner which was to be characteristic of the later French arabesque — that is to say, with C-scrolls connected by short straight bars, with palmettes of foliage radiating from the junction of opposite scrolls. A minor feature already found here was the leaf of acanthus diverging from the termination of the scroll— a feature which, in the sequel, was to become universally char-
58 Reproduced, Berliner, of. cit., pi. 95. There are also such patterns in French bookbindings of the period.
59 L. de Farcy: La Broderie du Xl e Steele jusqu'a nos jours, d'afres des specimens authentiques et les ancie?is inventaires, 1890, e.g., II, pis. 83, 91.
60 Ibid., II, pi. 100.
61 Cf. Arthur Lotz: Bibliografhie der Modellbiicker . . . 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, 1933, esp. p. 29.
62 We find related patterns in marquetry furniture, such as the bureau with the arms of the Marechal de Crequi (d. 1638) at the Musee de Cluny.
83 The relevant passages in the text are on pp. 191-192, 199, 201. They point to a date of writing about 1622- 1632, or earlier. I cannot find authority for the statement that Mollet wrote "in 161 3, towards the end of his life," made by M. L. Gothein: History of Garden Art, 1928, I, 420.
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The Creation of the Rococo
acteristic. 64 We can scarcely doubt that these novel garden designs, so conspicuously used and so much admired, were not without influence on the subsequent development of the French arabesque, in which these forms were subsequently to appear.
A new vogue of painted arabesques in France was inaugurated by Vouet, under the influ- ence of Italian mannerism to which he had been subjected. Vouet painted the panels of the Appartement des Bains de la Reine-Mere at the Palais-Royal in 1643. 65 The central medal- lions are of geometrical form— mostly oval and octagonal, rarely with rollwork— buttressed by pairs of supporting figures, with acanthus foliage and other motifs. Similar compositions of large scale occur at the Arsenal. 68 At the Hotel Lambert minor arabesques abound in the rooms decorated by Lesueur, 1645-1649, 67 and by Le Brun, after 1650, as also at the Hotel Lauzun, after 1657, an d elsewhere. 68 In contrast with these, which follow mannerist tradi- tion, were those of Errard, leader of the academic trend, which reverted more directly to the arabesques of Raphael. His decorations at the Louvre, from 1654 onward have largely perished, but a series of panels from the Appartement de la Reine, 1657, were incorporated in 1 8 1 7 in the Chambre du Livre d'Or at the Luxembourg. 69 Other fine arabesques of Errard, closely similar, survive in the Chambre d'Anne d'Autriche at Fontainebleau, 1664. In none of the painted compositions so far mentioned do we encounter any of the handwork which was afterwards to play such a significant part in the development of French arabesques.
Meanwhile in baroque Italy we do find such bandwork, related to what we have observed in embroidery and in French parterres, appearing in the marble intarsia of floors and incrus- tations which then became popular. 70 Where in the sixteenth century there had been acanthus scrollwork, in the mid-seventeenth century scrolled bands were often used. Though occasion- ally a plastic effect was sought, the nature of the material favored flat bands, even to approx- imate the frame of a cartouche. Thus a pairing of opposite scrolled bands was characteristic. In some instances there were borders of moresques or other scrolled bandwork in repeating
64 H. von Geymiiller, in Baukunst der Renaissance in Frankreich, 1901, called such a scroll a bec-de-corbin (bill-hook, or hawk's-bill) , and German writers have followed him. Although Geymiiller had the advice of Destail- leur in matters of usage, I do not find in French parlance, either of the eighteenth century or today, just such a use of the term, which was applied to a somewhat different foliate element — a jeuille de rejend ending in a very deli- cate scroll turning backwards. Cf. the key to diagrams of parterres in an engraved suite issued by Nicolas Langlois (Print Department, Metropolitan Museum of Art). In the absence of any term better grounded historically we are constrained to adopt this one.
65 V. Champier and R. Sandoz: Le Palais-Royal, Paris, 1900, 1 14. Fourteen panels were engraved by Dorigny in 1647.
66 In the so-called "Cabinet de Sully," actually decorated for the Marechal Due de la Meilleraye, Grand Maitre de l'Artillerie, 1634-1648. His capture of Hesdin, June 29, 1639, which appears in one of the panels, gives a terminus fost quern, later than usually assumed. The decorations may have been executed any time before 1648.
67 In the dado of the Cabinet des Muses a few of these early panels remain in place; some from the Cabinet de l'Amour, including circular cartouches framed by palm, are preserved at the Chateau de La Grange in Berri. Cf. L. Dimier: La Peinture jrancaise .. . 1 627-1 690, Paris, II, 1927, pis. IO, II.
68 Both at the Hotel Lambert (Cabinet des Muses) and the Hotel Lauzun (Ancienne Salle a Manger) certain arabesques date from remodellings of the eighteenth century, and may readily be distinguished from those of the seventeenth.
69 Dimier, op. cit., 16, pis. 14, 15, and Bulletin de la Societe de histoire de Part jrancais, 1927, 37-39, follow- ing A. de Champeaux: L'art decoratij dans le vieux Paris, 1898, 74-77, an identification resting on the engraved suite Ornemens des Appartemens de la Reine au Vieux Louvre far le sieur Errard.
70 W. Kern and P. Schubring: Italienische Marmor-lntarsien, 1 921.
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patterns (Figure 7). In others there were panels with an inner border or band ending semicir- cularly at top and bottom with paired scrolls. Among notable examples of such marble intarsia in Rome were panels of Bernini's sepulchre of Santa Francesca Romana at Santa Maria Nuova, about 1648. Here in the pavement we find even a hint of the French developments, in borders with scrolled crossettes set off by a leaf. 71 Beside its architectural uses, such in- tarsia was incorporated in marble table-tops which formed an article of export, notably to the Court of France. Some of these tables combined handwork and foliate elements in much the same way as did the French parterres, which appear to antedate them.
The decorative repertory of Charles Le Brun was so vast that his arabesques have attracted little attention, yet they are of much importance. His personal concern with their design we know from his manuscript drawings at the Louvre 72 (e.g., Figure 8), although their execu- tion was doubtless left to assistants. Rather than analyse these drawings, which cannot be dated, we shall discuss datable examples carried out under his direction, which in fact show a similar character.
In the interiors at Vaux, completed in 1 66 1 , Le Brun gave arabesques a large place. 723 They decorate the woodwork in several rooms of the Grand Appartement. In general they continue the French tradition of Vouet, with figural elements on a large scale, acanthus foliage, and oval medallions here placed against a background of drapery, hanging sometimes from a valanced baldaquin. This traditional Italian element, adopted by Ducerceau, and already re- vived at the Arsenal, was a favorite in Le Brun's arabesques. What is specially characteristic and essentially novel in painted arabesques is Le Brun's occasional use of moulded straight bars, or scrolls of flat handwork connected by short horizontal or vertical bars— contrasting with the smooth flow of the acanthus leafage in the same panels (Figure 1). From the junc- tions of opposite band scrolls, as traditionally from the junction of acanthus scrolls, spring radiating leaf-motives, variations of the palmette. This is best illustrated at Vaux in certain painted friezes, where the intertwining of bands, from the scrolls of which diverge certain leaves of acanthus, foreshadows the treatment which was ultimately to be characteristic of plaster cove-cornices under Louis XV.
It was from such arabesques of Le Brun, obviously, that were derived the forms of many engraved models by such artists as Georges Charmeton { 1 6 1 9- 1 674) , Nicolas Loir (1623/ 24- 1679) and his brother Alexis (ca. 1630-1713). 73 Indeed those of the two latter correspond almost exactly with the character of Le Brun's composition at Vaux.
Similar forms appear in Le Brun's Gallerie d'Apollon of the Louvre, where the wainscot which covered the walls was richly ornamented with painted arabesques, while arabesques in stucco figure in the minor panels of the ceilings. The accounts are not specific as to the several parts of the decoration painted between 1666 and 1677 — by La Baronniere, who had al- ready worked at Vaux, by Gontier, Gervaise, and the Lemoines— or for the precise date at
71 These and similar patterns were noted by Oppenord in his Roman sketchbook of 1 692- 1699, now in Berlin, p. 29 recto, 49 recto, etc.
72 Nos. 5912, 5914, 8253, 8254, 8443 in J. Guiffrey and P. Marcel: Inventaire general des dessins du Louvre . . . Paris, VII, 1912, VIII, 1 91 3.
72a J. Cordey: Vaux-le-Vicomte, 1924.
73 When in discussing the sources of Berain's arabesques, Berliner, of. cii., 166, says that they cannot be derived from Berain's immediate predecessors such as Charmeton, he overlooks the basic common source in the painted ara- besques of Le Brun.
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The Creation of the Rococo
which the arabesques of the walls were executed. 74 But the plates of ornaments of the gal- lery 75 engraved by Jean Berain ( 1640-171 1) as his first work for the Crown, including six showing the piers (Figure 9), were paid for beginning in January, 1671, which gives a terminus ante quern. He was paid for nine plates by November, 1 672. 70 Notable in them, as at Vaux, is again the presence of bandwork with scrolls from which diverge leaves of acanthus. While in the painted wall panels this bandwork is subordinate, in the ceiling panels in relief it is defi- nitely characteristic. In one of these (Plate 7 of the engraved series, our Figure 10) it forms an inner border, turning into the pattern, uniting in opposite scrolls. The engravings also show the strips of ornament of the window jambs, still surviving, chiefly of interlacing bandwork, again with palmettes at the junctions of the scrolls, many of which are garnished with an acanthus leaf.
An equally advanced stage of decoration under Le Brun's direction is shown by the ara- besques of the Grand Appartement at the Tuileries, as they appear in engravings by Lemoine in the same series. 7 ' He and his brother had worked at the Tuileries from 1669 (I, 334), and Germain Brice states that the Chambre du Roi had grotesque panels executed by them. 78 Here indeed, in certain panels, the bandwork even dominates over the acanthus. The essen- tials of the style which we call that of Berain are thus already present at a time before, or soon after, he first worked for the Crown.
If painted arabesques do not appear in the rooms of the Chateau Neuf at Versailles which survive from this period, we must remember that none of the private rooms of the time are preserved unchanged. Errard's arabesques of 1 662-1 665 were in the Petit Chateau, of which the rooms remained undisturbed only until 1678-168 7. The apartment of Mme. de Monte- span, where the decorations of 1671 by La Baronniere and the Lemoines {Comptes I, 509) may have been similar, was swept away in 1685. Of the nature of painted decorations of other private apartments we know nothing. In the Escalier du Roi the four simulated tapestries with arabesques, surrounding military scenes executed in 1 677-1 67 8, 79 have inner borders of bandwork analogous to others we have seen in the work of Le Brun.
Arabesques also figure in the designs for tapestry by Le Brun. This was the case notably in the suite of Festons et rinceaux a fond de mosa'ique, "maniere arabesque," woven at the Gobelins in 1668 and destroyed during the Revolution. As described in the Inventaire du mobilier de la Couronne* it had "rainseaux, oyseaux, et festons de fleurs, et dans le milieu de chaque piece une
74 Hautecoeur states, op. cit., 1 17: "de 1670 a 1677 les Lemoine decorerent les trumeaux d'arabesques," but I do not find anything so definite in the accounts. Berain's engravings begin in the very year the Lemoines began to be employed at the Louvre, and would thus seem to be show work by the other men.
75 Twelve plates engraved by him, of which the coppers arc preserved by the Chalcographie du Louvre, were included with others in a series assembled in 1710 with the title: Orneme?is de feinture et de sculpture qui sont dans la Galerie d'Apollon au Chateau du Louvre et dans le grand Appartement du Roy au Palais des Tuileries. Dessinez et gravez par les Srs. Berain, Chauveau, et le Maine.
76 Comptes, I, 478, 544, 642. The payments for further plates, extending to 1677, as cited by R. A. Weigert: Jean I Berain, Paris, 1937, II, 40, are not specifically stated to be of ornaments of the gallery.
77 Plates 26-29, Lambris dans le grand Apparternent des Tuileries, of the collected series of 1710. The only plates for which he was paid were four in 1678 (I, 1 089), which may thus well be these.
78 Description de Paris, 1698 ed., I, 60.
7fl One of these, transferred to canvas is preserved at the Musee de Versailles, No. 155.
80 Ed. by J.-J. Guiffrey, Paris, 1885, No. 71 of the tapestries, cited by M. Fenaille: Etat general des Tapisseries des Gobelins, II, 1 903, 41.
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medaille ovalle dans laquelle sont representez les Divertissements du Roy, le tout sur un fond aurore de petits carrez d'or et de soye." It is our first mention of this characteristic background of mosai'que, which appears also in the overdoor panels of the Galerie d'Apollon, and later in many ceilings of the Chateau Neuf . In figural tapestries arabesques might appear, as initially in Raphael's tapestries, in the borders. Thus the borders of the suite of the Histoire du Roi, of which the first pieces were woven in 1668, have arabesques with rinceaux intertwined with horizontal handwork, from the bars of which hang scalloped lambrequins, as in the friezes at Vaux.
Bandwork appeared likewise at Versailles in carved panel fillings, such as the surviving shutters of the Appartement des Bains, about 1672, and the doors executed for the Escalier des Ambassadeurs in 1678 by Philippe Caflieri, from Le Brun's designs of which we have spoken. In each of these the band is merely an inner border of the panel field, uniting at the axial points in opposite scrolls adorned with a leaf of acanthus. All such bandwork was still, and for a score of years to come, rigidly confined within the geometric outline of the mould- ed frame.
Our study of the remoter background has already, we hope, served to confute the old idea that the rococo issued directly from Italian baroque influence in France. We may emphasize several points particularly. Italian artists of advanced training worked in France during the high baroque without evoking the rococo ; on the contrary, while employing many baroque forms, they reverted there to a more conservative spirit. French artists were in Rome at the height of the baroque, giving it particular and friendly attention. Baroque motifs were thus thoroughly domesticated in France long before the rococo, without generating it. The work of these artists in France, filled as it was with baroque forms, not only failed to create the rococo but assisted in evoking, by reaction, a pronounced classical academism. While the typically Italian baroque form of the cartouche was relatively neglected, and the trophy re- tained a conservative treatment, a new development, wholly French, was beginning to take place in arabesque surface ornament— a development independent of high -baroque forms. It was this French development, and not anything Italian, which, we shall find, ultimately led on to the rococo, the basic character of which, in spite of the continued survival of individ- ual baroque elements, was essentially antithetical to the baroque.
Immediate Background : The Central Period of Louis XIV, 1678 -1699
A new outburst of activity corresponds with the central period of the reign, the last quarter of the seventeenth century, opening when the martial successes of France had brought Louis XIV to his apogee. The academic tendency which had emerged from 1666 onward, now be- came dominant. The advent of Mansart, as the ultimate agent of the King's artistic will, the decision to make Versailles the seat of the Court, coincided closely with the Treaty of Nim- wegen, 1678, which opened a decade of peace with unexampled wealth.
More even than previously, it was the King who took the major initiatives. As between the Louvre and Versailles, who shall say that Colbert was right rather than the King, who insisted on creating at Versailles his unrivalled engine for the destruction of feudal independence in
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The Creation of the Rococo
the nobility? We must emphasize, moreover, what tends to be forgotten: that the buildings of the Louvre and Tuileries— no matter how united and cleared of their ignoble encum- brances—were incapable, by their form and relations, of receiving a distribution at all in harmony with the functional requirements of royalty, Court and government, so admirably achieved at Versailles in spite of the early forebodings of Colbert. At Saint-Germain, which Saint-Simon thought should have been preferred, the remodellings and additions of 1680- 1682 made only more obvious what the King already recognized: the total impossibility of creating from the irregularities and disparities of the buildings there a coherent practical and artistic whole, capable of receiving the entire Court.
As no programme for a building enterprise had ever been more wisely drawn, or more lit- erally followed than the King's list of requirements of 166 8 81 for the Chateau Neuf de Ver- sailles, which Le Vau had so ably translated into plastic form, we can little doubt that the essential major demands for the transformation of 1678 were likewise ideas of the monarch, brilliantly embodied by Mansart. We know that it was the King's veto which ultimately saved the court of the chateau from the changes proposed by Claude Perrault, and we may thus suppose it to have been his decision also which now saved it from the elevation proposed by Mansart — thereby preserving the artistic dominance of the Stage du Roi which Mansart's proposal threatened to extinguish. The basic artistic scheme of Marly, with its satellite pa- villions, is implicit in the very conception of its practical requirements, and accordingly must also redound ultimately to the credit of the King, quite irrespective of the report to this effect mentioned by Charles Perrault. In the matter of taste— "le mauvais gout du roi en toutes choses" of the crabbed Saint-Simon— we have more than one example of the superiority of the King, as we shall see.
In the art of the central period, Colbert was no longer, as during the earliest years of his ministry and of his Surintendance des Batiments, the initiator and arbiter, but was now rather the energetic executant of the King's mature will. The system Colbert had created, a constella- tion of individuals in academies advising the minister, was subtly transformed, as we shall see, into a centralization of the Batiments under a single architect— responsible indeed to the Sur- intendant, but ultimately an instrument of the King. This new system, already existing since 1678, was recognized just before Colbert's death in 1683 by the revival for Mansart of the office of Premier Architecte. Multiplication of his subordinates followed under the Surin- tendence of Louvois. Except by the disfavour of Le Brun, the favour of Mignard, Louvois' action on the arts had little new personal direction, though his zeal and energy were equal to Colbert's. His own death in 1690 and the succession of the weak- Villacerf increased the im- portance of the Premier Architecte, whose agency was the unifying factor in the architecture of this whole period.
In Jules-Hardouin Mansart, Louis indeed found and recognized the perfect executant of his artistic will. The purism of contemporaries and of later critics might indeed justly re- proach him with a lack of that artistic conscience, of that correctness of motive, proportion, and detail so well exemplified by his uncle, Francois Mansart. All this was now beside the
81 "Ce que le Roi desire dans son batiment de Versailles," Lettres et instructions de Colbert, ed. Clement, V, 1868, pp. 282-284. That the King and not the minister was responsible is shown by Colbert's demurrers on many points.
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point. What was necessary was a breadth and readiness of conception, a rapidity of execu- tion, only made possible by organization and by delegation of details to others. In stressing the large part of subordinates in the creation of artistic motive under Mansart's regime, we by no means deny him great and deserved credit for the plastic solution of the major architec- tural problems posed by the King. His was the responsibility, if not in all cases the initiative, for the masterly relationship to the chateau at Versailles of the great wings, of the Orangerie, of the ficuries, for the actual distribution at Marly and at the Trianon de Marbre. His was the responsibility for the choice of personnel, the recommendation of designs, as well as their realization with almost magical promptitude and efficiency, achieved by a body of subordi- nates with newly-specialized duties, of which, as we shall see, he himself dictated the organi- zation.
We need scarcely detail the rise of Mansart except to assemble scattered evidence as to its early stages. Born April 1 6, 1 646, he was scarcely twenty when we first hear of him as direct- ing certain work for M. de Lesseville, mentioned in a subsequent deposition of December, 1 673, in which, at twenty-seven, he is described as "architects des bastimens du Roy," 82 a term then still somewhat loosely used. By his marriage in 1667 to the daughter of a Tresorier de la prevote de France he was definitely launched. The Comptes des Battments do not mention him before 1676, when he was paid 500 livres as a member of the Academy of Architecture, fol- lowing his appointment to it in 1675. The ground for his favour was his success at the Chateau de Clagny, begun in its first form for Madame de Montespan in the spring of 1674. 83 For the chateau as enlarged by the "nouveaux bastiment" begun in 1675, the specifi- cation for the joinery, in Mansart's hand, is dated June 14, 1676. 84 In March of 1677 he re- ceived the extraordinary sum of 6000 livres "pour les desseins et la conduite des bastimens de Clagny," beside other perquisites. From this year we have an ill-spelled letter of Mansart to Colbert from Clagny, September io, 85 following an unannounced visit of the minister to the work in Mansart's absence, for which he pleads illness. He writes in great fear of Colbert's displeasure, especially as he had just had his first opportunity for employment at Versailles: "J'ai done depuis peu le reste de touts les mesure pour les quabines de marbre que vous faite faire dans le parque de Versailles au cabinet de la Renommee." 86 From 1678 he was fully in charge of the immense new constructions at Versailles. In February, 1682, contrary to the statutes of the order requiring nobility, he was made a Chevalier de Saint-Lazare, being en- nobled in September of the same year. Before Colbert's death, which took place on Septem- ber 6, 1683, Mansart had been given the title of Premier Architecte. 87
82 J. -J. Guiffrey: "Jules et Michel Hardouin freres, architectes," in Nouvelles archives de Part jrancais, III, 1887, 289-294. In this deposition we find Mansart answering with a truculence already suggesting the self- confidence which was to carry him so far.
83 C. Harlay: Le Chateau de Clagny a Versailles, restitution-notices-iconografhie, n.d. ( 191 2). Other documents in P. Bonnassieux: Le Chateau de Clagny, 1 88 1 , 50 ff. Cf. also Nolhac in Revue de I'Aistoire de Versailles . . . 1 900, incorporated in La Creation de Versailles, 190 1 ed., which Harlay corrects in important regards.
84 Cited by H. Jouin: Nouvelles archives de Part jrancais, 1885, 11 6- 11 7.
85 Quoted by Bonnassieux, 156-158, from G. Peignot: Documents authentiques et details curieux sur les defenses de Louis XIV , 1827.
86 Payments for the model for a pavilion were made in April and May (Comftes, I, 959, 962).
87 His nomination seems not to be preserved, but he was paid in this new capacity for the entire year, the first half-yearly payment being made July 25 (Comftes, II, 381).
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The Creation of the Rococo
As to how much or little Mansart himself could draw we have but scant authentic infor- mation. The younger Dargenville, to be sure, wrote, long afterwards, that Mansart "profiloit dans la derniere perfection et dessinoit grossierement avec du charbon ou une grosse plume." 88 Dargenville was unborn at Mansart's death ; even his father, with similar interests, could barely have known Mansart. Many of the younger Dargenville's notices were taken over entire from Mariette and other previous writers; others were merely journalistic compila- tions. In this instance his text seems to be based partly on scattered remarks of Jean-Francois Blondel's Cours d y architecture y 1771-1777, completed by Patte. One passage there (V, 41-42) speaks of certain mouldings at Clagny as "d'un excellent profil, partie dans laquelle Hardouin Mansart s'est toujours signale avec le plus grand eclat." Blondel himself was not born until 1705, three years before the death of Mansart, and he speaks solely from knowledge of the finished buildings.
Actually we know of no single drawing which is surely from Mansart's own hand, at any period of his life. Many which have been called his and which have his signature have it merely affixed to an official approval "Bon a executer," itself written in another hand, not even that of the draughtsman. It is notable to what an extent Mansart adopted and adapted the existing designs of others. In the chateau of Versailles the system of the facades is merely that established by Le Vau — slightly modified and greatly extended. Hardouin Mansart's first designs for the chapel at Versailles, on a domed scheme, were adapted from sketches of his uncle for a funerary chapel at Saint-Denis, on which the scheme of the Chapelle Royale des Invalides was also based. 89 Nowhere do we find in the archives even any preliminary sketches which may be his. Nonetheless all public credit went to the Premier Architecte, who alone is always mentioned as having "donne les desseins."
It thus becomes vital to penetrate the official fagade of the Batiments, which have masked in anonymity the personalities of all subordinates. Was it really to the great functionary, as Mansart soon became, or to other men, more modest in rank, that we should attribute the in- itiative in artistic creation?
Mansart's formal dominance in the Batiments dates from 1678. His title in that year was "Architecte," his basic salary 6000 livres. Aside from Blondel, "Professeur," each of the other academicians was now listed as "Autre Architecte" and, with a single exception, received merely the 500 livres paid for attendance at the conferences of the Academy.
The exception was Francois Dorbay, who had been in charge of the works at Versailles since the death of Le Vau and whose salary was 1000 livres. Dorbay also received in this year, as in the previous one, a gratification of 2000 livres "en consideration du soin qu'il prend des basti- mens du Roy." Henceforth the functions of the academicians as such became nominal; the office of the Batiments was given an independent development. Dorbay continued to be sec- ond in command. When Mansart was named Premier Architecte Dorbay was named "Archi- tecte" at 2000 livres, and he remained, until his death in 1697, second in pay— even after the appointment of De Cotte, Mansart's brother-in-law, to this rank in 1685. Mansart fre- quently looked to Dorbay for drawings, as we shall see.
88 Vies des jameux architectes, 1787, 365.
89 L. Hautecoeur: "L'origine du dome des Invalides, "Uarchitecture, XXXVII, 1924, 353-360, and "Jules Hardouin and Frangois Mansart," in Bulletin de la Societe de Phistoire de Part jrancais, 1924, 1 20-1 21.
[ 36 ]
Background
Robert de Cotte (165 6- 1735), had begun his career as a contractor for masonry, with im- portant royal work in 1 682-1 685. Marrying the sister-in-law of Mansart before 1683, he was made a member of the Academy in 1685, and in the same year was given a salary of 2400 livres as an architect in the Batiments, inferior only to Dorbay. He was to rise to fortune as Mansart's collaborator and successor. To remove the reproach of lack of academic train- ing, he made in 1 689-1 690 a belated six-months trip to Italy, for which we have his journal, of the driest observations, 90 and a collection of drawings of churches, made with rule and square, in which several different hands may be recognized. 91 That De Cotte was not incap- able of drawing we know from his slight and loose freehand sketches for his own hotel of 1722, with their notes "ma chambre, mon cabinet," 92 but we find no developed designs of in- teriors or ornament from his hand. His contribution will have been rather in larger matters of general conception, for which we have ample evidence of his great powers, both in his own correspondence, 93 and in the letters of Balthasar Neumann. 94 Indeed we must credit him, rather than Mansart, with some of the major conceptions of the period, for we find on the first study for the final scheme of the Place Vendome, 95 1699, a contemporary caption "Place Louis le Grand suivant l'idee de Mr. De Cotte."
Under Mansart, to a degree hitherto unknown, draughtsmen were regularly employed to assist the architect. True Le Vau had used Dorbay, Dorbay had used the young Desgodetz and sometimes Vigneux. But Mansart went further, even at Clagny, almost from the begin- ning. We find in the accounts there the following payments to Cauchy: 96 in 1675, "a compte de ses ouvrages, 300 livres,"— in i676,"a compte desdesseinsqu'il fait, 600 livres in 1677, "a Cochery, designateur, pour plusieurs desseins du bastiment de Clagny, 500 livres." Cauchy, moreover, was not alone. There were payments at Clagny in 1675, 1676 and 1678 to De Langre, dessinateur, totalling 384 livres. Jomart was paid 300 in 1679 and 200 in 1680, "a compte des journees employees a copier les desseins du bastiment de Clagny." For the first time in France a considerable division of labor appears in the preparation of architectural drawings for a given project. 97
At Versailles under Colbert, from 1 678, during the years of greatest activity, Mansart had the help not only of Dorbay but of various draughtsmen for special tasks. The chief of these
90 Bibliotheque Nationale, MS. fr. 1 4663-14664. Cf. Mile. Jeanne Lejaux in Bulletin de la Societe de I'his- toire de I'art jrancais, 1938, 31.
91 Ibid., Vf 7, with binders title De Cotte-tglises d'ltalie.
92 Ibid., Va 270.
93 Ibid., Hd 1 35-1 3 5e, published in part by P. Marcel: Inventaire des fafiers . . . de Robert de Cotte, 1906.
94 K. Lohmeyer: Die Brieje Balthasar N eumanns von seiner Pariser Studienreise, 1723, 191 1.
95 Cabinet des Estampes, Va 441, No. 1808.
96 So he signed his name to the minutes of the Academy of Architecture March 5, 1 699, when Mansart came ac- companied by "MM. les officiers des bastimens."
97 None of the original drawings for the construction of Clagny survives at the Archives Nationales or at the Cabinet des Estampes, the earliest of many drawings (Cabinet des Estampes) being one from which Mariette's plate was engraved, drawn apparently by Lassurance, who did not enter the Batiments until 1684. None of the draughts- men listed in the accounts for Clagny, to be sure, was capable of making the general design of Clagny, which is rightly called in a note in Blondel's Cours d 'architecture (V, 192) "l'une des plus ingenieuses compositions d'archi- tecture de ce genre." Is it possible that Mansart merely modified and executed a scheme of Antoine Lepautre, to whom Mariette attributed the first designs for Clagny? There are indeed generic similarities of design with Le- pautre's work at Saint-Cloud.
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The Creation of the Rococo
was Desgodetz, who had earlier been employed under Dorbay. Now on his return from Rome, at twenty-five, he was paid in 1678 and in 1679 for "plusieurs plants des maisons royalles"; again in 1682 (after two years as clerk at Chambord) he received 1000 livres "sur les desseins qu'il a fait des bastimens de Versailles." On the Grande Ecurie in 1679 Cauchy received 100 livres "a compte de ses desseins," Jomart, 200 "pour les journees employees a copier les plans, eslevations, et profils," and 1 20 more in 1 68 1 "pour desseins des plants." On the Aile du Midi, he had 100 livres in 1680 "sur les journees qu'il a employees a dessigner les plants et eslevations."
It was, however, in 1684, after the advent of Louvois, that the supplementary staff was regularized and enlarged. In that year Cauchy and Chupin were regularly employed as draughtsmen. In 1685, beside De Cotte as architect, Daviler and Lassurance, then young men, were active as draughtsmen. Except for Lescuyer at Marly, and for the appearance of Boffrand from 1686 to 1691 and sporadically later, these continued to constitute the staff until near the end of the century. Cauchy was specifically qualified in 1685 as "dessinateur dudit Sr. Mansart," Daviler also in 1686 as "dessinateur sous le Sr. Mansart."
Simon Chupin had been at the Academy in Rome from 1672 to 1676, 98 where Errard had opined he would succeed better in military than in civil architecture, "n'avant pas de dessein." "Un garson soumis," he never rose, any more than did Cauchy, above the obscurity of an assistant.
Germain Boffrand (1667- 1754), at the age of but nineteen, was employed on the draw- ings of the Place Vendome in its first form, from its origins in 1686. April 13, 1687, he was paid 740 livres "pour ses gages de l'annee 1 686 sous le sr. Mansart a dessigner les plants et profils des bastimens de la place Vendosme et du Commun des Capucines (Compies II, 1272). We find his handwriting on one of the earliest plans, to establish the levels." In 1688 he was paid 600 livres, "pour avoir dessine les plants et profils des bastimens de la place Royalle et du convent des Capucines de l'hostel de Vendome," in 1689, 600 livres for the same, "sous le Sr. Mansart en 1688 j" in 1690, for the previous year, 300 livresj in 1691, 150 livres— all for drawings for this project. In 1693 he was paid only for taking plans of Fontainebleau and Choisy; and in 1694 for doing so at other places. We have not found any designs by Boffrand at this period for other new works than those of the Place Vendome.
Charles-Augustin Daviler (1653-1700) was, along with Desgodetz and Chupin, excep- tional among the staff of the Batiments for having studied in Italy, working at the Academy in Rome from 1676 to 1680. Soon after his arrival there, although he had previously worked at the school of the Academy of Architecture at the Palais-Royal, it was remarked by Errard that "II manque du dessein," 100 and this deficiency was considered to continue, for Colbert, on seeing his envois, wrote Errard in March 1679 "je n'ay pas trouve, qu'il dessinait assez bien." 101 Mariette writes of him: "Lorsqu'il fut de retour de Paris, il continua encore pen- dant quelque temps ses etudes en son particulier; mais peu apres M. Mansard, premier Architecte du Roi, qui connoissoit son merite, le recut au nombre de ceux qui travailloit sous
98 Corresfondance des Directeurs, I, 1887, 39, 64.
"Cabinet des Estampes, Va 441, not numbered. There are ample specimens for comparison in signed letters, e.g., Bibliotheque Nationale, Cabinet des Manuscrits, Nouv. acc. fr. 2768, fol. 27.
100 Corresfondance des Directeurs, I, 64-65.
101 Ibid.
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Background
lui dans le Bureau d'Architecture. II y occupa bientot une des premieres places ; & comme il ne se fasoit pour le Roi qui ne passat par ses mains, 1 'experience augmenta considerablement ses connoissances." 102 During his activity in the Batiments, from the fall of 1684 to the spring of 1689, we do not find Daviler receiving any gratifications for special services, and, at least for interiors, the surviving drawings from the period of his employment are by other hands. Im- patient for advancement, he left the Batiments in disgust at the beginning of 1 690. After the publication of his Cours d* architecture in 169 1, codifying the practice of Mansart's atelier at that time, he assumed the direction of the works of Dorbay at Montpelier, where he died in 1700.
It was Pierre Cailleteau, called Lassurance, who was the chief reliance of Mansart from the time of his appointment in 1684. He appears in the accounts from 1679 as a-p-pareilleur at Clagny, and thus learned building on the scaffold, like so many other French architects, with- out ever going to Italy. We know nothing of his birth, or of his life except in his profession j he died in 1724. Saint-Simon, indeed, after Mansart's death, twice made the exaggerated charge that Mansart's reliance of Lassurance was complete. In his additions to the journal of Dangeau, May 11, 1708, he wrote of Mansart:
II etait ignorant dans son metier, et de Cotte, son beau-frere, l'etoit guere moins. lis tiroient tout d'un dessinateur qu'ils tenoient clos et a l'ecart chez eux, qui s'appeloit Lassurance, sans lequel lis ne pouvoient rien. 103
And, in his own memoirs for 1708:
Us tiroit leurs plans, leurs desseins, leurs lumieres, d'un dessinateur des batiments nomme l'Assurance, qu'ils tenoient tant qu'ils pouvoient sous clef. 104
We shall see that at least the drawings for interiors from 1684 to 1699 were from the hand of Lassurance.
Our survey of the Batiments at this period would not be complete without a renewed allu- sion to Le Brun, who in these years reached and passed the pinnacle of his career. As Premier Peintre in a period when there was no Premier Architecte he was indeed the leading officer of the Batiments down to 1 683, the date of Mansart's elevation to the vacant post at the head of the architectural staff, which he had long headed in fact. Colbert's death soon afterwards ex- posed Le Brun, who may also have been regarded as representing a survival of baroque in- fluences, to the force of Louvois' preference for Mignard j but he retained his favour with the King and his post as director of the Gobelins until his death on February 10, 1690. The im- mense body of his drawings preserved at the Louvre, includes many for works of the central period of the reign. The bulk of them are from his own hand ; including at least the ornaments in certain designs for interior features other than paintings— where the mechanical outlines
102 "Vie de . . . Daviler," in Mariette's edition of Daviler's Cours d' architecture, I 738, xxxix-xlii. Mariette was himself not born until 1694, and depended, as he says in the Abecedario, on memoirs and papers supplied him by the artist's brother.
103 Journal de Dangeau, 1857 ed., XII, 134.
104 Memoir es de Saint-Simon, ed. Boislisle, XVI, 1902, 39.
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The Creation of the Rococo
may have been drawn by assistants. We continue to find payments for such draughtsmen. The painter Claude Nivelon was paid 825 livres in 1680 as "dessignateur aux Gobelins pour ses appointements pendant les aeuf derniers mois de Pannee." There are small sporadic pay- ments to others as draughtsmen at the Gobelins, as to Pattigny in 1 68 1, Sebastien Le Clerc in 1 68 1 and following years.
Not administratively subordinate to the Batiments was the office of Menus-Plaisirs, in which the artistic force was Jean Berain. 105 Born in 1640 in Saint-Mihiel, son of a master- gunsmith, he came in youth to Paris. After being occasionally employed by the Batiments, from 1670, as an engraver, he had been appointed, at thirty-four, by brevet of December 28, 1674, Dessinateur de la Chambre et du Cabinet du Roi. His predecessor, Henry de Gissey, whom a contemporary document calls the "maistre de M. Berain," may indeed have inducted him into pagaentry, but scarcely into the decorative arts, in which he was to unfold an exten- sive activity. Mariette wrote of him: "On ne faisait rein, en quelque genre que ce fut, sans que ce soit dans sa maniere, ou qu'il en eut donne les desseins." While the expenses of the Menus- Plaisirs by 1692, as described in the fitat de France, included among many other items those of "les Meubles et Pargenterie pour les appartements du Roi" their design is not mentioned in the charges of Berain's brevet of 1 674, which were "pour toutes sortes de desseins, perspec- tives, Figures et habits qu'il conviendrait Faire pour les Comedies, Balets, Courses de bagues et Carousels . . ." Actually Berain's duties, in the early years at least, lay precisely in such fields, and we do not find specific references to designs for use in the royal interiors prior to those we shall mention in 1 682-1 684. Through these, and above all through decorative com- positions diifused by engraving, he was to exercise an influence which was of very great im- portance.
In the central period of Louis XIV, even more than during his early personal rule, the creative works, decisive for artistic direction, were in the palaces of the Crown. Although these have been the subjects of so many monographs, it remains to place in a single chrono- logical series the successive undertakings there which embody this creative line.
Of Clagny, substantially completed by 1680 and destroyed in 1769, we have only inade- quate descriptions, drawings and engravings, many of them inconsistent and inaccurate. 106 The engraved suite by Mansart's brother, Michel Hardouin, 1678-1680, 107 gives us almost our only significant glimpse of intended forms in the interior— a transverse section of the cen- tral vestibule, a longitudinal section of the great gallery with its three salons, in the center and at each end (Figure 11). By contrast with the rooms of the Grand Appartements at Versailles as then existing, but following Le Brun's scheme in the Grand Escalier, they were distinguished by an order— which here was of Corinthian pilasters. As compared with the work of Le Vau and Dorbay, the growing academism was sharply accentuated by this use of
103 Cf. Weigert: Jean I Berain.
106 Assembled and reproduced by C. Harlay, of. cit.
107 J.-F. Blondel: Cours ^architecture, Paris, 1 774-1 777 (completed by Patte), V, 41-42 alludes to this suite, often bound with Jean Mariette's series: "On peut compter pour rien, ou pour peu de chose, les plans qu'en trouve dans le receuil de P Architecture Francoise, et qui ne sont que les premiers idees imparfaits que l'architecte," yet the plan is dated 1680, the other plates 1678. Blondel's work itself gives details of the niches of the salon (III, pi. XL) surmounted by a cartouche with flanking cherubs, and of two interior cornices (V, pi. VII), one with con- soles—nothing fundamentally new.
[ 40 ]
Background
an order. In the two central salons an attic reigned above the cornice. Although Louis XIV had included a gallery, with a central salon if possible, in his program for Versailles in 1669, 108 the adopted plan for the main story did not provide these. Clagny thus anticipated the treat- ments soon to be adopted at Versailles, both in the gallery and the salons there. At Clagny, as at the Chateau Neuf de Versailles, the Chambre du Roi had neither panelling nor ordonnance. The chimney breast still projected ; the chimney piece, with a relief on the tall attic, was crowned by receding mouldings.
At Versailles, Mansart's advent to power there in 1678 found work in the Chateau Neuf still continuing under Colbert, Dorbay and Le Brun. The last of the paintings in the Apparte- ment du Roi were not placed until 1 68 1 5 the Escalier du Roi was not completed until 1679 j its adjuncts, the upper vestibule (Salle de Venus) and the Salle de Diane, even without their future marble revetments, not until after 1680.
Mansart's first employment at the chateau of Versailles in 1678 was on new projects of greater importance than these completions and corollaries of old undertakings. They were, on the one hand, to extend the forecourt with new lodgings in its pavilions and wings j on the other, to provide a new monumental gallery with accompanying salons. These first enter- prises themselves were but the prelude to the vast expansions projected in 1679 to provide accommodations for the entire Court: the wings along the gardens, beginning with the Aile du Midi y the two immense stables.
In the matter of a gallery, Louis XIV by 1678 found himself outshone both by his mistress at Clagny and by his brother at Saint-Cloud. At Versailles, there was still only the Galerie Basse. Its inadequacy had now become insupportable, especially since Mignard's daz- zling decorations at Saint-Cloud had been revealed to the Court in October of 1677. The King's decision to house the Court at Versailles, to make it the true capital, rendered imma- terial the existence of the Galerie des Ambassa^deurs at the Tuileries, the completion of the unfinished Galerie d'Apollon at the Louvre. Versailles was no longer to be merely a country seat, however magnificent j it must have its gallery, the most splendid of all.
The decision to build the gallery must date from the spring of 1678, even before the peace of Nimwegen. The advance provisions for the year (I, 1013-1016) do not envisage the gal- lery, yet the terrace of Le Vau was dismantled for it by June 26 (1040), by which time the plan for remodelling the Chateau Neuf (Figure 12) must have been prepared.
The gallery was the product of intimate collaboration of Mansart and Le Brun, with their respective assistants. 109 Its calm pilastered ordonnance of marble represents the apogee, in the interiors of the time, of the academicism of the central phase of the architecture of the reign (Figures 13-14). The substitution of arches, in the gallery and its salons, for the square- headed windows previously in vogue, 110 gave an exaltation which prefigures the tendency of the coming years. In the vault, baroque motives, both in relief and in grisaille, still survived,
108 Published in Lettres . . . de Colbert, V, 1868, 238. Cf. Kimball: "The Genesis of the Chateau Neuf de Ver- sailles" (awaiting publication abroad).
109 Kimball: "Mansart et Le Brun in the Genesis of the Grande Galerie de Versailles," Art Bulletin, XXII, 1940, 1-6, where their successive studies are illustrated, attributed and discussed.
110 At Saint-Cloud, just before this, the pavilions by Antoine Lepautre, completed 1677, had arched windows, which appeared in the Salon de Diane, and at the end of the gallery, but the other windows of the gallery and of the Salon de Mars, while arched internally, were still square-headed on the exterior. Cf. Fleury, of. cit.
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The Creation of the Rococo
though the former are much diminished in plasticity. In the adornment of the walls there was not yet that freedom and delicacy brought only by the placing of their trophies after 1 701 .The mirrors which filled the openings in the inner walls of these rooms, reflecting the windows, made a monumental application of their use, hitherto mainly confined to small cabinets. 111
The Salon du Roi (de la Guerre) at the north end of the gallery, was opened in 1682, though its completion, with that of the Salon de la Paix, required some years longer. As first described by the Mercure, its walls were of marble, with trophies in gilded relief. These trophies as originally proposed (Figure 15) had been dominantly symmetrical. We cannot be sure that the provisional ones first executed followed the first design, any more than that they prefigured those delivered in 1 701, on which Ladoireau had worked since 1682. Over the fireplace was the immense equestrian relief of the King by Coysevox, in an oval frame suggested by many works of Bernini and of Borromini. A similar frame surrounded the panel in the corresponding salon, the Salon de la Paix, where the minor trophies were of at- tributes of peaceful occupations, executed with graceful naturalism.
For the central salon, adjoining the gallery on the east, the attic of the salons at Clagny was adopted— as indeed it was in the first studies for the end salons (which show also ceilings of a double cove as at Clagny). In this central salon, too, was a pilastered ordonnance, at first Ionic, to assume its Composite form in the changes of 1684 while awaiting the further modi- fications of 1 70 1.
The building of the gallery and salons involved the destruction of the more private rooms of the Grand Appartement du Roi, the cabinets and garderobe, returning along the garden. It was impossible to undertake the gallery without replacing these facilities elsewhere. Mansart's project of 1678 (Figure 12) provided them with great ingenuity by taking as a Petit Apparte- ment du Roi the five rooms of the Petit Chateau to the west of the Cour de Marbre. This new Petit Appartement du Roi, first executed in 1 678-1 682, was at first approached from the north, from the Grand Appartement which the King continued to occupy until 1682. 112 The rooms still were given, for the most part, wall coverings of tapestry and damask, as we see in the drawing of 1679, probably by Desgodetz, 113 for the Chambre du Roi and Petit Cabinet (Figure 16). In the former, only the side walls were panelled, with tall Composite pilasters flanking the chimney piece and opposite pier. These units projected, breaking the cornice, and each bore a large painting. The overdoors had paired sphinxes, a baroque motif derived from such Italian examples as Bernini's great doorway in the hall of the Palazzo Barberini. An attic, as in the central salon, was employed in the high rooms at each end of the suite — the Petit Cabinet and the Cabinet des Termes— the latter taking its name from its features in that zone. The chimney pieces remained in part, at least, undisturbed by this remodelling, or at
111 In the gallery at Saint-Cloud, which had windows all along one side and part way along the other, the rest of this side had, as Tessin wrote, "autant feintes des glaces." "Relation de la visite de Nicodeme Tessin a Marly, Ver- sailles, Clagny, Reuil et Saint-Cloud en 1687" in Revue de Vhistoire de Versailles et de Seine-et-Oise, 1926, 297.
112 Cf. Kimball and A.-M.-E. Marie: "Versailles inedit: L'appartement du Roi, 1678-1701," awaiting publi- cation. It is a source of great regret that I must anticipate here the results of this collaborative paper, while my co- author is inaccessible to communication in occupied France.
113 For evidence of his technique we have the copy of his manuscript Cours d' architecture, with illustrations, made by Jean Pinard after I 742, Cabinet des Estampes Ha 23 and 23a. Cf. J. Duportal in Revue de Part ancien et moderne, XXXVI, 1914, 153-157; also the relation of drawings to chronology developed by Kimball: "Mansart and Le Brun," cited above.
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Background
least continued to follow earlier types. That of the Chambre du Conseil, surviving until 1699 (Figure 22), still had the receding attic suggestive of a hood.
The filling in of the court on the north to provide for the Escalier du Roi and the Salle de Venus had been followed by the filling of the corresponding court on the south, from 1676 onward, 114 to receive the chapel. This permitted the space previously occupied by the old chapel proper to be taken for a Salon de la Reine (equivalent to the Salle de Diane on the north side), and allowed the space occupied by the tribune to be added to the Escalier de la Reine, so that this might be rebuilt with greater magnificence. These last two units could not be remodelled until the old chapel was vacated in 1679, 115 and their internal designs are subsequent to those for the Grande Galerie. 116
The Escalier de la Reine, envisaged, like the salon, for execution in 1679 O-i 1 1 1 4)> was built in the two following years from drawings probably by Dorbay, dated 1680, which sur- vive (Figures 17-18). They offered little that was new after Le Brun's final designs for the Escalier du Roi, and follow them in using a marble revetment with the Ionic order.
After certain earlier payments for paintings for the room, we find by February, 1680, al- lusion specifically to the "salon de marbre . . . de 1'appartement de la Reyne" (I, 1280) — later the Salle des Gardes de la Reine, as it survives intact ( Figure 19). Scholars have not hith- erto appreciated that this was the first of all rooms in the main story of the chateau, other than the staircases, to have a complete marble revetment, its execution preceding any of the revet- ments in the Appartement du Roi as well as those of the Grande Galerie with its salons. The scheme of the marble incrustation does not differ substantially from that of the Cabinet des Bains in its strictly geometrical panels, although greater unity is achieved both through sub- sumption within the tall architraves reaching to the cornice and through the rondels which unite, rather than divide, the panels of the piers.
In the ceiling, executed in 1679- 1680, were used paintings first intended for the demol- ished Grand Cabinet du Roi. Between their frames, strictly rectangular, the angles had painted balustrades with figures looking down. It was the first example in the royal chateaux of this motif, familiarly employed by the Italian mannerists, as notably by the Alberti in the Sala Clementina of the Vatican, 1 596-1598, and lately adopted by Le Brun in the chapel at Sceaux, 1674- 1676.
The chimney piece of this room at Versailles may well be the oldest surviving example 117 of a new type, in which the moulded marble architrave is surmounted by a plain attic of marble, slightly set back, with a simple thin shelf of marble (not a cornice) at top of archi- trave and top of attic. It is not until 1682 that there were installed "les cheminees et les attiques du grand appartement." 118 It was doubtless to such works that Francois Blondel al- luded at just this moment, when he wrote, in his Cours d y architecture, 1683: "L'on faisait cy- devant beaucoup de depense pour la structure & les ornemens des Cheminees . . . que l'on
114 Comftes, I, 88 iff.
115 Ibid., 1 1 55) 1278.
116 Kimball: "Mansart and Le Brun," loc. cit.
117 At Clagny from February, 1679, the accounts mention "chambranles, attiques et foyers de marbre des prin- cipaux appartemens" (I, 1 191), and at Versailles from April of the same year, "foyers, attiques et chambranles de marbre pour ... les appartemens du Roy" (1 164).
118 Colbert to d'Ormoy, March 25, 1682. Lettres . . . de Colbert, ed. Clement, VII, clxi.
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The Creation of the Rococo
chargeoit excessivement : Mais presentement on les rend beaucoup plus legeres, & l'on les trouve plus belle dans leur simplicite."
The need of communication with the Grande Aile required a further displacement of the chapel, to a position, itself provisional, in a wing begun in May, 1681, to the north of the chateau, on the site of the future Salon d'Hercule. The unpublished designs of Dorbay, dated June 22, 1681, survive at the Archives Nationales (o 1 1783). They show a continued use of herms in the principal story, here constituting the tribune, as had been first intended for the Escalier du Roi and its landing. Work was completed with the greatest rapidity, per- mitting dedication in May, 1682.
To reach the new chapel more handsomely, the old pavilion of the wing was remodelled, the northern portion becoming the Salle d'Abondance, which served as a vestibule from the Appartement du Roi not only to the chapel but to the Cabinet des Bijoux, des Curiosites, des Raretes, or des Medailles, which occupied the southern portion, raised by five steps. The raising of the roofs in this area in 1 678-1 679 permitted these new rooms also to have vault- ed ceilings.
The Salle d'Abondance was executed in 1682, being described in the Mercure of that De- cember, except for the ceiling, paid for in November, 1683. Its most striking feature was the marble doorway to the Cabinet, over which the cornice of the room was arched on consoles, framing a large medallion. This is a familiar Italian high-baroque motif used for instance in the drum of Pietro da Cortona's Santa Maria della Pace, adopted on a grand scale in the facade of the Hospice des Invalides, 1 671, and partly anticipated in the overdoors of the design of the Grande Galerie approved by Colbert in September, 1678. The example in the Salle d'Abondance was the first to be executed in a French interior, henceforth there were many during the '8o's and '90's. The design, in view of its date, will surely have been due to Dor- bay. On the consoles of the cornice are cherubs' heads with butterfly wings. 119 The ceiling, un- like those of the older rooms of the Chateau Neuf, is not divided into compartments. Its ce- lestial vault is bordered by a parapet with figures.
A series of rooms of a special character was opened by the Cabinet des Curiosites— or des Medailles, to use the name which ultimately carried the day— begun in 1682 and reaching substantial completion in 1684. Of its form, "ordonne" or "indique" by Berain, 120 we have had only very inadequate descriptions until the publication of that of Tessin from 1687, 121 now made intelligible by the discovery, by Alfred Marie, of a plan (o 1 1768) and a section (o 1 1775). This was the first of such cabinets in just this period, the forerunner of many others, as it was the successor of those of the earlier Versailles. Tessin wrote of the Cabinet des Medailles:
119 Herms with butterfly wings, found in early Italian grotesques, are common in those of Berain, none of which, however, may be dated as early as this.
120 According to the "Notes de Nicodeme Tessin le jeune relatives a son sejour a Paris en 1687," in Bulletin de la Societe de Phistoire de Part jrangais, 1932, 271. Tessin's special friendship for Berain, who supplied much of his information, occasionally led him, as we can judge in this case, to exaggerate the extent of Berain's responsibility.
121 "Visite a Versailles," loc. cit., 284-285.
[ 44 ]
Background
Cette chambre est presque quarree, mais, aux quattre coins il y a quatre niches ornees des glaces . . . et, dans la niche, on a faict comme les estages dorees . . . avec leurs petits sup- ports . . . en se diminuant ... A coste de ces niches il y [a] un espece des petits pilastres estroits, represent.es des miroirs et hordes des orures [i.e. de dorures], devants lesquels on voit sur des petits soustiens posees des petittes statues d'agathe ; auprez de ces pilastres, de deux cotes de la niche, il y a des petits tableaux . . . ranges au nombre des trois l'un sur 1'autre ... a coste de ces trois tableaux nommes, il y a par tout des pillastres de rechef, ordonnes de mesme comme je viens de dire, entre les quells, du coste de l'entree, le chambranle de porte occupe l'espace ; de meme, vis-a-vis la fenestre, du coste gauche, la cheminee avec ses glaces en haut ... a l'opposite de laquelle il est egualement orne des glaces.
Above the cornice — in the frieze of which, as Felibien reports, were fifty recesses, lined with mirrors, for precious vases— was an oval dome on pendentives, its lunettes and drum pierced by dormers, all richly ornamented with gilded figures and festoons.
The chimney piece, as it appears in the section, is a new type with a frieze or attic and then a tall panel, successively narrowed, above the architrave. 122 Already in 1684 Le Negre (or Le Necre) was paid "pour avoir releve les ornemens de cuivre dore de la cheminee ... les avoir redore ou il etait necessaire, mis en couleur et reposez" (II, 459). Whatever was the case in 1682, by 1687, at least, the whole panel of the chimney breast was faced with mirrors, as we shall find them in the Chambre du Roi by 1684.
It was for the Cabinet des Medailles that Berain designed in 1684 (II, 497, 541) the fa- mous Bureau du Roi executed in marquetry by Jean Oppenord (458) as were the twelve marquetry cabinets for the medals.
A related room — the Dauphin's Cabinet de Boulle— "son cabinet de marquetrie et de glaces" 123 — was begun in its first form in 1682-1683 (slightly later than the Cabinet de Curi- osites of the King) for his apartment in the Aile du Midi. Much additional work was done by Boulle on its removal to the ground floor of the chateau in 1684, but we cannot doubt that it was from the very beginning, as Tessin says in 1687, "en compartemens octogons et quarrees, remplies de glaces all' imitation des incavatures antiques ; les quatres murailles . . . fort jolyment inventes et revesties des lambris, guarnies de touttes sortes des oeuvres de rapport d'otton, estain, etc. j le pave . . . d'une marquetterie tres fine," that it had, indeed, as Felibien later states, 124 "de tous cotez et dans le plafond des glaces de miroirs avec des com- partemens de bordures dorees sur un fond de marqueterie d'ebene." 125 The floor of mar-
122 Chimney pieces of not dissimilar type, but without mirrors, appear in Girard's suite of Cheminees nouvelle- ment jaites, 1686, in the Receuil des oeuvres du Sieur Cottart, 1686, and in Laurent Francart's Nouvelles Chem- inees, n.d. One of this last suite is illustrated in Kimball: "The Development of the 'Cheminee a la royale,' " loc. cit., on p. 266, and, as later revised to include a mirror in the attic, on p. 267. Pierre Lepautre, as we shall see, en- graved some of the type with attic mirrors, and others appear in Daviler's Cours d'architecture, 1691.
123 So Dangeau calls it, June 14, 1684, in speaking of the orders for its transfer to its new location (salle 50).
124 J. F. Felibien: Description sommaire de Versailles . . . 1703. Other descriptions by Monicart, 1 7 1 3, and La Martiniere, 1729. As we have demonstrated, the familiar painting Le Grand Daufhin dans son Cabinet shows not this cabinet but that at Meudon, executed from designs by Berain in 1699. Cf. "The Development of the 'Chem- inee a la royale,' " 268, 271 and Burlington Magazine, LXVIII, 1936, 185.
125 La Martiniere mentions consoles to receive bronzes and porcelains. Although Tessin does not mention them in 1687, they had apparently been installed in 1685 (Comftes, II, 618).
[ 45 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
quetry had the arms of the Dauphin and Dauphine. Although no document connects the design of this cabinet with Berain, it is not improbable that he had such a connection in the case of this work for the Dauphin, as we know he had with the Dauphin's cabinet at Meudon seventeen years later, Berain being long the favorite artist of the heir to the throne. 126
A new campaign in the interiors began after 1683 with the death of Colbert, the advent of Louvois to the Surintendance, the eclipse of Le Brun by Mignard. The man now primarily concerned with architectural design of interiors, as we have said, was Lassurance, appointed desstnateur in the Batiments in the fall of 1684.
The great enterprise of this year was the transformation of the rooms around the Cour de Marbre into a veritable Appartement du Roi. Since the return of the Court in May, 1682, when the eight northern bays of the gallery were opened, the Grand Appartement du Roi had become uninhabitable by the monarch. Although a state bed remained there for many years, the rooms began to be called Salles or Salons and the suite became known as the Grand Ap- partement rather than as the Appartement du Roi. The death of the Queen, July 30, 1683, rendered unnecessary the privacy of relationship between her apartment, henceforth assigned to the Dauphine, and the more intimate rooms of the King. The decision was made to take for the Appartement du Roi the whole circuit of the Cour de Marbre, to reverse the approach, utilizing the Escalier de la Reine, to provide a Salle des Gardes and Premier Antichambre by widening the Aile Gauche, and to turn the old Petit Cabinet into a Seconde Antichambre, giving public access to the gallery. This great change involved giving all the new outer rooms of the suite, which acquired the functions of the corresponding ones of the old Grand Apparte- ment du Roi, a more monumental character, to adapt them, in their new uses, to the splendour of the monarch.
The new Salle des Gardes and the Premier Antichambre received a revetment of marble. The succeeding rooms of the Appartement du Roi were remodelled for increased magnifi- cence. They were now characteristically panelled throughout in wood, richly carved and gilt: Antichambre des Bassans, 127 Chambre du Roi (Figure 20), Salon, Cabinet du Billard (Figure 21 ) 128 — "tous boises" as Felibien describes them and as they appear in surviving designs re- vealing the style of Lassurance. Spatial unity and simplicity were heightened by elimination of the projection of the chimney breast, accomplished in the Chambre du Roi by carrying the cornice, unbroken, across the existing recesses at either side. The cornices themselves received a lighter treatment, as here. The new chimney pieces remained high, although in the Chambre du Roi a high frieze replaced the attic. In the panelling of the rooms, mirrors were now intro- duced over the chimney pieces, both of the Cabinet du Billard and of the Chambre du Roi, the
126 As early as 1 68 1 he had designed the costumes for the mascarade Le Triomfhe de V Amour given by the Dauphin, and in 1783 those of La Noce du village in which the Dauphin's disguises were particularly numerous and ingenious. Cf. Weigert, op. cit., I, 77-81.
127 This was actually panelled by mistake, as is clear from Mansart's letter to Louvois May 27, 1684 (o 1 ljblh), on which the Minister noted: "Le Roy n'avoit ordonnee que Ton boisast l'antichambre la plus proche de sa chambre, mais puisque cela est fait, Sa Majeste n'est pas fachee qu'elle soit boise aussy bien que l'autre."
128 From an engraved suite by Pierre Lepautre Fortes a placard et lambris dessinez far le Sr. Mansard et nou- vellement executez dans quelques Maisons Royales. It includes also the Cabinet de Monseigneur at Versailles, ca. 1 684-1 68 5 , and several rooms at Trianon of 1686-1687. Possibly the panelling of the Cabinet du Billard was only on the chimney wall, as the number and size of the paintings which hung here seems to preclude panelling on the other walls.
[ 46 ]
Background
latter rising to the main entablature. Thus appeared a feature, the tall pier-glass, which was to be of much significance in the subsequent development.
To a degree not generally realized, the Grand Appartement du Roi was also enriched at this time. The inner wall of the Salle de Venus received its marble columns and revetment in the autumn of 1684. 129 The Salle de Diane, in November, 1684, acquired its supreme orna- ment, Bernini's bust of the King, in a new setting, designed apparently by Lassurance, again making use of the motif of an arched cornice resting on consoles. 130 Marble columns and re- cesses on the inner wall of the Salle de Mars, which have since disappeared, were added in 1687 (II, 1 173). Here in that year Tessin states that "devant les deux piliers entre les croisees, il y a de grands miroirs." By their columnar ordonnance, these rooms of the Grand Appartement were made at once more monumental and more academic.
In 1684 a change was also made here in the floors. The need of washing the marble, which had tended to rot the joists below, led to the substitution of "parquet de menuiserie." 131 In general this was in the large diagonal squares still commonly known today as "parquet de Versailles." Such parquets "en lozange" were remarked by Cronstrom in 1693 both at Ver- sailles and at Trianon. 132
In the cornices of this time the scheme with consoles and sculptured metopes now became universal. Employed at Clagny and in the gallery at Saint-Cloud, it was adopted in the gal- lery at Versailles, and in such magnificent examples as those of the Salle d'Abondance, the Salle des Gardes and Premier Antichambre du Roi, from 1683 and 1684.
The ceilings of the two salons at the end of the gallery were attacked by Le Brun in 1685 and completed in 1686. Their frames were simplified, as compared with those of the old rooms of the Appartement du Roi, having, like the Salle de Diane, four lunettes under ellip- tical arches, with a central circular panel above. On the arches of the Salon de la Guerre there was a rich band of fronds of palm, recalling those of Borromini at the entrance of Saint John Lateran. ..
To Mignard the favour of Louvois assigned the flat ceiling of the Grand Cabinet de Mon- seigneur, 133 immediately after his completion of the vault of the Petite Galerie, and thus of nearly the same moment as that of the Salon de la Paix just above.
The work of Louvois' campaigns at Versailles included also development of the initiative taken in the Cabinets des Medailles and de Monseigneur. In 1684 the Cabinet du Conseil and the Cabinet des Perruques were revetted throughout with mirrors (Figure 22). A similar re- vetment was proposed in 1684 for the Petite Galerie, with its salons, as shown in the original design by Lassurance (Figure 23). Consoles for precious vases were to be placed against the glass, as we may see today in the Green Vault at Dresden ( 1 72 1-1 724), an imitation which has survived its French exemplars. A detail drawing (o 1 1768, no. 50) shows that the frames were to be marquetry of lapis and tortoise shell. Tessin saw the whole work set up at the
129 Reports of Louvois, November 10, cited by Nolhac: Versailles residence de Louis XIV, 1925 ed., 103.
130 Archives Nationales, o 1 I 768. Lassurance, previously employed as an "appareilleur," was paid on January 28, 1685, for his first quarter's work as a draughtsman, which could thus well include this drawing. The indication of the cherubs is closely similar to that of the same motif in a later drawing by him for the Menagerie.
131 Comftes, II, 610, and documents cited by Nolhac: Creation de Versailles, 1925 ed., 175.
132 R. Josephson: "Le Grand Trianon sous Louis XIV," in Revue de Vhistoire de Versailles . . . , 1927, 24.
133 Engiaved by Gerard Audran.
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The Creation of the Rococo
Gobelins in 1687. He states that it had been "indique" by Berain; in view of Lassurance's general design this can only apply to the details. Apparently it was never installed at Ver- sailles. By the inventories of 1695 as well as those of 1709-17 10 we know that the walls of the Petite Galerie were hung with precious easel paintings. 134 Brice wrote in 1706 (I, 85) of the Galerie des Ambassadeurs at the Tuileries, "on distinguera encore dans merae lieu les morceaux d'un tres riche lambris, que l'on avoit destine pour la petite galerie de Versailles, orne de glaces et de moulures de bronze dore, sur des fonds d'ecaille de Tortue et d'un lapis assez bien contrefait." The decision to devote the Petite Galerie to paintings led in 1690 to the installation of consoles for vases against the mirrors of the Cabinet de Conseil (II, 394- 399)-
The floor of the Petite Galerie and its salons, of which a drawing survives (Figure 24), was executed in marquetry by Jean Oppenord. It is possible that this was from a design by Berain, 135 whom we have seen providing designs for this ebeniste. The pattern is in com- partments, with broken arcs not irrelated to those of the great series of Savonnerie carpets so lately completed for the Louvre. There is much interlacing bandwork, but without any mix- ture of acanthus or scrolls. The ceiling by Mignard, engraved by Gerard Audran, was in painted compartments against a background of delicate gilt mosa'ique.
At Marly, first projected in 1679, the Pavilion Royal was begun in 1680, its joinery exe- cuted in 1 680-1 68 1, its carv-ing 1 682-1 683. Of the initial form of its interiors we know very little. There is a manuscript section before the remodelling of 1699, 136 another after this re- modelling (Figure 47). 137 The great octagonal central salon a Vitalienne, suggested by the central circular hall of Palladio's Villa Rotonda, is adorned in the main story— here, as at Clagny, the ground story— by Corinthian pilasters, in the upper story by herms continuing the traditions of Le Brun and Dorbay. Prior to 1699 there were no fireplaces in the salon ; "a chaque angle," wrote Tessin in 1687, "il y a, sur des piedestaux, des statues de marbre." 138 Here, as we shall see, the chimney pieces with mirrors were to be substituted in 1699. 139 The balconies of the room, introduced for music in 1686 (Comptes II, 922, 1045), were above the main cornice. The four vestibules with coved ceilings and heavy pedimented doors were adorned, below the imposts, with large paintings by Van der Meulen, and other paintings by him were placed in 1688 on the chimney pieces of the major apartments {Comptes III, 90). One of the rooms of the upper story— appearing, little modified from its initial treatment, in
134 F. Engerand: Inventaire des tableaux du Roy, 1899.
135 He was paid 1000 livres, August 19, 1685 "en consideration de plusieurs desseins qu'il a faits pour le service de S. M." (II, 737), and again May 9, 1688, 1 500 livres (III, 67).
136 Archives des Batiments Civils, reproduced by Jean Verrier in V architecture, XXXVII, 1923, I.
137 Archives Nationales, o 1 1472, with title "Marly ... I 714," pi. 5 ; an engraving of it for Mariette in Cabinet des Estampes, Va 351, re-engraved in A. -A. Guillamot: Le Chateau de Marly-le-Roi, 1865, pi. 3. I have not seen the drawings for Marly which Nolhac mentioned in 1901 as in the collection of Victorien Sardou. No in- terior designs are reproduced in C. Piton: Marly-le-Roi, 1904, which made use of the collection of Sardou. The diary of the German architect Pitzler contains sketches and descriptions of Marly in 1685, kindly called to my at- tention by Dr. Hans Huth, but they do not add to our information on Marly from other sources.
138 «v; s ; te a Versailles," loc. cit., 293.
139 The trophies reproduced by J. -J. Guiffrey: Inventaire du mobilier de la Couronne sous Louis XIV, 314- 315, with the caption "Trophees d'emblemes sculptes et dores du Grand Salon de Marly" are actually from a later room, now in the Hoentschel-Morgan collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and have nothing to do with Marly.
[ 48 ]
Background
the section of 17 14— shows that here the inner walls had tapestries of the Maisons Royals series, above high two-tiered dados, and had narrow projecting chimney breasts with heavily moulded tabernacles later filled with mirrors.
The transformation of the Trianon de Porcelaine into the Trianon de Marbre took place in 1 686-1 688, two of the old pavilions being incorporated in the new building. 140 Here again, as at Versailles in 1679, windows arched externally were substituted for the old square- headed ones, although high vaults above heavy entablatures still held the internal opening of the windows, in their first treatment, down to the impost, with an elliptical arriere- voussure. 141 Of the early interiors here, from 1687, we have a drawing of the Salon des Jar- dins, and engravings of features in a number of other rooms (Figures 25-27)— all these rooms being designed by Lassurance. The Grand Cabinet is described by Andre Le Notre in 1 694 142 as "remply de grande glasse depuis le bas j usque au haut"— doubtless then covering the en- tire walls as in the Cabinet de Conseil of 1684 at Versailles. In 1 691 -1692 was executed the Appartement du Roi of the Aile Gauche, likewise from designs by Lassurance (Figures 28- 31). Its rooms were panelled throughout in wood, with marble chimney pieces having a high attic. 143 In two rooms the windows were pierced to the full height of the exterior arches ; the effect must have been admired, for many others were pierced in 1694.
In the early panelled rooms of Lassurance, whether at Versailles or at Trianon, we find a variety of schemes, from survival of the old type of lambris a Vhauteur d'un bras leve with paintings above (Salon des Jardins) to ordonnance by columns or pilasters (Salon Rond, Salon "pour serrer le fruit," Salon de la Chapelle). In all, however, there was a multiplied articulation and superposition, involving universally some division of the wall by an impost. The rectangular panels, relieved only by a few oval or circular ones above the doors and chim- ney pieces, were of geometrical monotony. Carving was confined strictly to the friezes and to the principal frames, scarcely invading the panels themselves. Some of the cornices had con- soles j more had continuous friezes with repetitions of balanced scrolls— sometimes of foli- age, sometimes of broken bandwork— from between the scrolls of which spread radiating lines of shell or fleuron. At Trianon, mirrors were introduced in several rooms in 1 69 1 , being confined to the piers between the windows and to the attics of the chimney pieces, except in the Salon de la Chapelle, where after several studies, the pier opposite the chimney piece re- ceived a tall arched mirror with a cornice on consoles, the Italian motif employed just previ- ously at Versailles in the Salon d'Abondance and in the Salon de Diane. The windows at Trianon had continuous archivolts without imposts, as in many Italian examples.
By 1692 Lassurance made the designs for the new Salon Ovale at Versailles (Figure 32) of elongated form with semi-circular ends. In alternating rhythm, between Corinthian pilas-
140 Cf. on this point, R. Danis: La fremiere maison royale de Trianon, Paris, 1927, which in some other regards is very untrustworthy.
141 Kimball: "La transformation des appartements de Trianon sous Louis XIV," in Gazette des beaux-arts, VI e per. XIX, 1938, 87-1 10.
142 Letter quoted by R. fosephson: "Le Grand Trianon sous Louis XIV," in Revue de Phistoire de Versailles . . . , 1927, 20.
143 We may remark that in the Cours d 'architecture, 1691, of Daviler, who left the Batiments at the end of 1689, the chimney pieces are of types prior to those at Trianon; the complete interiors are not more advanced than the early style of Lassurance. Like most manuals, it codified the style of a moment before, rather than led the way.
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The Creation of the Rococo
ters, were four openings on the major axes for the doors and the window, four niches in nar- rower intervals between. Doorways and window were treated alike with carved architraves rising to the entablature j the niches rose freely into the upper zone between the pilasters. No impost divided the height j no chimney piece interrupted the lines— the effect was of a unity hitherto unexampled.
Later in the decade, in 1698, Lassurance was called on to design apartments for the little Duchesse de Bourgogne, at Trianon, and, a few months later, at the remodelled Chateau de la Menagerie. 144 In the Chambre de la Duchesse at Trianon (Figure 33), the impost still survived, the multiplication of panels in the height still persisted, but certain arches, includ- ing two for mirrors above the chimney piece and on the opposite pier, broke into the upper zone, and sculpture invaded certain of the panels, above the arches and below the impost. These were the first of the new type of arched mirrors in the royal residences. 145 At the Men- agerie, in the Appartement d'Hiver, along with cabinets of varied spatial forms lined with mirrors and consoles— the last, by the way, of such cabinets in the French palaces— was pan- elling of almost stereotyped rectangular monotony (Figure 34). In the Appartement d'Ete, however, while the impost was retained, with numerous tiers of panels, we find more varied schemes which embody fresh creative ideas. In the Antichambre the upper panels are rounded at top and bottom. In some of the rooms, the dado was eliminated, the piers up to the impost were punctuated only by a circular panel or rosette at half the height j in others narrow piers were unbroken by any impost. The marble chimney pieces here had broader shelves or tab- lettes without any attic, 146 their heads being arched or supported by herms. In the Anticham- bre (Figure 37), the mirror of the chimney piece was arched above the line of the impost, which itself was arched above this, almost to the cornice, with which it was united by a crown- ing motif of shell and cornucopia. In the Chambre (Figure 38), the semi-circular head of the tall mirror rose even higher, supporting a vase and cherubs which reached the cornice. These principal apartments being on the ground floor, with existing windows very close to the ceilings, which were flat or with the smallest of coves, the cornices were reduced to a thin- ness very exceptional at this period (Figures 35, 36). Most of them lacked any architrave. Their friezes and mouldings were richly ornamented, as were the frames marking the upper limit of the coves of the cabinets, these latter bordered with fringes of scrolls and palmettes.
The forms of work for the Dauphin at this time we know only through the accounts. His apartment at Versailles was enlarged and renovated in 1693- 1695. 147 We note of the new chimney piece in the Grand Cabinet, February, 1694 {Comptes III, 991, 955), that there is no specific mention of an attic. Meudon, acquired in June, 1695, and included in the Maisons Royales, saw at once a few first remodellings. The Cabinet a la Capucine of the entresol took its name from the brown of its "boiserie de chene naturel vernisee," 148 a novelty and excep- tion among interiors usually painted and gilt.
144 Kimball: "Trianon," loc. cit., and "Le decor du chateau de la Menagerie," Gazette des beaux-arts, VI e per., XVI, 1936, 245-256.
145 Mansart had adopted it in 1695 at the Hotel de Lorges, as we shall see.
146 In 1699 it was proposed to substitute such low ones at Versailles, in the Chambre du Roi and the Cabinet du Conseil. Cf. "Versailles inedit: l'Appartement du Roi," previously cited.
147 The beginning of the work is marked by Dangeau October 3, 1693, IV, 385.
148 P. Biver: Histoire du chateau de Meudon, Paris, I 923, 1 34 ff.
[ 50 ]
Background
These works close the cycle of royal interiors executed under Mansart's direction before his succession to the Surintendance, when with a new designer, there was to open a new phase of artistic creation.
There were, to be sure, works of some importance executed at this period for the Dauphin at Choisy; 149 for Monsieur, a gallery was added by Mansart in 1692 at the Palais-Royal. 150 Both these works, however, like Meudon and Saint-Cloud, have suffered total destruction, as has Issy. 151 Here a pilastered salon recalled some motifs of the Grande Galerie de Ver- sailles ; one room at least had a square mirror above the fireplace. The little we know from drawings and documents does not indicate that these works embodied much in the way of artistic initiative.
In Paris relatively few private houses of importance were erected at this time when, of all other periods, Versailles was most completely dominant. In certain remodellings, however, we find some work of creative importance. Thus at the Hotel de Mailly in 1687-1688 there were ceilings designed by Berain which we shall consider at length in our discussion of ara- besques. At the Hotel de Lorges, 15 " though other parts of the house were still filled with workmen in 1698, the remodelling of the apartment of the Marshal was completed under the direction of Mansart by 1695. The Mercure of that year speaks especially of the views from the Grand Cabinet and their reflection, along with that of the central lustre chandelier, in tall arched mirrors over the chimney piece and on the piers of the other three sides— obvi- ously a novelty. 153
We are now in a position to sum up, more accurately than has been possible heretofore, the architectural character of interiors in the central period of the reign.
For wall treatment, in the state apartments at Versailles, complete revetments of marble added both monumentality and splendour. Elsewhere a unified panelling in wood, now em- bracing all the walls, became characteristic. In the cabinets equal unity was achieved by a fac- ing of mirrors throughout.
Le Brun's adoption of an order in the Escalier du Roi at Versailles, followed by Mansart at Clagny and in the Escalier de la Reine, now led to more extensive employment of monu- mental forms. Unlike the galleries at the Louvre, the Tuileries and Saint-Cloud, the new gallery at Versailles had an ordonnance throughout, with full columns at the ends. Such columns were also introduced in the remodellings of the Salles de Venus and de Mars. In
149 B. Chamchine: Le chateau de Choisy, Paris, 1910, esp. pp. 29 ff. 150 Champier and Sandoz: Le Palais-Royal, Paris, 1900.
151 Designed by Bullet, it was spoken of by Tessin in 1687 as "new." "Sejour a Paris," 230. Certain motifs are engraved in Mariette's Architecture francoise, pis. 309"3iOof the Hautecoeur edition.
152 A. de Boislisle in Bulletin de la Societe de I'histoire de Paris, XXXVIII, 191 1, 199-208, where, as in notes to the Journal of Dangeau, V, 1855, 180, the documents regarding the house are assembled and quoted. Many drawings are preserved at the Cabinet des Estampes, Va 236 f, but no interiors before the period of occu- pancy by the Princesse de Conti, from 171 3.
153 Photographs of the Chambre du Lit at the Hotel de Mailly, in its condition a generation ago (Les Vieux hotels de Paris, IV, 1 9 1 1 , pis. 7-12) show such an arched mirror over the fireplace in connection with Berain's painted panelling of 1687. Tessin's description of the hotel in that year, already cited, speaks of this panelling as being then in the "alcove," as being "ornes de glaces," but says nothing of the mirrors there being arched. The arched mirror may thus possibly date from the period of remodelling. If not, it would be the earliest of all the arched mirrors, pre- ceding even those of the Hotel de Lorges by eight years. It is almost impossible to believe that so long a time elapsed before adoption of the motif on a chimney piece anywhere else.
[ 51 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
the new Appartement du Roi, as well as at Marly and Trianon, the more formal or more important panelled rooms had likewise an order.
When, toward the end of the period, interest came to centre mainly on more private ac- commodations, the use of pilasters diminished and the treatment of panelled rooms was one almost purely tectonic, stressing the doorways and chimney piece, with a multiplied superpo- sition of rectangular panels, and carving confined chiefly to the major frames, without any pronounced baroque ornaments.
The use of mirror-glass reached an apogee at this period, overflowing from the cabinets into other rooms, even in the Grands Appartements, where hanging mirrors began to be re- placed by glasses let into the walls. The inclusion of mirrors in the monumental treatment of the Grande Galerie — the Galerie des Glaces— made their vogue universal. In the Chambre de la Reine, in 1687, Tessin mentions, "au lieu de miroir, trois grandissimes glaces jointes ensemble." In the Salle de Mars and at Saint-Cloud, he noted their presence on the piers between the windows.
Important for the future was the placing of mirrors, instead of paintings, on the chimney breasts in rooms other than the glazed cabinets— cheminees a la Alansarde or a la royale 15 * as they were later called. The first, as we have seen, were the large square-headed ones in the Chambre du Roi and the Salle du Billard at Versailles, both from 1 684. This was prior to any architectural activity of Robert de Cotte, to whom the innovation was subsequently attrib- uted. 155 At Trianon, where there were no such mirrors at first, small ones were introduced in the attics of the mantels in 1692, with others on the piers opposite. 156 Certainly at the Hotel de Lorges in 1695, at Trianon and the Menagerie in 1698, there were arched mirrors in this position, rising to the cornice.
Whereas the windows in the Galerie d'Apollon at the Louvre, in the first designs for the Chateau Neuf at Versailles and also in the gallery at Clagny (Figure 11), had stopped at a sill lining with the dado, those in the gallery at Saint-Cloud were spoken of by Tessin as descending "presque j usque a terre," and the very first designs for the gallery and salons at Versailles show casement sash extending quite to the floor. This scheme was quickly adopted elsewhere at Versailles. Tessin remarks particularly, in the Appartement du Roi in 1687: "Les fenestres montent depuis les pavees jusques sous les corniches par tout." Such a treat -
154 Cf. "The Development of the 'Cheminee a la Royale,' " already cited, for these usages.
155 J. F. Blondel, born in 1705, too late to have personal knowledge, mentions having heard this attribution, in his De la distribution des maisons de flaisance, Paris, I 73 7-1 738, from which it was repeated without qualification bv Pierre Patte in Monuments eriges en France a la gloire de Louis XV, 1 765, and in his continuation of Blondel's Cours d'architecture, 1771-1776, V, 66, as well as by Dezallier d'Argenville, Vies des jameux architectes, Paris, 1787, 418, and universally by modern writers.
156 Such mirrors appear throughout in Pierre Lepautre's suite Cheminees et lambris a la mode execute?, dans les nouveaux batimens de Paris. (An early impression issued by N. Langlois, belonging to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, shows that this included the following plates of the Jombert edition ; suite 54, pis. 1-2; suite 55, pis. 3-6). The marble mantels, while simple in detail, show varied forms which anticipate later types: with a segmental opening, with baluster-like supports, and the concave crossettes at the upper corners. Similar attics with mirrors appear in three plates— which though unsigned, appear to be by Pierre Lepautre — of a suite incorporated in Jean Mariette's later collection Architecture a la Mode with the title Cheminees nouvelles a la Mansarde. The other three are from Laurent Francart's suite Nouvelles cheminees grave sur des dessein de Mr. Francard, but have mirrors substituted for the bas reliefs originally shown in the attics and are otherwise modified in the direction of later taste.
[ 52 ]
Background
ment— the "French window," used also at Marly, Trianon, and the Menagerie— now became universally characteristic.
Thus was established the basic scheme which the French interior was to retain henceforth : a square room with symmetrical wall membering, double doors en enfilade balanced by false doors, windows rising from floor to cornice, doorways extended by overdoors to the same height, a relatively low marble frame for the fireplace, a chimney breast flush and treated as part of the panelling, already, like the pier opposite, with a mirror which might extend to the cornice. This abiding basic scheme attained its full embodiment during the last fifteen years of the seventeenth century.
The ceilings of the principal rooms, while still usually vaulted or with a high cove, tended to lose their traditional Italian character and thus also to approach the scheme which was to prevail in future. The frames of compartments in stucco were diminished in relief (Grande Galerie) and in complexity of outline (Salle de Diane, etc.), replaced by painted compart- ments (Petite Galerie), or eliminated entirely (Trianon). Where there was a story above, the ceilings of the ground story were usually flat, for instance at Versailles and in most of the rooms at the Menagerie. This did not preclude their being painted, like Mignard's figural ceiling of the Grand Cabinet du Dauphin at Versailles; the ceilings of the Hotel de Mailly "avec des voutes tout a fait plates," as Tessin described them, gave occasion for a decoration of painted arabesques.
Except for a few rare instances of varnished woodwork a la ca-pucine, the French panelled in- terior was painted and gilt. Tessin speaks repeatedly of white and gold: at Versailles, in the doors of the Escalier du Roi, in those of the Grand Appartement, and in the cornices there, as well as in the panelling of the central salon j at Saint-Cloud in the cornice of the gallery. The Grand Cabinet de Monseigneur at Versailles he describes as "tout garny d'or blanc et un peu d'azur." The arabesques of the ceilings of the Hotel de Mailly were also in yellow, brown and gold, originally on a white ground. At Trianon alone there was at first no gilding: "le tout peint en blanc en detrempe," as Cronstrom wrote Tessin in 1 693, 157 "et cela pour plusieurs raisons, premierement pour eviter la depense ... a cause de celles de la guerre . . . et outre cela, pour gagner du temps, car les dedans de Trianon ont este acheves avec beaucoup de precipitation."
It remains for us to speak of employment at this time of various motifs of ornament. The cartouche— sign manual of the baroque— sometimes with wings, sometimes with figural sup- porters, was now employed but rarely, almost solely to display an armorial bearing or a cypher. The trophy was employed as the principal ornament of the Salon de la Guerre. Le Brun's drawings for it (Figure 1 5), as we have seen, show trophies still mainly symmetrical, without the variety of movement of the trophies in bronze ultimately placed there, which, though begun in 1682, were not completed and installed until after 1701. The trophies at Issy, doubtless inspired by those in the Salon de la Guerre, are also of conservative form.
It was in the arabesque that a fruitful evolution continued. In the Maisons Royales of the central period of the reign, to be sure, we know no example of painted arabesques, which
157 R. Josephson: "Le Grand Trianon sous Louis XIV," loc. cit. Later, J.-F. Blondel characteristically rational- ized the absence of painted ceilings and of gilding, on the ground that the palace was to be occupied only in the pleasant season. Architecture jranqoise, I, 1752, 124.
[ 53 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
there gave place to the monumentality of marble or the luxury of collected masterpieces of easel painting. Arabesques, however, continued to be used, increasingly in tapestries, and, by private clients, in painted decorations, where for the first time, they invaded a new field, the ceiling.
Although Le Brun continued to hold the direction of the Gobelins until his death in 1690, he was not called on under Louvois for designs of any new tapestry suites. His preoccupation until October, 1686, with the immense task of the ceilings of the Grande Galerie and its salons at Versailles might be regarded as a sufficient explanation but on its completion he was no longer employed in the palaces, and his disfavour with the Surintendant was a further reason why the Gobelins turned at just this time to other sources of design. It was equally significant that these sources were within the admired academic canon; the compositions of Raphael's Stanze of the Vatican, as copied by the pensioners of the Academy at Rome, the Sujets de la Fable, of Giulio Romano and Raphael, the Scipio and the Fructus Belli of Giulio Romano, and two suites of arabesques from models supposedly Raphaelesque.
Noel Coypel ( 1 628-1 707), pupil of Vouet, assistant of Errard, and himself from 1672 to 1674 Director of the Academy at Rome, was commissioned in 1684 to paint for the Gobelins "les desseins de Rabesques d'apres Raphael," which became known as the Triomphes des Dieux, adapted from a sixteenth-century Brussels set. 158 Coypel's cartoons follow this older set very closely in composition, proportion and motif, but transform the figures and details into academic elegance. The background in both is of light columnar structures much in the style of Roman wall-painting. They nowhere contain any bandwork, even in the borders. 159 This revival of arabesque tapestries may well have given Berain a stimulus to design his own arabesque patterns, which began to appear soon after this time. By contrast with the prevailing trend to academism, stemming in French decoration from Errard and represented by Noel Coypel, Berain took up the creative line of the arabesque of Le Brun, in which he now further developed also the element of bandwork, in the form given it by French tradition. It is sig- nificant that this work was not in commissions for the royal palaces or for the Gobelins, but in decorations for private buildings and in models followed in tapestry at Beauvais. 160
158 Three of this set, woven by Franz Geubel apparently from designs by a follower of Van Orley, are preserved in French national possession. Two of them are reproduced by E. Guichard: Les tafisseries decorative; du Garde- Meuble, Paris, n.d.
159 In 1687-1688 another Flemish grotesque set "dessein de Julles Romain, representant les Douze Mois de Pannee avec crotesques et paysages," was literally copied at the Gobelins, this time without new painted cartoons, except for two additional subjects by Coypel. The models then in French royal possession have been lost, but a set from the same designs, delivered in I 574-1 5 75 by Jost van Herselle, "tapissier de Bruxelles," to the Duke of Lor- raine, is preserved in the Viennese imperial collection, one being reproduced by H. Gobel: Wandteffiche, Erster Teil, Bd. I, 1923, frontispiece, with text on page 668. Thus was produced what has become known as the Mois Arabesque, of which the first set was hung at Trianon, just built. The central motifs, again of classic mythological fig- ures, are framed in light structures of columns or lattice. In the fields of some of the set (August, or December) the lateral motifs are mannerist cartouche-medallions. Along with herms and other related elements, we find not only motifs of rollwork and pierced strapwork, but a number of flat bands of the step-like Roman type. In the French adaptations these bands become bars moulded as in Le Brun's arabesques.
160 Doubtless by Berain's designs, engraved or manuscript, were inspired "les Grotesques a petits personnages" executed in tapestry at Beauvais from 1689 onwards, from cartoons painted by Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer and others. Weigert: "Les grotesques de Beauvais . . . ," in Bulletin de la Societe de Vhistoire de Part jrancais, 1933, 7-21. We cannot be certain, however, that any of the surviving examples of these tapestries were of the earliest date, so that we do not take them into account in the chronological evolution of Berain's style.
[ 54 ]
Background
In 1 68 7- 1 68 8, Berain gave the designs for arabesque decorations painted by Andre Camot at the Hotel de Mailly in Paris. These decorations are described by Tessin at the time of his visit to Paris in 1687, naming the designer and the executant. 161 One of the ceilings of the hotel is preserved, along with certain panelling; in addition we have several manuscript draw- ings of the ceilings.
The arabesques of the panelling 162 are closely similar to those of Le Brun (Figure 40). Again we find the broken opposite scrolls, with shells or palmettes radiating from their junc- tions, swirls of acanthus diverging from their volutes, with finials of interlacing handwork. In many instances a figure occupies the incorporeal central tabernacle of bands and scrolls, a figure standing perhaps on a scrolled pedestal garnished with a lambrequin, and sheltered by a suspended valanced baldaquin. Such was the character and vocabulary of Berain's ornament in its beginnings, almost indistinguishable from what had gone immediately before.
It is in the ceilings, with their new problems, that we find Berain giving new developments to the established system. The different designs as shown in the drawings— alike in being com- posed symmetrically on the cardinal and diagonal axes— are not yet wholly homogeneous in style, although all of them display essential elements of Berain's patterns. The one for the "Salle ou Premier Antichambre" (Figure 39) is mainly vegetal, especially in a surrounding broad border— uniform in effect except for slight accents at the middle of the sides, and for others, made more emphatic by small wreaths, at the corners. Even in this border, however, there are traces of flat bandwork, formed of C-scrolls projecting at the corners in hawk's-bill form. Such bandwork is more conspicuous in the large central rosette, with radiating panels, not unlike Le Brun's rosettes of bat's-wing in the Galerie d'Apollon, but bounded outwardly by C-scrolls and bordered by lighter scrolls and tendrils. From their opposite pairs, here and throughout the series of designs, radiate palmettes of varying detail.
In the ceilings of other rooms (Figure 41 ) the bandwork dominates the vegetal elements; pairs of parallel bands united by contrasts of color give a firmer basis to the major pattern. The scrolls are characteristically joined by short straight bars, and the terminal volutes are reenforced by a divergent swirl of acanthus, henceforth typical of all Berain's touches. It is these elements, of which we have traced the rise in France— not the herms, masks, and can- delabra-like forms common to Italian and Flemish arabesques— which now became the essen- tial and characteristic ones in Berain's surface ornament.
The ceiling of the Chambre du Lit, the only one still preserved (Figure 13), is the most interesting of the four for its broad, embracing double band, so characteristically curved and broken, its elaborate diagonal standards of medallions (distantly derived from Pietro da Cor- tona and Le Brun) flanked by scrolls with profile masks having feathered headdresses, its
181 His travel diary was first published by Oswald Siren: Nicodemus Tessin d. y. studieresor y Danmark, Tysk- land, Holland, Frankrike och. Italien. 191 4; the Parisian portion, in translation, by Weigert: "Notes de Nicodeme Tessin le jeune relatives a son sejour a Paris en 1687," in Bulletin de la Societe de Vhistoire de I'art jrancais, 1932, 220-279, the passage on the Hotel de Mailly occurring in pages 238-239. Weigert also discussed these decorations in the same Bulletin, 1 93 1 , 167-174, and in U architecture, January 15, 1932, 31-36 where he published draw- ings of the ceilings secured for Tessin in 1 696-1699 by Cronstrom, the Swedish minister, and preserved in the Na- tional Museum at Stockholm.
162 Tessin describes it in place. It is now installed in the chateau of Vernou-en-Sologne. It is clear that the ara- besques were not modified in the eighteenth century when important decorative works at the Hotel de Mailly were executed by Cauvet, whose style is of quite another character.
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The Creation of the Rococo
interlaces of single bands, now substantially equivalent in importance with the acanthus. We note the employment, both in the broader hands and in the fields of the medallions, of quadrillage or mosa'ique derived from the examples of Le Brun and henceforth commonly em- ployed by Berain and others.
It is the engraved arabesque designs of Berain which have had the greatest attention, and which were doubtless most influential in diffusing his style. They come to us as collected by his son-in-law Thuret in 171 1, the year of Berain's death. Their chronological evolution, im- portant to establish, has not hitherto been emphasized. 163
Fortunately we derive some fixed points from the lives of the engravers employed. The young Daniel Marot left France some time after the Edict of Nantes (October 23, 1685), and was in Holland certainly by the beginning of 1 686. 104 It is perhaps significant that, while he engraved for Berain a frontispiece ( 1 68 1 ) and three plates of court ceremonies which occurred in August, 1682, and September, 1683, he did none of Berain's arabesques, all of which we believe to be of later date.
We are able to date a number of them, engraved by Dolivar, as before 1693, through the fact that Dolivar's death occurred in that year. Several of these (e. g. Figure 42) show Ber- ain's characteristic style well developed in the framing of the traditional central figure and baldaquin. Bandwork was now predominant, foliage subordinate. In the example illustrated, as in the ceiling of the Chambre du Lit of the Hotel de Mailly, we find broad double bands of contrasting tone, themselves composed of interlacing fillets, their scrolls and bill-hooks garnished with acanthus.
It has not hitherto been remarked that none of the arabesques engraved by Dolivar, any more than those at the Hotel de Mailly, are of the more attenuated type we are accustomed to associate with Berain.
We are fortunate in having certain designs by Berain, toward the end of the century, which show his use of major architectural forms. One is for the great organ at Saint-Quentin, from 1 697 ; a whole series is for chimney pieces, from 1699. Both of these will be discussed in their relation to works of such types in the following period, to which they offer instructive contrasts. Of the same character with these works of Berain are the backgrounds of a series of tapestries in course of execution in 1 698 for the Comte de Toulouse, woven from cartoons by Vernansal from lost designs which are justly attributed to Berain (Figure 43). 165 The fore- ground groups of marine deities, which recur in engraved arabesques of Berain, are framed in rustic columnar, arcaded loggias with a wealth of mannerist elements. The essential point to observe is that all this work is of massive architectonic character, by no means dissolved into the airy irreality of arabesque forms. While its frames are broken and overlaid by quoins, consoles, and figural elements, there is no suggestion of replacing these frames themselves by elements borrowed from surface arabesques.
163 Th e plates reproduced by Berliner, however, are very correctly dated and placed in order.
164 M. D. Ozinga: Daniel Marot, 1938, 17.
165 Weigert: "La tenture des 'Triomphes marins' d'apres Jean I Berain," in Bulletin de la Societe de Vhistoire de Vart jran^ais, 1937, 17-18. The attribution goes back to the early eighteenth century, for clearly these are the tapestries then at the Hotel de Toulouse mentioned by Brice, 1 7 1 9 ed., I, 161, as "sur les desseins inventez par le fameux Berin, dont chacun sait le gout et la maniere, et peint en grand par vernansal"— although Brice was mistaken in thinking they were made at the Gobelins for Madame de Montespan.
[ 56 ]
Background
Gifted artist as was Daniel Marot, whose career unfolded mainly after he left France, and admirable as are his engraved designs, we cannot allow him any share in the genesis of the movement we are discussing. In 1685 Berain's work was only in its beginnings. Marot thus knew it primarily through its subsequent diffusion by engravings. Some of these supplied direct prototypes for plates of Marot, modified only in minor regards. Daniel Marot's rela- tionship to Pierre Lepautre is particularly instructive for us. Marot's suite Nouvelle cheminees a panneaux de la glace de la maniere de France obviously derives its title from Lepautrt's Nouvelles cheminees a panneaux de glace executees dans quelques hotels de Paris. It includes various belated types as well as one with a tall arched mirror, itself based on a plate of Berain of 1 699. Other plates of Marot show derivatives from various engraved designs of Pierre Lepautre. The excellent biographer of Marot, 166 while mentioning such relationships, is at pains to stress the differences, in such plates, between his work and that of the French. He was indeed the creator of a national, provincial variant of the Louis XIV style, but he did not contribute, even by his engravings, to the formation of style in France itself.
In the central period of the reign Italian influence and baroque character were on the wane. So far from an intensified baroque, we have found a strengthening of academic reaction. So far from a progressive transformation of Italian forms in the direction taken by the fu- ture, we have found in French architecture a return to formulae essentially of the past, to which the eyes of the pensioners at Rome, like those of the Academicians, were now turned. Prior to 1678 the classical impulse of Colbert and Perrault had been felt mainly on the ex- terior of buildings; at Versailles, indeed, Le Vau had succeeded, to a degree, in escaping its sway. In the interior, at the time, the Raphaelesque academism of Errard had even given way before the tempered baroque of Le Brun. After 1678 academic tendencies gained the upper hand, inside as well as out ; in the cabinets alone was a more playful treatment still permitted.
Le Brun himself, in conjunction with Mansart, became fully architectonic, monumental, and academic in the membering of the walls of the gallery at Versailles; his ceiling there, by contrast with his own earlier work, shows a diminution of baroque character, a diminution more appreciable still in the ceiling of the Salons and of the other rooms after 1680. For walls, whether panelled in marble or in wood, where there was no columnar "order," the treatment, as developed by Lassurance, was almost exclusively tectonic, not plastic; static, not dynamic. The panelled assemblage was of the most rigid geometry, in which the multi- plied superposition of rectangular elements was relieved only occasionally by circular or oval frames, with carving confined almost entirely to an enrichment of these frames. Framework and painted surface ornament were kept sharply distinct.
Individual baroque members, already long domesticated, did indeed persist in certain in- stances. Their use, however, was entirely subordinate to the general tectonic character of the framework. Sculptured ornaments of baroque types were employed but rarely.
Only in the ornament of Berain, who had never been in Italy, do we find an original, creative impulse, derived primarily from French sources, and giving genial development to the fruitful initiative of Le Brun in this field. Only here do we encounter, prophetically, forms which were subsequently to become essential elements of the rococo.
His arabesque was still exclusively a surface pattern. It was through a transformation of
166 Ozinga, of. cit., especially pp. 1 1-14.
[ 57 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
the scheme of panelling interiors, fusing frame and surface pattern, that, in the following period, the basic scheme of the rococo was to be created. Down to 1699, however, there was as yet scarcely a trace of this transformation.
In the spirit, as well as in the forms, it is only at the very end of the period that we find a prophecy of what was to come. It is significant that the words of this prophecy were words of the aging King himself, in reprobating Mansart's proposals of 1 698 for the decoration of the Menagerie. "II faut qu'il y ait de la jeunesse melee dans ce que l'on fera."
[ 58 ]
Genesis
End of the Reign of Louis XIV, 1699-1715
WE should seek in vain in political, social and economic developments for any ade- quate explanations of the pregnant artistic innovations on the eve of the new century. The Treaty of Ryswick in 1 697, to be sure, gave opportunity for return to the arts of peace, which continued even though the peace was of short duration. It was a favourable mo- ment for great undertakings: the completion of the Invalides, the building of the Chapel at Versailles, the fulfilment of the vow of Louis XIII for a new altar at Notre-Dame de Paris, all authorized in the closing days of 1698, 1 and begun in 1699. Emulation of the splendours of Saint Paul's, which Louis XIV's antagonist, William III, opened to divine service on December 2, 1697, with a thanksgiving for the peace, may have moved the French king, a year later, to resume his great enterprises in religious building, improperly attributed to the devotion of Madame de Maintenon. 2
At Court her influence was far from producing at this time any such restraint as has been imputed to it; on the contrary the advent of the young Duchesse de Bourgogne in 1697 Jed to a gaiety which even the disasters of subsequent campaigns could not quench. We have seen the small but significant remodellings which her advent occasioned at Trianon and at the Menagerie. Now in 1699, new activity began at Meudon, Marly, Versailles, and Trianon on a scale truly regal, fully continuing the leadership of the Crown.
No broader social change, such as later coincided with the Regency, had yet been felt, and while the seeds of economic ruin were being sown, the harvest was still in the future. Paris still remained in the shadow of Versailles, though the Place Vendome, transferred to the charge of the City, was begun anew. Its first hotels were taken by the financiers, for whom others sprang up from the profits of the late war, soon renewed.
In the intellectual and cultural sphere we can indeed point to certain significant develop- ments at the turn of the century. The literary quarrel of the ancients and moderns, unroll- ing from 1687 to 1701, in which Charles Perrault had championed the moderns on the basis of technical progress and of the advance of reason, had done much to destroy superstitious reverence for the authority of the ancients, and issued in agreement on esteem for the mod- erns. There was thus a self-confidence which might allow certain liberties, beyond those of Claude Perrault a generation before, with the rules of academic grammar and proportion.
The related quarrel of design and colour renewed from time to time since 1672 by the amateur Roger de Piles, resulted now in victory for the colourists, that is for the moderns. De Piles' Abridgement oj the Lives oj the Painters , appearing in 1699, while preserving much which was conventional, spoke for the artistic licenses of genius, which become new laws. He praised the Venetians, and, above all, Rubens. Thus he prepared the way for the contemporary colourism of Charles de la Fosse and of Antoine Coypel, both men long employed by the Crown, now on the eve of their great commissions at the Invalides and the Chapelle de
1 As reported by Dangeau, December 20 and 21, Journal, VI, 1856, 477-478.
2 Cf. the documents showing her opposition to these expenses, cited by Nolhac: Versailles residence de Louis XIV, 1925, 355 and note.
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The Creation of the Rococo
Versailles, both men not without influence on the future development of Watteau. 3
It is difficult, nevertheless, to bring the innovations which were about to take place in architecture and decoration into any sequential relationship with developments of theory, or of practice in the other arts. These architectural innovations, indeed, while admired and adopted as a new and brilliant vogue, were not regarded as involving any breach with estab- lished theories, and thus evoked neither academic hostility nor a new theoretic justification. In these regards the situation was very different from the one which was to prevail about 1730, when the later, more pronounced phase of the new style called forth both attack and defense. The artistic revolution, which was ultimately to be recognized and opposed as such, was in its beginnings most gently insinuated and warmly welcomed.
The movement we are to trace, we observe, was, in its genesis, essentially an immanent, artistic one. Both its exact nature and its real protagonist are still to be ascertained. "Cher- chez l'homme," as Lionello Venturi has said, "should be the motto of art historians." This search, superficially conducted in the past, we now undertake.
Mansart's career was crowned, January 7, 1 699, by his elevation to the high post of Surin- tendant des Batiments. Both before and after him this responsible position in the King's coun- cils was held by a layman: a minister of state like Colbert or Louvois, a nobleman of rank like the Marquis de Villacerf or the Due d'Antin. Advancement to it of a man of professional experience in the person of Mansart, already Premier Architecte, was a unique exception. Not only did this, in itself, imply that he had displayed high talents for administration, but it tended to plunge him still further into varied activities of an administrative nature.
Mansart's administrative talents were at once employed in a reorganization of the Bati- ments to handle efficiently the great increase in its tasks. In a series of long instructions 4 he established and defined in detail the duties of his principal subordinates, incidentally mak- ing plain what tasks he reserved for himself. Authority was closely centralized, the higher posts being in the hands of men bound to Mansart by ties of blood or marriage and wholly dependent on him for their rise to fortune. These instructions throw a clear light on the mat- ter of personal creative responsibility within the Batiments.
De Cotte, Mansart's brother-in-law, with the rank of Architecte in the Batiments since 1685, was now formally established as second in command, by a brevet as Architecte Ordi- naire and Director of the Academy of Architecture. 5 He kept the bureau des plans "ou se seront tous les desseigns pour le service du Roi, qu'il fera faire sur ceux que nous aurons regie." Beside this supervision of their preparation, he was charged with maintenance of orderly files of the drawings, with care of the copper plates, engraved and unengraved, and direction of the work of engravers, with records of the marbles in the various magazines, their employment and sale, as of the stocks of lead, copper, iron and other materials, with
3 Cf. L. Venturi: History of Art Criticism, 1936, 134. Venturi, to be sure, overlooks the artistic forerunners of Watteau, and speaks as if, in this instance, criticism had outrun the evolution of art itself.
4 Archives Nationales, o 1 1 246.
5 Published by Mile. J. Lejeaux in Bulletin de la Societe de Vhistoire de Part jrancais, 1938, 22-32.
[ 60 ]
Genesis
the requisitioning of glass, with the papers of all the royal manufactures including the Gobelins and Savonnerie, their supplies and products, with all matters regarding the acad- emies of architecture, painting and sculpture, and, not least onerous, with putting in final form all the specifications "que nous aurons dicte et regie," distributing them to bidders and taking the bids. It is obvious from the enumeration of his duties that he did not have the time personally to make finished drawings, and indeed we find no developed designs of in- teriors and ornament from his hand.
The other principal official was Jacques Gabriel (i 667-1 742) whose mother was Man- sart 's cousin, his father a large contractor for masonry on the royal works. He had been ap- pointed in 1688, at twenty-one, as one of the Controleurs Generaux, had accompanied De Cotte on his hasty trip to Italy in 1689- 1690, and was now given the rank of Autre Archi- tecte. He was the type of the efficient executive, and had developed marked practical and administrative ability. Mariette, who knew him well, states that he "etoit expert dans la conduite du batiment, mais il n'auroit pas pu dessiner le moindre bout d'ornement." 6 He asks "Est-ce la etre architected" and continues, referring to his later succession to the leading place: "Et comment un premier architecte peut-il hazarder de juger sur les ouvrages des artistes qui lui sont soumis, quand il est lui-meme depourvu des connoissances qui sont si necessaires pour diriger ses decisions?" For the moment his duties were all purely execu- tive: keeping the files of -placets, metnoires, and reports, the registers of orders and decisions, transmitting them to the proper persons, and so on.
Mansart himself, in spite of delegating so much, remained very fully occupied. His time was primarily employed in attendance on the King, whose orders, along with his own, he dictated to his secretary Marchand "sur des feuilles de papier volante," which were sent at once to Gabriel to be registered and communicated to those concerned. Marchand, or the under-secretary Beaulieu,were instructed to follow Mansart constantly about, paper in hand, "pour ecrire tout ce que je dirai, soit pour les choses que je trouverai a faire dans les visites que je ferai, ou pour les ordres que je donnerai aux controlleurs ou entrepreneurs." Man- sart held audiences and adjudications, dictated and signed letters, specifications, and con- tracts, and approved and signed the designs adopted. He was even farther than before from having the time, if he had the gifts, to prepare the preliminary designs for his buildings. We have no knowledge, either, that he had clarified any underlying aesthetic notions which may instinctively have governed him. It is, indeed, difficult to see how this driving opportunist could really have been the moving force in evolutions in the realms of thought and form. He continues to appear, as in the past, as a master of organization and efficiency rather than as an artistic creative genius.
We know that, in such ramified architectural organizations as Mansart was the first to organize, the chief sometimes still retains a true artistic initiative. To judge of this we need to know whether or not the character remains the same in the work of different designers in the organization at the same period, whether it evolves continuously in spite of change of
8 Abecedario, II, 276. The comte de Fels, in Anges-Jacques Gabriel, 1912, cites no drawings by the elder Gabriel, whose later works he considers to have been designed by the son. Lemaistre (apparently Jean Pierre), who was also now appointed "autre architecte," though without equal responsibility, was paid in 1 700 as "archi- tecte et expert, pour le toise et verification des batiments" {Comptes, IV, 684), and thus will likewise have been a practical man rather than a designer.
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The Creation of the Rococo
designers or changes sharply with change in the personnel— questions we shall devote our- selves to answering.
In the Menus Plaisirs, Jean Berain remained Dessinateur de la Chambre et du Cabinet du Roi until his death in 171 1, but Mansart was not the man to suffer encroachments on his de- partment. Though Berain courted him at the beginning of his administration by dedicating to him the suite of Desseins de Chemtnees, he viewed Berain with no favour. Not once during Mansart's Surintendance did Berain do any work for the Batiments reflected in the smallest payment, and he continues to figure in our discussion only through the patronage of the Dauphin. Even at Meudon, as elsewhere, his role as designer of arabesques was soon taken over by the painter Claude III Audran, to whom we shall recur.
We have seen 7 that the chief designer of the Batiments, actually holding the pencil in the period 1685- 1699, was Lassurance, the accomplished "dessinateur sous clef" of Saint- Simon's strictures. In interiors, which constituted the principal royal works of that time, a sharp change in style had occurred on his first appointment as dessinateur by January, 1685; the evolution during his tenure was relatively minor. On Mansart's appointment to the Sur- intendance, Lassurance's pay was doubled, and in 1700 he was advanced to the rank of Architecte et Dessinateur at 5000 livres. From 1 702 he was in charge of the Invalides and had his office in Paris (Comptes IV, 912, 974), so that he will scarcely have been concerned with the works which will occupy us here. From 1699 the design of interiors and of decora- tive features was left to other hands.
As other Dessinateurs in the Batiments there remained the veteran Cauchy, henceforth carried as Ancien Dessinateur with the least pay, 8 and Rene Carlier the elder, employed oc- casionally since 1695, regularly since 169 8. 9 These were now joined by Pierre Lepautre and Rivet le fils.
We shall find that it was Pierre Lepautre who played the essential creative role in the years from his appointment until his death, 10 and that a decisive turn in the work of the Bati- ments occurred, immediately on his appointment, in designs entrusted to him. They com- prised precisely such interior features, domestic and religious, as first manifested the new spirit, and continued to offer its most characteristic expressions.
Eldest of the children of Jean Lepautre (161 8-1682), Pierre Lepautre was married at Saint-Christophe in 1678. 11 We may thus place his birth in the neighborhood of 1648, per- haps a little later. Pierre-Jean Mariette, whose father published many of Pierre Lepautre's engravings, and who must have known him well, recounts his varied training under Jean Lepautre, his marvellous facility in etching, and his success as an engraver "dans le temps qu'il en faisoit son unique profession." In this time, from his first dated plates of 1679, we find him engraving illustrations for numerous volumes on architecture and related topics by
7 Cf . the writer's papers on the Menagerie and Trianon, already cited.
8 He was made inspector at Meudon in 1700, and thereafter will scarcely have been concerned with the prep- aration of designs.
9 We belive that to Carlier may be attributed the designs for remodelling the Cabinet de Madame de Maintenon at Trianon, 1698 and the Appartement du Roi in the Aile Gauche, 1 700, both of conventional and backward char- acter. Cf. the paper on Trianon, cited above.
10 Kimball: "The Creation of the style Louis XV" Art Bulletin, XXIII, 1941, 1-15.
11 H. Herluison: Actes d'etat- civil des artistes jrancais, 1873, 245. He is still frequently confused with his cousin the sculptor Pierre Lepautre ( 1 660-1 744) .
[ 62 ]
Genesis
Desgodetz, Perrault, Daviler and others, with dates extending to 1698. 12 It is worth noting that, following his father and his brother Jacques (d. 1684), he engraved a number of de- signs by Jean Berain, those datable being of 1687, 1690 and 1693. 13 He received isolated payments in 1685, 1687 and 1689 for "planches et plans qu'il a gravez pour le service de S. M." 14 This was the justification for describing him as "graveur du Roy" in an accord of August 14, 1692, signed by him and by the engraver, Jean Liebaux. 15 He had also engraved privately in the 'eighties and 'nineties, as we have seen, several suites representing details and interiors from buildings by Mansart, among others, all very much in the style of Lassu- rance. Beside those already mentioned they include notably one "Fait par P. Le Pautre," the Cheminees a la royalle a grand tniroir et tablette avec lambris de menuiserie (Figures 44-45). 16 It shows tall mirrors with heads both square and semicircular, crowned by acanthus scrolls, mostly rather heavy, invading the panels above. The closest analogy with any executed works is with the interiors of the Menagerie, but Lepautre's designs are in some ways more advanced ; he is groping toward the scheme which he will soon employ in designs of his own for the royal works.
For his later career the basic text is the following passage from Mariette's notice: 17
Comme il se trouva avoir assez de genie pour l'architecture, et qu'il possedoit toutes les parties pour la bien dessiner, Jules-Hardouin Mansart, surintendant des bastimens, jeta les yeux sur luy, fit creer en sa faveur une place de dessinateur et graveur des basti- mens du roy, et, en cette qualite, se l'etant entierement attache, il se servit souvent de sa main pour rediger et mettre au net ses pensees. Ainsy, Pierre le Pautre eut beaucoup de part a tous les ouvrages qui se firent dans la suite a Versailles, a Marly, et dans les autres maisons royales, tant pour ce qui regarde l'architecture que le jardinage. II en fit presque tous les dessins; il en grava mesme plusieurs.
It was indeed precisely on Mansart's elevation to the Surintendance in January, 1699, that Pierre Lepautre first entered the regular employ of the Batiments, as "dessinateur et graveur" at a salary of 2000 livres (Comptes IV, 554), continuing until his death in 17 16. 18 That Mariette was not in error in suggesting Mansart's dependence on Lepautre is shown by another significant document in the register of extracts and decisions for 1701 : 19
Paultre represente qu'il a travaille longtemps sous les ordres de M. Mansart du temps de Msrs. Colbert et Louvois sans estre paye de son travail.
Que M. Mansart luy a promis de luy faire du bien en cette consideration. II demande quelque gratification pour ce travail.
To which Gabriel noted:
M. Mansart lui fera plaisir dans l'occasion.
12 Listed by Destailleur, of. cit., 124-127. 13 Weigert: Jean I Berain, Nos. 234-241, 178 ff.
14 Comptes, II, 785. The earliest of these may well have been the large perspective of the Hotel des Invalides, signed and dated 1683.
15 Archives notariales, minutier central, XLIX, 399, document communicated by the gracious authorization of Me. Faroux. This is the only signature of Pierre Lepautre known to me.
16 Early impressions "Chez Langlois." Later incorporated in the Jombert edition as suite 54, pis. 3-6; suite 54, pis. 1-2.
17 Abecedario, III, p. 188.
18 This is the year given by Mariette. It is confirmed by the manuscript accounts, O 1 2216 and 2217, which record payments to him for I 7 1 6, but not for I 7 1 7.
19 O 1 1 08 1. [ 63 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
It was a promise never kept. 20
As compared with Lassurance, his predecessor as Dessinateur, whose training was purely architectural, Pierre Lepautre was much more versatile, having learned from his father, as Mariette says, "l'architecture, l'ornement, la perspective et generalement toutes les differ- entes parties du dessin." In an engraved address he informs the public that "Pierre Lepautre . . . montre a dessigner l'Architecture, la Figure, l'Ornement, le Paysage, etc." Notably in his mastery of the figure he surpasses Lassurance, who rarely introduced any figural mo- tives in his drawings, and then with but rudimentary indications. 21 We shall observe the greater freedom of line which appeared in the work of the Batiments with his advent.
Among surviving drawings for the royal works between 1699 an< ^ 1 7 1 6 we find a con- siderable number made by a single hand, a hand not appearing before or after these dates, which are those of Lepautre's employment. Comparison of their technique with that of his engraved designs reveals that these drawings are indeed from the hand of Pierre Lepautre. In spite of varying media, and of varying degrees of care and of speed in preparation, they show a unity of technique as impressive as is their difference in technique from other draw- ings of the same milieu, even those of imitators and followers. They permit us, as we shall see, to identify as from Lepautre's designs a body of executed work which includes also certain works for which the original drawings are not preserved.
The works of various designers in the great year of 1699 require our individual scrutiny in their chronological order, as it was precisely in one of them— but not the first— that we shall find the decisive creative act of the period, becoming, as its significance was recognized, influential on other works in progress.
The earliest of the interiors of 1699 is a work of Berain for the Dauphin at Meudon — long destroyed, but known by documents— a work important not only for its own interest and novelty in some regards, but for its failure to show that decided initiative which Le- pautre, taking his departure from Berain, was now to assume.
January 17, Dangeau notes (VII, 10), "Monseigneur . . . fait changer tout Papparte- ment ou il couche." The changes, which began, as we shall see, with ceilings by Audran in the Chambre and Garderobe, were to involve the creation of the Cabinet de Monseigneur, rep- resented, fortunately for us, in the well-known portrait of the Musee de Versailles, Le Grand Dauphin dans son cabinet (Figure 46). Its background has ordinarily been supposed to be one of the suite of Cabinets de Monseigneur at Versailles. 22 Actually it represents the Grand Cabinet de Monseigneur at the Chateau of Meudon, of which the chimney piece was exe-
20 Lepautre did receive gratifications of 300 livres each in the years 1702 to 1705, but that was no more than was granted also to Rivet, Carlier and others. In 1706 he and Rivet were alike given 500 livres "en consideration des peines extraordinaires, veilles et voyages en 1705," after which the distress of war put an end to all supplemen- tarly emoluments.
21 E.g. the two cherubs in a drawing for the Menagerie, reproduced above.
22 Often erroneously assumed to have been the Cabinet de Boulle (Salle 50), executed in 1682-1683 for the Aile du Midi and transported to the ground floor in 1684. That room, however, as we have seen, was lined with mirrors and had an elaborate marquetry floor with the arms of the Dauphin and Dauphine. Nolhac presumed the picture to represent the second Cabinet (Salle 49), which the contemporary descriptions pass over in silence. Nolhac supposed the boy to be the Dauphin's eldest son, the due de Bourgogne (born 1682) ; Pichon thought him to be the due d'Anjou (born 1683) ; actually he can only have been the third son, the due de Berry (born 1686).
[ 64 ]
Genesis
cuted in the months from March to July, 1699, 23 the finished work being inspected by the King August 18. 24 The entries of the Comptes (IV, 479 &., 546) correspond in all details with the chimney piece shown, which at that moment was absolutely unique: 25
i er mars: a Hardy, sculpteur, a compte des modeles qu'il fait pour la che- minee du cabinet de Monseigneur, h Meudon 100 [livres
15 mars — 21 juin: au nomme Boule, ebcniste et fondeur, pour les bronzes qu'il a fait pour la cheminee de Monseigneur, a Meudon, quatre bases, deux chapiteaux, deux pilastres et quatre bras (6 p.) 2492 [livres
15 mars — 7 juin: . . . Au s r Desjardins, fondeur, pour les ouvrages de bronze qu'il a fait pour la cheminee de Monseigneur, a Meudon, deux enfants, mosaYques et trophees (5 p.) 1 123 [livres
15 mars: au s r Le Pileur, fondeur, pour les ouvrages de bronze qu'il a
fait au dessus du ceintre de la cheminee de Monseigneur, a Meudon 481 [livres
15 mars— 7 juin: a Soyer, fondeur, pour les ornemens de bronze du
chambranle et consolles de ladite cheminee (3 p.) 340 [livres
29 mars — 7 juin: au s r Sautray [fondeur], pour les consolles, testes et tailloirs et les deux bordures de table qu'il a fait pour la cheminee du cabinet de Monseigneur, a Meudon (5 p.) 1420 [livres
29 mars — 5 juillet: a Dezaigres, marbrier, a compte de la cheminee du
cabinet de Monseigneur, a Meudon (2 p.) 700 [livres
5 juillet: a luy [Despardins, fondeur], sur les bronzes et dorures de la
cheminee du cabinet de Monseigneur, a Meudon 400 [livres
19 juillet: au s r Spingola [Lespingola] , sculpteur, pour un modele de
cheminee pour le cabinet de Monseigneur, a Meudon 200 [livres
But the conclusive identification of the room is by the inventories of paintings at Meudon: 2
Cabinet de Monseigneur
Un tableau de Lanfrance representant Mars et Venus, figures de vingt a vingt deux pouces ayant de hauteur trois pieds sur trois pieds neuf de Large
This painting appears, in the correct dimensions, at the left of the rear wall over the bookcase.
Both the chimney piece and the bureau have been recognized in Berain's published en- gravings j we may add that the tall arabesque panel is also figured there on one of the plates of the series Desseins de Cheminees (Figure 115). We can thus attribute the design of the room to this favorite artist of Monseigneur.
23 Cf. the writer's letter in The Burlington Magazine, a propos of Huth's erroneous identification as "A French Regency Interior by Boulle" (Vol. 68, No. 397, 1936, 185). Huth supposed the portraits to be of the Regent and the young Louis XV, which would place the work as late as 1722! It is inconceivable that the Regent would have been painted in such a setting at a time when Oppenord's new decorations and Cressent's furnishings of the Palais- Royal were complete. Edward Warwick, the distinguished authority on costume, also informs me that 1722 is much too late for the details of costume in the painting, which he places about I 700.
24 Dangeau, VII, 132.
25 Biver: Meudon, 154, recognized the similarity between this chimney piece, as detailed in the accounts, and the one in the painting (which he supposed to represent the Cabinet de Boulle at Versailles), but did not realize that they are one and the same.
26 The inventory "B," after December, 1702, and before 1706. Biver, of. cit., p. 457; cf. F. Engerand, In- ventaire, 1 76-177, where the composition is described in detail.
[ 65 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
The mirror over the chimney piece (as we see it here or in Berain's engraving) is richly framed with an arched cornice of triglyph voussoirs resting on panels crowned by consoles and ornamented by terminal figures of Victory. The mantel itself, as at the Menagerie, rises but little above the dado, the architrave, as in one of the chimney pieces there, being aban- doned for a low moulded band, here resting on panelled supports and for the first time bowed forward in an arc. At left and right are consoles on which are seated figures, their heads surmounted by branching candelabra.
Berain's plate of this chimney piece forms part of his suite with the title Desseins de Chemi- nees dediez a Monsieur Jules Hardouin Mansard . . . sur'intendant . . . des batimens . . . , a dedica- tion which must fall after January, 1699. The great majority show tall mirrors with their heads arched or of broken curved outline. We cannot tell whether any others were executed, although very possibly they include other chimney pieces at Meudon listed in the Comptes as made in 1699.
The style of most of these designs is fantastic to a degree very unusual in the grand Steele in France, with architectural members broken in mannerist fashion, an extravagant use of curvature, and much interpenetration of elements. Some of the forms of Lepautre's Che- minees a la mode recur, endlessly varied and elaborated. Lateral consoles of balancing profile are common. The fireplace opening is given the most diverse forms, with its upper corners concave or convex, its intrados arched, scrolled or broken— even in a depressed arc. An architrave is rarely retained. The supports take the form of panels, herms, or consoles, with masks, shells, or palmettes. Although the turn which design took under Mansart's Surin- tendance was sharply away from the mannerist trend of Berain, some of his less extravagant forms entered into the general vocabulary of the period, and two decades later, under the Regence, as we shall see, many architectural details in the work of Vasse and Oppenord trace their suggestion to Berain.
How sharply such freedom contrasted with the conservative nay-saying of the Academy of Architecture, even a decade later, is illustrated by a report of one of its seances then, when the less extravagant of these forms had long been adopted by other designers.
LUNDI, 21 JUILLET I 7 10
L'on s'est entretenu au sujet des ouvertures des portes et fenestres et des cheminees et Ton a examine diverses manieres qui s'introduisent, particulierement a 1'egard des che- minees, pour terminer le haut de leurs ouvertures. La Compagnie a desapprouve plusieurs de ces nouvelles manieres, qui sont defectueses et qui tiennent la plupart du gothique. 27
It should be noted that, although the wall panels, both on the piers and above the mirror, are richly painted with arabesques of Berain's characteristic bandwork, this is confined within the recessed mouldings of the panels, which themselves retain a strictly geometrical out- line. We shall see how fundamentally the work of Pierre Lepautre was to differ in this regard.
27 Proces-verbaux, III, 344. Cited by B. Lossky: I.-B. A. Le Blond . . . son oeuvre en France, 1936, 210, in connection with Le Blond's edition of Daviler's Cours d' architecture, appearing in that year. The plates of this work, themselves engraved by Pierre Lepautre, are scarcely more than personal variants of his characteristic forms, with certain borrowings from Berain, notably in the form of the marble chimney pieces.
[ 66 ]
Genesis
The earliest of Lepautre's works in the palaces of the Crown, 28 the first to be executed and admired, the first to be influential, were his designs for changes at Marly. In them appear for the first time the characteristic forms of the last fifteen years of Louis XIV, already foreshadowing those of the following reign.
Beginning in April, Mansart's register records a series of orders for new chimney pieces: 29
Du 25 avril ( 1699). Le roy a ordonne de faire un dessus de cheminee au Cabinet de son appartement a Marly avec des glaces enfermees dans une bordure de bois sculptee et doree depuis le dessus de la Tablette jusques sous la grande corniche . . .
Du 26 avril. Le Roy a ordonne d'aller demain a Marly faire un dessin de cheminee de sa chambre . . .
Du 27 avril. Le Roy a ordonne de faire des cheminees de marbre neuves dans sa chambre, son cabinet et sa garderobbe a Marly avec des dessus de Menuiserie ornees de cadres qui renferment des glaces depuis le dessus des tablettes jusques sous les corniches . . .
Du 10 juin. Faire une cheminee de marbre avec des glaces jusqu'en haut dans l'anti- Chambre ou le Roy mange 30 et dans le grand Cabinet de Madame de Maintenon . . .
There followed similar orders for the apartments in the attics of the Chateau (in part later countermanded) and also for those of Monsieur and Madame, and for the Apparte- ment de Jeu. In one item there is specific mention of "cadres ceintrees par le haut renfer- mant des glaces."
The beauty of these new designs must have been instantly appreciated, for ones of similar type, with mirrors "en toute la hauteur," 31 were ordered by August 20 for the diagonal faces of the Salon (cf. Figure 47). 32 In the autumn also was executed a redecoration of the Cham- bre du Roi, 33 shown in several drawings in the technique of Pierre Lepautre (Figures 48, 49), 34 eliminating the cove to raise the cornice much higher, and placing in the center of the ceiling an elaborate rosette in relief (Figure 49)— the first example of such a feature, which was to become characteristic in the following reign.
28 As we shall see, the earliest of all his designs for the Batiments, preceding the domestic examples by a few weeks, was a religious work, but this was not executed until later and in a modified form.
29 Archives Nationales, o 1 I 809.
30 The disposition here was modified by order of May 3, 1702.
31 The orders are in Mansart's "Memoire des ouvrages ... a faire au chateau de Marly . . . pendant le voyage de Fontainebleau et le restant de la presente annee 1699." O 1 1473, p. 56. The work is mentioned by Dangeau August 20 and September 1 (VII, 134, 1 40), and its executed form, with arched mirrors, can be seen in the sec- tion of the chateau previously cited.
32 The flues of these new chimney pieces required the closing of the attic windows on these faces and the substi- tution of paintings. On a memoir for the salon, the King wrote, September 14, "Je suis de votre avis, il faut tra- vailler a 4 tableaux comme vous le proposes, il faut bien choisir les paintres, et ne les pas presser pour qu'ils soient beaux." Lucas Montigny catalogue, cited by C. Piton: Marly-le-Roi, 1904, 117. Paintings of the Seasons are shown in these positions in the section of 1 7 1 4. To introduce fireplaces at all in the Salon, without disturbing the central balance of its octagonal form, there had to be four, on the diagonal faces. Thus devotion to unity of form led from cold into the opposite extremity. Years later Madame de Pompadour was to write, one May, to her brother, from Marly: "J'ai un rhume assez fort . . . Je descends au salon ce soir, qui par parenthese est diabolique pour les rhumes; il y fait un chaud enorme, et froid en sortant, aussi entend-on plus tousser qu'a Noel." Corre- sfondance de Mme. ie Pompadour, ed. by A.-P.-Malassis.
33 Discussed in a paper presented by A.-M.-E. Marie December 2, 1938, at a seance of the Societe de l'histoire de Part francais, and published in its Bulletin, Annee 1938, 190-196.
34 Cabinet des Estampes, Va 361 VI; an outline study for the rear wall, misclassified as for Trianon, is at the
Archives Nationales, O 1 1884. r ^ n
[ 67 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
We find in the Comptes for 1699 35 payments to Antoine Rivet of 19,100 livres "sur la menuiserie qu'il fait aux cheminees de Pappartement du Roy et autres endroits du chateau de Marly"} to Pierre Taupin and Andre Goupy, 12,300 livres "sur les ouvrages de sculp- ture en bois qu'ils font dans Pappartement du Roy a Marly"} to various marble workers, large sums for marble chimney pieces, including those of the Chambre du Roi, the Apart- ment of Mme. la Duchesse, and the appartements du hautj to Lochon, fondeur, 2750 livres "a compte des moulures de bronze qu'il a dore d'or moulu pour la bordure des glaces des apartemens du chateau." These payments were completed by December, 1699, when the gilding of the Salon was executed. Already on October 23 the King had inspected the com- pleted work, on the 29th it was shown to others, and the Salon was the object of admiration during the voyage de Marly of November 2. 36
Designs of some of the chimney pieces of the apartments were published in the Livre de cheminees executees a Marly sur les desseins de Monsr. Mansart Surintendant . . . dessinees et grave es -par P. Le Pautre Graveur du Roi (Figures 50-52). 37 These Marly designs, limited though they are to a refacing of the existing narrow chimney breasts, already embody the essential character of the new phase of style, soon to be employed in the remodellings of the royal apartments at Versailles in 1701 and at Trianon in 1702- 1703. By contrast with Las- surance's work of 1685-1698, with its rigidly geometric, tectonic framework, its limitation of carved ornament to the decoration of mouldings and friezes, we now find a modification of the outlines of the framework and a free invasion of the panels by elements in relief.
The forms, though differently employed, were suggested by certain features of the paint- ed arabesques of Berain. At Marly the scheme of flat bandwork in Berain's panel-fillings was taken over by Lepautre into the framework itself. Lepautre applied Berain's forms to the moulded outlines of the panels: he truncated their angles by C-scrolls ending in the hawk's-bill, each with a swirl of acanthus, 38 he flanked the palmettes of mask and headdress by opposite scrolls, interrupting or overlapping the mouldings. Some of these scrolls are of bandwork, others are realized as cornucopias, still others are of palm or of acanthus, occa- sionally terminated by sprays of naturalistic flowers, or joined by naturalistic garlands. In these it is not the motifs or the naturalism which is new— all this may be found under Le Brun, for instance in the ornaments of the Salon de la Paix— but the incorporation of such arabesque elements as features of the frame. So, too, where a mask is surrounded by scrolls, this is a derivative not of the baroque cartouche, with its corporeal plasticity, but of arabesque motifs, linear and ethereal.
Only where there are coats-of-arms or cyphers, as over the mirror head of the Chambre du Roi and in the firebacks, do we still find cartouches of plastic baroque character, with borders of rollwork— a survival of the types of Le Brun, as the circular or oval medallions, the wings in certain instances, make clear.
35 IV, 513-518, 650.
3fi Dangeau, VII, 174, 178, 180.
37 A precious example, unique so far as we know, is in the Print Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
38 Geymuller: Baukunst der Renaissance in Frankreich, 1901, 347, sees the "bec-de-corbin" motif in the scrolled ears of architraves by Borromini (e.g. at the Sapienza). These motifs, however, lack the acanthus leaf which clearly indicates Lepautre's dependence on Berain.
[ 68 ]
Genesis
We may compare Lepautre's treatment here with Berain's in his chimney piece at Meu- don, in course of execution at the same moment, and in his engraved suite Desseins de cheminees (including that one) of which we have spoken, issued in 1699 or later. Berain's arabesque is a panel-filling. He may inscribe lines of bandwork with his typical motives, but he confines them within the mouldings, which themselves remain strictly geometrical— he does not transfer these motives to the frame. Lepautre, on the other hand, while modifying the moulded outline with such motives, abandons the painted arabesque filling. The only real fill- ing in his panels is a uniform carved diagonal "mosaic" of neutral effect (itself common since the time of Le Brun) occasionally used as a foil to the airy whiteness of the background else- where. This transformation of the arabesque from a flat filling to a carved frame was a sig- nificant contribution of Lepautre, destined to have far-reaching influence.
There is an equal contrast between their major architectural forms: Berain's are of man- nerist character, complex and broken, with academic proportions and bold projections: Le- pautre's are relatively very simple, with slender proportions and slight relief. The lightness of Berain's surface arabesques was in sharp contrast to his own treatment of masses. Le- pautre, having created a frame of plastic arabesque elements, now abandoned any massive architectural forms. Among the few survivals of architectonic elements are the pilaster strips which occasionally support the arches. They are themselves reduced to extreme slenderness, delicately panelled, with an invasion of relief ornaments at top, bottom, and centre. While in the design that serves as the title-page of Lepautre's suite the pilaster preserves a small capital and base, and the panel is geometrically outlined, in another design, where the strips support consoles, the geometrical outline is abandoned at the base, where the profile is given by a shell with pairs of opposite scrolls. The motifs are derived from Berain's painted bandwork in his pilaster-panels— the scrolls and palmettes being followed by an interlace and finial— but transposed from the flat to relief and already modifying the moulded out- line on the panel, as Berain's never did. Thus Lepautre struck out the way which was hence- forth to be followed.
Though, except in the Chambre du Roi, the new works at Marly were limited to isolated chimney pieces, and though we know them only from engravings, we can still feel their high artistic quality. From the marriage of frame and filling, of moulding and surface, of structure and ornament, of geometry and fantasy, had sprung a living entity, not only deeply new, but vitally perfect. It is a tribute to the perception of contemporaries that the quality of this creation was recognized almost instantly, that they could no longer accept anything which did not share it, or, in the end, possess it fully.
In the late spring of 1699 there had been proposals for certain changes in the Apparte- ment du Roi at Versailles: eliminating the attics of the chimney pieces in the Chambre du Roi and the Cabinet du Conseil, and enlarging the latter room, without changing its treat- ment. 39 These proposals, drawn up by other designers with traditional forms, were regis-
39 There were even suggestions for much more ambitious changes in the Chambre du Roi, one including the use of free-standing Ionic columns to frame the alcove — a scheme first adopted in the Chambre du Roi at Trianon in 1700. The design (o 1 1773) has two old endorsements "Pour la Reyne" and "Encien dessein de la Chambre de la Reyne," but these are surely in error — error committed in filing after memory of this fugitive proposal had vanished. There was no queen from 1684 to 1725; none thus during the period to which the technique of this drawing surely belongs. The Chambre de la Reine was but 23 feet high and was 30 feet wide, whereas this drawing shows a
[ 69 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
tered June 26, before the first of the new chimney pieces at Marly could have its effect. It was doubtless the dazzling novelty of their new ornaments, already realized, which led on August 21 to the abandonment of any minor undertakings in the Appartement du Roi, in favor of more sweeping changes to be made at a later day.
One enterprise at Versailles, which could not be postponed, was indeed carried through in 1699: the Appartement du Nuit of the Due de Bourgogne, who was to be united with his young bride in the autumn. We know how skilfully this was provided, by a small block di- viding the southern interior court and connecting the Antichambre du Roi with the Apparte- ment de la Reine, which had been assigned to the child princess in 1697. The order for this construction was given July 28. The drawings for the interiors (Figures 53, 54), by an un- identified draughtsman, 40 are already under the influence of the new work at Marly, adopt- ing some of the innovations of Lepautre, still but half understood.
That it was not Mansart or De Cotte who was responsible for originating the new treat- ment is shown by their failure to impose it not only on the designers of changes in the Ap- partement du Roi at Versailles but also on Carlier in his designs of February, 1700, for re- modelling the Chambre du Roi at Trianon (Figures 55, 56). In these the coves are reduced, the cornices raised, but with a still further multiplication of the tiers of rectangular panels. The artistic failure of this work, in contrast to the brilliant success of Lepautre at Marly, was such that the triumph of the new style soon became universal. Mansart and De Cotte henceforth adopted the style of Lepautre for all interior works, and, as we shall see, called on him personally to make the drawings for the most important ones.
One of the orders for Marly indicated another treatment, a "transitional" one— really a compromise after the fact, like all "transitions." The entry reads:
10 juin . . . Faire quatre cheminees de marbre . . . dans . . . l'appartement de Madame la Duchesse de Bourgogne dans l'attique du Chateau de Marly avec des dessus de me- nuiserie, depuis le dessus de la tablette jusques sous les corniches ornez de glaces et de cadres four les tableaux.* 1
Such chimney pieces, doubtless from the year 1699, are included in another rare suite of plates of Lepautre, the Livre de cheminees executees dans les apartemens de Versailles sur les des- seins de Monsieur Mansart Surintendant ... 43 The mirrors themselves are square or slightly oblong, rising half the height above the mantels. Their heads are sometimes straight, some- times of varied forms, with corners eased by C- or S-scrolls and with a central mask, shell, or
room 27 feet high and 25 feet wide. Now the existing Chambre du Roi was 27 feet high, and was 25 feet wide in the clear between the chimney breast and the opposite pier. Doubtless the design forms part of the series of pro- posals of early 1699.
40 Both the handwriting and the technique are very close to those of Carlier, but it is almost unthinkable that the author of these drawings, showing some receptiveness to innovation, should be the same man who, next year, was still immovably conservative.
41 This order was cancelled in August when the princess was assigned the Appartement Bas, but the type was em- ployed elsewhere, as we shall see.
43 It has escaped the cataloguers of his work, but exists in the fine early collection of Lepautre engravings at the Metropolitan Museum. The heights of the cornices would indicate that the rooms were in the premier etage of the wings of the chateau. One might hope that the rooms concerned might be identified by the paintings, with the aid of the inventories published by Engerand, of. cit., but this hope has proved vain, as Lepautre seems merely to have shown any painting of the right proportions, ignoring true sizes, as in the case of Raphael's St. Michael.
[ 70 ]
Genesis
palmette. The characteristic tendency is to include the upper motive of the chimney breast within a single tall frame which embraces both the mirror and the painting or relief above it (Figure 57). In the marble mantels there is considerable variety, with several elliptical and segmental arches, with consoles and panels tending to replace the old plain architraves.
Great ladies of the Court must at once have chimney pieces in the fashion. There exist sev- eral manuscript drawings for ones on the order of those at Marly, the touch of which, iden- tical with that of the Marly engravings, clearly established that they are by Pierre Lepautre (Figures 58, 59). 44 The fine pen-stroke does not differ essentially from the stroke of Le- pautre's free outline with needle or burin, alike facile and flowing, with slight shading. The heads above the arches are expressively indicated with a few touches, a dot under the line of the mouth being particularly characteristic. Lepautre's handling of the brush, and of colour, is here revealed to us. Narrow shadows are drawn in boldly with a very sure line of the brush. While the tints chosen, for woodwork, for glass, for marbles, are those which had be- come traditional in the Batiments, the tonality is paler and more neutral than with Lassur- ance or Carlier. One of these drawings (Figure 5) is inscribed, "Cheminee de Mad e La princesse de Conty a Versailles. Bon a Rivet menuisie et Tarlet marbrier. Le tout regie le I5 e Juin 1700. Mansart." 45 Another (Figure 6) seems to be for the chambre de Mme. la Duchesse de Chartres, ordered September 12, 1700.
By 1 70 1 a remodelling of the Appartement du Roi at Versailles could no longer be post- poned. It was executed, as we know, on a radical plan, taking for the Chambre du Roi the old central salon, with its greater size and height, extending the Antichambre to include the space vacated by the Chambre, and enlarging the Cabinet du Roi at the expense of the Cabinet des Perruques. The first two of these rooms remain substantially intact, among the chief monuments from the last period of the reign.
For the Chambre du Roi, designs survive at the Archives Nationales (o 1 1768, No. 66) which seem to have escaped the earlier students of Versailles (Figures 60, 61). They show successive studies for the rear wall. Although the drawing under the wash is here in pencil instead of pen, there is no difficulty in recognizing the same hand as in the drawings by Le- pautre which we have presented. There is the same free and sure drawing in of shadows with the brush, the same abbreviations for the scrollwork and mosdique y the same notably for pil- aster capitals. On the later alternates, more summarily sketched, the touch becomes pro- gressively bolder, the figures showing the greatest mastery and economy of line, with Le- pautre's characteristic shorthand for the faces.
While in this room the pilasters and doorcasings are survivals from the treatment of 1684, all else was, by successive orders, made new, and all was fused in the new spirit (Fig- ure 62). The effect of height was increased by the genial invention of the great arch, and by the new arches of chimney piece and opposite pier "renfermant des glaces jusqu'en haut," with details clearly designed by the same hand as those at Marly. Reclining cherubs over the mirror have the butterfly wings we have seen a generation before in the cornice of the Salle d'Abondance, and meanwhile in Berain's arabesques. The old overdoors "trop
44 Cabinet des Estampes, De Cotte collection, Ha 18, fols. 25 and 26.
45 Only the signature is Mansart's, not the other writing. Nolhac was in error when, in the Gazette des beaux- arts, 1 1 I e per., XXVIII, 1902, 41, he captioned this drawing "Croquis de Mansart." The order for the work, 15 juin 1700, is included in Mansart's register.
[ 71 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
pesants," were replaced j the heavy panels of the old doors were carved as best they could be with bandwork ornaments "riches et legers," the window heads and shutters were like- wise carved in Lepautre's new vocabulary of forms.
The Chambre du Louis XIV has been universally recognized as an artistic masterpiece of the first order, both representative and absolute. There is a union of qualities rarely found together: nobility and grace, splendour and moderation, richness and refinement, monu- mentally and delicacy, strength and lightness, in the vital synthesis of the perfect work of art.
Of the designs for the Antichambre (the Oeil-de-Boeuf ) and the Cabinet de Conseil, only rough office copies survive, 46 but many features reveal unmistakably the paternity of Pierre Lepautre. In the chimney piece of the Oeil-de-Boeuf (Figure 63), this is evident both for the mantel, with its oval arch, and for the great mirror with its concave upper cor- ners—features both first found in the examples at Marly. The tympanums of the windows are merely so many Marly mirror heads ; the concave window heads are rich adaptations of the same novel motives. Beneath the large paintings and mirrors of those rooms the panel- ling offered for the first time 47 large panels carved in the new manner, with a border of band- work with scrolled bill-hook corners. By contrast with the doors of Le Brun and Caffieri in r 679- 1 68 1 , where even the bandwork itself, united by gilding with major ornaments, con- stituted with them a panel filling, the treatment here may be thought 48 to represent a draw- ing together of the ornament into accented areas, contrasting with a nude background. It is truer genetically, however, to consider the scrollwork as an adjunct of the frame, invading the bare field at the ends and about a large central rosette. The motifs of this carved inva- sion of the broad panels are fundamentally the same as those of the narrow pilaster strips at Marly, although opposite scrolls of the interlace now enclose minor fields of appreciable area, filled with palmettes or fleurs-de-lys.
Many elements of the Oeil-de-Boeuf are actual remains of the old woodwork of the Chambre du Roi. The old pilasters were reused, merely elevated on dies to reach the raised position of the cornice, which itself was merely that of the Chambre du Roi extended around the enlarged room. The old overdoors remained, with a new frieze below of delicate scroll- work. After one has knowledge of the disparity of the elements of the wall one may find this somewhat disturbing, but as it has passed unnoticed by observers, one must concede that old and new are combined with remarkable skill and success.
The glory of the Oeil-de-Boeuf is its ceiling, which so genially takes advantage of every inch of height permitted by the roof construction and which masks the unusual resulting form by the superb inclined band above the cornice, incorporating the oeils-de-boeuj . The joy- ous, animated figures of playing infants by Van Cleve and his fellow sculptors are relieved against a continuous background of gilded mosa'ique, while branches of palm frame the open- ings. Here all was new, living, and beautiful.
46 O 1 1 770, liasse I , nos. I 5 and 15 bis; and O 1 1772, liasse 1 1, nos. 4 and 5. Cf. Kimball and A.-M.-E. Marie: "L'appartement du Roi," cited above.
47 The great horizontal panel on the east wall is evidently later in date than the others there; it is closely related to panels of the Salon des Sources at Trianon, 171 3, and to the doors of the chapel of Versailles at that time, hav- ing like some of those doors, a second, inner gilded band from which the interlaces of scrollwork take their rise.
48 As by R. Sedlmaier, Die Grundlagen der jransozischen Rokoko-Omamentik in Frankreich, 1917, 48 ff.
[ 72 ]
Genesis
In the Cabinet du Conseil (Figure 64) whereas proposals of the spring of 1699 had re- tained the full revetment of mirrors beginning at the floor with a division of the height at the top of the doors, the mirrors were now embraced in a more extensive framework of wood, rising unbroken from a dado to the main cornice. Arched heads with carved spandrels were placed over the mirrors at the cardinal points, as well as over the windows. It has not been appreciated that in the Cabinet de Conseil, again remodelled in 1755, much work of this period survives beside the window embrasures: the dado on the end walls, the friezes of the doors, and indeed the arched mirror frames themselves, with their spandrel ornaments, al- though the mirrors themselves may have been enlarged in an intermediate remodelling. 49
Unlike the other rooms of the suite, this one was cast in a single jet j it was wholly an em- bodiment of the new spirit. To reconstitute it in imagination we may turn to the Cabinet des Glaces at Trianon (Figure 74), in which, a few years later, its scheme was again incorpo- rated. There we may grasp and feel the artistic qualities of this first room which was wholly a work of Pierre Lepautre — instinct with smiling grace, with delicacy, with lightness.
It is small wonder, in view of the richness and novelty of all this treatment, that Dangeau should have written, on the return from Fontainebleau to Versailles, November 16, 1701 (VIII, 239) : "Le roi trouva ici son appartement d'une magnificence, d'un agrement et d'une commodite non pareils."
Even in the Grande Galerie Lepautre was called on to make certain designs for modifica- tions at this time. It is well known that the first set of bronze chutes d'armes were not deliv- ered until 1 70 1, when the King ordered them placed in the Salon de la Guerre, 50 and that it is not until this period that an order was given for additional examples for the gallery. It was to show their effect there, in place of the initial busts on consoles, that Lepautre made a long drawing of the gallery (o 1 1768), rendered in his characteristic manner. 51
At Trianon, too, the King had to have an apartment in the new style, created in 1 702 in the space hitherto occupied by the Salle de Comedie. From their character we cannot doubt that the details at least were drawn by Lepautre. These rooms, wholly new, exemplify the style more fully than could the remodellings at Marly and Versailles. The height of the walls was increased at the expense of the vaults, leaving the ceiling essentially flat, with a very small cove above the cornice. The panelling is of extreme importance, being the first in whole rooms of normal type treated in the new manner. We shall see that it embodies many innovations which have ordinarily been thought characteristic of a much later day.
The apartment consisted of Antichambre, Chambre, Cabinet, Grand Cabinet. The Grand Cabinet has long been swept away, the Cabinet absorbed in the enlarged Chambre, and the woodwork has been retouched in many places. Fortunately we have drawings (e.g. Figures 6s~6g) S2 — though small and summary ones— of the last three rooms of the suite, which en- able us to verify what parts of the finish survive from 1703 and to describe it as it then was.
49 Cf. "L'appartement du Roi," already cited, also A.-M.-E. Marie: "Le cabinet du conseil," a communication to the Societe de l'histoire de l'art frangais, 1940, unpublished.
50 Mansart's register, October 170 1.
61 o 1 1768, reproduced in "Mansart and Le Brun," loc.cit.
52 o 1 1884. In our paper on Trianon, of which the proof corrections were not received in Paris in time to be incorporated, these are captioned as being drawn by Robert de Cotte; we consider them today to be office copies, some of the captions of which were indeed written by him.
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The Creation of the Rococo
No longer are there any moulded imposts. Although the narrow piers on many walls are punctuated at half their height by rosettes or small ornamented traverses, the effect is now of a singe flight from dado to cornice. 53 On the broader surfaces, though there are again sev- eral tiers of shallow panels, they are differentiated, and subordinated to the general effect of height. Some of these panels surviving in the Antichambre have, within the rectangular outer moulding, an inner bead with scrolled crossettes— a multiplication of bands, as in the Cabinet du Conseil, which was to increase, in the most elaborate work, from double to triple. Already at Trianon, inside this inner ornamented bead, there is occasionally a further, third line, made by the moulded edge of a raised field, wholly nude, inscribed within the scroll- work of the crossettes— the forerunner of the fielded panels characteristic of the time of Louis XV. The bead itself is spirally wreathed with a delicate spray of flowers— the initial example of one of the favorite motifs of the coming reign. The modifications of the geo- metrical assemblage by carved scrollwork is carried into the pier glasses and into the over- doors, where in the Chambre du Roi the arched cornice on consoles, crowning the oval frame, is almost the only feature which preserves any academic or corporeal character. In the Grand Cabinet the overmantel mirror, square in a first study, is arched to the cornice. The weight and relief of all the mouldings is greatly reduced, and the whole panelling takes on an ethereal lightness and delicacy.
The marble chimney pieces shown need not detain us, as they are of types identical with those by Lepautre we have already seen.
In spite of the many losses and later retouches, we can, by an effort of mental reconstruc- tion, recover something of the artistic effect of this suite, where, as in the Cabinet du Con- seil at Versailles, all was new and coherent. No longer was there any substantial admixture of plastic survivals. Everywhere the linear, surface quality predominated, in a fine-spun net of delicate mouldings and carved scrolls— the mouldings themselves being now incorpo- rated with the carving by spiral sprays. The framework was now fully autonomous and self- sufficient, an end in itself, delighting the beholder by its free play.
Lepautre's hand may be recognized beyond doubt in the subsequent work at Trianon. In 1705 there were new chimney pieces at Trianon-sous-Bois of which the mirror frames ring the changes on the Marly types. In 1 706 there were new and more delicate cornices, placed higher, in many of the rooms of the Chateau. Several of these (Figures 70-72) are includ- ed, with others, in the engraved suite Livre de differentes corniches executees dans le chateau de Versailles sur les desseins de Monsieur Mansart Surintendant . . . dessine et grave far P. Le Pautre. 5 * The great majority are still full entablatures} but there are some with merely an astragal in place of the architrave, as in that of the Salon de Musique. The frieze is now sometimes given a concave or reverse curvature as in the Salon Frais, where the concave frieze, di- vided by shallow consoles, and with playful figural ornaments, is already prophetic of fu- ture developments. Four feet was added to the wall in certain rooms, notably the Salon de Musique, where the overdoors are of this period. At this time also the Salon de la Chapelle received its present treatment with taller composite pilasters (Figure 73), and the Cabinet
53 These piers, as we see them today, were later modified by the substitution of single tall panels: those of the Antichambre perhaps about 171 2, those of the Chambre apparently after I 730.
54 A rare copy, perhaps unique, is in the Print Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is datable from the Trianon cornices as after 1706.
[ 74 ]
Genesis
des Glaces its graceful smiling decoration (Figure 74), confining the mirrors within arched frames as had been done in the Cabinet de Conseil at Versailles in 1701. Both are shown in other engravings by Pierre Lepautre.
Latest of the works at Trianon was that in the Salon des Sources, remodelled in 1 7 1 3, where the carving of this time includes the large horizontal panels, the tall uninterrupted pilaster-like strips and the ovals of the piers, with their characteristic scrollwork.
In these and other works of Lepautre the profiles of the mouldings are not of new types, the basic form continuing to be the baroque ovolo or bolection. What is new in these profiles is their scale, reduced to a linear slenderness and lightness in complete contrast to the plastic massiveness of the baroque.
Even before Lepautre's first decorations were being executed in the royal chateaux, he had made for the Batiments the first design for a major religious work, the altar of Notre Dame de Paris. We are forced to discuss this project in some detail, for Lepautre's connec- tion with it has not been appreciated and the evolution of the design itself has not hitherto been adequately established. 55
December 19, 1698, Dangeau had noted in his journal 56 the King's gift of a large sum for this purpose, in fulfilment of the old vow of Louis XIII. Of the character of the first design, our chief idea hitherto has been derived from descriptions of the medal by Roussel and De Launay 57 placed in the cornerstone December 7, 1699, of which an example is now repro- duced here (Figure 76). As Germain Brice wrote in 1 7 1 3 (III, 264), it shows the altar "de quatre colonnes torses, d'ordre compose, posees en demy cercle, qui portoient un demy bald- aquin."
The original design for the altar in this form has lain, apparently unobserved, at the Archives Nationales (o 1 1690, No. 52). It bears on the back the endorsement, entirely in Mansart's bold hand: "Arete par le Roy ce 19 mars 1699, Mansart." 58 The same date ap- pears in his endorsement of a memorandum (No. 36), "Depense a faire pour l'Autel de Notre Dame," totalling 287,000 livres: "regie ce Jour duy— a Marly par le Roy pour estre execute— et depancer 40,000 par annee a commancer de eel de 1699 19 mars."
This drawing, which we reproduced for the first time (Figure 7 5), 59 is from the hand of Pierre Lepautre. Drawn on a large fair sheet, it is inked with easy mastery and finely ren- dered in colour.The identity of technique with Lepautre's drawings and engravings extends to the indication of every individual motif of ornament— palms, bell-flower, acanthus, fleur- de-lys, shell, guilloche. The suggestion of the faces, the drawing of the figure, nervous and muscular, and of the wings all conform with the technique of Pierre Lepautre, indeed the crowning group is almost identical with one in the designs for the Chambre du Roi.
5d M. Vloberg: 'Notre-Dame de Paris et le voeu de Louis XIII, 1926, reproduced some of the designs for the altar, but he apparently did not know those illustrated here, and thus failed to disentangle the evolution. 66 VI, 477. December 21 he reports the amount as 500,000 livres.
57 Their authorship of the medal is indicated by the Comftes, IV, 485, 488. In Mansart's register, O 1 I 809, we find the authorization for it under date of 1 2 juin, 1699.
58 Ibid., 4 mars, 1699: "M. Mansart a fait voir au Roi le dessein en forme circulaire de l'autel de Notre- Dame, que sa Majeste a approuve." Following preparation of the estimate, royal authority to proceed is also re- corded here, 19 mars.
59 "The Creation of the style Louis XV," loc. cit.
[ 75 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
Lepautre's design of 1699 for Notre Dame, with its twisted columns, did not represent an isolated and radical adoption of a baroque type ; Mansart had apparently adopted the scheme, the year before, for the high altar of the Invalides. 60 Lepautre's design is in many regards a conservative version of the baroque type, reverting to more geometrical lines. The plan is a semicircle} the canopy has a semi-circular arch, disguised but slightly by the fronds of palm— very different from the consoles at Saint-Peter's, the Val-de-Grace, or the Inva- lides. The spacing of the columns is uniform, instead of being unequal in balanced groups. Still architectonic and plastic, the altar and its canopy tend from energy toward equilibrium.
The treatment of the arcades of the choir and apse around the baldaquin deserves some at- tention, especially as, in the end, this treatment was to become dominant in the design. The Gothic piers were to be given a revetment of marble with round arches, above which were pairs of seated female figures supporting shields. The piers, with panels in slight relief, were to be adorned with trophies of arms.
The Camples regarding Notre Dame reveal numerous payments in 1699 for the execution of a model of the altar in wood. The first stone of the foundations was laid December 7, 1699, and the model at full size was exhibited June 19, 1700, 61 but met with much criticism. The King inspected the model on his visit to Paris May 20, 1701, "le trouva mal place," as Dangeau reports (VIII, 105), and called for a vote of the canons as to its location. 62 In Sep- tember, 1703, the model was demolished. 63 In an unpublished contemporary resume of the history of the project (o 1 1690, No. 44) we read: "En 1703 M. De Cotte ecrivit au Chapitre en ces termes: 'Le Roy a vu le nouveau dessein de l'Autel de Notre-Dame; il ma paru con- tent. Nous allons travailler en conformite tant a l'autel qu'au dessus de chaises et jube.' Le dessein a ete execute."
What appear to be the first tentative versions of the new design, thus datable probably from 1703, exist in three variants preserved at the Cabinet des Estampes (Va 259b). 64 The drawings (Figures 77-79), which we lately published for the first time, are likewise from the hand of Pierre Lepautre. This is shown not only by absolute identity of the tricks of hand with corresponding features in the design of 1699 (e.g., the crucifix) but also by inde- pendent analogies of indication with other drawings and engravings of Lepautre. The me-
60 Francart was paid in October, 1698, for a "tableau en grand" and, in November, for "desseins en grand." From October, 1 700, to November, 1 704, there are payments for a wooden model or models. As executed in 1705 the baldachino had six twisted columns jointed by straight entablatures. An engraving of the work, long destroyed, is given in Granet: L'histoire de V Hotel ties Invalides, 1736.
81 We learn the date from a memorandum of severe "Observations," O 1 1 690, No. 37.
62 From this time will come the studies for placing a similar baldaquin in other positions in the cathedral, reproduced by Vloberg, of. cit. One (pi. XXXVII), apparently by Lepautre, is a perspective showing it placed under the crossing. The colonnes torses are abandoned in favor of fluted Corinthian columns. Another (Figure 104), described by Vloberg as "Dessin de Robert de Cotte," is inscribed "Idee d'un particulier" and would ap- pear to be one of the suggestions volunteered at this period. It places the baldaquin at the entrance to the choir, flanked by remains of the old jube of the early XVII e century (cf. Vloberg, pi. XVII). From the technique and details of this design the "particulier" might well seem to have been Oppenord, just back from seven years study of the baroque in Italy and eager for employment (cf. Grand Offenord, pi. LXXXXVIII).
B3 Comftes, IV, 957. Some late payments for further demolition of the "ancien modele" occur in I 709 (V, 342).
64 Courajod, writing in the Nouvelles archives de Part jrancais, 1873, 356-358, erroneously supposed these drawings to be of the period of 1699.
[ 76 ]
Genesis
dium is again the same — pen and coloured wash, with similar tonality— although there is a somewhat freer and bolder shading with the brush.
It was now proposed to abandon any boldly plastic central feature, and to develop the surrounding walls of the apse. Near the back of the apse was to be a low altar table like a sarcophagus, with a relief of Louis XIII kneeling before the Virgin with the dead Christ. Around the sanctuary, on pedestals flanked by consoles, were to stand angels holding flam- beaux. In the first version an angel also occupies a niche in the central arch. The second version shows under the arch, instead, an elaborate tabernacle corbelled on consoles adorned with winged cherub-heads. In the third variant, from which the executed designs were later developed, the relief of the Pieta, with the monarch in adoration, is enlarged and removed from the altar- front to fill the central arch or niche, above which a glory with adoring angels replaces the royal coat-of-arms with its supporters. It was in harmony with the spirit of the new style that the scheme adopted should have been not the architectonic nor the plastic one, but the one in low relief, in which the surface dominated. The trophies of the piers below the imposts are now tro-phees d'eglhe. Above are panels of mosa'ique with rondels at half their height. The motifs meanwhile developed in domestic interiors thus begin to make a modest appearance in monumental religious work.
The execution of the altar was deferred until after the death of Mansart, with further modifications which we shall discuss in their place.
Meanwhile a project of related character, for the choir of the Cathedral of Orleans, had received the attention of the Batiments. The approved design for the stalls (Figure 80) was one presented in 1702 by Jacques Gabriel, Controleur General des Batiments du Roi. 65 Now Jacques Gabriel, while an efficient executive, was, according to the passage we have quoted from Mariette, incapable of drawing the least detail of ornament. When we examine the surviving woodwork of the stalls and of the episcopal throne (designed in 1705), 66 we realize at once that he had recourse to the gifted designer of the Batiments, who had just created these new forms.
We see that Lepautre embodies here in church woodwork the ideas he had developed in the panelling of the palaces. While most of the panels are geometrical, those above the arches, like those above chimney pieces elsewhere, are truncated with scrolled hawk's-bills. In the panels of the pedestal below the episcopal throne are the rosettes and interlaces of the dados at Versailles. The scheme of the ovals within an arch on consoles is like that of the overdoors in the new Appartement du Roi at Trianon, designed the same year, and corre- sponds even more closely to one of Lepautre's engraved designs for interiors at this period (Figure 81).
It should be noted that the tro-phees d'eglise, here employed as a major decorative feature,
65 Adjudication de 30 juin, 1702, published with other documents by G. Vignat in Reunion des societes des beaux-arts des defartements, XVII, 1893, 722-756, and by G. Chenesseau: Sainte-Croix d^Orleans, 1 921, 199- 213. The carving of the stalls and of the throne was executed by Dugoullons (so he signed his name in one of the documents), the medallions of the life of Christ being from drawings and models furnished by Robert Le Lorrain, as the younger Dargenville notes in his life of the sculptor.
66 The throne has been twice restored on different schemes, to incorporate the columns, the balustrade and basement, and the coat of arms with its supporters, which are original. We may doubt whether a scroll pediment, which today supports the arms, would have been used by Pierre Lepautre.
[ 77 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
were the first conspicuous executed examples of this motif, foreshadowed in baroque Italy and henceforth so widely adopted. Its use was in contravention of a recent dictum of the Academy of Architecture, in discussing Blondel's remarks on trophies at its seance of June 3, 1697 (present: De La Hire, Desgodetz, Dorbay, Felibien) : "il serait mal a propos de repre- senter en trophee, mesmes dans les eglises, des chandeliers, des calices, des burettes et autres choses semblables, qu'on n'a pas coutume d'attacher et mettre en trophee." 67 Thus a new freedom transcended academic bounds and pointed toward the future.
The stalls, restored in 1937- 193 8 to their original site though not wholly to their original relationships, speak to us today with ringing brilliance. Less delicate in voice than the house- music of the domestic interiors, theirs has a sonority and volume which is not less moving.
The succession of the Marquis (later Due) d'Antin as Directeur-general des Batiments du Roi 08 and of Robert de Cotte to the post of Premier Architecte on the death of Mansart, May 1 1, 1708, brought little change, at first, in the artistic responsibility for design. Where the memoirs previously said "sur les desseins du Sr. Mansart," they now read "sur les desseins du Sr. de Cotte." In one case as in the other this was merely a uniform official formula, which tells us nothing as to the real authorship. Afterwards, as before, we find in the bulging dos- siers of the organization, and equally in the rich collection of drawings which passed to the descendants of the Premier Architecte, no preliminary sketches from his hand for any of the royal works.
There were few important additions to the staff. Jossenet, Carlier cadet, Aubert and Lambert (d. 1709) who came in as draughtsmen in 1708, scarcely represent significant acces- sions in design. More important may have been the return of Boff rand, who was paid as Archi- tecte from March 21, 1709, at the low rate of 1000 livres yearly, although again we find no drawings from his hand for decorative commissions. These were still handled by Pierre Le- pautre, who continued as Dessinateur at the salary of 2000 livres.
One new force in the Batiments, destined soon to gain great importance, was the sculptor Frangois-Antoine Vasse (1681-1736). Like Berain and Lepautre he was never in Italy. He had worked first with his father Antoine in the Arsenal at Toulon, for which Berain had furnished ornamental designs since 1687, 69 so that he must have been familiar from child- hood with the basic ornamental forms of this godfather of the rococo. He may have come to Paris in 1698, at the age of seventeen. We hear of him there in the distribution of prizes to the students of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture, as winner of the first prize for the spring quarter of 1707. 70 This was presented to him by the Due d'Antin, opening the series of awards made, belatedly, at the session of December 1, 1708, the first attended by the new Protector.
By September of this year 1708, under the administration of D'Antin and De Cotte, Vasse was engaged as a decorative sculptor at Versailles. He became, as we shall see, the
87 Proces-verbaux, III, 1 1 .
B8 Regarding this appointment, which evoked the jealous comments of Saint-Simon, cf. "Memoires du due d'Antin" in Melanges fublies far la Societe ties bibliofhiles jranqais, 1822. Of De Cotte he says (p. 70), "homme de probite et de merite"; of Mansart (p. 74), "je dois lui rendre justice, il n'a ni friponne, ni vole."
69 Weigert, of. cit., 1 16 ff.
70 Proces-verbaux, LV, 73.
[ 78 ]
Genesis
favorite sculptor of De Cotte. 71 His abilities were not limited merely to execution j by 171 1 we shall find him also making drawings, and thus fully responsible for the advanced char- acter of certain crucial works. In 171 5, indeed, he was to be made Dessinateur General de la Marine, a post of which Berain had performed the functions, although he had been refused the title.
In the years still remaining to Louis XIV, De Cotte was to have few opportunities to deco- rate domestic interiors in the royal chateaux. There was indeed one important work under construction, the Chateau Neuf at Meudon. The woodwork and carving fall in the years 1708 and 1709. The rooms of the Dauphin's apartment had boiseries carved by Dugoullons and his atelier, some being decorated au vernis by Claude Audran ; we cannot doubt that they were generally similar to Lepautre's designs of just this time at Trianon. The destruction of the Chateau in 1870 leaves us with little evidence as to the precise forms of this work. 72 At the very end of the reign, in 1714, 73 there were extensive remodellings in the Appartement du Roi at Fontainebleau, but subsequent changes in the most important rooms leave us uncer- tain as to the exact identity of the elements there from this time. In minor rooms at Fon- tainebleau from this campaign the detail is closely similar to what we shall find just then at Bercy, to be discussed later.
The great enterprise in progress at De Cotte's accession was the decoration of the Cha- pelle de Versailles, of which the major forms, as executed, go back to designs of 1699. 74 They were magnificently recorded in the folio Les Plans, coupes, prof Us et elevations de la chapelle du chateau royal de Versailles, leves Cf? graves par Pierre Lepautre, architecte Cf? graveur du Roy. It is not, however, on this his record of the completed work that we base our suggestion that Le- pautre had a large share in the decorative design, where it was obviously desired to exploit as much as possible the new style he had created. There survive numerous manuscript drawings from his hand for this adornment.
The most important of Lepautre's designs are for the apse of the chapel with the high altar. One large sheet (Figure 8 2) 75 shows the whole breadth of the nave. No less than eleven flaps, now mounted separately (Va 361, tome VII), give alternate designs for the altar with its flanking figures. All these are rendered in wash in Lepautre's characteristic blond tonality, identical in touch and degree of development with the drawings of 1703
71 Vasse's early success evidently went somewhat to his head, for we find him in I 71 3 demanding to enter first at the Ecole du Modele, before all the students and with the professor who posed the model, "s'estant mesme ex- plique qu'il seroit autorise dans sa pretention par Monseigneur le Due d'Antin," a pretention which was rejected by the Protector and the Academy.
72 At the Archives Nationales the drawings of Meudon in the carton o 1 1524 include no interiors of the Cha- teau Neuf. Mariette's engraved section, taken on the axis, gives us only one panelled room, of little elaboration. One would expect that photographs of the interiors might survive, but our search for them has not been successful.
73 Comftes, V, 786, 821, 823. Cf. Dangeau, XV, 219-220, Saint-Simon, XXV, 98. For the Salle du Conseil, modified first in 1738 and again in 1 75 2-1 754, we have a drawing by Gabriel at the latter period (pi. XLIII in E. de Fels: Ange-Jacques Gabriel, 191 2) which shows at the left the work before his changes, but we cannot be sure how much of this goes back to 1 714.
74 We hope in future to say more than has yet been said as to the evolution of the general design of the Chapel to the form adopted. Lassurance, as surviving drawings show, had certainly a large part in it. In the ordonnance much depended necessarily on the masonry surviving from earlier beginnings, which was skillfully modified to give the whole a new character.
75 Cabinet des Estampes, Topographie, format 6.
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The Creation of the Rococo
for the apse and altar of Notre Dame, with which they are also closely related in style and motif.
The basic drawing, already indicating all the wealth of sculptured ornamentation the chapel was to receive, shows this in forms antedating the execution of any of it, and was thus made not later than the spring of 1708. 76 Lepautre here treats the altar-front with his characteristic panel-work; above it he places a retable composed with motifs from Berain. Later alternates offer a variety of tabernacles and baldachinos, as well as large reliefs filling the arch: a Nativity, a Resurrection, a Pieta, and angels flanking a glory— the scheme adopted in the relief executed by Van CI eve, on which he received a first payment May 25, 1708. In the several studies, the flanking figures are sometimes saints, sometimes angels, standing or kneeling, the last foreshadowing those finally carried out.
For the spandrels of the choir, Lepautre proposed groups of three angel-musicians; we know that, after Coustou had experimented with models of two angels, the scheme of a single angel with a cherub was adopted in execution. For the piers Lepautre proposed trophees d'eglise as in the stalls at Orleans— "les ornaments sacres des eglises," as Felibien says, "avec les armes que les rois de France ont fait servir a la defense et a la propagation de la foi." 77 Already in the drawing before us he suggests some of the motifs employed in a hun- dred variations of those which are the chief magnificence of the decoration of the chapel. The bands of interlace on the soffits of the arches are also indicated here generically ; we can- not doubt that the motifs of the pendentives and the rosettes of the aisle vaults (Figure 86) as well as the backgrounds of mosaique—a.\\ so consonant with his earlier work— derive also from Lepautre. Indeed the only surviving drawing for such elements (o 1 1782), a very large one for a tapering compartment of the apse vault seems to be by Lepautre.
At the Archives Nationales are studies for several other architectural features of the Chapel; 78 all those surviving from the time of its first building may be recognized as in the technique of Lepautre. They include early projects for the altar of the Virgin, the altar of the Holy Sacrament, and the altars of the aisles. These altars, first discussed in a prelimi- nary memorandum of January, 1 707, were executed on a somewhat modified scheme from 1708 to 1 7 10, when the Chapel was consecrated on June 5. Our drawings will thus be from 1707 or early 1708.
We may take as a specimen the altar of the Virgin, occupying the central chapel on the north at the gallery level. 79 The upper portion remains unchanged and enables us to identify two pencil drawings, closely similar, as preliminary studies for this altar (Figure 83). The indication of every motif— the heads, the scrolls, the acanthus leafage, the carving of the mouldings, the mosaiques—'vs identical with what we have seen in Lepautre's line drawings and engravings.
76 The dates and names of executants are covered by L. Deshairs: Documents inedits sur la chafelle de Chateau de Versailles, 1906, reprinted with fuller detail from his paper in the Revue de I'histoire de Versailles, VII, 1905, 241-262. Van Cleve had 4000 livres on May 28, I 708, "sur les ouvrages de bronze qu'il a fait pour le grand autel." The first payments for any of the stone carving shown in this drawing are of September 3, 1 708.
77 MS. published by Nolhac: La chafelle royale de Versailles, n.d. [ 1 91 2] .
78 O 1 1782, 1783.
79 Its original form as executed is established by the engravings of the chapel and by Felibien's description, both included by Nolhac in La Chafelle royale de Versailles.
[ 80 ]
Genesis
The project for the altar of the Virgin is not based on Italian altarpieces, but is a com- position of original type, of elements already familiar to us in his secular work. In the great frame of the painting, the outline repeats that of mirror frames at Marly and in the Oeil- de-Boeuf, though winged cherub heads— a Renaissance motif revived by Borromini, used occasionally by Le Brun and Jean Lepautre and by Oppenord in designs of 1704 as we shall see — form the central motif and replace the leafage at the upper corners. In the posi- tion, they constitute, with others in the Chapelle de Versailles, the earliest examples I know in French architecture of tetes en esfagnolette.
That the superb doors of the chapel and its vestibules, carved in 17 10, with their great oval rosettes (Figure 85) were made from drawings by Lepautre is a conclusion which is in- escapable. Perfectly coherent in style with the projects for altar-frontals, as with the panels of this time at Versailles and Trianon, they show a culmination of his personal development, beginning with the chimney pieces at Marly, and have indeed served as classical paradigms of this phase of style. 80 The change from the work of 1699 and 1702 is most obvious in the liaison of the divisions by interpenetrating scrolls, and in the more impassioned curvature. In several instances an inner band reinforces the scrolled outline and defines the bare inner field.
More than a quarter century after completion of the chapel the obituary of Francois- Antoine Vasse said of him : "II a fait tous les Desseins et Modeles des Archivoltes et Trophees des Piliers de la Chapelle du Chateau de Versailles, du grand Autel, Chaire a precher et les Tribunes du Roy et de la Reine, le Lutrin et plusieurs bas-reliefs." 81 This statement, which has escaped the writers of monographs of the chapel, obviously calls for careful verification.
We have seen that the first designs for the high altar were made by Pierre Lepautre, and that these show also the genesis of the reliefs of the spandrels, the archivolts and the pillars of choir and nave, with their trophies. Payments for the carving of these motifs of the ground story began September 3, 1708. As early as January 19, however, La Pierre was re- ceiving a first payment on two of the reliefs of musical trophies in the tribune of the apse, reliefs which, with those of Le Lorrain at the same moment for the royal tribune, first set the style of execution for all the trophies of the chapel.
When we come to the pillars of the nave, we find that the first of all payments for them was to Vasse, September 3 (V, 216), this being also the first time that the artist, then twenty- seven, appears in the royal accounts. It was "sur quatre bas-reliefs de trophees d'eglise du pourtour d'un des piliers"— which we know from memoirs published by Deshairs was the fourth pillar on the right. This is also, as it happens, the only pillar where the trophy on the face was not carved by the same artist who executed the angel in the spandrel above— in this case Thierry, apparently later than the trophy. The other trophies of the face of the pillars, which we cannot exactly date, were carved each by a different artist, including men of such rank as Le Lorrain and Nicolas Coustou. April 20, 1709 (V, 214) Gaillard, Noel and Du- goullons were paid no less than 16,000 livres "sur les ornemens des trophees d'eglise des pilliers du rez de chausee"; these and many more by other sculptors were those of the aisles. From September, 1 709, to January, 1 710, Vasse again had 1050 livres on eight trophies for the pillars of the nave, some of these being on the sides and back of pillars of which the
80 Sedlmaier, of. cit., 52-53. 81 Mercure, March, 1736, 531.
[ 81 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
face was carved by others. His whole account, totalling 10,270 livres for such trophies and for carvings in wood for the pulpit was finally settled in October, 17 10.
We see that Vasse was indeed largely concerned with the trophies of the pillars, that he may have carved the first of these to be executed and thus have established their depth of relief —less than that of the larger trophies above. Clearly, however, his work was subse- quent to Lepautre's general design for the pillars, and follows the general suggestion and character of the earlier trophies by Le Lorrain and La Pierre above. That Vasse, the young newcomer, may have designed the trophies of the aisles executed by such men as Dugoullons and his associates is readily possible ; that he gave designs for those by sculptors like Coustou and Le Lorrain is barely conceivable. More probably, after many years, the execution of eight out of over eighty trophies had become the designing and modelling of all.
In all these compositions, as in the military trophies of Ladoireau— so long ago begun, but so lately completed and placed in the Salon de la Guerre— any suggestion of symmetry is rare. There is a wealth of movement, not only in the placing of the major elements, but also in the lines of palm which so often add their reverse curvature. The endless variety and profusion, within the unity of scheme and treatment, make the adornment of the chapel in- comparable in richness since the Middle Ages.
For the high altar, where the executed work differs in many ways from Lepautre's early designs, Van Cleve's memoir of over 37,000 livres cover every phase of the work, including "60 journees a plusieurs petits modeles en terres et cires." The only payment to Vasse in con- nection with the high altar was a small one of 171 1 (V, 533) "pour le modele du nouveau pro- jet du tabernacle"— the tabernacle which disappeared at the Revolution. On the other hand, Thierry, Vasse, Cayot and Desjardins were paid 7000 livres in 17 10 "sur les ouvrages de bronze qu'ils font l'autel de la Vierge, et les cinq autels des bas-cotez" (V, 415)— altars of which the first designs, generally followed, had been drawn by Pierre Lepautre.
We turn now to the woodwork of the chapel, the ecclesiastical furniture, the oratories, the pulpit, the stalls and the organ — which include some of the freest and most advanced designs. Though so much of this is destroyed, we are not wholly without recourse as to its form. Some of it appears in Lepautre's engraved sections, and we have later drawings of certain elements.
The two oratories which stood at the western end of the aisles, later the Oratoires de Mesdames, had a crown of free profile— a concave pedestal with consoles at the corners, bearing a scrolled urn. Lepautre's section makes evident that the "changement" shown in a later drawing by Gabriel (Figure 84) was merely a rearrangement, on a new plan, of the existing elements which clearly reveal Lepautre's authorship of their original design.
The tourelles of the oratories of the royal tribune are shown in the engraved section. Oval in plan, they had, belatedly, the character of a baroque belfry, with crown of consoles. Vasse was the carver of these, the accounts (V, 493) confirming his obituary to that degree.
The form of the pulpit, which the obituary also attributes to Vasse, is preserved to us by certain graphic documents (Figure 8 8). 82 For perhaps the first time since the Renaissance,
82 From an album of sketches, of which one is signed Tanche, 1770, in the Fromageot collection, it was first reproduced by Deshairs, of. cit. The pulpit also appears, more clearly, in the engraving of C.-N. Cochin the younger, Ceremonie du mariage de Louis, Daufhin de France . . . dans la Chafelle . . . de Versailles le XXIII jevrier MDCCXLV.
\ 82 ]
Genesis
it was a pulpit of circular plan; its profile was a reverse curve. The canopy, also circular, was of generally concave profile, buttressed at intervals by motifs of cartouche and scroll which clung very closely to the surface. The wax models were made by Bertrand, La Pierre and Vasse, 83 and Vasse, as his obituary stated, did indeed make the eagle of the lectern. 84 This was perhaps the extent of his carving on the pulpit, for which we have already seen he was paid in 1710.
It is the organ case, executed in 1709-iyioand still surviving (Figure 87), which most fully embodies the new spirit appearing in the decoration of the chapel. Here we are in an exceptionally favourable position for comparisons, with the organ of Saint-Quentin designed by Jean Berain in 1697, 85 just prior to Lepautre's first work from the Crown. That organ— itself representing great innovations in the traditional type— is extremely massive, in an ef- fort to achieve academic proportions. Its broad base is panelled without other carving than garlands over certain rondels. We remark particularly that there is no smallest suggestion of a plastic modification of the geometrical outline of the panels, no trace of application to the framework of motives of Berain's painted arabesque— an application which we have sig- nalized as Lepautre's decisive and fruitful contribution, transforming the evolution of style.
In the organ of Versailles we see, first, a reversion to the "Gothic" from which Berain expressly sought to escape. 86 The towers are accepted as the principal motifs; there is no effort to disguise the plate-faces by treatment a I'halienne. The pipes are supported by a spreading cove in a manner unused since the sixteenth century (Amiens, Rheims, Ecouen) but related to the cove of Lepautre's proposed tabernacle for Notre Dame de Paris in one of the projects of 1 703. The case for the first time takes on a concave form, to remain character- istic throughout the following reign. The panel-frames of the substructure and of the cove have Lepautre's characteristic outline and ornaments, the frame of the jenetre des claviers is richly scrolled with related motifs. The trophies of musical instruments, employed in pierced form by Berain, here continue the tradition of Lepautre from the stalls of Orleans; the royal arms with their supporting Victories have many analogies in his previous designs. The palm trunks rising at the angles were the first examples in interior decoration of the motif appearing in exterior designs for the Chapel at the extremity of the roof and executed in 1707 by the sculptors Guillaume Coustou and Lepautre. Naturally the gifted sculptors who executed the carvings had liberty to modify their details, but the instance of Saint-Quentin, where we can compare design and execution, shows that such modifications will have been minor and that the artistic credit rests primarily with the designer.
No mention of the organ is made in Vasse's obituary, and the accounts do not connect him with it in any way. The models for the Victories, the relief of King David, and the other figural motifs were made by Philippe Bertrand. 87 We cannot doubt, however, that in this
83 Deshairs: Chafelle . . . de Versailles, 48, 49.
84 His memoir of 4900 livres for it is noted, ibid., 48.
85 Cf. A. Sangel: Les grandes orgues . . . de Saint-Quentin, 1925, 18, which reproduces Berain's original de- sign, and N. Dufourc: L'Orgue en France, 1935, 352-356 and pis. LX, LXI, which reproduce drawings of it by Berain fils, 1701, from the Tessin papers in the National Museum, Stockholm. Cf. Also Weigert, of. cit., I, pi. XIV.
86 Letter of Cronstrom to Tessin, October 16, 1700, quoted by Dufourc, of. cit., p. 356.
87 Deshair's Chafelle . . . de Versailles, 48, 49.
[ 83 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
instance the essential responsibility for the design, as for so much of the decoration of the chapel, lay with Pierre Lepautre.
For the marble pavement of the chapel, there is a study (Figure 89) 88 which we cannot doubt was, like the engraved plan of the executed pavement, by Pierre Lepautre. The drawing of the royal arms in the centre is sufficient to identify his technique. The essential novelty in the design of the pavement was its use of marquetry of marble, the first sugges- tion for such a use of it in France. Within the main rectangles the outlines of the major panels, defined by handwork, are of simple geometrical form — oval, octagonal, or lozenge— less complex in outline than Berain's in the wooden marquetry of the Petite Galerie. In the subordinate details, on the other hand, there is free use of Lepautre's characteristic motifs, C-scrolls with a suggestion of leafage, long panels with end interlaces and a central rosette, occasional backgrounds of diagonal mosaic. The proposed treatment proved, indeed, too elab- orate for execution on such a scale in the unhappy years of war. 89 The wealth of novel orna- ment was transferred to the Savonnerie carpets from cartoons by Fontenay. 90 The one for the royal tribune from 17 10 (or a duplicate supplied in 1734), preserved at Saint Eustache, 01 is quite in the new style created by Pierre Lepautre.
Work on the altar of Notre Dame was resumed November 3, 1708, with financial assist- ance assured in September by the canon Antoine de la Porte, who died December 24, 1710. The proposed treatment at about this period appears in the painting of Jouvenet, La messe du chano'ine de la Porte at the Louvre, showing the monstrance he presented to the cathedral June 7, 1708. The background, reputedly painted by Feuillet (cf. Biographie Universelle, 1 81 8, article Jouvenet), has an irreality which betrays that it was executed from drawings. The main group of the niche is now an Entombment, above which floats a group with God the Father upborne by angels. On the face of the altar is a relief of the Last Supper. More- advanced drawings for the work (Figures 90-91) — still made certainly prior to the end of 171 1, as antedating the execution of features executed in 171 2— we recognize as also from the hand of Lepautre. 92 They show a great elaboration of the ironwork, as carried out in 1 71 3 (V, 692), in a development of Berain's style. The angels with their torches now stand on corbels or culs-de-lampe fronted by cartouches flanked with palms. At the entrance, on either side of the gates, appear marble altars in the form of a triptych, with the Madonna in a central niche flanked by saints.
For the altar table proper, Lepautre prepared certain early studies of moulded architec- tural profile, 93 but the final design (Figure 92) so richly sculptural, was made, as we shall
88 o 1 1783.
89 The pavement laid in 1709-1712 from designs of Fontenay {Comftes, V, 315, 617) is purely geometrical, in a style almost indistinguishable from that of the Invalides, executed from designs of 1701-1705 by Lespingola and Fontenay (IV, 727, 846, 1 175).
90 V, 315, 340, 617.
01 Cf. C. Jouhannaud in Gazette des beaux-arts, VI e per., VIII, 1932, 249 and P. Verlet, ibid., XVII, 1937, 180-182. In the De Cotte albums at the Cabinet des Estampes, Ha 18, along with drawings by Lepautre, are cer- tain designs for carpets, now inaccessible, which may have some bearing.
92 Reproduced by Vloberg, of. cit., XLI, and XLII, both attributed by Vlobert to De Cotte, among whose papers they are preserved at the Cabinet des Estampes. The latter drawing is also reproduced by M. Aubert: "Les trois jubes de Notre-Dame de Paris," in Revue de Vart ancien et moderne, XLIII, 1923, 112. Two additional minor drawings by Lepautre are included in the volume Va 254a, Nos. 2468, 2470.
93 Va 254b, rendered in wash, all with the number 1862. Penciled details are preserved on the previous page of the same volume. r -1
Genesis
see, by Francpis-Antoine Vasse, 94 who, with Cayot and Desjardins, executed in 171 2-17 15 the angels, bas-reliefs and other bronze ornaments (V, 609, 694, 787, 788, 875).
While we know of no signed drawings by Vasse, 95 we are not without resource to identify his draughtsmanship. There are a number of engravings after his designs. There are also several drawings for different works of De Cotte with which Vasse was concerned, both before and after the death of Lepautre— drawings which, by their own coherence of tech- nique, totally different from that of De Cotte, we must conclude are by Vasse himself. Those which we consider to be by Vasse include the following:
171 2 Altar, Notre Dame
1713-1715 ? Chimney pieces for the palace at Madrid (Vb 147) 96
1 71 8 Study for the end of the gallery, Hotel de Toulouse (Figure 125)
1 71 8 Study for trophies of the gallery, Hotel de Toulouse (Figure 124)
Study for ceiling of the gallery, Hotel de Toulouse (Va 232c) 1734 Design for a clock (Figure 177)
All these are drawn in ink with the greatest freedom, and rendered with india wash and colour, the gold being in a strong yellow.
As compared with most of Pierre Lepautre's work, Vasse's design for the altar (Figure 92) is much more freely plastic. The altar table proper is framed by diagonal pedestals, curved in profile and tapered downward, with consoles of a double reverse curve crowned by cherub heads. The bas-relief between, with concave upper corners, is flanked by floral pen- dants and, at the base, by pairs of cherub heads with bold scrollwork. The coffer behind spreads outward in reverse profile, buttressed by concave consoles. Its upper zone ends in bold volutes with fluted hollow, supporting a pair of kneeling angels— motifs influenced di- rectly, as we shall see, by Oppenord's altar of Saint-Germain-des-Pres executed in 1704. In the center is a cartouche with a border of concave fluted scrolls and wing-like acanthus leaf- age. Only in the organ at Versailles and in the archiepiscopal thrones of Notre Dame do we find works of equally free character at this time.
Our attribution to Vasse, on internal evidence, of the design of the altar table gives sup- port on this point to the statement regarding Notre Dame in his obituary of 1736, the other terms of which we must now scrutinize. After speaking of his work at the chapel of Ver- sailles, extending as we have seen from 1708 to 17 10 or 171 1, it says: "II fut charge ensuite de faire les desseins et Modeles du grand Autel et du Choeur de l'figlise de Notre Dame de Paris, et du Pourtour, avec la Chaire Archiepiscopale; les Modeles des Culs-de-Lampes qui portent les Anges, et il a execute une partie de ces Ouvrages." We shall consider these further assertions one by one in conjunction with the several elements of the work.
94 Ibid., reproduced as "dessin de Robert de Cotte" by P. Marcel in V architected 1907, 32, and by Vloberg, of. cit., pi. XL.
95 None is catalogued as by him either at the Cabinet des Dessins du Louvre or at the Cabinet des Estampes, nor do I find mention of any in the published catalogues of the Musee de la Marine.
96 Kindly called to my attention by M. A.-M.-E. Marie. The dates are those of the chimney pieces mentioned in the correspondence of Robert de Cotte. Marcel, op. cit., 196-206, which mentions "sculptures en bronze dore de Vasse."
[ 8 5 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
Obviously the statements cannot apply to the earlier designs down to 171 1, which, as we have seen are by Pierre Lepautre. Vasse was first paid for work at Notre Dame in May and July, 1 712, when he had a final payment of 2135 livres "a quoy montent les modelles et autres ouvrages qu'il a faits tant pour le maitre-autel que pour l'autel des feries, pendant
171 1 et 1 71 2" (V, 609). His drawing for the altar was thus made some time in 171 1. As it was precisely in this instance that he superseded Lepautre, we may presume this was the beginning of his activity at Notre Dame. The accounts themselves further show only that he executed, with Cayot and Desjardins, the sculptured ornaments of the altar proper, begin- ning June 8, 1 7 13 (V, 694).
The form of the sanctuary as executed is shown in contemporary engraved plates. 97 Numerous changes of detail were made from Lepautre's latest design. On the surrounding piers, above the imposts, Lepautre had shown rondels and mosa'ique. Brice complained in
171 2 that the marble work was "d'une invention seche et peu gracieuse" 98 and continued "Vasse travaille aux ornemens, & on espere beaucoup de son habilite." Thus while there are no payments to him for models of them, it is possible that he was responsible for the sugges- tion of substituting there, in execution, trophies of gilded metal, like those below the imposts. Only to this extent can he be credited with an influence on the "pourtour." The corbels or culs-de-lampe on which the angels stand follow closely the earlier design of Pierre Le- pautre.
In the ultimate arrangement, the figure of Louis XIII was not included in the Pieta of the central niche, but placed on a separate pedestal in the flanking arch of the apse, balanced by a figure of Louis XIV— the sculpture being executed by Coustou and others beginning in 1 71 2. The pedestals of the royal statues, buttressed by consoles, are fronted by winged car- touches, similar to many in the designs of Pierre Lepautre. The niche was surmounted by a glory with gilded rays, angels and cherubs. The pavement of the sanctuary, designed by Fontenay in 171 2 (V, 615) is of marble marquetry in patterns suggestive of Lepautre's unexecuted design for that of the chapel at Versailles. The first of such works to be carried out in France, it was described by Piganiol de la Force as "surprenant." 99
Payments to Jean de Nelle for the joinery of the stalls (Figure 95) had already begun by June 9, 1 7 10, extending to January 2, 171 1, on which date start payments to the carvers, Dugoullons, Taupin, Bellan, Legoupil and Lalande. Thus apparently Vasse was not con- cerned with their design, and indeed his obituary does not specifically name them.
The obituary, however, does name the archiepiscopal throne (Figure 93) as being of Vasse's design. The dates would not contravene such a possibility. Apparently it was begun in 171 1, when a model in wax for the throne, paid for on November 11 (V, 510), was made by Bertrand, who, we remember, had collaborated with Vasse on the model of the pulpit at Versailles. May 12 of that year De Nelle and Louis Marteau received first payments on the joinery of the thrones, on the carving of which the sculptors had 1 1,000 livres on account in February, 1 7 1 1 .
97 By C.-N. Cochin the elder. A memorandum of 1 71 7 for them is noted by Marcel: Inventaire, 50. They are incorporated in Mariette's Architecture jrancoise, pis. 1-3 of the edition of Hautecoeur. B8 1 71 3 edition, III, 266. The Approbation is dated June I, I 71 2. 99 1 742 edition, I, 392
[ 86 ]
Genesis
Brice does not state the authorship of the woodwork in any of the editions published in his lifetime ( 1 713, 1 71 7, 1725). The Description of Piganiol de la Force in 1742 (I, 392-397) correctly ascribes the execution of the ornaments of the altar to Cayot and Vasse, and the carving of the stalls to Dugoullons, but says nothing of their design. It was not before the mid-century that the guidebooks supplied attributions of the designs, and these do not carry any independent authority. Thus Dargenville's Voyage pittoresque of 1750 uses verbatim the passage from Vasse's obituary. When the 1752 edition of Brice 100 says "Les Stalles . . . sont du dessein de du Goulon ... La Chaire Archiepiscopale [et] . . . une toute semblable . . . sont du dessein de Vasse," it is merely paraphrasing the earlier statements.
Let us examine the woodwork itself, so remarkably creative, to see both its own qualities and the internal evidence it may present as to the authorship of the designs. In such work the traits of the designer are to be sought in the general lines and major features, whereas the details of the carving derive from the executants.
In the panelling of the stalls we note particularly the crowns of the alternate panels, with curved corners flanked by twisted winged cherub heads — so closely similar to the crown of Lepautre's altarpiece of the Virgin in the chapel at Versailles. In the intermediate panels, above and below the oval medallions, the scrolls of the truncated corners— of the type origi- nated by Lepautre at Marly — are almost identical with those which flank the circular medal- lion on the face of the altar in the same design of Lepautre. We cannot doubt that the basic design of the stalls was his.
In their aesthetic character, what is particularly to be observed is the relative lack of any bold plasticity. In total contrast with the baroque, where the forms spring forth from the mass, there is here a delicate play on the surface. The last remaining trace of academic mem- mering, still present at Orleans, has disappeared. So has any main division of the height. The tectonic feeling, still dominant at Orleans, is subordinated ; the outer rectangular frames, slightly recessed, are dominated by the outlines of the major, inner panels, which are curved. In the fine-spun ornament— which here, instead of mere mosaic, fills the remainder of the field, above and below— the motifs are of small individual significance for us: branches of palm and of flowers, of much naturalism, gajrlands falling from acanthus scrolls. Car- touches, little projecting, bearing the royal cypher, and certain bas-reliefs, punctuating the narrow vertical strips, scarcely interrupt the flow of stems and leafage which constitutes a highly original form of arabesque, not yet fully digested. Most significant is the type of feature at top and bottom of these strips— developed from the terminal interlace of Le- pautre's pilaster panels — now recurring also below the ovals in the wide panels: a flat field, in the plane of the background, surrounded by interlacing elements and itself usually en- closing some radiating palmette-like form. This feature, an equivalent of the cartouche without its plasticity, foreshadowed the characteristic cartouche of the rococo, in which the field — unlike the bulging field of the baroque cartouche — had the airy emptiness of the background of the arabesque.
The thrones also embody many features previously invented and used by Lepautre, but their general character, as in the case of the altar, suggests that their final design had another
100 IV, 201-202. The editor of this fourth volume, according to the Bibliotheque historique of Lelong, 1768 ed., was the Abbe Perau, born in 1 700, thus too late to have personal knowledge of the matter.
[ 8 7 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
authorship. The line of development may be traced from the tabernacle shown in Le- pautre's study for the altar of the Virgin at Versailles, in the profile of the crown and in the arch flanked by scrolled strips. The corbel below follows the corbels of the angels in the sanctuary. The departures from the scheme of the thrones at Orleans, however, are even more significant. Just as in Vasse's design of the altar, as compared with the design of Le- pautre, there is an abandonment of academic, architectonic elements. No longer are there columns, entablatures, or balusters. The canopy, relieved of all massiveness by its sugges- tion of a valance, is supported by concave brackets. The rail, adopting Lepautre's scheme of panel design with rosettes against a background of diagonal mosa'ique, is given a new lightness by piercing both. Its profile, a reverse curve, follows that of the pulpit at Versailles, carved by Vasse. Thus the character, as well as the date, of the thrones indicates that they may in- deed well be of his design.
It is instructive to contrast the whole treatment with that of the woodwork of the choir of Saint-Paul's in London, which Grinling Gibbons had executed in 1 695-1 697, just before the beginning of work on the choir of Notre Dame. There all is heavily plastic, with high relief in the consoles, the garlanded friezes. The panelling of the stalls in London is boldly membered, with multiplied articulation, subdivision, and superposition of rectangular ele- ments, and depth even through recesses, whereas in Paris it is smooth, unified in height, with suave curvature and liaison. In London, as upper termination of the stalls there is not merely an academic cornice but the additional firm horizontal of an attic ; in Paris the thin canopy dissolves in a spray-like cresting. In London the thrones are flanked by three-quarter col- umns, with bold consoles, dominantly convex, and a massive, scrolled segmental pediment. Above rises an open crown in the form of a Borrominian belfry of consoles in two tiers, whereas in Paris all is flowing surface. In Paris, indeed, the work is not a derivative, but a negation of the baroque.
Beyond these relative values of priority and novelty in the choir of Notre Dame, are its absolute values of unending richness, inexhaustible fantasy, suavity, grace and ease.
The Salon d'Hercule at Versailles, occupying the position of the older chapel and lead- ing to the vestibule of the new one, has passed usually as a work of the following reign, its decoration, with the brilliant sculpture of Francois-Antoine Vasse, having been completed in 1725-1736. Its masonry and joinery, however, were executed in 1712 (Comptes IV, 583, 585, 586). There is another significant item in the accounts (594) :
8 janvier 1 7 13: aux peintres, sculpteurs, masons et autres ouvriers qui ont este em- ployez au modelle des ouvrages du sallon neuf dud. chateau, pour leurs journees et autres menus depenses faites a ce sujet. 3396 livres I 7 s. 6 d.
Thus, and necessarily before the assembling of the marbles in 17 13 and 17 14, a design for the room existed. The north wall, indeed, appears in one of Lepautre's plates for the en- graved folio of the Chapel published by Demortain in 17 14. This shows the spacing of the pilasters, the arched doorways, the elliptical arch of the fireplace with a mask at the centre, the great frame above with its concave corners at the top, its consoles below— all that characterizes the general design of the room.
[ 88 ]
Genesis
Accordingly we are not surprised to discover a coloured section (Figure 94) 101 endorsed "Sallon de Versailles," showing the east wall as executed, in the technique of Pierre Lepau- tre, who was thus also the author of this supreme design. As envisaged at the end of the reign of Louis XIV, the room already incorporates so fully the style of the early years of the fol- lowing reign that it has long been regarded as one of that period's most characteristic crea- tions. Here were taken up again the marble revetment of the older state rooms which this room adjoined and continued, the ordonnance of pilasters of figured marble, but with a new graciousness and unity through the arching of doors as well as windows, through the ad- vanced forms of chimney piece and pier.
When we reflect that the room formed the royal access to the tribune of the new chapel as well as the only communication, in the principal story, with the entire north wing, we realize that its forms, in an unfinished state, must have already become familiar during the last year of the life of Louis XIV.
We need scarcely discuss in detail other works for the Crown which are obviously from designs of Lepautre. Examples could readily be multiplied. 102
We may however allude to the Livre de tables qui sont dans les quelles son poses les bijoux du Cabinet des Medailles. Dessine et grave far P. Le Pautre, Graveur du Roi } including at least one design of 1699, 103 as a work vastly influential in the design of furniture.
By the variety of work at the same moment under Mansart and De Cotte, by the changes in style when their designers changed, we know that the creative responsibility was not theirs. The true creative artist, as in other periods of fertile originality, was the designer who actually held the pencil.
We find that, as Mariette said with the utmost exactitude, "Pierre le Pautre eut beaucoup de part a tous les ouvrages qui se firent dans le suite a Versailles, a Marly, et dans les autres maisons royales"— that his part, down to 171 2, was the decisive one. Marly, the Apparte- ments du Roi at Versailles and Trianon, the stalls of Orleans, the altars and many other features of the Chapelle de Versailles, the choir of Notre Dame, the Salon d'Hercule— all the great royal decorative enterprises of the later years of Louis XIV— were all basically, when not completely, from designs of Pierre Lepautre. The authorship of these superb works of art establishes Lepautre, hitherto almost overlooked, as a great artist in his own right, the father of the rococo.
To a degree not hitherto appreciated, Vasse began, in the very last years of the reign, to assume a principal role. With his design of the thrones of Notre Dame and related works in 1712, he definitely took over the artistic leadership. In the second phase of the move- ment, thus inaugurated, characteristic of the Regency to follow, he was to continue in this
101 o 1 1768.
102 Notably the work in the Appartement du Roi at Fontainebleau in 1 7 1 4, Comftes, V, 820-823. While add- ing little to the idea of his work already gained, it is extremely difficult to disentangle, in some parts, from later additions. Thus in the Cabinet du Conseil, of which a drawing by Gabriel for changes in 1752 is preserved (o 1 1424, reproduced by Fels, of. cit., pi. XVIII) one cannot, in all regards, be sure what then survived from I 714 and what dated from changes of 1738.
103 The "Buffet execute a Marly" shown on plate 6 is evidently one of the eight "tables angulaires" for the salon there executed in that year. Comftes, IV, 481, 583, 620. Doubtless some of the other tables are those still preserved, and lately adorning the Galerie d'Apollon. Coloured designs for the marble tops of certain of these sur- vive in the De Cotte collection at the Cabinet des Estampes, Ha 18.
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The Creation of the Rococo
position of leadership, which he had then to share with the Regent's own designer, Oppenord.
The royal works at the time we have been discussing, so grievously fragmentary in pres- ervation, known too often only through drawings or engravings, present unusual difficulties for us to see and feel them as artistic entities. When, however, we have successfully achieved their visual and emotional reconstruction, we appreciate that in these works were embodied not merely influential inventions but absolute artistic values of a new order. Baroque art, with its spatial and plastic energy, had been replaced by something wholly different, the rococo, a flowing organization of line and surface, rejecting the traditional forms of academic architecture, yet attaining a harmonious maturity in works deeply crea- tive, of smiling ease and grace.
Private Buildings
The years from 1700 to 171 5 were years of increasingly active private building in Paris, in which participated both the architects of the Batiments and those outside its favoured circle. Artistic initiative, to be sure, still remained wholly with the Crown: the new fashions of dec- oration were set, as we have seen, in the narrow royal circle of Marly, the Menagerie, Meu- don, Versailles, and Trianon. The centralizing power of Versailles had not been relaxed, nor was there, before the tragic deaths of 1711-1712, any lack of gaiety and life. Indeed the years prior to that, passed increasingly in the intimacy of Marly and dominated by the verve of the Duchesse de Bourgogne, had been of unsurpassed brilliance— even, for conscious ef- fect, during the worst misfortunes of war.
Paris, though not the capital, remained the metropolis, and could attract the Dauphin and the Court itself by the unique entertainment of the opera at the Palais-Royal. Monsieur, until his death, and after him the Due d'Orleans, there preserved a certain independence. Minis- ters like Pontchartrain and Desmarets had their hotels in Paris, as did the financiers. Certain great noblemen like the Due de Vendome risked displeasure by setting up new establish- ments there although, as Saint-Simon makes clear, those closest to the King would not have dared this before the period of mourning for the Dauphin.
Among the men active in private building few new figures attained importance before the very end of the reign. Such practice was open to the officers of the Batiments, to the academ- icians, left in otium cum dignkate by Mansart's system, as well as to others.
The original academicians were now dead with the exception of Pierre Mignard, long re- tired to Avignon. There had been scarcely any appointments to replace them prior to Mansart's reorganization of the institution in 1699. The members as then named were:
First class: De Cotte, Bullet, de l'Isle, Gabriel, Gobert, Lambert, Le Maistre, de la Hire, Professor, and J.-F. Felibien, Secretary.
Second class: Lassurance, de l'Espine, Matthieu, Desgodetz, Le Maistre le jeune, Bullet le fils, Bruant le jeune, Cauchy, Gittard le fils.
Several of these were executives on the royal staff, controllers, inspectors or minor em- ployees ; others were interested chiefly in theoretical questions ; the younger generation was not yet independently established. The only ones of these men having substantial private practice were Bullet, eldest of all, De Cotte, and Lassurance. After his attainment of the rank of Architecte in the Batiments in 1700, Lassurance was stationed in Paris from 1702,
[ 90 ]
Genesis
in charge of work at the Invalides (Comptes IV, 912), and seems to have had greater public reputation and opportunity to work also for individuals. De Cotte, with ever widening re- sponsibilities, met them, as we shall see, by increasing the number of his draughtsmen and collaborators.
Outside the Academy were left, among men previously active, only Boffrand— still but thirty-two in 1699. He was occupied chiefly in Lorraine and in the Netherlands until 1709 when, under De Cotte's administration, he was taken into both Academy and Batiments, and began to be considerably employed in private building in Paris.
The men born after 1670 were also to have their importance mainly in the following period. We need mention here only four whose work began before that time: Oppenord, Delamair, Le Blond and Cartaud. Of these the first, both by his native gifts and by his pro- longed study in Italy, was ultimately to be by far the most important.
Gilles-Marie Oppenord ( 1 672-1 742) was born in Paris as the son of the Ebeniste du Roy Jean Oppenord (1 639-1715). Jean Oppenord was Dutch by birth, "natif de la ville de Gueldres," but naturalized in 1679 when "depuis plusieurs annees il s'est habitue en nostre royaume." 104 We have seen him as the collaborator of Berain in 1685. Brought up in the ateliers of the Louvre, where his father was lodged since 1684, 105 the young Oppenord can scarcely be regarded as other than a French artist— although as with Watteau, another artis- tic innovator of the Regency— the blood of the Low Countries has been thought to tinge his reaction against the classic and academic.
Sent to Rome at twenty, in 1692, as a protege of Villacerf, then Surintendant, he gave his prolonged studies there a different turn from that of most pensioners of the Academy. It was perhaps his facility and application which chiefly won him the constant praise of La Teuliere, the director, although his taste was equally commended: 100 "II escremera, pour ainsi dire, tout ce qu'il y a de bon en Italic" It was the ornaments and plastic forms which chiefly occupied him in his sketches: "un grand amas de tout ce qui peut estre propre a orner les ouvrages d'architecture de tous les accompagnens qui peuvent les rendre solides et agre- ables . . ." and, elsewhere: "non seulement pour les proportions, mais sur la forme des parties."
Three of Oppenord's sketch books survive, including many drawings made in Italy. 107 Particularly the one in Berlin overflows with hundreds of graphic notes dashed on the paper from Italian examples. Both from these and from La Teuliere's letters we learn that Op- penord's observation was devoted less than usual to ancient Rome, far more to baroque Italy. From the Renaissance we find little j the arabesques of the school of Raphael, however, form
104 J. -J. Guiffrey: "Lettres de naturalization accordees a des artistes etrangers," Nouvelles archives de Part jrancais, 1873, 258. Jean Oppenord, then "marchand ebeniste, demeurant dans l'enclos du Temple" is first listed as a witness in the parish register of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois for 1675 (166), according to the Fichier Laborde of the Cabinet des Manuscrits of the Bibliotheque Nationale. In the same parish registers (63) a listing of Gilles- Marie Oppenord, as a godfather in 1690, when he was eighteen, gives his occupation loosely as "ebeniste du roy."
105 Guiffrey: "Logements d'artistes au Louvre," ibid., 371.
106 Corresfondance des directeurs, e.g., I, 327, II, 66, 169, 240, 400.
107 Berlin, Staatliche Kunstbibliothek, OS2712 gr; Stockholm, National Museum, 89: 4: A; Lyons, collection of M. Pabbe Chagny, all generously made available to me for photographing. In addition we have the suite of Italian motives engraved by Huquier, after 1748 under the title Livre de jragemens d' 'architecture recueillis a Rome, familiarly known as the Petit Oppenord.
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The Creation of the Rococo
a significant exception. Page after page records the minutest details of the works of Bernini, and, above all, of Borromini, then dead less than a generation. The identity of a vast number of these may be recognized: "Tombeaux, tabernacles, fontaines, ornemens, chapelles, fron- tispices," as La Teuliere says, among which figure prominently the elements of San Filippo Neri, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Sant' Ivo, Sant' Agnese, the Propaganda Fide, and the Lateran. 108 Notable is the relative rari.ty of plans as compared with the abundance of pro- files; the stress is on the plastic rather than the spatial.
Beside works in Rome, Oppenord drew and studied — by exception, and against Villacerf's objections — those of North Italy. There too he did not confine himself to Palladio and to Bramante's school. 109 The mannerists Giulio Romano, Pirro Ligorio, also find mention in the correspondence. Before leaving Italy Oppenord made designs for certain works of his own. 110 Certain details of them reproduced in the Grand Oppenord are of typical baroque character.
The profound study of the work of modern Italy, on the part of a man so gifted as Oppe- nord, failed to be immediately influential in France on his return in the fall of 1699 because of his failure to secure any post in the royal works. His patron Villacerf had retired as Su- rintendant in January; Mansart showed Oppenord no favor. He had tarried too long: when he arrived the reorganization of the staff, the appointment of Pierre Lepautre and Rivet as Dessinateurs had already taken place. Lepautre's first genial works were already visible, and their dazzling novelty and success were already apparent. An exotic design of high-baroque character, which, as we shall see, Oppenord submitted for the altar of Notre Dame, did not meet with favour, and he remained an outsider, never being taken into the Academy. In pri- vate employment he was at first little more fortunate. It was but gradually that his draughts- manship and fertility of imagination brought him occupation as an engraver and a designer of altar pieces, his great opportunity was to come only after the close of the reign.
We get few glimpses of him in the first years after his return. In 1701, on his marriage to Antoinette Berard, daughter of a prosperous Paris bourgeois, he described himself as "ar- chitecte du Roy," 111 a title only justified by his pension at Rome. We shall not find him re- ceiving even private commissions for work in his profession before 1704. In the accounts for the engraving of the tomb of the Dues de Bouillon at Cluny, for which he made the fair drawing for the engraver in 1708, he is called "Dessinateur du Roy," 112 again loosely, for the Comptes des Batiments list no single royal payment to him under Louis XIV. A collec- tion of engraved Figures antiques, after his drawings, was announced by the Mercure in 1 709. 113 Brice states that the handsome catalogue of the works and collection of Girardon, issued in 1 710, was "d'estampes dessinees et gravees correctement sous la conduite de Gilles- Marie Oppenordt." 114
108 It is worth observing that none shows the works of Sardi and others, beginning in 1 691 , cited by Marcel Reymond as inaugurating the rococo (as he uses the word for the late Italian baroque), although these were under way while Oppenord was in Rome.
109 A large drawing of the altar of San Giorgio Maggiore is preserved at the Louvre, No. 31483.
110 Brice, 1 7 1 3 ed., II, 182-183 mentions those for a port for Innocent XII at Nettuno.
111 Fichier Laborde, Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, February 3, 1701 (177).
112 Nouvelles archives de Part jrancais, I 872, 297.
113 July, 203.
114 1 71 3 ed., I, I2i.
f 92 ]
Genesis
During his long years of relative lack of employment there was ample time for the native tradition of French decoration to make itself felt on his own work. His hands were not idle; the new trends of French design gave occasion for further study, and he made full use of the opportunity to familiarize himself with them. While it is difficult to date the sketches he con- stantly added in his note-books, the subject matter of many of them indicates that they belong to this period, when he was absorbing the new motifs employed in executed works by Lepau- tre, Berain, Audran and other French designers. He sketched trophies in the Chapel at Ver- sailles ; 115 he designed, as we shall see, arabesques most nearly related to those of Gillot. 116 Such studies account for the profound difference of style between his Italian sketches and his own executed work in France, 117 a difference which begins to appear even in his earliest commissions.
By comparison with Oppenord, other new figures were, in the end, to play very secondary roles. Pierre Alexis Delamair (1676-1745), had the precocious success of being entrusted, before the age of thirty, with the building of the H5tels de Soubise and de Rohan. He was, however, almost immediately superseded at the Hotel de Soubise by Boffrand, as regards the interiors, and, finding little other employment, devoted most of his later years to em- bittered writing of his humiliations. 118
Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond ( 1679-1719), 119 gifted in drawing from earliest youth, and active in publication, was also employed in the construction of Paris houses, as we shall see, until his extravagance and quarrelsome humour led by him, in 171 6, to accept an in- vitation to Russia, where he died in 17 19.
Jean-Sylvian Cartaud, who had been with Oppenord at the Academy in Rome, though not as a pensioner, and who had been one of the witnesses at his marriage, built for Pierre Crozat in 1704 his house in Paris, and also built his chateau at Montmorency, at both of which Oppenord was later employed. Cartaud's oval salon in two stories at Montmorency, of which Mariette gives a section, closely follows that of Vaux, in spite of the two genera- tions intervening— order below, herms above— with only slight nuances to suggest the later date. Clearly Cartaud, who in spite of his skill was not elected to the Academy until the age of sixty-seven, was not a force in decoration.
In the first decade or so of the century, Bullet was finishing for Antoine Crozat the earliest hotels of the Place Vendome. They were remodelled after 1750, and we have no evidence of the form of their first interior treatment. Bullet was an able planner and sound construc- tor, but we should scarcely expect decorative innovations in these houses, any more than in his Chateau d'Issy during the previous period.
115 Those engraved by Huquier as Plate XII of the Grand Offenord are in reverse, with trifling variations, from the pair carved by Robert Le Lorrain in the royal tribune. The left hand figure of Plate XIV is from the trophy of the second square pillar to the right on entering the Chapel.
116 Cf. his manuscript arabesques preserved at the Staatliche Kunstbibliothek, Berlin (reproduced in part by C. Gurlitt: Das Ornament des Rococo, 1894, pis. 26, 27, 31, 35) with Gillot's engraved Livre de Portieres.
117 This difference is remarked by C. Linfert in Kunstwissenschajtliche Forschungen, I, 193 1, especially 164- 182, but we cannot concur in his attempted solution of the historical problems involved.
118 Cf. Ch.-V. Langlois: Les hotels de Clisson, de Guise et de Rohan-Soubise, 1922, fassim.
119 Boris Lossky: "I.-B. A. Le Blond, Architecte de Pierre le Grand, son oeuvre en France," in Bulletin de V as- sociation russe four les recherches scientijiques a Prague, III, 1936, 179-216.
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The Creation of the Rococo
Lassurance built the Hotels de Rothelin, toward 1700, Desmarets, 1704, d'Auvergne, finished 1708, de Bethune and de Maisons, 1708, 120 besides remodelling the old Hotel de Pussort for the Due de Noailles in 171 5. Of these the Hotels de Rothelin and de Maisons survive, much changed internally. 121 Of three of the houses, we are fortunate to have small engraved sections given by Mariette 122 and Blondel, themselves made later, after certain of the buildings had already been remodelled. These show that at the Hotels de Rothelin and de Bethune Lassurance still used the geometrical panelling in many tiers characteristic of his early work. The Hotel d'Auvergne was even plainer. At the Hotel de Bethune we find, in the ground story, cornices with hollow friezes. Since, as in all ground-story rooms, even at Versailles, there was no cove above the cornice, one may say that these hollow friezes con- stitute cove cornices. Indeed it is in such instances, which we shall find as early as 1703, that the cornice first took on the form characteristic of the future.
Regarding the work of De Cotte, who built the Chancellerie, 1703, the Hotel de Lude, 1 710, and the Hotel d'Estrees, 1 713, we are better informed. True only one of these build- ings still stands, and that one, the Hotel d'Estrees, has been drastically remodelled. 123 But we have a small section of the Hotel de Lude, and very full knowledge of the interiors of the Chancellerie.
The most important work of Robert de Cotte at this period not for the Crown, but hav- ing official aspects, was indeed the Chancellerie— remodelled from the old Hotel de Lionne, Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, for the Chancellor Pontchartrain. He had taken office in 1699. Although Dangeau reported the purchase as early as 1700, 124 it was not until March 27, 1703, that Pontchartrain completed its acquisition from the Due d'Estrees, heir of M. de Lionne, 125 after which, as Germain Brice states "(il) y a fait faire des reparations et des embellisements considerables." A great mass of drawings for this remodelling survives in the De Cotte collection at the Cabinet des Estampes, 126 which gives us a unique opportunity to study the work of that moment.
The designs for interiors, to the number of thirty, are all in the technique of Pierre Le- pautre. In one instance (No. 2146, Figure 96) we even have his own preliminary study, boldly shaded with a brush over pencil outlines. The schemes for the walls ring the changes on those of Marly and Trianon, showing mirror heads square with concave corners, or semi- circular, with or without breaks, and supported on pilasters or consoles. In one (Figure 97) a new form appears, a segment with concave corners, prefiguring still another scheme of the
120 These d a tes, unless otherwise stated, rest on the statements of Germain Brice in the successive editions of his Description de Paris, of which those of 1707, 1 7 1 3 , and 171 7 are contemporary with the period discussed.
121 The present interiors of the Hotel de Maisons come from a remodelling of about 1 750 and will be discussed later.
122 The drawings made for the engraver, chiefly by Chevotet, of which many are preserved in the Collection Lesoufache at the ficole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, show some of these interiors more clearly, and were obviously meant to be highly faithful.
123 'phis house, at 79, Rue de Grenelle, preserves certain interiors which have been thought to date from the time of its building. We would place them in the period around 1750. There are plans of the building at the Cabinet des Estampes which show it had already undergone certain modifications by I 727-1734.
124 VII, 272. March 13,1 700.
125 Note by A. de Boislisle in his edition of Memoires de Saint-Simon, XV, 441.
126 Large ground plans in Va 441, other drawings in Va 234 and Va 236c There are many papers regarding the hotel at the Archives Nationales, o 1 1577.
[ 94 ]
Genesis
Regency. In general there are no imposts. For a few of the walls, where an impost with mul- tiplied tiers of panels had been first proposed these are crossed off in favour of a single flight of panels above the dado, punctuated merely by an oval rosette, which still further empha- sizes the vertical effect. The marble chimney pieces, in general, are of the types character- istic of Lepautre at this moment. The cornices are closely related in profile to those of Tri- anon at this period. Some with hollow friezes, and'( unlike those at Trianon, where coves pre- existed) with no cove above, constitute the very first examples of this treatment, which thus also was an innovation of Pierre Lepautre.
At the Hotel de Lude, as shown in Mariette's section, there was a chimney piece of the type created at Marly. Here also the ground story has simple cove-cornices.
A later work, likewise destroyed, but likewise very fully known to us, 127 is the Chateau de Bercy, at the eastern gates of Paris, which, begun by Frangois Le Vau in 1658, had stood for many years without internal finish. M. de Bercy, then Intendant des Finances, states very explicitly that he undertook the work of completion and decoration in 1712; 128 it must have been substantially completed before his disgrace in 171 5. The caption of Jean Mariette's plot plan of Bercy gives the name De la Guepiere, doubtless Jacques who died in 1734, as architect of the distant stables of the chateau, still surviving, with bold naturalistic trophies of hunting dogs over the doorways. His name has been attached by modern writers to the decorations of the chateau itself —an assumption as easy as it is unwarranted. 129
Many features of the decorations, such as the mirror heads (e.g. Figure 98) unmistak- ably betray, by their identity with those we have seen by Pierre Lepautre, his authorship of the designs of the interiors, which thus assume an immense importance as domestic works of his full maturity, unique in their integral character. The Grand Salon of the ground story, now installed at 2, Rue de l'Elysee, is of the greatest magnificance (Figure 98). Panelled Corinthian pilasters, with characteristic scrollwork, frame the bays, which contain, below oval frames with paintings, large panels closely similar to one type of those of the stalls of Notre Dame, completed in July of 171 2. Their crowns, as in Notre Dame, have little cor- nices above concave crossettesj their bases, as at Notre Dame, are semicircular. The cherub- heads of the religious work are replaced by scrolls, the bas-reliefs of sacred subjects by an inner bead with rich palmettes and scrollwork at top and bottom, by a light interlace in the center. Even within this inner ornamented bead, there is the third line of the moulded edge of a raised field which comprises the bare area of the panel, circumscribes the major outlines
127 Beside the boiseries now installed elsewhere, we have the complete drawings of every room made in i860 before its demolition, published by L. Deshairs, Le chateau de Bercy, n.d.
128 Quoted by A. de Boislisle: "Topographic seigneuriale de Bercy," in Memoires de la Societe de Vhistoire de Paris, VIII, I 8 8 1 , 62. The date is further confirmed by the table prefixed to the 1 7 1 3 edition of Germain Brice (the Approbation is dated June 1, 171 2) which speaks of the chateau as "repare et embelli en 1713."
129 Of De la Guepiere we know very little, except that he was an academician of the second class from 1 720. Mariette's caption for the plates of the Menagerie at Sceaux, which Brice mentions in 1725 (IV, 396) as "bati depuis peu," names "Mr. de la Guepiere" as the architect. In view of the dates we would presume this was also Jacques, rather than Philippe, who worked in Germany from 1 752 to I 760 and died in 1773, if it were not that Dargenville says expressly in his Voyage fittoresque des environs de Paris, 1755, 195: "C'est la Guespiere, Directeur des Batiments du Due de Wurtembourg, qui en a ete l'Architecte." The interior of this pavilion, shown in Ma- riette's section, is of excellent conventional regence design, but nothing we know of De la Guepiere would indicate he was capable of such mastery of ornament as is displayed in the interior of Bercy, which we shall see was on the frontier of creative advance of its time.
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The Creation of the Rococo
of the upper and lower scrollwork, and itself bears the central interlace. It is a development of the initiative we have seen at Trianon in 1703, in a form frequently adopted henceforth. The panels of the doors, strictly rectangular, are given a similar treatment. The painted overdoors are framed with vertical consoles somewhat as in the Salon Frais at Trianon at just this time. As the cornice of this room, like those of all other rooms at Bercy, is a full entabla- ture (although De Cotte's Chancellerie, Hotel de Lude and several others already had simple cove cornices), we may assume that the proportions of those at Bercy were established by the pre-existing rough work. That of the Grand Salon has a concave frieze divided by con- soles, the metopes being filled with light relief ornaments in which figures recline and slender grotesque sphinxes twine amid attenuated bands and scrolls. They trace their ancestry to Le Brun's tapestry borders, as developed in the arabesque of Berain and Audran. These cornices offer the earliest surviving example we have (unless in Boffrand's work at the Hotel de Mayenne) of such a treatment, soon to become universal.
Other panelled rooms, often with very slender bandwork, ring the changes on familiar motifs, not without various innovations. 130 The library was greatly elaborated (Figure 99). Its doorway, like its mirror heads, was arched— a treatment just adopted by Lepautre for the Salon d'Hercule— their lunettes having pairs of sculptured figures not unlike those of the gallery at Trianon but with attributes of the arts and sciences. In the zone above the im- post, between the doorways, were painted panels the frames of which have, for the first time, richly scrolled ends— pointing toward the scrolled overdoors of the future. The doors, as well as the walls beneath the imposts, have major panels with semicircular head and base, like those of the stalls of Orleans. As at Notre Dame, such panels at Bercy are inscribed in shallow outer rectangles filled with mosalque, but the upper panels of the doors, with reverse curves at their ends, have no rectangular enclosure. Both here and in the rich boudoir there were certain panels which are treated much like those of the doors of the royal tribune of the chapel at Versailles, of about the same moment, with a central medallion, circular or oval, linked by the inner bead with the extravagantly scrolled borders of the ends.
The ceilings of rooms in the principal story still had low coves, lacking, as commonly, in the ground story. Everywhere the entablatures have hollow friezes, many undivided by con- soles, with relief motifs of bandwork, scrollwork and figures, including some of playful monkeys, dogs, cats and birds. Such decorated cornices are the first examples of the sort we know anywhere, inaugurating a treatment characteristic of the reign of Louis XV. Indeed throughout the work at Bercy we find the most typical elements of Louis XV decoration, al- ready fully established by Pierre Lepautre.
Of the marble chimney pieces of Bercy, all but that of the Grand Salon (the one pre- served) were of the period of 171 2. That of the library, with an elliptical arch on frontal consoles, was of the type originating about 1700. The others, however, were the first we know 131 of a new type destined henceforth to carry the day, their openings being flanked by consoles placed diagonally. Supports so placed (herms in that case) had appeared in one of
130 Much material from them is recombined at the Hotel de la Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville. The rooms there, though tastefully composed, contain a good deal that is modern and in many ways belie the character of Bercy. This is notably the case with the cornices, where in every case the coving of the ceiling above has been omitted and central and corner motifs have been added.
131 Unless there be some in the Chancellerie drawings of 1703, now inaccesible.
[ 96 ]
Genesis
the figures engraved by Lepautre for Le Blond's 1 7 10 edition of the Cours d y architecture. What had there been but one of a variety of schemes, more or less bizarre, was now given the form which was to become most characteristic.
The stone vestibule at Bercy, enlarged in 1712, was adorned with an Ionic order framing wide and narrow bays, alike enriched with magnificent suspended trophies of arms, of arts and of the chase. We have come to the opinion that these, like the other decorations of the chateau, were from designs by Pierre Lepautre 132 — who had himself been so much con- cerned with trophies at Versailles and elsewhere. In these, his first secular examples, the artistic character is closely related to that of the religious trophies just executed in the Chapel at Versailles, with strongly asymmetric elements, and with a background of palm and other foliage. Conspicuously focussing the composition were stags' heads, one of them circled by a hunting horn — henceforth a favorite motif.
The adjoining room with a buffet offers us a unique glimpse, just before the Salon d'Hercule, of a marble revetment. It partakes of the change in design of wood wainscot, as it has but a single tier of tall panels above the dado, unlike the many-tiered marble wall en- graved by Lepautre for Daviler's Cours d y architecture of 1691. A great oval frame over the buffet, reminiscent of Le Brun's in the Salons of Versailles, is flanked by narrow panels approximating pilasters, of which a mask with cartouche border replaces the capital. The heads of the frames of the diagonal niches recall those of Lepautre's mirror heads, with a great double shell surrounded by palm fronds. The fountains below, with basins of undu- lating shell, are the forerunners of many similar ones in the following period.
At Bercy, as earlier at the Chancellerie, was thus a house decorated throughout by Lepau- tre, of which the surviving fragments, welcome as they are, are a poor consolation for the loss of the consistent unity and wealth.
It has not been remarked that the modifications of the Hotel Lauzun in the early eight- eenth century may be recognized as from designs by Pierre Lepautre. This is obviously the case with the mirror frames of the chimney piece of the Grand Salon, with its arch and pil- asters very close to those of 1 705 at Trianon-sous-Bois. The other mirror frames are clearly from the same hand. The one opposite the chimney piece is our first example of a new form, its head a pair of S-scrolls of reverse curvature. Such curvature is thus transferred from the acanthus foliage to the mouldings of the frame itself. The mosa'ique of the background also takes on curved lines for the first time. We may presume this work to have been done for the financier Ogier, who acquired the house in 1709.
Thus though Lepautre's main energies in these years were absorbed in his ecclesiastical work, he continued also in his domestic designs the freeing of the frame from the limitations of geometry, the progressive enfranchisement of the flowing line.
Among other artists at this time, we find ourselves in the case of Boffrand, one of the most gifted, lamentably ill-informed as to his work, whether in Lorraine or in Paris. We t have available today no body of his drawings, since the disappearance from family hands, about 191 8, of the recueil Piroux at Nancy, which had not been studied scientifically since
132 In an early discussion of the work of Oppenord, published before we realized the extent of Lepautre's influ- ence on him, we were led, on the basis of his trophies at the Hotel de Pomponne and other designs, to attribute to him those of Bercy, as well as those of Rambouillet — an "expansionism" which we trust we have expiated in this book.
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The Creation of the Rococo
1 864. 133 In Paris in 1 704 he remodelled the Hotel de Mesmes, demolished} by 1707, suc- ceeded Delamair at the Hotel de Soubise, where none of the earliest interiors survive} in 1 709, remodelled the Hotel de Livry, demolished, and the Hotel de Mayenne, where little of the interior remains in place } in 17 10, the Petit-Luxembourg (Presidence du Senat) where much of the early decoration survives} in 1711-1714 the Hotel du Premier President, 134 demolished, and the Hotel de Broglie in the Rue Saint-Dominique, gutted} 135 in 17 13, a house for Melchoir de Blair, 1 8 Rue Vivienne, "decore tres agreablement," of which the surviving stairway may well be Boffrand's. 136 Of none of these buildings do we have any en- graved sections.
The best preserved of these buildings is the Petit-Luxembourg, as remodelled for the Princesse Palatine in 1710. Boffrand's staircase, now crowned by a modern ceiling, has monumental Composite pilasters framing arches with military trophies in the spandrels. The entablature, curved at the corners, has a broad concave frieze with scrolled bandwork and fronds of palm and laurel— one of the first of such treatments surviving. The over- door which fills the arch on the landing has a circular medallion fringed with palm, flanked by a pair of griffins. Related winged animals frame supporting borders of palm for the semicircular overdoors of the Grand Salon (Figure 100). A uniform membering of arches- such as Blondel later notes 137 in the oval salons of the Hotel de Moras— for the first time embraces the windows, the doors, the mirrors, again with corners and cornice slightly round- ed. The spandrels, with gilded medallions surrounded by loose bandwork with playing cherubs, would seem to be surely original, as may be also the strange fringe of bandwork invading the high vaulted ceiling. The main wall panels however are obviously work of the period about 1730, as are some other interior features of the house. In the Chambre d'Ap- parat (Figure 101) is further work of 17 10, of a general character not unlike that at Tri- anon at the same period. The mirror clearly shows its dependence on Lepautre's, though its consoles are turned sidewise, like earlier ones in Jean Marot's plates and in the Hotel Lauzun. The crossettes of the panel above have a pronounced scroll, characteristic of Boff- rand, and a central cartouche of residual plastic character. The overdoor, confined within a rectangle, is treated with arabesque in relief, derivative of Berain, quite unlike any other we know. To judge by the decorations here, which have not the perfect consistency and har- mony of Lepautre's work, Boffrand was moving in the train of Pierre Lepautre, but with eagerness to retain his independence, and anticipating, in certain features, treatments of Op- penord under the Regency.
From the Hotel de Mayenne, 1709, much of the woodwork was sold to M. le Comte
133 p Morey: "Notice sur la vie les oeuvres de Germain Boffrand," in Memoires de VAcademie Stanislas, 1864, 203-282. A volume of tracings by Morey from the recueil Piroux, owned by the Musee Lorrain and kindly put at our disposition by M. Pierre Marot, naturally does not permit any certainty even of Boffrand's authorship of in- dividual drawings, and those included do not surely belong to the early period, so as to establish any priority.
134 For the documents regarding it see the Bulletin de la Societe de Vhistoire de Part jrancais, 1923, 338. Our date of 1 709 is from the Comptes du prince de Vaudemont in the Archives de Meurthe-et-Moselle, cited by Langlois, of. cit., I57n.
135 The carved panelling from it preserved at the Musee Carnavalet (illustrated in Les Vieux hotels de Paris, Quartier Saint-Antoine, pi. 13) seem surely to be of much later date, after 1730.
136 Boffrand's interiors at the Hotel de Villars, later than their generally reputed date, we shall discuss under the Regency.
137 Architecture francoise, I, 1 1 8.
[ 98 ]
Genesis
Cahen d'Anvers, 138 who installed it at the Chateau des Champs in the principal story, in the Chambre de Madame and the boudoir on the court of honour. Still in situ at the house are several rooms with various fragments of decoration of the period of Boffrand, mirrors, overdoors, and cornices, and cove-cornices with cherubs.
Boffrand, a master of disposition, did not fail also to build a number of new hotels in Paris. The earliest of these, in 1700, was the house of Le Brun, nephew of the painter, which stands, dismantled. In 1704 139 he built one, in the name of the Abbe Dubois, for Madame d'Argenton, mistress of the future Regent, the ceiling of the salon being painted in 1708 by Antoine Coypel. It served from 1725 as the Chancellerie d'Orleans, and was repeatedly remodelled. We have numerous engravings after 1725 showing the salon, but its design as there seen cannot possibly be a work of the beginning of the century and thus will be dis- cussed later.
With a business enterprise like that of Mansart and De Cotte, Boffrand erected a number of large hotels at his own risk for sale. Thus in 171 2 he built in the Rue Saint-Dominique a hotel "dans laquelle on remarquera des dispositions extraordinaires & hasardees, lesquelles cependant paroissent fondees en raison pour plusieurs commoditez." 140 This, which prompt- ly became the Hotel Amelot de Gournay and later the Hotel de Montmorency, had an oval court, a salon and a principal chamber flatly elliptical at the outer and inner ends, and a ves- tibule with rounded corners and two converging sides. Mariette's section shows the cham- ber panelled only at the chimney breast and at the doorways of the enfilade. The mirror head, with an arched cornice on consoles, is closely similar in type to examples by Pierre Lepautre, although the consoles here again are placed in profile. The overdoor, with a broken semicircular head of plain mouldings, is flanked by vertical strips such as we have seen in Lepautre's work at just this date. All the cornices throughout the house are indi- cated as having concave friezes with no architrave and no cove for the ceiling— in other words they are shown as simple cove-cornices. There is nothing in the details corresponding in novelty with the exceptional spatial inventions of the plan.
Also built by Boffrand as speculations were: his pavilion inaugurating the Faubourg Saint- Honore (1712-1715), which became the Hotel de Duras; a house in the Place Vendome (171 3), which was sold to Nicolas de Curzay (No. 24) ; as well as the Hotels de Seignelay (17 1 3 ff) and de Torcy (1714 ff). The interiors of the two latter have been wholly remod- elled, 141 and Mariette's plates include no sections of them. We are no better informed as to the Hotel de Curzay. Of the Hotel de Duras, however, we have an excellent small section. 142 The mirrors are closely similar to those of Lepautre at the same period, with concave or reverse curves at the top, and sometimes with reverse curves at the bottom; some of them, as at the Hotel Lauzun, have paintings above in frames composed essentially of a quatrefoil
138 Cf. Champeaux, of. cit., 148. The Comtesse d'Anvers has kindly verified for us their present location.
139 Cf. J. Mayor: "L'Hotel de la Chancellerie d'Orleans," Gazette des beaux-arts, IV e per., XII, 1916, pp.
333-359-
140 Brice, 171 3 ed., Ill, 153.
141 The Hotel de Torcy was completely redecorated under the Empire for Prince Eugene de Beauharnais. At the Hotel de Seignelay, of which the present interiors have passed for work of the early period, they were actually, as we shall see, the result of a remodelling about 1750.
142 Blondel: Architecture jrancoise, pi. 438 of the Guadet edition.
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The Creation of the Rococo
of four C-scrolls, henceforth the most common form also for overdoors. Here again all the rooms are shown as having simple cove-cornices.
Little of significance for us remains of Boffrand's work in Lorraine. In the Cathedral at Nancy, which Mansart had begun in 1703 and Boffrand continued after 1708, his high altar has a painted retable of which the semicircular head, lightly broken at the impost, follows the general type of Lepautre's side altars at the Chapel of Versailles. Not much which is his survives in the interiors of the chateaux of Leopold 143 or in the houses at Nancy, and such sections of these buildings as are given by Boffrand in his Livre d' architecture, 1745, give us small help in most cases. The exceptions are those of La Malgrange, begun in 171 1. Work here was suspended in 1 7 1 5, when the interiors were already well advanced, and the chateau was demolished by Stanislas. Boffrand gives sections of both his projects, of which the first was preferred to the second. In general there are few novelties worthy of remark, but one room deserves great attention: the salon of the first project (Figure 102).
This salon is oval, rising through two stories like Le Vau's salon of Vaux long ago, and like Cartaud's at Montmorency, built at much the same period as the Malgrange designs. Unlike these rooms, however, it has no order of pilasters or other boldly plastic architecture. The windows in both stories are arched, the heads of those in the upper story rising in pene- trations of the cove, as later did those of the salons of the Hotel de Soubise. The room, however, is far from anticipating these later salons fully, indeed many features point rather backwards than forwards. Thus a small academic cornice is arched over the heads of the upper windows, with breaks supported by tall herms in relief facing sideways, like the con- soles we have previously noted in Boffrand's work. The cove is adorned with heavy garlands, from which depend large unsymmetrical trophies in the panels between the windows. In the lower story, below the impost, are square panels but slightly softened at the top by crossettes and a central shell. Above the impost pairs of figures seated on the arches support shallow iron balconies, while between them in the spandrels are large cartouches of little relief, with irregular fields and borders partly of shellwork. In spite of adherence to geometry, there is throughout a suggestion of graceful undulation which foreshadows that of Boffrand's fu- ture masterpiece. 144
On the interiors of Le Blond we are better informed, thanks to the sections he himself published 145 of his Hotel de Vendome, built 1705-1706 and enlarged 1714-1716, which with the Hotel de Clermont, 1708- 17 14, constituted his work in Paris. 146 Better still, we have the plates he added to his edition, 17 10, of Daviler's Cours— plates, we may note, en- graved by Pierre Lepautre (Figure 103). Mariette wrote of Le Blond: "II touchait l'orne- ment avec une tres-grande delicatesse." 147 There is, however, little that is new to us in motif j
143 Cf. P. Boye: Les Chateaux du roi Stanislas en Lorraine, 1910.
144 r pj le (} oors shown are remarkable for their free design, with curved rails, even one with a reverse curve. As such doors are quite unexampled elsewhere until after 1730, we may perhaps assume that they were indicated at the time the plates were engraved, in 1745.
145 In his edition of Daviler's Cours d architecture, 1 710. Cf. B. Lossky in Gazette des beaux-arts, VI e per., XII, 1934, 30-41. This paper, appearing before our discussions of Berain's and Lepautre's work, when Berain's chim- ney piece at Meudon was undated and wrongly identified, and when Lepautre's chimney pieces at Marly were still unknown, made claims of priority for Le Blond at the Hotel de Vendome which could not now be supported.
146 A "Petite maison de campagne du dessein du S r Le Blond," in Mariette's Architecture jrancoise, shows two rooms in section, which do not alter the idea we gain from the other works discussed.
147 Abecedario, III, 89-92. r ,
Genesis
the novelty, simplicity and variety which Le Blond remarks as now current, by contrast with earlier examples, are the qualities with which we have already become familiar in executed works. The designs of mirror frames represent personal variants of the schemes established a decade before by Berain and Pierre Lepautre. In some respects the forms are of belated types: many of the chimney breasts still project from the walls ; some of the mirror heads, including one still square-headed, have unornamented, unbroken mouldings. There is much narrow bandwork of slight relief, suggestive rather of Berain's painted ornament than of Lepautre's transformation of it, and the bizarre forms of certain marble mantels— curved and broken both in plan and in elevation— recall Berain's designs of 1699. Two of these mantels have diagonal herms, never found in Berain's, hesitant forerunners of the diagonal consoles adopted by Lepautre by 171 2 and henceforth typical. In the mosaic background we find in one instance the curved lines which Lepautre was then employing in the remodellings at the Hotel Lauzun. The cornices, all full entablatures beneath a low cove, tend to have friezes also hollow, with figural ornaments— in form and decoration not unlike that of the Salon Frais at Trianon in 1706. Among the plates of "Nouveaux Lambris," "si differens de ceux qui etoient en usage il y a quelques annees," we find again adaptation of Lepautre's motives, not well understood.
Delamair, so early superseded at the Hotel de Soubise, retained his employment at the Hotel de Rohan, subsequently much remodelled, abused, and "restored." The land was ceded July 22, 1705, the specifications and contracts for the construction range from 1705 to 1708, those for the carving and gilding, including that of the salons, being from 1 706. 148 Of Delamair's original interiors there, certain early drawings survive, 149 which he included in a volume sent to the Elector of Bavaria in 1 714. They show two sides of a room, one with a central arched doorway and very simple panelling. The mouldings of the lunette are strictly geometrical, there is no trace anywhere of the forms created by Pierre Lepautre. Busts are placed at the impost on consoles of free form; garlands follow the line of the arches, falling in one case from a simple cartouche. The cornice, with plain vertical frieze, is of academic form, though with only an astragal in place of the architrave, and is surmounted by a cove of substantial height. Clearly Delamair was not a pioneer in the decoration of in- teriors.
Delamair built also, before 1713, 150 for Chanac, abbe de Pompadour, a house which still stands in the Rue de Grenelle. The interior, however, was much remodelled under Louis XV and Louis XVI, and the plates of Mariette and Blondel include no section to confirm or modify our view of him.
Oppenord's earliest surviving works in France 151 are all ecclesiastical. One volunteered in 1699 for the altar of Notre Dame (Figure 104), 152 translates the baldaquin of Lepautre — the disapproval of which was itself doubtless partly due to its baroque aspects — into something still more baroque, and it also preserves the mannerist tabernacles of the old jube.
148 Langlois, of. cit.
149 Royal Library, Munich, MS. fr. 540, reproduced by Langlois, of. cit., pis. XLI and XLI1.
150 Brice, 1 71 3 ed., Ill, 215.
151 For the chronology of Oppenord's work see G. Huard's study in Dimier: Les feintres francais au XVIII' siecle, I, 1928, 311-329.
152 Cabinet des Estamples, Va 254c, No. 2220. It is marked merely "Dessein d'un particulier."
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The Creation of the Rococo
The altar of Saint-Germain-des-Pres was executed in 1 704 from a design of Oppenord (Figure 1 05), 153 after he had made a multitude of studies on various schemes. Again it was a baldaquin, with scrolled baroque consoles above, their junction marked by winged cherubs' heads. The Gothic reliquary of the saint (for which Oppenord first proposed to substitute a baroque one) is held aloft by two angels who kneel on opposite volutes, as in Lorenzo Tedesco's ciborium at Santo Spirito in Sassia at Rome— such volutes, as we have seen, later taken up by Vasse, in 171 2, for the altar of Notre Dame. One earlier study shows a revet- ment of the choir with trophees d'eglise, less like those which Oppenord had seen and sketched in Italy than like those of the new stalls of Orleans. The mouldings at the top of the panel take on something of the character of an early Lepautre mirror head, already with less geometrical character.
For the Abbey of Saint-Victor in 1 706 Oppenord made designs of an altar, not executed, which were exhibited in the library of the establishment. 154 Our only trace is the study en- graved in the Grand Oppenord, 155 which is of great scale and pronounced baroque composi- tion, though by no means copied from any specific Italian model.
In the surviving altar of Saint John at the cathedral of Amiens, 1709 (Figure 106), 156 French traditions also begin to make themselves felt in the form of the great frame, which at first held a painting. It is cut at the upper corners by concave arcs as in overmantel mirrors by Pierre Lepautre at Marly and in the Oeil-de-Boeuf at Versailles, and as in the altar of the Virgin just executed from Lepautre's design at Versailles.
It was in 171 2, according to the historian of the church, 15 ' that Oppenord presented a pro- ject for the altar of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie. An engraving of this project is included in the Grand Oppenord, plate LXXXIII (Figure 107). The retable is framed between pil- asters and beneath a cornice arched in the manner so often used in French decoration since 1685, and with a crowning ornament of a pair of cornucopias recalling many by Pierre Le- pautre. A painted scene of martyrdom, with an unbroken rectangular frame, is crowned by a pair of floating angels supporting a cartouche of traditional plastic character. The altar table, of sarcophagus type, has a reversed curve profile and is flanked by consoles with cherub- heads. On the face is an oval panel framed with palm. There is thus no such pregnant novelty of character as is so marked in Vasse's designs for the altar table of Notre Dame in the same year.
It was only in the period of mourning after the deaths of the two young heirs to the throne in 1712, following the death of the Dauphin in 171 1, that princes and courtiers of the first rank, like the Comte de Toulouse, the Princesse de Conti, and the Due d'Antin, "qui ne
153 National Museum, Stockholm. The surviving preliminary MS. studies are there and in the Cabinet des Estampes (Va 269a) — one of the latter published by F. de Catheu in Bulletin de la Societe de I'histoire de I'art jranrais, 1936, at p. 62. Other studies are engraved in the Grand Oppenord, pis. LXXVIII and LXXIX, and in the Moyen Ofpenord. This altar was literally copied in I 710 at Sainte-Trinite in Caen, this replica now being at Notre Dame de la Gloriette there. Cf. Huard, loc. cit.
154 Brice, 1713 ed., II, 182-183.
155 PI. CXVI.
156 G. Durand: Monographie de la cathedrale d' 'Amiens, 1901-1903. A drawing for this altar is preserved at the Cabinet des Estampes. Va 401a.
157 The Abbe Villain, cited by Huard, op. cit., 316.
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Genesis
pouvoient decoucher de la cour," ventured to set up establishments in Paris. 158 It is particu- larly important to study the works of this last moment of the reign, in order to define ex- actly their character on the eve of the period of Louis XV. Bercy, from 171 2, already dis- cussed, sufficiently represents Pierre Lepautre at this time. Fortunately we have also rea- sonably adequate material on several works at the very end of the reign from the hands of other designers.
Oppenord's reputation had steadily grown since his return from Italy. In 17 13 Brice spoke of him and of his house in the Rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre:
remplie & decoree de quantite de bonnes choses, particulierement des etudes qu'il a faites a Rome & dans tous les endroits d'ltalie, sur ce que l'antique & les plus excellens modernes ont de precieux. Les beaux projets et desseins d'architecture qui sortent jour- nellement de ses mains le font considerer comme un tres habile architecte, ayant un con- naissance parfait de tous les ouvrages de quelque genre qu'ils puissent etre, et possedant le dessein a une haut degre de perfection. 159
The first interior we know for which Oppenord was responsible was at the Hotel de Pom- ponne, Place des Victoires, executed for Michel Bonnier in 1714. 180 There survive portions of the panelling (Figures 108, 109), twice moved, and two of Oppenord's drawings. 161 We observe first the great wealth of carving, richly figural, the invention of a fertile plastic talent. The large standing trophies of the chase in the major panels, with live animals as well as dead game, were doubtless suggested by Audran's Portiere of Diana of 1 699 with its stand- ing trophy with hounds. The free grouping about naturalistic trees, which is such a novel feature of Oppenord's treatment, recalls the compositions of contemporary still-life painters like Weenix or Desportes. The filling of the subordinate panels (whether on the flat, or in the curved corners), likewise, is not confined merely to conventional leaf and bandwork, but playfully adopts, for the first time in carving, further arabesque motives. There are figures of Fame under valanced baldaquins, and naturalistic foliage such as is found in the arabesque Portieres of Audran, and still more in the arabesques of Gillot and Watteau. The mouldings of the panels themselves, both large and small, are subtly curved and modified without de- parting from basic rectangularity. At the top only C-scrolls are used, but at the bottom we find already mouldings of reverse curvature.
One of Oppenord's drawings (Figure no) shows two chimney pieces of related character. The marble mantels develop and vary types suggested by Berain at the turn of the century, doubtless now coming into wider use, as Le Blond's plates suggest— the marble curved both in profile and in plan, with a wealth of consoles and scrolls. In the hands of Oppenord, end- lessly facile, there was no hardening of such types into new formulae. The heads of the tall
158 Saint-Simon, XXIII, 176-177, 380-381. D'Antin bought in 171 2 the Hotel de Travers, which had been built for Chamillart; the Princesse de Conti, in I 7 1 3 , the Hotel de Lorge, redecorated by Mansart 1 695- 1 698.
159 I, 150. The passage recurs in the edition of 1 71 7, I, 156, but disappears in the next one of 1725.
160 Cf. the writer's paper "Oppenord reconnu," in Gazette des beaux-arts, VI e per. XIII, 1935, 42-58, which assembles the evidence for chronology. Brice ( I 7 1 7, I, 349) mentions "de fort grans changements, et plus de soixante mille ecus de depenses pour decorer les appartemens et pour leur donner les agremens de la mode nouvelle . . . dorures magnifiques"— made in 1 7 1 4. We shall see that certain changes, at least on the exterior, were made by Oppenord at the house after 1723, but the panelling is fully consonant with the date of 1 7 1 4.
161 De Cloux collection, Cooper Union, New York, Nos. 231, 232.
[ 103 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
mirrors over the fireplaces are freshly and lavishly invented: one bowed in reverse curves richly crested with a fan-like border; the other basically semicircular, to be sure, but with its regularity veiled by a diverging rim of shell. This adaptation of the rim of shell, which we have seen long ago in the cartouches of Stephano della Bella, was now a great novelty, which we shall also find, a moment later, in those of Vasse— a novelty which was to become a sign- manual of style under Louis XV. Scrollwork is not confined to the heads; the frame of one mirror breaks at the sides (as sometimes with Berain) into console curves, that of the other (far more freely than ever with Berain) waves at its base along the mantel, as does the mir- ror of the pier opposite. Without departure from the established general scheme, or a change in the tendency to greater curvature, the tendency is vastly accelerated, the scheme is given dynamic vitality.
It is worth observing that, in this first domestic design of Oppenord, to whom so much initiative has been attributed, the basic scheme was purely French— the scheme which was crystallizing toward 1 700, with a low marble chimney piece and with a tall arched mirror above that, the single flight of panels above the dado, the modification of the geometrical frame, the linear character, the slight relief. There is a fertile originality in detail, but no fundamental modification of the constructive or decorative elements, to say nothing of any radical change of materials, or of aesthetic character.
The Comte de Toulouse, a legitimated son of Louis XIV, who had purchased in 171 2 Francois Mansart's Hotel de la Vrilliere, began in 1714-1715 to remodel it under the di- rection of Robert de Cotte. Aside from the gallery, not disturbed until some years later, the chief decorative works were in connection with the vestibule and staircase. "La nouvelle escalier," wrote Germain Brice in 1 7 1 7, "a de la grandeur, et le grand palier qui sert d'entree aux appartements, est decore de pilastres, qui soutiennent une cornice fort enrichie de sculp- tures d'un fini tout particulier, la plupart duquelles ont ete executees par Du Mont, 162 sculp- teur tres habile, de l'academie . . ." It is only in later descriptions that we find the names of other sculptors. Thus in Piganiol de la Force's edition of 1742 (III, 83) he names Charpen- tier, Montean and Offhman as the sculptors of the staircase, while the 1752 edition of Brice, revised by Mariette, 183 mentions Vasse and Charpentier as sculptors specifically of the trophies. Vasse we know, was active elsewhere in the hotel after 171 5, but we cannot be sure he was concerned with the stairway.--
For this stairway two architectural sections survive, 164 in the style of draughtsmanship established by Pierre Lepautre, not by his hand but inferior and labored. 165 Engravings of the work as executed were included in the Architecture jrangoise of Mariette (Figure 1 1 1). 168 In the principal story there were Ionic pilasters framing panels with large suspended trophees de marine and trophees de chasse. The general treatment is thus not unlike that of the vestibule at Bercy, with large panels bearing suspended trophies, here trophies of arms including
162 Brice, 171 7 ed., I, 332-338. The 1716 edition of Les Curiositez de Paris (I, 6l), merely mentions work going on; the I 7 1 9 edition (I, 167) mentions no artists for the stairway, although it gives Vasse as the author of the sculpture in the Grand Cabinet.
163 I (completed about 1 740, see p. vii), 438-440.
164 Cabinet des Estampes, Va 232c, Nos. 1585 and 1586.
165 The author is not the same as that of the designs for the Chateau de Bonn, drawn by another imitator of Le- pautre.
166 Pis. 449-450 of the Hautecoeur edition.
[ 104 ]
Genesis
shields sharply inclined. Two of the panels are not strictly rectangular, but have paired C- scrolls at the top. The newer motifs thus appear without pronounced modifications of gen- eral character.
De Cotte began at this time to be called in by foreign princes and their advisers. Thus from Spain, now a Bourbon kingdom, the Princesse des Ursins wrote in 171 2 for his counsel on designs for the Cabinet des Furies (not preserved) and for chimney pieces in the Apparte- ment de la Reine in the palace at Madrid. 167 In 1 7 1 3 he was having executed in Paris the finish for "la piece octagonale" at Madrid, including carvings by Dugoullons and associates, marble mantels, and bronzes by Vasse, billed in 171 5. There survive at the Cabinet des Estampes (Vb 147) 168 a number of designs for chimney pieces at Madrid, some of them rendered in imitation of Lepautre's technique but not by him, four others, I believe, by Vasse. These last have flanking figures not unlike those we shall later see in the gallery of the Hotel de Toulouse, where the arch of the fireplace rests on similar baluster-like piers, and there are similarities of detail also with the later ornaments of Vasse in the Salon d'Hercule.
The character of work of De Cotte's office at this moment for the provinces, without the participation of Lepautre or Vasse, is shown by drawings prepared in 17 14 for rooms for the Marquis de Grammont at Besancon. 169 In their general ordonnance they follow the schemes of Lepautre about 1703, with square frames and medallions in the upper zones, and with the slightest modification of the geometrical assemblage. The Chambre (Figure 112) even retains an impost all about, and in all the rooms there are numerous superposed panels. The mirrors of the Salon and the Chambre still have semicircular heads ; those of the Anti- chambre and the Cabinets have broken segmental heads like those of Lepautre at the Chan- cellerie. The marble chimney piece of the Chambre has the form now most characteristic, its inner moulding, of broken curves, flanked by diagonal consoles of slight projection and curvature.
It will be observed— contrary to the view of many writers— how completely private work at this time was under the influence of the initiative taken in the royal works. Versailles, so far from being conservative or backward, was in the forefront, by the remodelling of the Appartement du Roi in 1701, then by the decoration of the Chapel extending to 17 10. Even between 17 10 and 171 5 the leadership remained with the artists of the Crown, at Notre Dame and elsewhere.
In the last years of the reign, as we have seen, younger men, while following and exploit- ing the tendencies established by Lepautre, began to show greater personal initiative. Thus Boffrand, always a finished master of spatial composition, showed, at least at La Malgrange, ability to devise new motifs for the treatment of surface. Oppenord brought a rich equip- ment which, especially in religious work, transcended adherence to formula and promised much for the future. At the end of the period, Vasse made himself felt as a vital creative force. The character of Oppenord's early work, to be sure, still tinged by baroque remini- scences, was not entirely in harmony with the essential spirit of the new style. It represented
167 Marcel, Inventaire, 195-207.
168 Not available for reproduction since the outbreak of war.
169 Va ter, Nos. 794-805. Requested in October, 1 7 1 3 , and sent after June, I 714, according to letters abstract- ed by Marcel, of. cit., 1 21 ff.
[ 105 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
that "transition"— really a compromise after the fact— which follows, in the work of other men, the initiative of every great individual artistic creator.
The Ornamentalists
While Lepautre and his followers were creating the masterpieces of the time in architec- tural form, new developments had been proceeding in the painted decoration of surface, from which again were to come important suggestions.
Here the leadership was now taken by Claude III Audran ( 1 658-1 734) . At thirty-three, on January 1, 1692, he had been received "maistre peintre, sculpteur, graveur et enjoliveur a Paris." 170 The next year Cronstrom, the Swedish Minister, wrote home to Tessin: "Celluy qui apres M. Berain a la plus grande reputation en ce genre f d'arabesques et de grotesques] est Audran, neuveu d'Audran le graveur. Je croyois qu'on le pourrait disposer autant plus facilement a un voyage en Suede qu'il se trouve fort contre-carre icy par M. Berain a qui il fait ombrage." 171 In 1698 Cronstrom got from the Due de Vendome drawings from the arabesques executed by Audran at Anet. The Salon, as Dargenville tell us, 172 had a ceiling "de petites figures d'animaux, d'oiseaux et d'Amours peintes par Audran." Other rooms may also include his work: the Grand Cabinet, a gilded ceiling "avec quatre petites chasses," the Cabinet des Muses, "peintes en or sur les lambris," and the Cabinet des Singes with Savon- nerie tapestries of monkeys in the four seasons. Cronstrom writes: "Ann de ne pas chagriner M. Berain, M. de Vendosme ne dira pas pour qui e'est . . . Audran estant le seul qu'il craint." This fear was well founded, for after 1699 Audran was to take the lead, receiving in four years over 70,000 livres for his work for the Batiments.
The momentous year of 1699 saw both artists employed on decorations for the Apparte- ment de Monseigneur at Meudon. Berain's designs for arabesques on the panelling of the Cabinet (Figure 115) and elsewhere in the Chateau were executed by Guillaume Desau- ziers, gilder, who was paid from April 12 (Comptes IV, 544). The forms here and in other arabesques of this time — included, like these, in Berain's engraved series of Cheminees—art much more elongated than in his designs engraved before 1693. The double band disap- pears, although there are still contrasting areas, executed in gold, partly with mosdique. The panels of the Cabinet are devoid of figural and animal motives, but one other panel of the Chemlnees suite shows a seated Chinese figure of the type then just coming into vogue, 173 to- gether with a pair of monkeys— the earliest example of each of these motifs in his work which we can securely date. 174
Even before Berain's assistants adorned the walls of the Cabinet at Meudon, Audran had
170 Registre des jurandes, Archives Notariales, Y9322, cited by Dacier et Vuaflart: Jean de Julienne et les graveurs de Watteau, I, 1929, 19.
171 This and the following quotation are given by Weigert: Berain, I, 222.
172 Voyage fittoresque des environs de Paris, 1755, 179.
173 Cf. the general discussion of Chinese influence below.
174 Monkeys appear in one of Berain's arabesques (Weigert, No. 1 91) of which Weigert, relying on a manu- script note of Mariette, attributes the engraving to Jacques Lepautre, who died in 1684, but the plate is signed merely "Le Pautre," and from its style we would attribute it to a much later date and its engraving thus to Pierre Lepautre. Such monkeys merely replace the fauns, in similar playful activities, familiar in early arabesques like those of Ducerceau.
[ IO6 ]
Genesis
already attacked the ceilings in other rooms there, being paid 6900 livres, February 22 and March 14 "sur la peinture qu'il a fait au plafonds de la garde-robe et de la chambre de Monseigneur" (IV, 544). 175
The King visited Meudon and approved the work in the Chambre April 22. On April 25 Mansart received the Dauphin's order to efface an old ceiling in the Cabinet d'Angle "et y peindre un plat-fond de Grotesques comme celui de la chambre." 176 This order marked a definite preferment of Audran to Berain, and the end of Berain's employment for arabesques in the Maisons Royales.
Two sketches, "plafons de Meudon" (Figures 113, 1 14)— scarcely from Audran's own hand, but sketched from the work— survive in the Cabinet des Estampes (Va 358). The scheme of composition is still that of Berain's Chambre du Lit at the Hotel de Mailly, com- posed on the cardinal and diagonal axes. Again as there, the fields are bordered by a double band, here, in one case, much more extravagantly scrolled. The single fillets and scrolls, however, are more isolated and looser in organization, a baldaquin on leafy supports is of the airiest proportions. Birds and monkeys, as well as human figures, perch on the scrolls.
Other royal commissions to Audran quickly followed. Already in April of 1699 payments to him began on "ouvrages de peinture qu'il fait pour la petite chambre de Madame la prin- cesse de Conti" at Versailles (2500 livres to November 15, IV, 447).
On the reopening of the Gobelins in 1699, Audran was entrusted with a commission of outstanding importance, the "Nouvelles portieres des Rabesques des Dieux" (Figure 1 17). 177 As compared with the earlier Triomphes de Dieux and Mois Arabesques, copied or adapted from old models, these embodied, for the first time at the Gobelins, the new character which French arabesque had meanwhile assumed. The light pierced baldaquins on tapered leafy gaines were surrounded by sprays of naturalistic foliage, by airy scrollwork, chiefly of acanthus, and by garlands of flowers— all delicately shimmering in pale colors on a gold background. We gain an idea of the admiration this suite evoked from its having been exe- cuted seven to nine times between 1701 and 1703.
With the advent of 1 700, Audran, assisted by Desportes, began the painting of such ara- besques for the apartments of the Duchesse de Bourgogne at the Chateau de la Menagerie. Mansart had sent to Fontainebleau, September 8, 1699, a memorandum 178 proposing figures of Diana, Pomona, Thetis, Flora, Pales, Ceres, Minerva, and Juno. It was on the margin of this proposal that the King wrote his famous note, in which more than in all others, he showed his superior judgment and taste:
II me paroit qu'il y a quelque chose a changer que les sujets sont trop serieux et qu'il faut qu'il y ait de la jeunesse melee dans ce que Ton fera. Vous m'apporterez des dessins quand vous viendrez, ou du moins des pensees. II faut de l'enfance repandue partout.
Louis, Fontainebleau, 10 septembre 1699.
175 Cf. Biver: Meudon, 154.
176 Ibid., 154, citing Archives Nationales O 1 1473. Payments for this ceiling followed on September 27 and October 24. October 23 the work was inspected by the King (Dangeau, VII, 1 74, 1 76).
177 Mansart's register, O 1 1809, carried on June 12 the order for these "suivant les dessins de grotesques que M. le Surintendant a fait voir a sa Majeste."
178 Exhibited at the Musee de Versailles.
[ 107 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
Audran's designs (Figure 1 17), 179 so admirably suited to the age and taste of the princess, were the result.
In the accounts for 1700 we find him paid no less than 22,000 livres "a compte des ouv- rages de peinture qu'il fait dans les appartements de la Menagerie"; the payments continue until November, 1701. The surfaces ornamented included the panelling as well as the ceil- ings. 180 We learn of the royal satisfaction by two passages fromDangeau:
Jeudi 2 2 avril 1700. Le roi alia se promener a la Menagerie, ou Mme la duchesse de Bourgogne etoit allee pour le recevoir; il fut tres content de toutes les depenses qu'on y a faites, qui sont grandes et d'un gout fort recherche pour les boisures, les peintures, et les serrures . . .
Mardi, 2 1 decembre. — Le Roi . . . monta en carrosse avec Mme. la duchesse de Bour- gogne. lis allerent a la Menagerie voir les appartements qu'on a acheve de peindre et dorer; le roi les trouva magnifiques et charmants . . .
These decorations enjoyed considerable celebrity. Caylus, in his severe Vie . . . de Watteau read before the Academy in 1 748, mentions them, remarking "la legerete qu'exigent les fonds blancs ou les fonds dores sur lesquels Audran faisoit executer ses ouvrages."
Three studies for arabesque ceilings on a gold ground, attributed to Audran, are preserved in the Musee des Arts-Decoratifs (Figure 117). The presence of a unicorn in one of them suggests that they were destined for the chateau of the little princess who was not yet united with her husband when the designs were first proposed. 181 They are of the most delicate, at- tenuated proportions, with ethereal canopies floating without any support. The central fluted sunburst becomes a ring of bat's-wing, itself with lace-like openings; the few remaining double bands are pierced and disconnected ; other touches of bandwork become curved and calligraphic; fillets are replaced by single lines; and foliate scrolls are reduced almost to tendrils.
By such designs, in comparison with Berain's work of 1 699, we are led to the conclusion that the lightest of Berain's arabesques were influenced by the victory of Audran and were executed after 1 700. As pronounced examples, we may instance Berain's surviving engraved designs for ceilings (e.g. Figure 1 16), 182 which were drawn with single fillets only, though still, unlike those of Audran, with a firm organization. Without any change of fundamental scheme since the first ceilings of the Hotel de Mailly, the pattern is lightened to the airiest of interlaces.
179 One of three preserved at the Musee des Arts-decoratifs.
180 Cf. the passage in Blondel: Architecture francoise, I, 1752, 125.
181 This identification, proposed in my paper on the Menagerie, is subject to correction by future study of the great body of Audran's drawings, about 1 200 in number, from the Cronstedt-Fullero collection, given to the Na- tional Museum in Stockholm in 1941.
182 Weigert, No. 70b; also 70a and 69, of the same character. Weigert supposes these engravings to be among a dozen for ceilings mentioned by Cronstrom in a letter of 1693, in which however he says "il y a deja quelque temps que cela est fait et le gout a un peu change depuis." Now the style of a few years before, since changed, would have been the heavier style of the Hotel de Mailly. There are none of the lighter patterns among the plates en- graved by Dolivar before 1693. We must accordingly suppose that the dozen mentioned by Cronstrom are now lost.
[ I08 ]
Genesis
At this period, by 1703, 183 Audran also painted arabesques in the gallery of the Duchesse du Maine at Sceaux, which she had just acquired, works destroyed after 1775 by the Due de Penthievre.
In 1 708- 1 709 Audran was paid the substantial sum of 7,471 livres for "verni" and "verni et dorure" in the Chateau Neuf at Meudon, 184 doubtless in arabesque patterns. In the same years the Gobelins executed from his designs, for the apartment of the Dauphin there, the series of narrow panels known as the "Mois Grotesques," with classical figures under light fanciful baldaquins. They do not differ substantially in style from his earlier work. Band- work is subordinate but still present, sometimes with diagonal interlaces and almost a calli- graphic character. In 1707- 1708 and into 1709, Watteau, in his twenty-third and twenty- fourth years, was assisting Audran, so that it has been surmised that he may have collabo- rated on the designs. If so, his part was still receptive and secondary. 185
In 1 709 Audran painted for Marly his famous "tableau represantant un berceau ou les singes sont a table," 186 an exemplar of the surviving singeries of the next generation.
Germain Brice but expressed the general admiration of his contemporaries when, in his edition of 1 7 1 3 (III, 71-72), he celebrated Audran as "considere comme un des premiers dessinateurs du temps, sur tout pour les Arabesques & pour les ornemens de grotesques, dans le gout du fameux Raphael," and added "On voit de ses ouvrages en plusieurs endroits, particulierement au chateau de Meudon, & a la Menagerie, ou il a fait des choses dignes d'admiration, plus belles & plus ingenieuses, en ce genre singulier, que tout ce qui s'est en- core vu en France jusques icy."
With forms suggested by the surface arabesque of Berain, Pierre Lepautre, transposing them, and transforming, in their spirit, the architectural framework itself, had created something new under the sun— the essential scheme which was to prevail in France under Louis XV and throughout Europe in all the development of the rococo. This creation, as we have observed, took place in fullness from around 1700, still under Louis XIV, at a period long before scholars have generally realized.
Contrary to received opinion, spatial impulses were not determining factors in this genesis, which took place chiefly within the pre-existing walls of rooms of simple cubical form. The relative absence of spatial variety in French work of the time has been thought due to lack of comprehension of this resource of the Italian baroque. Le Vau, however, had early been a master of this resource, of which he was expressly deprived in his later work by the rigor of French academism. Boflxand braved this rigor soon after the great creative moment, but Boffrand was exceptional in France for his interest in spatial variety, and it was Lepautre, not Boff rand, whose innovations were the crucial and prophetic ones. The spatial effects char-
183 Madame wrote October 26, 1704: "I think I told you last year about the charming gallery and closet Ma- dame du Maine has made for herself there." Letters, tr. by G. S. Stevenson, 1924.
184 Biver: Meudon, 192, citing Archives Nationales, O 1 2207.
185 p or tne en g rav ing of the series by Jean Audran, announced in the Mercure for 1726, three drawings in red chalk, in reverse from the tapestries and the engravings, are preserved at the Cooper Union, New York (Figure 118).
186 Comftes, V, 340. Already in the Saturn of the Portieres des Dieux, 1699, we find a monkey playing with the cherubs — the first instance, to my knowledge, which can be definitely dated.
[ 109 ]
The Creation of the Rococo
acteristic of the reign of Louis XV, in the relation of interiors to one another and to the ex- ternal landscape 187 were achieved with little variety in the forms of the units, and were them- selves not the chief differentia of the new style.
It has been commonly believed also that in the genesis of the plastic forms of this style, Italian influences were predominant. Obviously many elements and motifs used by Lepau- tre, as by his predecessors, were of Italian high-baroque origin. The arched cornices on con- soles, the occasional armorial cartouches, sometimes winged, with figural supporters, the va- lanced baldaquins, the winged cherub-heads were all features long domesticated in France. The outlines of his mirror frames and altarpieces, for which parallels may be found in Italy, were merely logical developments of the outlines of frames in Le Brun's painted ceilings, themselves based, long ago, on Italian baroque examples. The impact of the Italian high- baroque, as we have seen, had been felt in France well before the fundamental change of style we have described, and its influence had long been on the wane.
Quite otherwise significant was Lepautre's transformation of this traditional baroque ma- terial. In all his work one of the most striking qualities was the abandonment of plasticity: in architectural members and decorative motifs alike. The column soon completely vanished from his work, the pilaster, greatly attenuated and reduced in relief, survived only as a strip, its cap and base dissolving. The wall panels, increased in height, had their mouldings like- wise diminished in projection. At focal points their outline was further etherealized by taking on the swing of arabesque bandwork with its adjuncts of acanthus. Interlaces and scrolls of these elements invaded the panels themselves at top and bottom and around the central rosette. Not the plastic baroque cartouche, which survived only as a shield of arms, but a smooth surface with surrounding bands and scrolls became the typical field for decorative enrichment. In the hands of Vasse the exuberance of line was heightened, the surface be- came curved without losing its smoothness.
For this genial transformation, Lepautre, who had never been in Italy, derived his first suggestion, as we have seen, from a French source, the painted arabesque of Berain. The derivative elements, Italian and French alike, he fused in a new creation, essentially distinct from either.
How completely distinct it had become from the art of Italy may be appreciated by a comparison of domestic interiors in their ensemble. The Italian rooms retained a high vaulted ceiling, with rich plastic ornament, in bold relief, often painted in full color with figural subjects j their walls were unarticulated, of plaster painted or covered with stuffs, in which the doors and windows, heavily framed, were pierced with little mutual relation. The French rooms, on the other hand, had an increase in the height of wall, a reduction in the depth of cove to a mere feature of the cornice, ceilings thus essentially flat, white or with ethereal arabesques ; walls articulated in wood. Highly unified membering, delicate and of slight relief, brought out merely by gilding, embraced doors, windows, and chimney piece in a single organic whole, fusing functional elements with ornament.
This new French scheme was indeed almost equally far removed from the academic sys- tem hitherto prevailing in France itself, with its rigid distinction between the bold archi- tectonic membering and flat surface decoration.
187 \v e ll analyzed by A. Schmarzow, Barock und Rokoko, 332-340.
[ no ]
Genesis
That it was appreciated by contemporaries as a new creation, in relation to what had gone before both in Italy and in France, is well evidenced by a remark of Germain Brice in 171 3 (II, 31) regarding the Hotel de Beauvais, which had been built by Antoine Lepautre in 1656:
Dans le mois de Juillet de l'annee 1704, les dedans de cette maison ont ete entiere- ment detruits pour les mettre a la mode & dans le gout moderne, qui est incomparable- ment plus commode & plus agreable, que celuy que Ton suivoit autrefois: & il est bon d'ajouter a cet egard settlement, que les architectes Francois surpassent de bien loin en cet article, ceux qui les ont precede, et les Italiens meme ; ce qui est d'une consequence infinie pour l'utilite & pour l'agrement que 1'on en regoit.
The pioneers in the new creation— Berain, Lepautre, Vasse, Audran— were purely French in blood, in training, and in tendency. Not one of them had studied in Italy. Italian elements, still surviving from earlier years, were secondary in their work ; Italian influence was no vital factor in the new art they created. It is an art essentially French also in its grace, its gaiety and its gentleness, one of the most delightful flowerings of artistic creative genius.
[ in ]
Evolution
The Reign of Louis XV
^RUSTIC evolution in France during the reign of Louis XV falls into three main pe- / % riods. The early years, in their very beginning under the Regency, saw a great out- X -m^burst of creative energy from artists whose activity extended, without much inner evolution, to about 1730. The middle years began then with a fresh impulse under new leadership, to which ran counter a conservative tendency, issuing after 1750 in a trend to reaction. In the last years after 1760 this reaction, sharply intensified, gained entire mastery.
This whole evolution of art, down to the reaction, was a development of that initiative the genesis of which we have already discussed — an initiative which, as we have seen, was taken in the last years of Louis XIV. The opening of the new reign brought no fundamental change of direction, but only an exploitation of the paths in the new direction so lately taken. These varied paths were struck out by men of the artistic generation of the Regency. By 1730 a fresh artistic generation with fresh leadership was going beyond them in accelerated, heightened movement, always with the same general aim. It was only after the middle of the century that art began to turn in a new direction, toward new ideals.
The rise and fall of the rococo would once have been thought to offer a classic paradigm of analogy with the growth and decay of organic life. We know now the fallaciousness of such analogies imported into history from science. We shall see that in the rococo, as in the Gothic, there was no internal "decline," no diminution of quality or power. In the moment of its highest ultimate brilliance, still capable of new differentiations, a new force, originat- ing elsewhere, was to sweep all before it.
Early Years of the Reign
The phase of style ordinarily called the style regence, marking the early years of the reign, extended beyond the years of the Regency proper ( 1 7 1 5 to 1723), which saw its formation, roughly to 1730. In 1735 came the death of Robert de Cotte closely followed by that of Vasse and accompanied by the eclipse of Oppenord. Though new forces, inaugurating a new chapter, were felt by 1730, the men of the generation of the Regency thus continued their own work for a dozen years beyond its term. Official tasks and official dominance changed with the change of regime, so that the Regency and its aftermath call for separate treatment.
The Regency, 1 7 1 5 - 1 7 2 3
Louis XV, on his accession, was a child of five. The first eight years of his reign, till his majority was declared in 1 723, were under the regency of the Due d 'Orleans, who died at the end of that year.
The seat of the Regency was not Versailles, but Paris — whither the boy-king was brought at once, and where he remained, at Vincennes and at the Tuileries, until 1722. Here was the Regent's own palace, the Palais-Royal j here now congregated the courtiers from an aban-
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Evolution
doned Versailles. Here too were the financiers and speculators of the post-war inflation of Law and the Mississippi Bubble — culminating in 1720 — in which great noblemen were not above participating, along with lackeys. Courtiers, favorites, and financiers rivalled one an- other in housing themselves at the capital in the latest fashion.
Familiar generalizations, much too facile, have been made as to a rebound to frivolity from barren splendour and oppressive piety in Louis XI V's last years at Versailles with Ma- dame de Maintenon. The artistic antithesis has been heightened by constrasting the Grands Appartements of Versailles with the Petits Cabinets of Louis XV, -as if the Versailles of Louis XIV had not also had its own Petits Cabinets, swept away in the remodellings of the next reign. Actually the art of the last period of Louis XIV, retreating to the intimacy of Marly and Trianon, and renewed on the motive of youth at the behest of the aging monarch, already foreshadowed, in scale and motive, what was to come.
Philippe d'Orleans, licentious as he was, was no mere worthless debauchee, as he has too often been pictured, but an enlightened connoisseur with personal understanding of art. A passionate collector, he assembled in a few brief years paintings rivalling even those of the Crown. Works by French masters were few among them, but it is significant that among these was one by Watteau and that this was indubitably a commission. 1 The Regent himself drew and painted with a skill well beyond that of most amateurs. He exemplified the charac- teristic advantages of aristocracy at its best, for the patronage of art: eagerness to accept the latest in creative innovation, superiority to philistine and bourgeois timidity and reaction.
There is, to be sure, a certain measure of truth in the hackneyed formulation of social in- fluences of the time. The personality of the Regent, informal and accessible, did tend to throw the centre of gravity further from the splendour of the Grands Appartements— which in his palace, too, had new forms of magnificence — to the luxuriance of the Petits Cabinets. The end and aftermath of war, with its characteristic sequels, gave the means for a burst of ac- tivity in private building and decoration, gave the mood of easy abandon.
A perfect artistic embodiment of this mood came in painting with Watteau, born in 1684, cut off by death in 1 721, whose brief but immense productiveness coincides almost exactly with the Regency. Those who once applied the words frivolity or license to the shimmering gossamer of Watteau little thought of the incessant labour, the intense observation of na- ture, the endless wealth of preparatory studies, the artistic integrity, the personal asceticism of the frail genius of the Fetes galantes. There is little need for us to analyse here the general character of his work, with its profound originality of subject and treatment. The specific character of his arabesque ornament, developed from that of Audran and Gillot, we shall discuss in its place.
It was doubtless more than a coincidence that, just on the eve of the period then opening, Shaftesbury had said with a new emphasis that art is not imitation but creation: 2 "To copy
1 The minute Les singes feintres on copper, painted as a pendant to the Breughel Musique des chats. Listed by L. F. du Bois de Saint-Gelais: Descriftion des tableaux du Palais-Royal, 1 727 ff. Dacier and Vuaflart, of. cit., I, 135.
2 Cf . L. Venturi: Histoire de la critique d'art, 1938, in additions there made to the English edition of 1936. For the earlier realizations of this truth in Neo-Platonic thinking from Plotinus onward, cf. E. Panofsky: Idea, 1924, fassitn, especially 69-71 (Diirer), 121 (Leonardo, etc.).
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what has gone before can be of no use . . . To work originally, and in a manner create each time anew, must be a matter of pressing weight, and fitted to the strength and capacity of none but the choicest workmen." Like the true poet, the artist "is indeed a second maker; a just Prometheus, under Jove." 3 The very word creation, as applied to man's invention and imagination, was relatively new, 4 and its appearance marks a fuller recognition of artistic powers. Shaftesbury, indeed, had no sympathy with the art of his own time— still then baroque in England — which he spoke of as "a kind of debauch ... in gaudy colors and dis- figured shapes of things . . . the wild and whimsical, under the name of the odd and pretty," and held up the example of a Greece that he knew not, where "everything muse-like, grace- ful and exquisite, was rewarded with the highest honours." But art was not, in his view, to be subjected to any formula, even any formula of the ancients.
The French artistic pioneers of the Regency and of the 'thirties had certainly never heard of Shaftesbury, but artistic freedom, like English philosophic ideas, was in the air. Dubos in his Reflexions critique sur la poesie et la peinture ( 1719)— himself, like Shaftesbury, in the cur- rent stemming from Locke, opposed to a priori principles, restoring sensations to honour — made the application that art was not subject to intellectual laws but to sensibility: "Un ouv- rage peut etre mauvais sans qu'il y ait des fautes contre les regies, comme un ouvrage plein de fautes contre les regies, peut etre un ouvrage excellent."
Critical reprobation for infraction of rules was not to fall for some time on the innovations of Oppenord and his fellows, any more than they were to receive, as yet, a formal defense on the new principles. The public of amateurs and patrons, eager to tell or hear some new thing, instinctively took them to their hearts.
The phase of interior style created by Pierre Lepautre, characteristic of the last years of the old reign, had received its harmonious and perfect embodiment at his hands in works from Marly to the Chapel at Versailles and the choir of Notre Dame; its protagonist was on the eve of his death. Already, since 17 10, there had been stirrings and fresh impulses among other architects, sculptors, and ornamentalists. The moment was ripe for the men of creative talent among them to impress a new character on the work of the new reign.
In our study of men and works under the Regency we shall consider first the two leading creative designers, Vasse and Oppenord, and a basic work of each having major importance and influence: one for the Regent himself and by his personal designer; the other for a prince of the blood and by artists of the Crown, then without official commissions.
The advent of the Due d'Orleans to regency gave Oppenord, then forty-three years of age, his supreme opportunity. Already at the death of his father Jean Oppenord, April 16, 171 5— some months before the death of Louis XIV— we find Gilles-Marie Oppenord men- tioned as "premier architecte du due d'Orleans." 5 How long he had previously held this post we do not know, although Brice would presumably have mentioned it had Oppenord received the appointment by the time of his edition of 171 3, as he does in those of 1 7 1 7
3 Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, 171 1, cited from the 1790 edition, III, 5 ; I, 179.
4 La Bruyere had used creer in this sense, though far less deeply than Shaftesbury, in his discourse on Boileau at the Academy in 1693. Leonardo, Lomazzo and Diirer, among others, had anticipated the conception of man as a second maker, God-like. Cf. Panofsky, of. cit.
5 Burial certificate cited by G. Huard in L. Dimier: Les Peintres jrancais du XVIll e siecle, I, 1928, 316. Les Curiositez de Paris, I 719 ed., I, 146, also speak of him as "premier Architecte de S. A. R."
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Evolution
(Table of volume I), and of 1725 (I, 240). The surviving lists of household officers of the Dues d'Orleans 6 include none between 1709, when he does not appear, and 1724, after the death of the Regent, when among the officers of his son, Oppenord is carried as "Surintendant et controleur des batiments et jardins," with a salary of 3000 livres. Among his younger con- temporaries, Jacques-Francois Blondel called him "Premier Architecte de S. A. R. Mon- seigneur le Due d'Orleans ; 7 Huquier, in engraving his portrait and the title-page of his works called him "Directeur des Batiments et Jardins de son Altesse Royale." 8
The other vital creative force in design under the Regency was Vasse, whom we have seen emerging toward independence in the last days of Louis XIV. He now, with the death of Pierre Lepautre in 171 6, became the chief reliance of Robert de Cotte in decorative design, responsible for all that is of creative significance in De Cotte's later works, as Lepautre had been in the previous period.
The chief scene of the artistic activity of Oppenord under the Regency was the seat of the Regency itself, the Palais-Royal. Unchanged externally, it was transformed internally by the Regent, who employed Oppenord for a series of remodellings beginning shortly after his advent to power. Every vestige of Oppenord's work there has long been swept away, most of it even before the Revolution, but documents and descriptions enable us, in part, to recon- struct it. 9
Among the first decorations, executed May to November, 1716, were those in the apart- ment of the Duchesse d'Orleans on the ground floor along the Jardin des Princes, ending with "une petite galerie du dessin & direction du sieur Oppenord." 10 For the treatment of this, alas, no evidence survives.
By the end of November, 1 7 1 6, the Regent was occupying his new apartment in the Aile Gauche. The Cabinet des Poussins, with its rounded corners, we know only from plans of the palace. For the Chambre a. Coucher we have a manuscript design by Oppenord (Figure 119), doubtless from this year, since it shows the room before an enlargement which was it- self made by 1 7 1 9. In this early form of the room there was little to mark any artistic change ; the doors and the panels over them are rectangular and wholly unornamented, the walls being hung with crimson damask as a background for easel paintings from the superb collec- tion of the prince. It is only in the treatment of the cornice that we note any innovation. Al- though the windows allow ample height for a full entablature, and although the presence of columns would hitherto have been thought to require it, there is now only an extremely low hollow, serving alike for architrave, frieze, cornice, and cove. The effort, from 1700 onwards, to secure maximum height of the wall proper, the abandonment of a full entabla-
6 J. -J. Guiffrey: "Liste des peintres, sculpteurs, architectes, graveurs et autres artistes de la maison du Roi, de la Reine, ou des princes du sang . . . ," in Nouvelles archives de I'art jrancais, 1872, 96.
7 Architecture jrancoise, II, 1 752 (plan of Saint Sulpice as reproduced by Blomfield II, pi. CXLVII).
8 Oeuvres de Gilles Marie Oppenord . . . known as the Grand Oppenord. Though itself undated, it is datable by its dedication to Le Normant de Tournehem as Directeur general des Batiments ( 1 745-1 75 1 ) and by its quotation of Saint- Yves' Observations sur les arts, 1748, as between 1748 and 1 7 5 1 . The Moyen Oppenord, in which Huquier engraved other motifs of detail, followed, and the Petit Oppenord, with Italian sketches, preceded the Grand Oppenord, as its Avis states.
9 Kimball: "Oppenord au Palais-Royal," in Gazette des beaux-arts, VI e per., XV, 1936, 113-117, where the documents for the chronology are cited at length.
10 Curiositez de Paris, 1719,!, 1 50- 1 5 I .
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The Creation of the Rococo
ture, the fusing of cornice and cove, were here adopted even though this cornice must span the void between columns — a license which Oppenord was apparently the first to permit himself.
On quite another plane of magnificence was Oppenord's new termination of Mansart's gallery of 1692. This had meanwhile been decorated by Antoine Coypel in 1694- 1705 with paintings of the story of Aeneas. 11 The ceiling was in compartments on a scheme not essen- tially different from schemes of Le Brun, united by cartouche borders of rollwork.The wall panels, with semicircular heads had spandrels haltingly derivative of the style of Lepautre. They were divided by pilasters, the entrance door was flanked by columns, all with rich gild- ing. Oppenord now designed an oval hemicycle at the end, completed by 17 17. Its motif of a great central chimney piece and side bays framed by Corinthian pilasters (Figure 120) 12 may well have been inspired by Lepautre's treatment of the end of the Salon d'Hercule, the latest novelty of the end of the last reign, still unfinished. The use of pilasters, there re- sumed on account of the monumental character of the work, is in harmony with the bolder plasticity of Oppenord's tendencies. The mantel proper, with an oval arch like that of the Salon d'Hercule, is buttressed by great consoles. At each end groups of cherubs hold fronds of palm with a multitude of candelabra which, unlike those of Berain, branch irregularly though balancing each other. Above the immense mirror, filling the whole space between the pilasters, and breaking into the zone of the entablature, Victories flanking a great baroque cartouche with crown of shell draw aside a curtain with heavy baroque folds, as first by Borromini in 1660 in the Capella Spada at San Girolamo della Carita, and again in 1665 i n the Sala Ducale of the Vatican. In the side bays, instead of the arched doors of the Salon d'Hercule, are pyramids in relief with rich military trophies and flying cherubs— "ornemens . . . entitlement dorez, qui sont d'un grand effet." "Toutes les parties," Brice adds in describ- ing the work with great admiration, "sont d'un profil nouveau et fort ingenieusement in- vente." 13
Parallel to the Grand Appartement of Mansart, Oppenord constructed for the Regent in 1717 14 two cabinets of novel form to receive some of the paintings of his collection. Both derived their light from elevated sources. For one, the plans 15 show shallow curved recesses in the longer walls, the shape of the room approaching a cross. The other, the Cabinet en Lan- terne or Salon a l'ltalienne, was elongated with an overhanging clerestory or monitor. Sev- eral of Oppenord's studies for this room, which presented new problems, were engraved by Huquier and included in his volume the Grand Oppenord (Plates CIX-XCI, Figures 121- 123). In one of these studies (Plate CIX, at left) the motives are closely related to those of the hemicycle of the gallery— pyramids and trophies at the sides ; cherubs, palms, and branching candelabra on the buttressed mantel — though of smaller scale. Over the seg- mental mirror head here is a heaped-up trophy of arms reminiscent of that of a pedimented
11 Engraved by Duchange, I 719.
12 J.-F. Blondel: Cours d' architecture, V, 1777, ed. by P. Patte, pi. LV.
13 1 71 7 ed., I, 204. The word profiles here does not apply to the sections of the mouldings, as we shall see, but to the general outlines.
14 Poiirson in a letter of March 16, 1777 {Corresfondance des directeurs, V, 66) speaks of "un cabinet que Monsieur Hoppenor fait orner." The Petits Cabinets are described in the Curiositez de Paris, I 7 1 9 ed., I, 1 48-1 50.
15 Cabinet des Estampes, Ve 86.
[ H6 ]
Evolution
doorway in G. A. de Rossi's Palazzo Altieri, which Oppenord had noted in Rome, 10 though it is also not unlike many French examples. Other studies (CIX, at right 3 CXI, at left) make use of elliptical arches circumscribing mirror head and door head — the first appearance of a treatment often adopted henceforth.
In this series, the large wall panels have rectangular tops with suspended oval frames, their mouldings still of academic weight and profile, interrupted only by radial crowning motifs of leaf and shell. At the bottom of the large panels on Plate CIX, however, we find a treatment of the carved terminal interlace analogous to that of Lepautre in the panels of the stalls of Notre Dame. The base of the panel is formed by two opposite acanthus scrolls, itself a novelty. At their junction, on the flat field, the usual central palmette is surrounded by a large rim, here of divergent width, scalloped internally and bordered externally with conventional flower-buds. As contrasted with the baroque cartouches, this frame — to be- come typical of the rococo — was not a plastic entity, which might be lifted entire from the wall, but has the irreality characteristic of arabesque. From the simple and delicate interlace at the top rises a tall light floral finial of acanthus leafage, with some more-naturalistic sprays. In basic motif, developed from that of the narrow panels of Notre Dame, the scheme antici- pates the treatment of such panels not merely down to 1730 but even after that date. The historical filiation is unmistakable ; the essential nature of the elements, here somewhat crudely juxtaposed, is far more obvious than in later, better assimilated ones.
There are also, to be sure, in these designs, several baroque cartouches of undigested forms still almost purely Italian and Borrominesque, by contrast with those of Lepautre. Thus in the clerestory (Plate XC) we find not merely an oval medallion having a slight cartouche border with wings, like those of some of Lepautre's fire-backs, but massive car- touches of broken outline with rolled leathery borders, some again with wings, almost undis- tinguishable from examples by Borromini at Saint John Lateran, where Oppenord had sketched.
Neither in these early designs nor in later works of Oppenord are the profiles of the mouldings of novel form. Like Lepautre's, they continue baroque types, but they follow Lepautre's use of these types in being greatly reduced in scale and thus denuded of plastic effect.
Such was Oppenord's work in the early years of the Regency.
Meanwhile Vasse was creating a work of equal programmatic importance, the gallery of the Hotel de Toulouse. Its design and execution are subsequent to those of the Petits Cabi- nets and the hemicycle of the Palais-Royal, but prior to those of the Grands Appartements there.
The gallery of the Hotel de Toulouse is the work among all others during the Regency on which De Cotte's reputation has rested. Here was no provincial or foreign task, to be dis- patched according to routine formulae, but one in Paris for a son of Louis XIV. It has had the good fortune to survive when so many other works of the time, particularly those of Oppenord, have disappeared. Brice, describing the changes at the house in his edition of 1 7 1 7, makes no mention of the gallery. In his edition of 1725 (I, 407) he adds: "En l'annee
16 Berlin sketch book, folio 12 verso, cf. D. de Rossi : Studio43-44- 27 Grand Offenord, pi. LXIV. [ 122 ] Evolution replace the broken convexity first suggested. The door heads, made segmental in execution, support overdoors with scalloped frames of palm, flanked at the base by plumed heads in profile like many of Berain. The mirror head, scrolled and crested, is supported by busts en espagnolette , and the relief ornament elsewhere is richly figural. In the engraved design the spandrel figures are enclosed in inner cartouche-like motifs with swelling field, 28 signifi- cantly omitted from the executed work where the surface behind the figures is plane and un- interrupted. The large wall panels assume convex lines, reversed and broken, at the base, still circumscribed by subordinate rectangular mouldings.The marble chimney piece, with the diagonal consoles now usual, was first designed with reverse curves in the soffit, but executed merely with a segment. Significantly, the corner panels of the room are rounded ; the cove cornice of the ceiling no longed ends in a firm moulding but in a loose border of scrollwork, bent outward around major motifs which occupy the cardinal and diagonal points. The fine preservation of this delightful room, lacking only its colour and gilding and suit- able furnishings, a room which throughout is the creation of Oppenord, enables us here, as nowhere else today, to enjoy the fertile yet disciplined inventiveness of this gifted master. Of the form of the interiors carried out by Oppenord in 1720-1721 for the Chevalier d'Orleans at the Hotel du Grand Prieur in the Temple, 29 our only record is of several of the simpler rooms shown in the genre paintings by Ollivier executed during their later occupa- tion by the Prince de Conti. One of these, Le The a I'anglaise, at the Louvre, shows the Salon des Quatre Glaces at the time of a performance by the child Mozart in 1763. The panelling is of extreme simplicity: the mirror heads form a semicircle with but the slightest interrup- tion by scrolls beneath the masks at the top. The only important carved motif is a trophy of musical instruments, in which the circle of a hunting horn, as earlier at Bercy, centralizes the composition. La Toilette de la Princesse de Conti gives us a glimpse of an alcove with profile in reverse curves, perhaps the earliest of this sort. Le souper chez le prince de Conti, the famous Souper aux chandelles of the Musee de Versailles, shows a room of simple panelling painted with arabesques, doubtless the ones by Audran mentioned in his obituary in the Mercure for 1735. Above a light full entablature the ceiling has a low cove, itself with a fringe of paint- ed ornament recalled in the central rosette. To entertain the young King on the way to the Sacre in November, 1722, the Regent made some renovations in his chateau at Villers-Cotterets, which we may presume were exe- cuted by Oppenord, but of these no substantial trace now remains in the building, now de- graded to use as an asylum. No doubt for the Regent was the "Pro jet d'une Fontaine pour adosser sur le mur de Ter- rasse de montreton a S. Cloud," Plate LXXXXV of the Grand Oppenord, which we need only remark for the marine trophies in the flanking panels. To the period of the Regency seems also to belong a set of drawings by Oppenord, pre- 28 Sedlmaier, who knew only the engraving, cites this, of. cit., 77, to stress the relation of the work to baroque Italy, and speaks of the overdoors "deren ganz ungewohnte Freiheit ohne die Errungenen aus dem romischen Barock schlechterdings ganz undenkbar ware." They are indeed unthinkable without the baroque, just as baroque architecture is unthinkable without the classic, but to stress this is to miss the entire novelty and character of the French work, which — as the evolution of Oppenord's own design from project to execution shows — was essentially anti-baroque, linear and not plastic. 29 Brice, 1725 ed., II, 74; Dangeau, XVIII, 265, 276, 295; and Buvat, Journal de la Regence, II, 256. [ 123 ] The Creation of the Rococo served at the National Museum in Stockholm, 30 for the "Salon du Chateau de La Grange" (Figures 1 38-1 40). Its identification is difficult, as there are more than twenty-five chateaux of some importance bearing this name in different parts of France, in none of which, so far as I am able to learn, does any room of this treatment exist today. 31 I offer the surmise that the design may have been intended for the royal palace of La Granja, where an old monastery was acquired by the Spanish Crown in March, 1720, and where the cornerstone of new build- ings by the architect Teodoro Ardemans was laid April 1, 1721. Here also all efforts have failed to verify the existence of such a room, the palace having been much injured internally by fire some years ago. We know that Rene Carlier, an assistant of De Cotte, was active in the design of the park, and that it was to De Cotte, in general, that Philip V and his court turned for advice in France, but the possibility remains that, as at Bonn, Oppenord was also consulted. To judge the date of Oppenord's drawings we have only the character of the design itself. We would indeed attribute it to a time about 1720. The large oval medallions of the broad panels are derivative from those of the stalls of Notre Dame. The small strips flanking the overdoors, though here given a herm-like form, are related to those of Bercy. The pilasters with their scrolled bases recall the treatment of the pedestals of the gallery at the Hotel de Toulouse; the light frames in the narrow panels, those of the spandrels in Oppenord's own engraved design for the salon of the Hotel d' Assy— both from 1 7 1 9. The curved corners are found also in the Hotel d'Assy. Nothing in the mantel or the overmantel would con- flict with such a date. Vasse, under De Cotte, was responsible for the sculpture and decoration of the chapel or rather altar of the Virgin in the south transept of Notre Dame, erected at the expense of the Cardinal de Noailles in 171 8- 17 19. Only the figure of the Virgin survives. Certain crude drawings, 32 surely not by Vasse, and the enumeration of features in the old Paris guidebooks give us but an inadequate idea of the artistic form of this composition. As another work of Vasse 33 at this period 34 we know only the salon of the chateau of Petit- bourg, 35 which had been reconstructed by Lassurance for the Due d'Antin, and was demol- 30 Nos. 5 108-5 1 1 2 - Two other Oppenord drawings for interiors, Nos. 5940, a ceiling ("Chambre de Parade"), and 5 I 84, seem to be of similar date. 31 In the effort to determine this, I had the advantage of the remarkable and richly illustrated manuscript dockets on the chateaux of France assembled by my friend Ogden Codman of the Chateau de Gregy (Seine-et-Marne) . 32 Va 254c. Cf. Marcel: Inventaire, 46. 33 Named in his obituary in the Mercure, March, 1736, 532. 34 We are unable to date the work with certainty; the style suggests a date around 1 720. Louis XIV's first visit to the reconstructed chateau, September 12, 1707, is described by D'Antin, 62-63, by Saint-Simon, XV, 258-262, by Dangeau, XI, 461, and by Sourches, X, 397, but Vasse's work in the Salon must surely have been subsequent to this. Dangeau on August 30, 1714 (XV, 219-220), describes the King's last visit there "ou il a ete bien content de tous les changements qu'il y a trouves. Son appartement est bien commode, bien plus beau, et il est meuble mag- nifiquement . . . Generalement tout ce qu'on a fait est du meilleur gout du monde." If the salon was among these works, it was the first major domestic interior by Vasse. But although the Court ceased to come to Petitbourg during the minority of Louis XV, we cannot assume that D'Antin ceased to redecorate. We have been unable to examine the album of MS. drawings of I 71 5, presumably prepared to show the changes of 1 714, and sold with the Destail- leur library in 1894. The album prepared in I 730, perhaps made to show further changes, and preserved at Vaux- le-Vicomte, gives the room in its final form, substantially as shown in the section of Mariette's Architecture jran- coise, pi. 325 of the Hautecoeur edition. 35 Always written as one word by the owner, the Due d'Antin. His memoirs, already cited, also give no clue to the date of the salon. [ ] Evolution ished after D'Antin's death in 1 736. As we see it in Mariette's section, the room, with Corin- thian pilasters, had a chimney piece and mirror much like that of the Hotel de Toulouse, but simpler, and overdoors of the form now become conventional. In all his works of the period we see that Oppenord, far from following essentially Ital- ian models, pursued the line established in France by Pierre Lepautre. A familiar process was repeated: a gifted artist, steeped in a foreign style, returned to be drawn into a vital cur- rent of events at home, to which, without changing its direction, he gave added force and sweep. In the work of Oppenord, it is the pre-existing French scheme which predominates over the added Italian elements: the French arabesque dissolves and absorbs the baroque features; the heritage of Berain and Lepautre triumphs over the intrusions of Borromini but is left enriched by them. The character of Oppenord's interior designs under the Regency achieves a new ease, movement, and fluidity, not less consistent than the harmonious accord of Pierre Lepautre. Curvature becomes more pervasive, the arc tends everywhere to be replaced by the flowing line, intersecting and interlacing now with greater complexity. Though there are occasional variations of spatial effect, the typical form still remains cubic, the treatment linear and superficial— again, with one or two exceptions, the most striking innovations are made on the walls of pre-existing rooms, without spatial modification. In the work of Vasse at this period, as in that of Oppenord, we find plastic, baroque ele- ments such as the cartouche, intruding into the linear treatment of surface. Such greater sur- vival in their work, as compared with that of Pierre Lepautre, of undigested baroque ele- ments, disappearing in the sequel, is typical of a moment of transition after the fact, univer- sal in a process of artistic creation and evolution. Although other architects and designers had meanwhile not been idle, we shall see that their contributions in this period do not compare in importance with those of Oppenord and of Vasse. In the Batiments du Roi under De Cotte, the existing staff continued to be carried during the Regency, 36 but without any additions. Pierre Lepautre disappeared after 171 6; Cauchy no longer received his pension after April 1, 1 7 1 7. That left, as salaried Architectes, Las- surance at 4000 livres and Boffrand at 1 200 livres; as Dessinateurs, Jossenet and Carlier. Not faced, in the King's minority, with any important tasks in the Maisons Royales, De Cotte and the other architects were free to devote themselves elsewhere. De Cotte, sixty years of age at the beginning of the Regency, was, as Premier Architecte des Batiments du Roi, the leading architect of Europe. With new royal undertakings in France suspended, he was overwhelmed with commissions from other quarters, requiring a large force of assistants. In his later years De Cotte's trusted lieutenant, at least in general concerns, was his son, Jules-Robert de Cotte ( 1 683-1 767), who received in 1718 one of the three posts of in- tendant and ordonnateur in the Batiments. 37 The best idea of the activity and relationship of 36 Manuscript accounts, o 1 2216-2222. 37 Memoires de Saint-Simon, ed. Boislisle, XXXV, 166 note. One might hope to derive an idea of Jules-Robert de Cotte's draughtsmanship from the drawings of an independent commission of 1711-1712, the church at Domfront (Orne), preserved at the Cabinet des Estampes Va 146. Their technique, though competent, is a little [ 125 ] The Creation of the Rococo father and son, a few years afterwards, we derive from the letters of Balthazar Neumann, who came to Paris in 1723 to consult regarding the designs of Wiirzburg. 38 He speaks of Robert de Cotte's time as being very precious, "in deme er alzeit beym Konig ist." Never- theless Neumann conferred repeatedly both with the father "vndt sein Herr sohn, der so guth als der vater darin ist." He says "dass . . . Mons. de Beaufrand nicht der beste seye sondern Monsieur de Coti vndt sein Herr sohn;" "ich finde Zwar ihne vndt seinen sohn von grosser vernunft;" and "ich habe mit seinen leithen (Leuten) gesprochen, die gar guthe architecti sein vndt die arbeit machen helfen." Even before the death of Pierre Lepautre in 1716 Robert de Cotte, as we have seen, was employing other draughtsmen. In his account of expenses for the King of Spain we find an item: "Paiement de cinq dessinateurs en 1714: 1800 l." 39 Several different draughtsmen were used even for interiors: by 17 14 we have found the drawings of more than one man who imitated both the style and the technique of Lepautre with superficial similarity but without the same freedom and verve. 10 We shall observe that De Cotte himself and most of his later collaborators offered little in the way of artistic initiative, but mainly repeated as formulae the forms created by Pierre Lepautre and developed by Vasse. An important early commission of De Cotte under the Regency was the Electoral Palace at Bonn, of which the interiors were undertaken in 1716-1717." Although little remains of these, we have numerous drawings for the chimney pieces. The drawings for the chimney pieces of the "Plan noble," 171 6 (Figure 141) show De Cotte's own handwriting and may be inked over his pencil indications. These chimney pieces, "Touttes . . . dans l'epaisseur des murs," are mostly of types already sufficiently conventional. Three of the mirrors shown have semicircular heads with a marked impost. Two of these are flanked by pilasters, either of academic form or panelled with carved rosettes and finials. Another mirror has an oval head supported on rather heavy consoled tetes en espagnolette, the earliest of the examples we have encountered. In the Cabinet des Glaces there is a more advanced treatment, with re- verse curves, with a garland hanging before the mirror, a feature new to us. Concave C- scrolls softened by leafage cut off the corners of the panels. The indication of ornament is rudimentary: it says little more than the frames were to be carved, the backgrounds, in some cases, to be of mosa'ique, the shield of arms in the Cabinet de Baviere to be flanked by fronds of palm. The marble mantels show little variety, being mostly flanked with diagonal con- soles, as already commonly since 171 2. It was perhaps this monotony of De Cotte's designs which led, as we have seen, to the execution of the chimney piece in the Cabinet des Glaces from a design of Oppenord. 42 arid; the human figure is sufficiently well drawn and rendered, without real facility. But we may presume that these drawings also, for such a minor construction, were the work of assistants in the office. 38 Die Brief e Balthazar Neumanns von seiner Pariser Studienreise, 1723, ed. by K. Lohmeyer, 1 91 1, 15-23. 39 Marcel: Invent aire, 206. 40 The hands of at least two such imitators are recognizable: one in the designs for the Buen Retiro at Bonn, 1717, and for the Chambre du Regent at Versailles; another, even in Lepautre's lifetime, in the drawings for the vestibule and staircase of the Hotel de Toulouse, 1714. These are in addition to hands of which the technique is less similar to Lepautre's. 41 Marcel: Inventaire, 182-186. 42 Letter of Hauberat to De Cotte, December 17, 1716. Ibid., 183. [ 126 ] Evolution The rooms of the wing at Bonn called the Buen Retiro, commissioned in the autumn of 1717, 43 are shown in a whole series of designs (Figures 142-147) by a draughtsman who imitates Lepautre's technique and also his style. The Antichambre, Chambre du Lit and Petit Cabinet might almost be copied from the old drawings of Lepautre for the Chancel- lerie of 1703, or, at latest, those for Bercy. The mirror heads include semicircular and seg- mental forms, as well as broken and reverse curves. The marble mantels show simple seg- ments as well as some wavy scrolls, and plain architraves and pedestal supports as well as some diagonal consoles. There are cove cornices everywhere except in the gallery. The wall panels are of types current about 171 2. Evidently the style of that moment was quite good enough, five years later, to offer foreign princes. Indeed a much earlier fashion is represent- ed by De Cotte's suggestion, accepted by the Elector and adopted in the Grand Cabinet, for a "cabinet tout en glaces." Its design follows the scheme of French examples from the period of Lassurance, with consoles against the glass, but now embraced within arcades on pilasters, arches and pilasters being of the types of Lepautre's mirrors. Similar arcades, which we meet in these Bonn designs for the first time, appear in the Chambre du Lit pour les Bains, which was to have the more modern and fashionable treatment of lacquer panels with Chinese sub- jects. Motifs half-sphinx, half-dragon support the oval panels of the overdoors. In the gal- lery we meet for the first time, so far as there is surviving evidence, painted overdoors with the general outline of a cartouche, the winged frames being realized with segments concave, convex and reversed. With this exception— perhaps really dependent, like all the rest, on earlier examples elsewhere — the atelier of De Cotte appears in such secondary designs as an industrial manufactory, rather than a hearth of creative fire. The gallery of the Hotel de Toulouse was not entirely isolated in De Cotte's work at this timej there was a somewhat similar treatment at the Hotel de Conti in the Rue de Bour- bon, no longer standing. This was begun in 17 16, was still under construction in 171 7, and is mentioned as if completed in 17 19, 44 when it was acquired by the Due du Maine. It is thus substantially contemporary with the work at the Hotel de Toulouse. Mariette gives a sec- tion 46 which shows a simple and somewhat backward treatment in most rooms. The salon of the principal story, however, is richly elaborated with pilasters flanking a very large central mirror. The doors at either side have overdoors framed with scrollwork which includes bold reverse curves. Whether Vasse was used here we are not in a position to say. 46 Another building in Paris with which De Cotte was concerned is the Hotel de Bourvallais in the Place Vendome, now the Ministry of Justice. Bourvallais, "the first tax-gatherer of the kingdom," had bought the site in two parcels in 1706 and 1709, being installed by 17 10. Brice said in 171 3, "l'appartement de Marie-Suzanne Guithou, son epouse, merite d'etre 43 Ibid., 186-189. 186-189. The designs were requested October 30 and their receipt was acknowledged December 22. 44 Brice, I 7 1 7 ed., Ill, 280: Curiositez de Paris, 1719 ed. (the Approbation is dated February 27, 1718), II, 490. 45 PI. 269 of the Hautecoeur edition. Blondel, in reproducing this, Architecture francoise, pi. 279 of the Guadet edition, wrote in 1752: "Le sallon ... est decore avec quelque richesse, mais son ordonnance n'en merite pas plus l'eloge, les portes etant trop petites, la partie du milieu trop grande et les pilastres d'a cote, d'une proportion trop courte et revetues d'ornemens peu convenables." 46 The war has precluded a search for drawings at the Cabinet des Estampes which might determine this. [ 127 ] The Creation of the Rococo vu par les etrangers," and spoke in 171 7 of "les riches meubles et les ajustemens mag- nifiques," especially in this apartment. Bourvallais was sent to the Bastille in 171 6 and the house was acquired in 171 7 for the Chancellerie de France. Dagusseau, the Chancellor, fitted up an apartment for himself in the rear, 47 using De Cotte for the remodelling. 48 The character of the surviving salon (Figure 148) points to this period. It is closely related to the work at Bercy, but clearly somewhat later. The overdoors, with unbroken oval frames, are flanked by pilaster strips. The mirror heads have reverse curves, as commonly since the re- modelling of the Hotel Lauzun, with ornaments still much in the style of Lepautre. The main wall panels, with oval central medallions, have large C-scrolls at top and bottom, in- dicating a date after 171 5. The cove cornice, divided from the ceiling by a heavy moulding, curves out to frame corner motifs of winged cartouches, the first instance we know of such a ceiling treatment. On the return of the Court to Versailles June 15, 1722, the Regent occupied the former apartment of the Dauphin in the ground story, which had been restored for him in that year. The design of a new chimney piece for the Chambre (Figure 149) is preserved in a volume of the De Cotte collection at the Cabinet des Estampes (Ha 1 8, no. 28). This draw- ing is identical in technique and indication with the drawings for the Buen Retiro at Bonn; the design is merely another conventional repetition of formulae now familiar, with panelled pilasters, a mirror head with tetes en espagnolette. To the Regent, accustomed to Oppenord's fertile invention of ornaments, the work of the Batiments must have appeared very banal. He had, however, but a brief time to inhabit the apartment, where he died suddenly on De- cember 2, 1723. Among private works of De Cotte we may cite one of exceptional importance, consider- ing its location, the decoration of the Chateau de Saverne in Alsace for the Cardinal de Rohan. Rebuilt after a fire of 1709, it again fell prey to the flames in 1779, but numerous drawings for interiors survive. 49 The earlier of these, of the period soon after 1 709, are of the most conventional and conservative character. Some twenty others relate to the Apparte- ment de Parade, with documentary dates of 1721 and 1722. These include detailed designs for the carved panelling, which show how little discretion was left to the executants. Certain large wall panels have moulded crowns of reverse curves with a rich palmette; other panels frame elaborate trophies of arms recalling those of the doors of the Hotel de Toulouse, but without equal fire and variety (Figure 150). We reproduce also a design for a ceiling rosette (Figure 151), representing approximately the same phase of design found at the Hotel de Bourvallais and at Chantilly. I am unable to identify the technique and handwrit- ing of these drawings; the technique, however, is a freer, more competent one than that of any minor hack. The measure of De Cotte's own very moderate power of invention in ornament appears in his drawings for the house he built for himself on the Quai d'Orsay in the years 1721 and 47 Dangeau, September 8, I 71 7, XVI, 159. 48 Plans, marked "Chancellerie," and thus for 1 71 7 or later, with designs including the new Chambre a Coucher, are preserved in the De Cotte papers, Va 422 and 234. 49 Cabinet des Estampes, De Cotte collection, nos. I 224-1 257; and Bibliotheque de l'lnstitut, both discussed by J. Duportal in Bulletin de I'art ancien et moderne, August 10, 1921, 126-128. Some correspondence of De Cotte regarding work of 1 727-1730 is published by Marcel, Inventaire, 148 ff. [ 128 ] Evolution 1722 50 — the latter date appearing on one of the interior details. Numerous hasty sketches for the chimney pieces (e.g. Figures 152-153) are preserved at the Cabinet des Estampes (Va 270a). That they are from De Cotte's own hand is evidenced by the scrawled notes "ma garderobe," "mon antichambre," etc. The marble mantels are of the variety of simple Re- gence types then long familiar. The mirror heads, sometimes semicircular or segmental, are mostly of paired reverse curves, with the mouldings little broken or elaborated. A few have oval frames above for pictures ; one or two suggest conventional carved trophies in that po- sition. There is nothing in the forms beyond what had long become common property. Boffrand continued active in Paris and in Lorraine, where he had been named Premier Architecte of Duke Leopold in 171 1, and his advice, like De Cotte's, continued to be sought abroad. 51 Many of his works in this period, as in the preceding one, are lost to us, but we are fortunate in having remains of the decorations of two of his Paris houses from this time. Claims for Boffrand of priority in work of Regence character have rested on certain dec- orations at the Hotel de Villars, in the belief that they were executed as early as 1713. 62 Fol- lowing his purchase in 1 7 1 o of the old Hotel de Navailles, the Due de Villars, as Brice wrote in his edition of 1713, 53 "y a fait faire une nouvelle porte en 171 2 sur les dessins de Bof- rand." The plan of Paris by Jean de la Caille, 17 14, however, still shows the building un- changed in extent, without the wing added on the west which survives at 118, Rue de Gre- nelle under the name of the Petit Hotel de Villars, and which contains the decorations under discussion. 54 Brice in his edition of 171 7 indicates that further work followed Villars' great victory of Denain, 1 7 1 3, and the peace of 1714. He now mentions not only the gate- way but "quelques adjustemens sur les desseins de Boffrand, qui l'ont considerablement embelli. Les dehors ont ete reparez & les dedans accomodez a. la mode." 55 We may infer that the wing now constituting the Petit Hotel was part of the work described in 1 7 1 7, and that the surviving decorations are the work of Boffrand at that period. We see them today as restored in 1924 by the architect Perrin; it is by no means easy to be sure how much is old, how much new or newly embellished. Antique would seem to be at least the oval panels with their paintings, the arched doorways with their scrolled over- 50 Brice, 1725 ed., IV, 146-147. Cf. C. Ponsonaille: "La maison de Robert de Cotte," in Reunion des Societes des beaux-arts des Defartements, XXV, 1901, 508-516. 51 Notably by the Prince-bishop of Wurzburg, through Balthazar Neumann. Neumann's published letters of 1723 from Paris, already cited, show that he consulted not only De Cotte but Boffrand, "mit welchen ich pflege freyer umzugehen" (p. 44). Boffrand at this period had evidently several draughtsmen, as Neumann speaks of drawings, which "ich . . . von seinen leithen copiren lassen." Among them we may presume his two sons, whom Dargenville states applied themselves to architecture, dying young, in 1732 and 1745. Boffrand was to send his revisions to Wurzburg, and in his published works he includes designs "sur lequel projet le Prince me proposa d'aller en I 724, sur les lieux," as he did. Cf. W. Boll: "Balthasar Neumann und die Vorgeschichte des Wurzburger Residenzbanes," in Frankenhmd , VIII, 1 921, 23 ff; R. Sedelmaier and R. Pfister: Die Fiirstbischofliche Residenz zu Wurzburg, 1923, 33-35. The engraved section shows the monumental stairs and Salle des Gardes, with motifs not unlike those of the Petit Luxembourg. These are not greatly to our purpose. 52 J. Vacquier: Les vieux hotels de Paris, XVI, citing only the 1 71 3 edition of Brice, gives the date of the sur- viving work merely as "apres 1 71 3." This year has since been taken by various writers, notably M.-J. Ballot in Le decor interieur au XVIII* siecle, as the date of these decorations which have thus been cited as the earliest of all works in the Regence style. 63 III, 123-124. The Approbation is dated June 1, 171 2. 54 This wing appears on the next important plan of Paris, that of De la Grive, in 1728. 66 III, 156. The wording of the 1725 edition remains unchanged. [ ] The Creation of the Rococo doors (Figure 154) and the magnificent wall panels with trophies of arms (Figures 155). As we shall see also at Boffrand's Hotel de Parabere, an impost survives, though it is turned upward to form the crown of the large panels, giving, with the arches, such a pervasive un- dulation as at La Malgrange. There is a boldness of swing in the enlarged scrolls of the crossettes of the minor panels, a new freedom in the stems with twisted vines which, as first in Lepautre's work at Trianon, form the inner bands of the great panels. Decorations of Boffrand, slightly later but closely related to those of the Hotel de Villars, are some of 171 8-1 720 from the Hotel de Parabere, 22, Place Vendome, now installed in modified form in the apartment of M. le baron Fould-Springer (Figure 156). 56 Cham- peaux described the small salon before its removal} 57 it then was of very different form. He states that it had one window, two bays on each side (one with a door), curved panels with carved dragons and arabesques leading in to a chimney piece at the inner end, and a painted balustrade above the cornice. Although Champeaux speaks of the painted upper panels as "oblongs . . . entoures de bordures a coquilles," we do not doubt they are the same as the rounded ones surviving, beneath arches, which, as at the Hotel de Villars, rise from an im- post. Again we have the vertical mosaic strips, again the sphinxes. Again the scrolled cros- settes are very bold} here indeed the upper lines of the spandrel panels are swung in reverse curves. Most notable and freshest is the elaboration of the large wall panels, the whole base of which is filled with carving: a small basket of fruit on a light fanciful stand, surrounded by scrollwork very loosely joined, and twined with the most delicate tendrils. The dazzling virtuosity of execution in these works, which makes us so much regret we do not know the names of the carvers, and even the unquestionable power and beauty of the designs, which freely develop prevailing formulae without really basic innovation, do not suffice to establish for Boffrand a position in the first rank among the creators, coordinate with Oppenord or Vasse, to say nothing of Pierre Lepautre, the pioneer of the previous generation. Lassurance continued to have much private employment} Blondel describes him as "celui qui a le plus bati a Paris." The original interiors of his Hotel de Monbason, built in 1 7 1 9, we know only by the section of Mariette, 58 which shows nothing novel for its date. The three important works under construction at the time of his death in 1 724 were still unfinished and of their interiors he was responsible only for the vestibule of the Palais Bourbon, 59 which shows nothing of any great novelty. We may remark only the small horizontal frieze above the door casing, serving as a base for the overdoor— a feature henceforth often adopted. The interiors of the Hotel de Roquelaure (1722 ff.) were executed under Lerouxj all others of the Palais Bourbon (1722 ff.) and of the Hotel de Lassay, under Gabriel and Aubert. Only a 56 In the earlier literature there has been much confusion regarding the hotels of the Place Vendome associated with Boffrand and with Madame de Parabere, mistress of the Regent, who had already been given a house there by 1 71 7 (Dangeau, April I 7, XVIII, 66). Boffrand built and sold No. 24 as we have seen. Madame de Parabere lived at No. 20 (from 1718, succeeded by her daughter 1735), and at No. 22 (1720-1732). For these two latter the old guides are silent on Boffrand. J. Vacquier in Vieux hotels, IX, 26, which illustrated the decorations, states that the lot at No. 22 was sold May 10, I 71 8, for 28,500 livres to Boffrand, who built and sold for 153,000 livres in 1720 to Madame de Parabere. 67 L'art decoratij dans le vieux Paris, 1 898, 287. 58 PI. 68 in the Hautecoeur edition. 59 Ibid., pi. 475, "du dessin de M. Lassurance." [ I30 ] Evolution grotesque error has associated the name of Lassurance I with the Elysee. 60 There is nothing to suggest that he played any part in the evolution after his own important early contribu- tions before 1699. Jacques Gabriel, no longer able to lean on Lepautre and not yet able to lean on his son, Ange-Jacques, born in 1698, took, as we shall see, a new collaborator, Jean Aubert (d. 1 741). In the service of the Batiments as a Dessinateur from 1703 to 1708, Aubert was admitted to the second class of the Academy in 1720. Already employed by the Due de Bourbon at Saint-Maur in 1709- 17 10, he became in his own right the favorite architect of the house of Conde, responsible for many fine interiors but not a leader of the first rank. Aubert's work during the Regency may be seen at Chantilly. 61 The rebuilding of the Grand Chateau was begun in December, 1 71 8, and the apartments there were sufficiently ad- vanced by November 4, 1722, to receive the King and Court on their return from the Sacre. The Regent was lodged in the Petit Chateau, in "Pappartement nouvellement restaure qui est un des plus beau a Chantilly." 62 The harmony and splendour of the familiar rooms there, which survive with little modification, have distracted attention from their conventionality as compared with prior works of others who had created the style. The ceilings call for more remark. All the rooms have coves above full entablatures (even where there is no order), entablatures in which the frieze is also hollow: that is to say they are "transitional" in treatment. In addition to the light scrollwork in the frieze — now adopted universally, though handled here, especially in the gallery, with great freedom and beauty— gilded ornaments in relief rise into the upper cove. In the Chambre de M. le Prince and in the Salon de Musique (Figures 157-158), large motifs, developed from the scheme of the terminal interlaces of the panels, rise at the cardinal and diagonal points. In the gallery, beside such motifs at these points, there is a continuous fringe of delicate scroll- work, punctuated at each bay. One might suppose that Armand-Claude Mollet (1660-1742), enobled in 1722, should be numbered among the important artists of the Regency, since he was architect of the Hotel d'Evreux (Palais de l'Elysee). It was built for a favorite companion of the Regent, who graced its formal occupation on December 14, 1720. The interior of the house as Mollet left it, however, contained very little of the woodwork we see today. Three of the original rooms, "du dessin de M. Mollet," are engraved in Mariette's Architecture jrangoise (Figures 1 59-1 61). 63 Of these only the Chambre de Parade retains today any of the material shown, 60 In speaking of the modifications under way there for Madame de Pompadour by Lassurance (II), d. 1755, Blondel in his Architecture jrancoise, III, 1 754, says "Voir ce que nous avons dit de cet architecte dans le premier volume, p. 235a," but what we find there is a notice of Lassurance I, who died in 1724. 61 Aubert's connection with the decorations there is not established by documents, but rests on his relation to the Due de Bourbon, exemplified at just this moment (as in other instances) by his responsibility for the design of the stables at Chantilly. Cf. H. Lemonnier in Bulletin de Part ancient et moderne, September 25, 1920, 165-168. Cf. also G. Macon: Les arts dans la maison de Conde, 1903. 62 Relation de Faure, quoted with other documents by E. de Ganay: Chantilly, 1925, 22-26. He cites a memoir of 1725 in the accounts of Chantilly "pour la fourniture des plaques de cheminee 'posees partout,' " which seems to indicate the entire completion of the work in the chateau by that year. 83 Pis. 488-491 of the Hautecoeur edition. In two of these the engraver has filled in paintings by Watteau, not owned by the Comte d'fivreux. Those of the Chambre de Parade, La finette and Les charmes de la vie, estab- lish a terminus -post quern for the plates, since engravings of these subjects were not available before July and [ 131 1 The Creation of the Rococo and this room has been much modified, with new overdoors, new mirror heads, and addi- tional decoration in the cornice. Initially there were tapestries toward the alcove, oval paint- ings above the doors and mirrors, in outer borders of somewhat freer outline than commonly hitherto, in the reverse curves at top and bottom not circumscribed by any rectangular panel. The only surviving features of importance are the broad panels toward the windows, now duplicated on the other side of the mirrors. Even they have been modified by addition of large center ornaments, and by substitution, toward the base, of crossed cornucopias and birds for the original baskets there. The Seconde Antichambre shown by Mariette (apparently the future Salle des Aides de Camp) has been greatly modified and the Antichambre or Salle de Bal entirely destroyed. The former was of simple character, by then entirely conventional ; the latter, with arched doorways was distinguished only by the double inner border of scroll- work in its large rectangular panels. Clearly Mollet, in spite of his inherited prominence as an official, was too old to participate deeply in a new decorative movement, and had nothing really personal to offer for the design of interiors. The same was true of Jean Courtonne ( 1 671-1739), who built the Hotel de Noirmoutiers in 1722. 64 In a contract of just that time he is described as "maTtre magon, entrepreneur des batiments," 65 though in 1728 he was admitted to the second class of the Academy. Cham- peaux 66 and other writers, without citing documents, state that after the house was acquired by Mademoiselle de Sens (1735) it was decorated by Lassurance, but I have been unable to confirm this. The house, in recent years used by the Etat-Major General, formerly contained some admirable panelling, in large part removed. One fine room survives, characteristic in style of about 1 730, and remarkable only for having, somewhat exceptionally, reverse curves without circumscribing rectangles in the main door panels, as well as in the wall panels and overdoors. Courtonne also designed the Hotel de Matignon, contracting with the Prince de Tingry in 1722 for its erection, but he was superseded there in 1724, as we shall see. Cour- tonne was very assiduous at the Academy, being elected Professor in 1730, but nothing in the proceedings suggests that he was a force in the field of decoration. Among the artists who accompanied Le Blond to Russia in 1716 the most gifted was cer- tainly the sculptor Nicolas Pineau (1684-1754), whose work there we shall now examine. 67 He was the son of the carver Jean-Baptiste Pineau, who appears in the royal accounts from 1680 at Versailles and elsewhere, but who died in 1694 when his son was only ten years old. We have no documents on the son's work prior to 171 6, when, at thirty-two, he went to Russia along with the architect Alexandre Le Blond and others. Emile Biais, 68 writ- August, 1729, when they were announced in the Mercure. Dacier and Vuaflart, of. cit., I, 134-135, are in error, as we shall show, in thinking the plates must be prior to 1727. 64 Brice, III, 426. Both Courtonne's own Traite de Perspective, 1725, and the Architecture moderne, pub- lished by Jombert in 1728, give several plates of the house, Courtonne, inv., but they include no sections. 65 Documents on the Hotel de Matignon published by L.-H. Labande in Gazette des beaux-arts, V e per., XIII, 1935, 257 ff. 68 Of. cit., 1 19-12 1. Lassurance I died in 1724, so it could only have been Lassurance II. Blondel, Architec- ture jrancoise, I, 235, speaks only of "changemens dans les basse-cours . . . de peu d'importance," and does not mention Lassurance. 67 The following account of Pineau's early work first appeared in Art in America, XXX, 1942, 233-237. 68 Les Pineau, 1892. He published many of Pineau's drawings, then in his collection. Many others were repro- duced and catalogued by Leon Deshairs: Nicolas et Dominique Pineau, n.d. [ 191 1 ] . [ 132 ] Evolution ing fifty years ago, supposed Nicolas Pineau to have worked on certain buildings prior to that time: the Hotel de Villeroy (which he presumed to be the Hotel de Lesdiguieres, inherited by the Due de Villeroy in 171 6), and the Chateau de Petitbourg. Pineau's work for Ville- roy, however, as the drawings show, was in the later remodelling of the Hotel Desmares, which Villeroy acquired in 1 746. I am not aware of any evidence connecting Pineau with Petitbourg, where the salon was carved by Vasse, as we have seen. That Pineau may have worked for Le Blond on the Hotel Vendome, as Biais also supposed, was merely an unveri- fied assumption. 69 Clearly he was not yet a figure of importance in France during the last years of Louis XIV. By Pineau's Russian contract he undertook to make "doors, chimney pieces, frames, table frames and other ornaments and designs" 70 and at first was concerned mainly with carving. The death of Le Blond in 171 9, however, left Pineau the leading French decorative artist at the court of the Czar, called on even for certain architectural designs, as well as for a great variety of decorations, on which the documents have been assembled by Serge Roche. His contract expired in 1726, but, although he had already sought to be released, he was per- suaded to remain a little longer. Our last specific mention of him in Russia was in March 27, 1727, though it would appear from certain designs that he was still there at the time of the death of Catherine I on May 16 of that year. 71 Among Pineau's first works in Russia must have been the design for a surtout de table with the symbol of the Empress Catherine I. There is little here that might not have been inspired by the work of Berain, whose influence appears also in the designs of tombs for Romane Bruce (d. 1720) and for Peter himself (d. 1725). His chief surviving work in Russia is the carving of the Cabinet of Peter the Great in the Grand Palais at Peterhof (Figures 162 and 164). 72 It was shown by the Czar on August I, 1 72 1, to Bergholz who speaks of it as "made by one of his French sculptors." 73 The room, unlike many works executed by French artists abroad, is purely French in character, with the characteristic scheme of large central mirrors flanked by carved panels and double doors. That the general design of the panelling was due to Le Blond may be established by comparison with plates of his edition of Daviler's Cours d* Architecture > 17 10. We reproduce one (Figure 163) of a pier glass, which embodies the same scheme of a seg- mental head with concave corners, a small cornice and carved crossettes. In certain features, like the reverse curve at the base of the mirror, the room is more advanced in style than the engraving, but there is nothing which was not already familiar in France by 1716. The glory of the Cabinet is its carvings, of which we are happy to reproduce several un- published details (Figures 166-169). 74 For these carvings there survive a number of manu- 89 B. Lossky gives no support to such a view in his works on Le Blond, already cited. 70 Imperial Archaeological Cabinet of Peter the Great, 89, 1. 65 I, cited by Serge Roche: "Les dessins de Nicolas Pineau pour la Russie," Starye Gody, May, 1 91 3, 3-2 1 translated from the Russian for me by Arthur Berthold. The references to works in Russian have kindly been supplemented for me by Mrs. K. N. Rosen. 71 Starye Gody, 1907, 602, cited by Roche, of. cit. 72 Les Tresors d'art en Russie, II, 1902, pis. 83, 84. The Cabinet de Travail at Marly in the Peterhof group is illustrated on pi. 92. 73 Diary, I, 131-135. I. Grabar: Histoire de Part russe, 1910-1915, III, 132-134, supposes that the carvings were executed about 171 7-1 71 9. 74 Supplied by courtesy of I. Baltzutevitch of the Department of Parks and Palaces, U.S.S.R. [ 133 ] The Creation of the Rococo script drawings by Pineau (Figure 165), 78 which show that he was entirely responsible for their design. Four of the major panels have superb military trophies. With dazzling brilliance of exe- cution, and with the novelty of including Russian helmets and weapons, they do not differ in essence from French examples like those of the stalls of Orleans, 1703- 1705, and of the Chapel of Versailles, 1708- 17 10, of which they continue the tradition. As in all these— and indeed in the bronze trophies of Ladoireau for the Salon de la Guerre at Versailles, begun in 1682 but not completed and placed until 1 701— they include sharply inclined shields and other elements unsymmetrically grouped, with a freedom permitted in such representative sculpture long before it was adopted in purely ornamental elements. Other wall panels have symmetrical central cartouches with medallions or cyphers and with attributes of the arts and sciences. The shutters and door panels are of arabesque ele- ments, including herms, and show certain suggestions from the stalls of Notre Dame exe- cuted in 1 7 10-17 1 2. Extreme elaboration is everywhere given to the double bordering beads, which are foliated and enriched beyond any seen in France at this time. It is the overdoors which offer the greatest interest. Here the dragons which flank the central tripods do not face and balance one another, but are turned in the same direction with a novel and decided asymmetry. It is, however, but a slight instance on which to base any general claims for priority of Pineau in this regard. In none of his other works in Russia do we find any similar liberty. Roche, carried away by his subject, dates before 1727 the designs for chimney pieces for Levenvolde or Oucha- coff (Ushakov) in which the central ornaments are decidedly unbalanced. We must agree with his earlier view, cited by Deshairs in the description of his figures 105 and 106, that these designs were made later in Paris during the reign of the Empress Anne, 1730- 1740. Roche also reproduces an unsymmetrical cartouche (no. 46 of Deshairs' list) as "avec le chiffre de Pierre le Grand." Deshairs himself saw in this "le chiffre L. P. (?)." The cypher is indeed not unlike that of Peter, but would pass equally well even for that of the Regent, or many others with a P. The extremely advanced character of the rocailles below is unlike anything in Pineau's Russian designs, and closely similar to those of his work in the 'forties. It is not surprising, in view of his isolation, that Pineau— in spite of his brilliance as a de- signer and carver— scarcely participated during his absence from Paris in the general crea- tive movement by which French style was meanwhile transformed at the hands of Vasse and Oppenord. It was on his return that, absorbing with genial rapidity the new spirit and the new vocabulary of forms, he was able to take, with Meissonnier, a leading position in the following phase. Another ornamental sculptor, who has been credited with large initiative under the Re- gency, was Bernard Toro ( 1 672-1 731 ). 76 We are by no means to assume from this spelling, which he ultimately adopted, from among the numerous early spellings of his name, that he was of Italian origin ; his father, Pierre, signed as Teurreau, and his grandparents were 75 At the Musee des Arts-decoratifs in Paris. One is reproduced by Deshairs as his figure 58, two others (nos. 163 and 164 of his list of unpublished drawings) are reproduced by Roche. The one illustrated here is no. 164. 78 The most recent studies to assemble the material on Toro are the article in Les Artistes decorateurs de bois by Vial, Marcel and Girodie, 1922, 166-167, and the chapter by Robert Brun in Dimier's Les Peintres jran^ais du XVIII' Steele, I, 1928, 350-363. They repeat, however, many early attributions no longer tenable. f 134 ] Evolution French also. Born in Toulon, he worked, like his father, as a carver at the Arsenal, where, after the time of Puget in his boyhood, the dominant influence, by 1687, 77 was from the de- signs supplied by Berain. In 1 706 the archives place him at Avignon, carving in the chapel of the Penitents Blancsj in 17 10 at Aix in relation to a patron, Boyer de Bandol. A new so- j ourn at Aix extended from 1 7 1 3 to 1 7 1 6. The attribution of executed carvings to Toro, and the building up for him of a legendary fame as one of the chief pioneers of the art of the Regency, was the work of a group of schol- ars in the 'sixties of the last century. 78 It is only fair to say that, in the absence of specific documents for the authorship of various carvings, and of developed notions of style, they were carried away by local patriotism and piety to their subject. Thus Toro's earliest surviv- ing work has been supposed to be the doors of the Hotel d'Artalan at Aix, adorning a build- ing assigned the date of 1 695-1 700— an attribution resting only on the high quality of the carving. Leon Deshairs has rightly pointed out the lack of relation with the style of Toro's engraved plates and the much later character of the work, for which he even suggests a date around 1730. If these doors have anything to do with Toro at all, they are from his later years. 79 So far from showing any priority or initiative, they are late provincial derivatives of the work of Pierre Lepautre— compare the tympanum and its rosette with one at Trianon— into which have crept a few details of a generation later. A goldsmith of Aix, Honore Blanc, engraved, with collaborators, presumably before 171 6, the first suites of Toro's of Desseins aflusieurs usages. It was at this juncture that Toro entered the consciousness of the capital through the issue of these and other plates in Paris, as announced in the Journal des Savants , August 10, 1 7 1 6 : Le Sr. Dubuisson, architecte du Roy, acheve de faire graver et imprimer chez lui les oeuvres de M. Toro, designateur et sculpteur du Roy, pour les ouvrages du port de Toulon. — Ce sont des compositions des plus neuves, des plus variees et du meilleur gout qui aient encore paru : elles representent des soleils, des ciboires, des calices, des lampes, des candelabres, et autres pieces a l'usage des eglises; des trophees, des tetes, des car- touches, des pieds de table, des vases, des cuvettes, des surtouts et d'autres pieces d'orfe- vrerie et de sculpture ; des arabesques et des grotesques de toute espece . . . Cette grande suite est divisee par livres de six feuilles de chaque espece . . . All told, nearly a hundred and fifty plates are known. Toro himself was in Paris at this period ; we have later letters of his mentioning his pres- ence there April 26, 171 7, and asserting "j'etois beaucoup charge d'ouvrages que j'avois enterpris a Paris pour des puissances." A copy of one of his engraved suites has a dedication to De Cotte, but it seems to have gained him little favour. Toro's stay in Paris was brief ; he returned to Toulon in the course of 17 17, and in 1 7 1 9 succeeded to the post of master sculp- tor of the arsenal. His pretensions to work from his own designs were rejected, and the de- signs were supplied by Vasse as Dessinateur General de la Marine. We know from docu- ments of the same year that Toro gave the design for the marble high altar of the cathedral 77 Weigert, of. cit., I, 116. 78 I. Pons: "J. Bernard Toro, sculpteur provencal," in Archives de Part jrancais, VI, i860; L. Lagrange: "Toro," Gazette des beaux-arts, I re per., XXV, 1868, 345-352, 477-508, "Catalogue de l'oeuvre de Toro," ibid., ll e per., I, 1869, 289-296. 79 Aix-en-Provence, n.d., xii-xiii and text to pi. 19. [ 135 ] The Creation of the Rococo of Saint-Saveur in Aix, but this was never carried out. From letters and contracts we know of several executed works, unfortunately not preserved. Collectors and biographers have been very free in attributing to Toro carvings at Aix of every quality. They have added, without the smallest justification, the doors at Nos. 1 1 8 and 120, Rue du Bac in Paris, 80 but these, from their style, are certainly of a date prior to his Paris sojourn. Actually we know the art of Toro only through his drawings and engravings. One of the former preserved at the Cabinet des Estampes, a large cartouche with the arms of the Dauphin, bears this note: "Le cartouche cy a cote a este commence par le S. Toro . . . et n'a pus estre fini par luy, ayant ete attaque d'apoplexie le 28 janvier 1 73 1 . . . Ce sculpteur travailloit le bois avec une si grande delicatesse que les ouvrages qu'il a faits, en pieds de tables, pendules, et consoles, n'etoient susceptibles a aucune dorure, et meme que les vernis qu'on pouvoit y mettre dessus y faisoit tort j tous ces ouvrages etoient entierement finis, et il leur donnoit toute la perfection qui pouvoit servir a son genie et a ses doigts." Drawings and engravings alike show the same character, a verve, a life, a fantasy often touched with the grotesque. Sphinxes and dragons are tormented by birds and satyrs, cherubs play with helmets too big for them, frowning busts are flanked by delicate sprays. Their char- acter derives from his free personality, which his employers found "capricieux et fantasque." For many elements, however, Toro was dependent on Berain and, more distantly, on Le Brun. This was particularly true of the non-figural elements: vases, consoles, pedestals with their fields of mosa'ique. Most striking of innovations in French ornament were the cartouches unsymmetrically placed (Figure 170): inclined, or seen diagonally if not actually unsym- metrical in design like some by Mitelli in Italy more than two generations before. These re- mained for the moment without imitators. The wealth of sculptured ornaments did not end that of painted ones, indeed these were never more in vogue than under the Regency. Audran was still active, as indeed he remained almost until his death, at seventy-six, in 1735. Among the works mentioned in his obituary, those at the Temple, the Chateau de la Muette, the Hotels de Toulouse, d'Antin and de Verrue, may well have been executed under the Regency, while those at the Hotel Peyrenc de Moras must have been as late as 1730. None of these decorations survives, unless the cabinet with an arabesque ceiling at 8, Rue d'Assas, of a character related to Audran's known work, formed part of the adjoining Hotel de Verrue, which disappeared in the piercing of the Boulevard Raspail. 81 They do not differ substantially in character from his earlier works, on which they show little devel- opment. We have exceptionally few fixed points to assist us in dating the arabesques of Claude Gillot (1673-1722). 82 A great number of Gillot's drawings for arabesques are preserved, 83 80 Best illustrated in the Vieux hotels de Paris, I, pis. 1-2. 81 Reproduced by P. Gelis-Didot: La feinture decorative en France, n.d., pis. 1 3 1-1 3 5. Gelis-Didot doubts that the two buildings were originally united but considers it probable that they were erected by the same architect and decorated by the same artists. 82 Cf. E. Dacier "Gillot" in Dimier: Les Peititres jrancais du XVIII e Steele, I, 1928, I 57-215. 83 Many at the Staatliche Kunstbibliothek, Berlin (two reproduced by R. Graul: Decoration und Mobiliar, 1905, figs. 7 and 8), a few at the Louvre (nos. 4226-4230 of the published Inventaire; four of them reproduced in Des- sins d'ornement du Musee du Louvre, n.d.), and elsewhere. [ 136 ] Evolution derivative from the work of Audran, with which they are very closely related indeed in their spirit, composition, and details. In the great majority— as always in Audran— the fig- ures are classical, Gillot's concern with the theatre being but rarely reflected by adoption of figures from the Italian comedy. Naturalistic sprays of foliage, as well as angular, inclined bands and fret-like interlaces, all found already in Audran, multiply in the arabesques of Gillot. Of Gillot's arabesques he himself began the engraving of one suite, the Portieres des Dieux, left unfinished at his death and completed by Cochin in 1737 (Figure 171). Doubt has been expressed whether their vapourous naturalism on which the impression of advanced charac- ter rests, was due to this later hand, but the surviving proofs of Gillot's first unfinished state establish that this was by no means the case. 84 The Livre de principes d y ornemens y posthumous- ly engraved, is of earlier character, almost devoid of naturalistic features, and with its light, conventional elements very evenly distributed over the background. Contemporaries thought very highly of the arabesques of Gillot. Huquier in his frontis- piece to the Principes d'Ornemens, speaks of him as "Pun des plus grands artistes en ce genre et reconnu pour tel par ceux qui en font profession," and Mariette writes that the plates of the Portieres were "commences avec tout Part et Pesprit possible." Nevertheless we cannot feel that, in relation to Audran's, they show any deep originality. Apparently from Audran or Gillot, more than from Watteau, whom Oppenord knew and admired, 85 came the direct influence reflected in Oppenord's own arabesques of which a number of drawings are preserved in Berlin (Figure I72) 8b and of which several were en- graved after his death. They are of quite a different character than those which he had sketched in Italy, and show how fully Oppenord had been caught up in the main current of French decorative art. They do not, however, bring anything vitally personal. Pineau's arabesques likewise developed under the influence of Audran. Those designed surely during his stay in Russia 87 are reminiscent of the Alois grotesques. That he made greater use of the cartouche and other elements of substantial weight was due partly, at least, to their being intended for carving, rather than for painting or tapestry. By contrast with those of Gillot and Oppenord and Pineau, the arabesques of Watteau (1684-1721) show a fresh personal impulse. He had worked with Gillot, probably from about 1706 to 1707, before going to Audran. Doubtless the questions are insoluble 88 whether Gillot had then already taken up the arabesque of Audran, and whether Watteau himself subsequently influenced the later designs of Gillot. Certain it is that Watteau 84 Cf. Dacier, loc. cit., 210, and B. Populus, Gillot, 1930, where the states are carefully distinguished. 85 The Goncourts signalize (L'art du XVIII e siecle, 3d ed. 1880, 41) a portrait with the inscription "Antoine Watteau . . . d'apres nature par son ami Gilles-Marie Oppenord," drawn in wash on the back of the title-page of the Figures de dijferents caracteres, which however, was not issued until 1726. Doubtless they met through Pierre Crozat, with whom Watteau lodged in I 71 2 and again after 1 7 1 4 as Oppenord did after 1730 and for whom Rosalba made a portrait of Oppenord in 1721. Oppenord owned at least two paintings by Watteau. Dacier and Vuaflart: Jean de Julienne et les graveurs de Watteau, I, 1929, 45 ; II, 1922, Nos. 30 and 77. Oppenord himself also owned the engraved Figures de dijferents caracteres. Among his sheets of sketches in Berlin are two drawn on plates of the series. One is a group of figures of the Assemblee galant, the other is the frontispiece, Boucher's en- graved portrait of Watteau, about which Oppenord has drawn an elaborate tabernacle. 86 Staatliche Kunstbibliothek. Several are reproduced by Jessen: Das Ornament des Rococo, 1894. 87 Deshairs, of. cit., figs. 133, 134 and no. 166, more fully discussed by Roche, of. cit. 88 Thus conclude both Berliner, of. cit., 167-168, and Dacier: "Gillot," loc. cit., 162, 189-190. [ 137 ] The Creation of the Rococo derived from Gillot his interest in the comedians as subject matter, appearing in the ara- besques of both artists along with the classical deities which alone occur in those of Audran. Some of Watteau's arabesques, engraved posthumously from 1735 onward, follow Audran very closely, as in the Venus and Cupid engraved by Caylus (D. and V. no. 207). Others like Les Singes de Mars are closer still to Gillot. No doubt these are his earlier compositions, from the formulae of which Watteau must soon have enfranchised himself. This enfranchise- ment is well in progress in the suite painted for the Hotel de Chauvelin, including the Feste Bacchique™ where the tabernacles, the bandwork are still recognizably derivative from Au- dran, the central scenes are already pure Watteau. We know the arabesques of Watteau 90 today mainly through engravings made after his death. Some of them ( Watteau -pinxit) were made after arabesques painted by him. Among these were the panels painted for Chauvelin, and the screen of six leaves of the Groult col- lection. Others ( Watteau invemi) were after drawings by the master. The question has been raised whether these latter were perhaps merely rapid indications, to which the engravers felt free to add features belonging to a later phase of the movement. Deshairs based his belief that this was the case on the sketches of the Groult collection, the only drawings for arabesques he felt confident were from the hand of the master himself. With these the en- graver has indeed taken certain liberties. Thus Deshairs was led to suppose, very plausibly, that it was the engraver, Huquier, who added below ha Voltigeuse or La Danse bachtque opulent rocailles as yet unknown in the time of Watteau, more in the style of Meissonier and of La joue. In the genial hands of Watteau the central feature of the arabesque became fully natural- istic. The conventional figures of the gods ga*ve way to personages of the Italian comedy, and to groups which are wholly Watteau's own, the Pastorales and Fetes galantes, bowered in foliage. Naturalism invaded also the surrounding elements in varying degree. Such plates as Le Berceau or Le Duo champetre are merely scenes of figures in landscape within an outer frame of arabesque or cartouche elements, reduced to the greatest attenuation and wreathed or branching with leafy sprays (Figure 173). Usually, however, there are vestiges, at least, of an inner tabernacle or medallion for the figures, perhaps itself dissolved into feathery trees, and arabesque elements unite the real and the unreal of central field and outer border. Sedlmaier has rightly emphasized 91 the essential flatness of the whole surface, in spite of all "plastic" or "spatial" motives, of all perspective play. The last echoes of baroque massive- ness disappear in evanescent incorporeality. The part of China in the development of the rococo has often been considered a large one. 92 We are led to the opinion that genetically Chinese influence was a minor and secondary 89 These compositions, says Mariette, Abecedario VI, 107, were painted on the panels of the cabinet of M. Chauvelin, Gardes des Sceaux. The house no. 43, Rue de Richelieu was occupied by Chauvelin from 1695 to I 719. 60 E. Rahir: Antoine Watteau feintre d arabesques, n.d. [1920] ; Fourcaud: "Antoine Watteau peintre d'ara- besques" in Revue de I'art ancien et modeme, 1 908, II, 1909, I; Deshairs: "Les arabesques de Watteau," in Melanges ojferts a M. Henri Lemonnier, 1 9 1 3, 287-300; Dacier and Vuaflart, of. cit. 91 Of. cit., 69. 92 H. Havard: Dictionnaire de V ameublement, n.d. [ 1 887-1 890] I, article "Chine," especially p. 842. E. Mo- linier: Le mobilier au XVII e et au XVIII' Steele, n.d. [1898] 90, 99; Geymiiller, of. cit., 268; R. Graul: Ostasiatische Kunst und ihr Einjluss auj Eurofa, 1 905 ; H. Belevitch-Stankevitch: Le gout Chinois en France au temfs de Louix XIV, 1910, v, 180; H. Cordier: La Chifie en France, 1910. [ 138 ] Evolution factor. At most it may have encouraged the vogue of asymmetry, the impulse to which was already present in European ornament, in the treatment both of the cartouche and of the trophy. The French were very late, as compared with the Portuguese, Spanish, English and Dutch, in entering the China trade and in taking up Chinese motives of decoration. Chinese porcelains and curios, brought by traders of other nationalities, were collected in France from the time of Mazarin. La Fontaine's description of Versailles in 1668 mentions Chinese stuffs in the Appartement du Roi. U3 The Trianon de Porcelaine of Louis XIV, 1670, first of the garden structures of oriental pretensions, was painted with figures in blue "a la manicre des ouvrages qui viennent de la Chine," 94 but the result was little nearer to China than Delft. The textiles brought by the Siamese ambassadors in 1686, "brodes . . . de fleurs, fig- ures, animaux et autres de la Chine," were used at Trianon-sous-Bois, 95 and doubtless also in the Nouveaux Appartements of the Marquise de Seignelay at Sceaux in that year. 96 The voyage of the Amphitrite, begun in 1698, gave a new interest, and even before her return in August of 1700, Chinese motives were adopted in Berain's divertissements in January and February of that year. Some furniture of Meudon at this time was decorated with Chinese grotesques 97 and Martin Lister in 1698 saw lacquer panels in the Appartement de Monsieur at Saint-Cloud. 98 We have seen Berain introducing certain Chinese figures in his arabesques of just this time. This, however, was merely a change of detail, without influence on the general nature of the pattern which remained symmetrical and otherwise unaffected. The dragon was a European as well as an Oriental monster y it was familiar in Italian ornament and in Ducer- ceau before it appeared in the engraved plates of Berain and of Toro, as well as in decorations of Boffrand and Oppenord. The asymmetry of Toro's cartouches derives not from anything Chinese, but from such Italian examples as those of Mitelli. The most notable of the "Chinese" decorations were the painted panels of Watteau en- graved as Figures chinoise et Tar tares, destine es au Cabinet du Roy au chateau de la Meute, derived doubtless from some imported drawings. 99 The Chateau de la Muette, sold by Catelan to Fleuriau d'Armenonville in 1707, and by him to the Regent for the Duchesse de Berri in 1 71 6, was acquired in 171 9, after her death, for the boy king Louis XV. The descriptions of the chateau in the mid-eighteenth century fail to mention the panels, and we cannot be sure they were ever put in place. In addition Watteau made the designs for two engraved ara- besques with the titles Empereur Chinois and Divinite chinois. Here the figures are very sec- ondary, in settings which do not differ substantially from those of Watteau's other arabesques. We have reproduced De Cotte's designs of 171 7 for the Chambre du Lit pour les Bains at Bonn, with its lacquer panels. We may cite also a signed study of Oppenord for a Chinese panel of that general period, without any indicated destination. 100 Was it, perhaps, for the 93 Cited by Nolhac: Creation de Versailles, 1924, 122. 94 A. Felibien: Description sommaire . . . de Versailles, 1674; cf. Danis, of. cit. 95 H. Belevitch-Stankevitch, of. cit., 11 3-1 15. 96 F. de Catheu in Gazette des beaux-arts, VI e per., XXI, 1939, 98. 97 Biver: Meudon, 137. 98 A journey to Paris in the year 1608, 1899. 99 Cf. Belevitch-Stankevitch, of. cit., 248-250. 100 Berlin. Staatliche Kunstbibliothek, D114, Hdz 2136. f 139 ] The Creation of the Rococo "Cabinet de la Chine rouge" of the Duchesse d'Orleans, of which the porcelains are listed in the inventory 101 made in 1723 after the death of the Regent? We have seen that, in spite of such examples of Chinese workmanship and of Chinese in- fluence in the details of decoration, there was no instance of asymmetry in the outlines of panelling at this period — indeed there was none before 1730, when it appeared under quite different circumstances. Aftermath of the Regency The coronation and official majority of the young King found the new style fully formed and universally adopted. For nearly a decade there was within it no significant fresh move- ment, no vital new force in design. The Batiments du Roi recovered their official leadership, the artists of the Regent had to seek other commissions, but the same men, without significant additions, continued active inside and outside the royal buildings, their work retained the character already established. It is thus entirely valid to extend the term style regence, accord- ing to French practise, over all the work down to about 1 730. Versailles resumed its central position in the life of the monarchy without, however, effac- ing Paris to any such degree as during the glory of Louis XIV. No longer were there substan- tial additions to the palace ; the tasks of the royal artists lay wholly in the interiors. As the apartments from time to time required adaptation to their new occupants, 102 with different requirements, different temperaments and habits, they were given an artistic treatment in line with the changes of style which had meanwhile taken place elsewhere. The marriage of the young Louis XV to Marie Leczinska in 1725 occasioned redecora- tions in the Appartement de la Reine. By the standards of the new century work of the decade of 1670 must have seemed very forbidding for the bedroom of a young queen, even as a chambre de parade. In the Chambre de la Reine De Cotte and Vasse undertook extensive changes, step by step. A new chimney piece with bronzes by Vasse was placed in 1725 ; 103 it disappeared under Marie Antoinette. The walls were not attacked until 1730, after the birth of the Dauphin in 1729. We have a long "Memoire des ouvrages de sculpture en bois . . . suivant les desseins de Monsieur de Cotte . . . par Du Goulons, Le Goupil et Verberckt dans les six premier mois de l'annee 1 730." 104 It is our first mention of work for the Crown by the young Jacques Ver- berckt, of whom we shall hear much more. This makes clear that the principal motifs of the room, the mirrors of the three great piers with their frames of palm (Figure 174)— of which only the one between the windows survives— were of this time. The doorways and overdoors (Figure 175), for which the paintings were ordered in 1734, also fall within the period of De Cotte's administration. 101 Archives nationales, X la 9162. 102 It was Pierre de Nolhac who disentangled the history of the chateau at this period: first, and in most detail, in Le Chateau de Versailles sous Louis XV, 1898, resumed and summarized in his Versailles inconnu, 1924, Ver- sailles au XVIII e siecle, 1926, Louis XV et Marie Leczinska, 1928, and Louis XV et Madame de Pomfadour, 1903, 1931, Their conclusions, with certain corrections based on independent study of the documents, are here embodied in a single chronological series, as contrasted with Nolhac's mainly topographic arrangement. 103 O 1 2225. 104 Published by P. Francastel in Revue de Vhistoire de Versailles, 1927. [ HO ] Evolution In 1730 De Cotte was seventy-four ; we shall scarcely expect to find him personally taking new initiatives in design, any more than Dugoullons and the other executants, likewise mostly of great age. Vasse, admitted to the Academy in 1723 and lodged in the Louvre, would surely have been De Cotte's reliance for design of work of such importance, and in fact, as we shall see, it was wholly coherent with his work in the Salon d'Hercule at the same period. Mirrors and overdoors alike were framed by palm stems, spreading freely at the top, of a weight in harmony with the large scale of the room. Those of the mirrors were spirally wreathed with sprays of olive. Garlands united the palms with the rich frames of the paint- ings above (now replaced), crowned by wings against a background of mosa'ique. The orna- ments of the frieze between doors and overdoors, are very similar to Vasse's trophies of the Salon d'Hercule. The panels of the narrow piers, so different in style, were undertaken by Ange-Jacques Gabriel and Verberckt in 1735 and will be discussed later. Another principal task in which Vasse was concerned was the completion of the Salon de Marbre, henceforth to acquire, from the motifs of its decoration, the name of Salon d'Her- cule (Figure 176). Vasse was at work from 1729 to 1736 on the sculpture, including the superb bronzes of the chimney piece: the head of Hercules, the lion masks, and the rugous cornucopias. The consoles above the mantel merit particular attention. Like the motif at the key of the arch in the gallery of the Hotel de Toulouse, they show rims of irregularly fluted shell, ending below in lobes wholly unsymmetrical, as are the spirally fluted shells in the corresponding consoles at the other end of the room. Vasse's also were doubtless the two great frames for the paintings, with bold crossettes of palm so closely related to his orna- ment of the Chambre de la Reine. Over the large Veronese opposite the chimney piece the winged cartouche with the royal arms had also the irregular border of shell, which, as we have seen at the Hotel de Toulouse, had been adopted chiefly on Vasse's initiative. The immense ceiling by Francois Lemoyne, as finally fixed in design in 1732 and unveiled in 1736, was the first of all those at Versailles to be undivided into compartments. It was also, in the French decoration of the time, to be the last of the painted vaults of figural subjects. As late works of Vasse we may cite three designs— two for clocks, one for a lectern— en- graved by Charles-Nicolas Cochin the younger (171 5-1 790), who was but twenty-one, and at the beginning of his independent activity, when Vasse died. For one of these the original drawing, in reverse, is preserved, 105 a precious basic evidence for Vasse's technique (Figure 177). In each of these pieces, the general design is symmetrical, with but minor departures except in the sculpture, where, in the clock not reproduced, the unbalance is violent. Vasse evidently participated to the end in the tendency toward increased movement, without vio- lating the principles which had governed his earlier work. Vasse, "apres avoir ete cinq ans malade," died in 1736. His ability and creative achieve- ment were well recognized by contemporaries j the Mercure we speaks of his "talent heureux et tres abondant pour les Ornemens." 105 Musee des Arts-decoratifs, Salle 35, No. 1 10. Certain impressions of the engravings bear the inscription "In- vente par Vasse, 1734," others merely "A. Vasse invent deli." 106 March, 1736. [ HI ] The Creation of the Rococo "Vasse etoit decorateur," wrote Mariette, 107 "et c'etoit principalement dans cette partie qu'il brillait." He remarks the "gentilesse" of his work as contrasted with the "gout solide et male" of the antique. Briseux, writing in 1 743 of the decoration of apartments, speaks of "la maniere dont quelques Genies distingues ont traite depuis peu ces ornemens," and adds this striking passage: Rien n'etant plus juste que d'inspirer a la posterite de la reconnaisance envers ceux qui ont perfectionne l'art sur lequel on ecrit, ni plus utile que d'exciter dans les Eleves une louable emulation, on croit, par ces deux differens motifs, devoir dire ici, que le feu Sieur Vasse, Sculpteur du Roi, a ete de nos jours le premier qui ait squ tirer de l'obscurite la Sculpture propre a decorer les appartemens: Ses formes sont des plus nobles, & elles ont un accord merveilleux avec ses ornemens. C'est dommage qu'il ne nous ait laisse que peu de productions de cette espece. 108 In other designs of the Batiments at this period, where we have no reason to presume the intervention of Vasse, we find no trace of any new impulse. De Cotte is described in 1733 as "tres vieux et aveugle," 109 his other designers had not the force to rise about banal repe- tition of old formulae. Among their first works at Versailles had been the Cabinet de la Reine. Following the death of Marie-Therese in 1683 the queen's apartment had lost, beyond recall, its old more intimate quarters which had lain along the Cour de Marbre. For the new queen, doubtless in 1725, these were replaced by a remodelling of the former Appartement de Nuit of the Due de Bourgogne, created in 1 699, which now became the Petit Appartements des Bains de la Reine. It comprised a Piece des Bains and a Cabinet en Niche. For the latter we reproduce a drawing (Figure 178), 110 which serves to show that the artistic effort here was of the very slightest. From the first return to Versailles of Louis XV as a boy of twelve, had begun, already in 1722, 111 the installation of the Petits Cabinets du Roi. They lay about the interior court, thenceforth called the Cour des Cerfs, from the stags' heads then placed there as decoration. From 1727 they began to invade the level of the attics, where a small library was created j the next year a larger room was added at this level in the building between the courts, with baths below, a Cabinet des Fourneaux and a roof terrace above. In 1732 library, "labora- toire," and terrace were doubled in size, and kitchens were added at this roof level ; later a story of offices was to be added even above that. In 1732, with substantial payments for carving in the library and cabinets, we again encounter, among the carvers, the name of Jacques Verberckt. A room to receive the Cabinet des Medailles 112 at the Bibliotheque du Roi in Paris (Fig- 107 Abecedario, VI, 40. 108 L'art de bastir des maisons de camfagne, I 57-1 58. 109 Document quoted by Lemonnier: Proces-verbaux, IV, xxxviii. 110 o 1 1773. 111 o x 2222, fol. 299, cited by Nolhac: Le Chateau sous Louis XV, 1898, p. 174. The drawings showing all these transformations are in O 1 1 771. An important MS. description prepared for the King, preserved at the Cabinet des Estampes, Va 363, published ibid., 1 80, and Louis XV et Marie Leczinska, 1928, 308-309, establishes the exact dates. 112 J. Babelon, "Le salon Louis XV au Cabinet des Medailles," in Revue de l'art ancien et moderne, XXXVII, 1920, 37-47; and Le cabinet du Roi, 1927. [ H2 ] Evolution ure 179) may have been designed at the end of the administration of Robert de Cotte. It was above the Arcade Colbert, uniting the library with the Hotel Lambert, which the Crown acquired in 1724, and took possession of in 1733. The medals, to be sure, remained at Ver- sailles until 1 74 1, and the paintings for the room, on a program outlined by Jules-Robert de Cotte, were not executed until 1 741-1746. To the long walls, where the windows have elliptical embrasure heads, is applied the scheme of Oppenord's salon at the Hotel d'Assy, meanwhile adopted elsewhere in the work of other men. Spreading spandrels, bowed down- ward at the base, make up, with the window heads, a continuous undulating line. After the death of De Cotte in 1735, he was occasionally credited with a larger share than we have allotted him in artistic creation. Thus Jacques-Francois Blondel, born in 1705, wrote in 1738 of the employment of mirrors: "J'ai entendu dire a feu M. de Cotte . . . qu'il avoit ete le premier a les introduire sur les Cheminees." 113 We have seen that the first of such mirrors, from 1684, antedate even the beginning of his activity in architecture. The remark reported by Blondel was merely a compliment to the aged dean of the profession. In 1737 Delamair, as part of his systematic denigration of Boffrand, speaks of Boffrand's "gra- tieux badinage d'ornemens des dedans . . . dont il faut avouer que la veritable et plus ver- tueuse origine doit s'attribuer au celebre decorateur feu M. de Cotte." 114 This was indeed true in a measure, but only in the measure that De Cotte had employed Lepautre and Vasse. Oppenord, though still excluded from the circle of the Academy and of the Batiments du Roi, did not fail to find other clients, both ecclesiastical and secular. Charles de Saint-Albin, a natural son of the Regent, created Archbishop of Cambrai in 1 723, purchased by 1 725 115 the Hotel de Pomponne, in which Oppenord had already worked for Michel Bonnier in 17 14. Oppenord now made external changes illustrated in the Grand Oppenord, Plates XVI-XVIII. While characteristically free, they do not show any significant innovations in detail. At this period, to judge by their style, additional decorations were executed at the Hotel d'fivreux (filysee), in the Grand Salon, the Grand Cabinet (Salle du Conseil des Minis- tres) and Seconde Antichambre (Salon des Aides de Camp). We have ventured for these an attribution to Oppenord, 116 maintained on grounds of the Comte d'fivreux's close attach- ment to the Regent and of the character of certain details. Chief of these are the mirror heads of the Grand Cabinet (Figures 1 80-181) with their incomparable wealth of motif and delicacy of execution in the fluted crestings, eagle heads and trophies of arts, so closely com- parable with pages of Oppenord's sketch books (Figure 182). The overdoors here (Figure 113 De la distribution de maisons de flaisance, II, 1738, 68. The passage was later paraphrased by Patte in Monuments eriges a la gloire de Louis XV, 1765, p. 6; and by Dargenville, Vies des fameux architectes, 1787, 418. 114 La fure verite, MS., 198, cited by Ch.-V. Langlois, of. cit., 160. 115 He is mentioned as owner in the 1725 edition of Brice, I, 427, the Approbation of this edition being dated February 22 of that year. The house was put up for sale in February 1 723, after its confiscation from Madame Chau- mont, according to J. Buvat, Journal de la regence, 1865, 1, 449. 116 "Oppenord reconnu," loc. cit. Lady Dilke, in her French Decoration and Furniture oj the XVlllth Cen- tury, 1 90 1, 29-30, attributed the carving of this period at the Fdysee to Pineau, on the basis of resemblances with his manuscript drawings for other works. She cites "the same vigour of the scroll terminations . . . the same strident heads of beasts or birds," but these are scarcely more than generic characteristics of work at this moment, as is shown by her other loose attributions to Pineau. [ H3 ] The Creation of the Rococo 1 84) with their unique arabesque panels of figural relief and rugous horns of plenty (a motif based on Borrominian examples sketched by Oppenord, and used also by Vasse in the Salon d'Hercule) may be compared with the figures under similar baldaquins in his work at the Hotel de Pomponne. The superb military trophies of the Grand Salon (Figure 183), far surpassing those of the Hotel de Villars a decade before, have a new fluidity of line and are paralleled only in Oppenord's numerous studies for plumed casques (Figures 185-186). The Salle des Aides de Camp, though much enriched from its original treatment shown by Mariette, is of more conventional character, but even here we find motifs analogous with Oppenord's drawings. The date of these remodellings, which had already taken place before the making of Mariette's general section of the house, 117 would fall after 1729, in view of what we have said regarding Mariette's engravings of the earlier decorations. A design of Oppenord's which may well come within this period is that for the Hotel Gaudion, at the corner of the Rue des Veilles-Audriettes and the Rue du Grand-Chantier. 118 Pierre-Nicolas Gaudion was Garde du Tresor Royal from 1 73 1 - 1 749, so that the inscription "Tresor Royal" in a cartouche over the door doubtless places the project, which may never have been executed, as probably from 1 73 1 or soon afterwards. This extremely competent and ingenious design is full of admirable but not unconventional spatial effects, achieved with units exclusively rectangular in plan. There is nothing in the details, however, which in- volves any innovation. Oppenord was employed by Pierre Crozat in 1730 for additions to his house built by Cartaud in the Rue de Richelieu— where Oppenord himself, like Charles de la Fosse and Watteau before him, was lodged in 1740 119 — and for the orangery at Montmorency, but we know nothing of these which is significant for our purpose. Oppenord was in charge also of the major religious work of the time, the continuation of Saint-Sulpice, 120 which had been taken up with great energy by the cure Languet de Gergy in 1 71 5. In 17 1 9 the Regent had made a substantial contribution to the cost, on the occasion of his laying the first stone of a tower. 121 Oppenord's work included completing the transept facades, building the nave, furnishing the choir, and making a design for the altar, of which he 117 Architecture jrancoise, pi. 118 of the Hautecoeur edition. It is impracticable, unfortunately, to determine exactly the date of these plates and of most others of the interiors contained in that work. Although the title-pages used for the first three volumes are dated uniformly 1727, the first, as ordinarily found, contains a plate of Saint- Roch with the date of 1739; the second includes the Hotel de Janvry, with the dates 1732 and 1733, and even the Hotel Demares, "avec les nouveaux changemens . . . faites . . . depuis que cette maison est devenue l'Hotel de Villeroy," i.e. surely after 1744. The interiors in volume III, sometimes found with a title-page of 1738, include one of the Hotel de Rouille, executed about 1732, according to Blondel, and the Salle a Manger added by Villeroy to his hotel after I 744. 118 Of the fifteen signed drawings belonging to the Musee des Arts-Decoratifs, two, including an important section, are reproduced by P. Alfassa in a well documented article in M usees de Trance, 1914, 5 6-60 ; and three by H. Mayeux in L 'architecture, XXVII, 1914, 129-131. 119 Will of Pierre Crozat cited by Huard "Oppenord," he. cit. 120 Contemporary allusions to his connection with it may be found in Brice, 1725 ed., Ill, 384 ff ; Mercure de France, March, 1725, 473 ff, 548; Piganiol de la Force, 1742 ed., VI, 380-381. Many of Oppenord's manuscript drawings, preserved at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and elsewhere, are published by E. Malbois: "Oppenord et l'eglise Saint-Sulpice," in Gazette des beaux-arts, VI e per., IX, 1933, 34-46. 121 J. Buvat: Journal de la regence, 1 865, I, 465. [ 144 ] Evolution is named as the architect in 1725, but of which the first stone was laid under Servadoni's di- rection in 1 732. 122 This, with the stalls, was destroyed at the Revolution. Unlike those at Notre Dame, the stalls had no high backs, but the two thrones at the entrance, while much heavier in treatment, took several suggestions of detail from the ones in the cathedral ; so did the main altar and the autel des jeries, though both had spatial relationships quite differ- ent from their exemplars. In the sacristy at Saint-Sulpice there is a wainscot carved with magnificent ecclesiastical trophies. In these the scheme of the trophies at Versailles is given a fire and swing which makes us suspect — pending possible archival discoveries— that the designs were by Op- penord. As in one of his drawings in Berlin, 123 a scroll of leafage crosses the curved moulded frame in a way very characteristic of him, representing a heightened movement by contrast with anything found before 171 5. Several designs survive, though not a general elevation, for the facade and western tower as intended by Oppenord. His studies offer many alternatives, one of which antici- pates Servadoni's use of the Doric order below, but both the grouping of the supports (in most studies) and the details, are markedly influenced by the Italian baroque. Notably a study for the window of the portal, "a laquelle je me fixe," notes Oppenord, "comme plus convenable," is of extreme baroque character. While in its crossettes there is an adaptation of Lepautre's hawk's-bill with acanthus, its cornice, waved and scrolled, and indeed its en- semble, is far closer to Italian examples, toward which Oppenord tended to revert through- out the design of the facade and its adjuncts. Such a revision, apparently inacceptable to the taste of Languet de Gergy, may have been quite as largely responsible as the impending fail- ure of Oppenord's wooden central lantern, 121 taken down in 1 73 1 , for his being superseded as architect of the church. In 1732 Servadoni appeared in this capacity. 125 Oppenord was likewise responsible for designs for the church of the Oratoire, of which some are preserved at the ficole des Beaux-arts. One is for a high altar. The table, with frontal and diagonal consoles, with kneeling figures flanking the retable, is not irrelated with Vasse's at Notre Dame. A detail for completion of the old facade, not yet undertaken when Brice wrote in 1725 (I, 215), is similar to Oppenord's baroque studies for details of the facade of Saint-Sulpice. The work did not proceed on this design; Brice's passage remained unchanged in the edition of 1752 (I, 227). Designs for a jube with its altars at the Cathedral of Meaux, commissioned in 1729, are 122 E. Barbier: Chronique de la regence, 1857, II, 333. 123 Published by Sedlmaier, of. cit., pi. IX, and by Jessen, Das Ornament des Rococo, pi. 39. 124 Oppenord's lantern itself had been adopted to replace a heavier dome projected by his predecessor, Git- tard, but proved itself too much for the supports. Huard's "Oppenord," loc. cit., and Bulletin de la Societe de Vhis- toire de Part jrancais, 1925, 37-39, make Oppenord responsible not only for this misjudgment, but for the fall of a portion of the Hotel Crozat in the Rue de Richelieu in September, 1 721. Buvat's Journal de la regence for that date (II, 295), makes clear, however, that the failure there was due to an architect named Roquet, and the whole affair was prior to Oppenord's employment by Crozat. Oppenord was a bold, even rash, constructor, but we cannot assume that structural rather than aesthetic reasons were responsible for his later eclipse. 125 BlondePs Cours, III, 1772, 345-349, speaks of a "competition" for the design of the fagade of Saint- Sulpice, won by Servadoni, and thus supposedly held in 1732, in which Meissonier participated with others. We shall see that Meissonier's design was offered in 1726, while Oppenord was apparently still in full control. Dargen- ville, Vies des jameux architectes, 1787, 483, speaks of an invitation to Boffrand to take charge, which he declined. [ 145 ] The Creation of the Rococo shown by an engraving of the Grand Oppenord. One of the alternate proposals for the retables is derivate from Lepautre's in the jube of Notre Dame, now given a concave plan. The other shows a baroque head of Italian profile and character, distantly recalling the main altar of Sant' Ignazio in Rome, though less strongly plastic in its forms. It has a terminal figure of pronounced movement backed by a great shell of which the unsymmetrical outline is rather exceptional even in the sculptural compositions of Oppenord. In the transformations of the style of the Regency which was to establish the genre pit- toresque Oppenord played no important role. At the time of Meissonnier's first use of "con- traste" in silverwork, Oppenord was fifty-six ; he was sixty at the date of Pineau's decisive interior designs of 1732. Oppenord's design for the Hotel Gaudion, shortly after this date; his work begun in 1 730 for Pierre Crozat (by whom he was lodged in 1 740), may have con- tinued for some years. 126 Neither shows any significant change of style. In his sketch book at Berlin are notes on the execution of a salon at Torcy in 1740, on which we have nothing further. Aside from these, we know of no designs for buildings or interiors in his later years, but only book illustrations and similar minor works. 127 We must imagine Oppenord then — like Meissonnier, as we shall see — to have passed much of his time in the spinning of facile, ideal designs, which French taste — now definitely hostile to their baroque Italianism — left unexecuted. Among these, and very probably of this period, were certain decorative studies, engraved after his death by Huquier in the Moyen Oppenord (e.g. suite A, no. 2), which participate in the picturesque movement by their considerable assymmetry as well as by their fusion of cartouche motives with naturalistic elements, 128 while others depart little from old formulae derived from Bernini and of Borromini. Berliner speaks of the "victorious Italian tendency" of this plastic development under the leadership of Oppenord. We find him personally de- feated, and Meissonnier victorious only in the crafts and in the taking up of his new type of composition in engraving and, to a minor degree, in painted panel-filling. As for Italianism, it was limited to the derivation of the cartouche, dissolved and absorbed in such compositions, where the principle of fusion of the decorative and naturalistic elements, however different individually, goes back to the French initiative of Watteau. In interior woodwork the plastic Italianism of Oppenord and still more of Meissonnier was wholly overcome by the French linear, surface tendency, triumphant with Pineau. It was indeed always for his drawings, rather than for executed works, that Oppenord was particularly celebrated. We have seen what Brice wrote of them as early as 171 3. After 126 Huard, "Oppenord," loc. cit., lists various designs, some engraved, some manuscript, which he cannot date: for work at the church of Saint-Marcel, at the Chateau de Bove near Lyons, at the Seminaire d'Orleans, etc. None of them shows a character more advanced than that with which we are familiar. 127 E.g. his two vignettes for the Moliere of Boucher, which appeared in 1734. Among his drawings at Berlin are a number for initials and frontispieces, some of which may be of this last period. 128 Berliner, op. cit., 169, citing a design of the Moyen Oppenord, says that Oppenord was the first to effect this broader treatment, which we have seen by 1734 in the engravings of Meissonnier, whom he does not mention. We are by no means justified, however, in assuming that Oppenord's designs of this type, few in any event, are of earlier date. Rather we are of the opinion that Oppenord, then over sixty years of age, in whose dated work there had never previously been anything of the sort, was trying his hand in the new genre inaugurated by the younger artist. A further instance is a coulisse-like sketch, very closely related to Meissonnier's composition but unique among Oppenord's, preserved in the National Museum, Stockholm, bearing the cryptic legend "Fait pour lx Vxrx." [ H6 ] Evolution Oppenord's death in 1742, the engraver Huquier, bought over two thousand of them. 129 About 1748 he published the collections familiarly known as the Petit, Moyen, and Grand Oppenord. Saint-Yves in his Observations sur les arts, 1748 130 — where he calls Oppenord "le Le Brun de l'architecture" and speaks, strangely to our ears, of "les ornemens antiques ... si simples, si elegans, si majestueux que le scavant Oppenor dont le genie si vaste & si fecond a tout ose, craignoit de s'eloigner de leur gout — says "Les memes hommes qui de son vivant s'etoient dechaines contre lui, donnerent apres sa mort 1'or a pleines mains pour avoir de ses desseins." Cochin, hostile to Oppenord in tendency, conceded that "il s'etoit fait un grand reputation par ses desseins . . . (qui) ne faisaient pas le meme effet, en execution," and, long afterwards, Dargenville echoed both these passages. 131 Our estimate of the position of Oppenord is borne out by literary testimony. In 1755 in the famous ironic defense of the extremes of the genre pittoresque, 132 Cochin wrote of their ori- gin: "Le fameux Oppenor nous servit dans commencements avec beaucoup de zele . . . II se servit abondamment de nos ornamens favoris, & les mit en credit. II nous est meme encore d'une grande utilite, & nous pouvons compter au nombre des notres ceux qui le prennent pour modele." But he makes his protagonist add, quite truly, "Cependant ce n'etoit pas encore Phomme qu'il nous falloit ; il ne pouvoit s'empecher de retomber souvent dans l'archi- tecture ancienne, qu'il avoit etudiee dans sa jeunesse." Oppenord had indeed been early a notable champion of the free tendency, but his reminiscences of Italian baroque plasticity, his surviving architectonics, had kept him from taking any prominent part in the ultimate phase of the French rococo. Our idea of Aubert's position is not changed essentially by several works of this time in which he served as designer for Jacques Gabriel. At the Palais Bourbon, although the land was acquired in 1720, Brice mentions only the foundations in 1725. Begun by Giardini, forwarded by Lassurance, who died in 1724, it was completed by Gabriel and Aubert, as was the neighboring Hotel de Lassay, also begun by Lassurance. "Par malheur," wrote Piganiol de la Force of the designers of the Palais Bour- bon, "le plus habile est venu le dernier." In spite of the sumptuousness of the decoration which, Pierre-Jean Mariette said in 1740, "surpasse en ornemens et en magnificence tout ce qui s'etoit fait jusqu'a present dans ce genre," 133 there is little fundamentally novel in either of these buildings. Of the Palais Bourbon, Jean Mariette, in his Architecture jrancoise, gives six plates of in- teriors, 134 which are welcome because of the great transformations the building has under- 129 He speaks of these in his introduction to the Grand Offenord. 130 I 31-13 2. In a footnote he speaks of Oppenord's published designs as "dans un gout tenant de l'antique, mais plus riche." 131 Vies des fameux arckitectes, 1787, 434-440. 132 Mercure de France, loc. cit. 133 Brice, 1752 ed., prepared by Mariette in 1 740, IV, 142. Blondel, indeed, criticizes the too great profu- sion of ornaments and gilding here: "La dorure doit aussi etre employee avec management, & lorsque l'on veut dorer tous les ornemens, au-moins faut-il mettre ces derniers avec discretion . . . parce que cette sculpture que Ton affecte quelquefois dans le milieu des pilastres, des frises, ou des panneaux, cause une trop grand confusion, aussi qu'on peut le remarquer dans l'interieur des appartements du Palais Bourbon." Architecture jrancoise, I, 1752, 121. 134 Pis. 475-480 of the Hautecoeur edition. Neither the Archives Nationales (o 1 1578) nor the Cabinet des Estampes offers anything of significance on the early period of the building. [ 147 ] The Creation of the Rococo gone both before the Revolution and subsequently. On the walls with the windows, arched or with elliptical arriere-voussures y the spandrels are treated very much like those of Oppenord at the Hotel d'Assy, now so commonly followed. The Grand Cabinet shows in its treatment of the oval medallion above the mirror, of the heavy fluted reverse-scrolls and dragons of the overdoors, a character which had meanwhile become essentially conventional. At the Hotel de Lassay, of which Mariette gives merely one plate of the vestibule, 135 the interiors with their panellings "dues pour le plupart a du Goullon," 136 are better preserved, in spite of some barbarous changes. In the Grand Salon (Figure 187) the main wall panels, with triple bands, have large central fields of free outline— no longer merely oval— with fig- ural reliefs, which are repeated by smaller fields at top and bottom of the panels. The doors and indeed all surfaces are richly ornamented. The most personal touch is in the multitude of C-scrolls which make up the bands of mosdique and reappear in the mirror heads and over- doors of other rooms. The chief glory is that of the cornices, heavy with medallions and other large gilded areas, ribbed and pierced, which evoked Blondel's criticism. In the Grand Salon and the Salon des Saisons (Figure 188) the upper moulding is interrupted by cardinal and diagonal features with which it is combined, not too organically, by subordi- nate scrolls. In the Salon de Musique and the Salon des Jeux (Figure 189) it is carried around the room in an oval, creating large pendentives at the corners, in which the motifs are but loosely combined. These were two different approaches to the ultimate solution of the problem, to be achieved by Pineau a few years later. At the Hotel Peyrenc de Moras (de Biron), erected in 1 728-1 731 by Gabriel and Au- bert, little is left of the original woodwork to supplement the small sections given by Blon- del, who also describes the changes, rather minor, made by the Duchesse du Maine, who took possession in January, 1737. 137 That little— mostly doors and dadoes— is closely co- herent with the corresponding features at the Palais Bourbon and the Hotel de Lassay. The two elliptical salons had the unified arched treatment initiated by Boffrand at the Petit- Luxembourg, which had meanwhile become common property. So far as our information goes, it confirms our impression of Aubert as a highly gifted representative of a school al- ready established. Boffrand is represented in Paris at this period by the remodelling of the Hotel d'Argen- ton for Comte Marc Pierre d'Argenson, who occupied it from 1725 as the Chancellerie d'Orleans, and was given it in 1743. 138 The ceiling and doubtless the cornice of the salon re- mained unchanged. The new treatment of the walls is illustrated on Plate XXXIV of Boff- rand's Livre d* architecture, 1745 (Figure 190), which shows the room in the same state as Mariette's small section. 139 A consistent range of semi-circular arches frames the windows, doors, and chimney piece. At the crowns of the arches are cartouches having bulging central fields ; at the base of the spandrels are similar frames — likewise with narrow serrated rims 135 PI. 481 of the Hautecoeur edition. 136 Dargenville: Voyage fittoresque de Paris, 1752 ed., 362. 137 Architecture jrancoise, II, 1752, 205-207, Brice, 1752 ed., IV, 30. J. Vacquier: Ancien hotel du Maine et de Biron, 1909, gives the documents and illustrates some remains of the decoration. The purchasers of others are indicated by A. de Champeaux: V Art decoratij dans le Vieux Paris, 1898, 131-132. 138 Cf. J. Major: "L'Hotel de la chancellerie d'Orleans," loc. cit., The house, including its salon, was much modified again by Charles de Wailly after 1783. 139 Architecture jrancoise, pi. 63 of the Hautecoeur edition. [ H8 ] Evolution of shell — surrounding fields apparently flat, though ending below in a subordinate plastic cartouche. Not only in the spandrels but also on the piers is a uniform circular tnosa'ique, re- lated to that of Aubert at the Hotel de Lassay. In the year 1724 Boffrand visited Wurzburg and there established the interior designs for the first episcopal suite of the palace. 140 Certain surviving drawings made there by the stucco worker Johann Peter Castelli of Bonn under Boffrand's direction and bearing his handwriting are of purely French character (Figure 191). They show a very sober version of style for that time, equivalent to De Cotte's decorations for his own house, depending for enrichment almost wholly on the mirror frames, without carving in the panels. Certain mir- rors are arched and slightly scalloped, others even remain square. This panelling was swept away in 1776, but the ceilings of 1725 by Castelli remain, with rosettes and cartouches close- ly related in design to French models, without innovations which we could suppose to be Boffrand's. Jean-Baptiste Leroux ( 1 676?-! 746) — a pupil of Dorbay, admitted to the Academy in 1720, Professor in 1 730— has passed as the author of many important interiors, but we shall find that these were actually by other hands. He is indeed specifically mentioned, with Le Grand and Tannevot, by one of Jean-Francois Blondel's interlocutors, as "ne sachant guere que faire des plans," and having recourse to other designers. 141 The engraved plates issued with his name are in part from the time of his young manhood after 1700, under the influ- ence of Pierre Lepautre, 142 in part, as we shall see, from designs of Pineau after 1730. As a work of Leroux at just this time there is only the Hotel de Roquelaure (Ministere des Travaux Publiques) begun in 1722, which he continued after the death of Lassurance in 1724 and completed in 1726. 143 Mariette's Architecture jrancoise gives six plates of in- teriors, 144 all captioned as "du dessin de M. le Roux." Of these rooms, three survive as shown: the Vestibule, with arched doorways and Ionic pilasters, an Antichambre and the Petit Cabinet (Figures 192-195). In the last of these, as we see it today (Figure 196), the only change is the substitution of panelling for the very large mirror opposite the windows. This is indeed a very lovely room, by its wealth of fine carving integrally preserved, still somewhat heavy in width and relief, by its fine ceiling and cornice with angle ornaments. Essentially it offers little new: its quatre- foil overdoors, its mirror head with reverse curves, surmounted by an oval panel— all these had become traditional since 17 10. Characteristic for its time are the outlines of the cup- board door panels with reverse curves truncated by concave corners. A feature we have not hitherto encountered is the coiled dragon replacing the swirl of acanthus in certain crosettes here and elsewhere in the house. The surviving Antichambre shown on Mariette's Plates 483 and 485 (Figure 193), has 140 R. Sedlmaier und R. Pfister: Die Filrstbischofiiche Residenz zu Wurzburg, 84-88 and figs. 81, 82. 141 Les amours rivaux, ou Vhomme du monde eclaire far les arts, far un homme de lettres (J. F. de Bastide) et feu M. Blondel, 1774, 102 ff. 142 Six chimney pieces without title-page, and a suite of Nouveaux lambris, both included in the Mariette col- lection entitled Architecture a la mode. 143 Brice, 1752 ed., IV, 47 ; not mentioned in the 1725 edition. 144 Pis. 482-487 of the Hautecoeur edition. The small section of the house in Blondel's Architecture jrancoise, I, 1752, pi. 70 of the Guadet edition, shows another room of similar character, doubtless also from the time of first building. E H9 ] The Creation of the Rococo large wall panels with reverse-curved crowns. Otherwise the room, with its low rectangular mirror on the chimney breast, its mantel with frontal consoles, is relatively backward in treatment. Of the additional interiors shown by Mariette— the Antichambre ou est la Chapelle (Fig- ure 192) and the Chambre a Coucher— the former is of simple geometrical conventionality. The Chambre ( Figures 194 and 195) has handsome large panels with central rosettes of rich interlace. With all their excellent disposition of ornaments, we find, in these first interiors at the Hotel de Roquelaure, merely an accomplished version of the style already current. Among the younger men, Claude-Guillot Aubry (1 703-1 791) built in 1724 for ihe dancer Madamoiselle Desmares a house which survives, much remodelled, as the Ministry of Agriculture. Blondel's section 145 is interesting to us, since it shows the salon as wholly identical in design with Oppenord's of 17 19 at the Hotel d'Assy. From this designer, who was to enter the Academy in 1739, we shall accordingly expect no great originality. Aubry also built in 1730 the Hotel de la Vrilliere, sold in 1732 to the Princesse Douariere de Conti (Ministry of War). 1 " Here one handsome room of the period survives. Its most notable feature is the ceiling, where a great circular medallion is inscribed on the flat surface within the cornice, the spandrels being filled in with a diagonal network. The overdoors, again resting on a narrow retreating frieze, have naturalistic reliefs, instead of paintings — doing away with the dark spot over the door which had been conventional, and thus increas- ing the unity of the room. 147 The Hotel de Matignon, while begun in July, 1722, from plans by Courtonne for the Prince de Tingry, was purchased when well advanced, July 25, 1723, by the Comte de Mati- gnon, who dismissed Courtonne and entrusted the completion of the work to Mazin "ingenieur et directeur des plans du Roi." 148 Courtonne listed profiles of the internal cornices among the drawings he had furnished, and certain of them had then already been executed, by Louis Herpin and other sculptors. Some of these were modified by Mazin, who substan- tially completed the interior by 1726, although carving in wood was still being executed in 1 73 1. As some remodellings were undertaken in 1 75 1 and again in 1760, to say nothing of brutal redecorations a generation ago, it is not possible to identify any of the surviving work as belonging to the first decorations. We shall have occasion later to discuss the work of 1 73 1 . We may mention also certain fine surviving rooms in other buildings of the period, for which we have not succeeded in establishing the authorship, or even the exact dates. In the Hotel de la Fare, 149 14, Place Vendome, Messrs. Morgan et Cie. preserve a most 145 Architecture jrancoise, pi. 5 of the Guadet edition. 146 Brice, 1752 ed., IV, 50. The Academy of Architecture was requested to adjudicate the accounts of work- men there in 1737, which may mark the end of further operations, perhaps including decorations. Proces-verbaux, V, 161-164. 147 Blondel in 1752 recommended such use of reliefs: "ceux-la se lient d'avantage avec l'ordonnance de la piece," and deplores the prejudice still existing in favour of paintings. Architecture jrancoise, I, 119. 148 The documents, preserved in unusual fulness, are published by L.-H. Labande in Gazette des beaux-arts, VI e per., XIII, 1935, 257-270, 347-363. The engraved designs of the house, Courtonne inv., in the Architecture moderne published by Jombert in 1728, include no sections. 149 The Marquise de la Fare, favored by the Regent, sold his house, acquired in 1 704 by his father-in-law, Paparel, in 17 16 to M. de Souvre; after the cancellation of this sale it was acquired in 1 7 1 9 by Salomon Le Clerc, for whom this room would seem to have been executed some years later. [ I50 ] Evolution delightful little cabinet (Figure 197). Its inner end is curved, its cornice crowned with a balustrade with scrolled pedestals and with vases profiling against the unbroken painted vault. That the room, with such suggestions from Oppenord's hemicycle and from the gal- lery of the Hotel de Toulouse, was executed a half dozen years after those works, we may judge by the contorted dragons which form the crosettes flanking oval paintings over the little doorways, recalling those of the first interiors of the Hotel de Roquelaure. Such dragons also occur in a similar position in a room from the house at 18, Place Ven- dome, 150 the Hotel Cressart, which, with another fine room of the house, shows further analogies with the first woodwork of the Hotel de Roquelaure. In works of this character, however handsomely embodying the taste of the time, we scarcely find fresh creative ideas, which were now to appear from other quarters. In ornament, soon to undergo a great upheaval, artists were still mainly occupied in ex- ploiting the initiatives of the Regency. So it was in the decorations of the wonderful room formerly in the house at 23, Place Vendome, 151 acquired by Jean de Boullogne in 1728 and decorated by Lancret, obviously at just that time. The panelling itself is closely related to that of three works we have just discussed, the Hotels de Roquelaure, de la Fare, and Cres- sart, with dragons on the crossettes and sphinxes flanking the overdoors. The arabesques of Lancret are derivative from those of Watteau's middle period. The painter Christophe Huet (died 1759) belongs in the great line of decorative designers stemming from Berain and Audran. It was he, doubtless, who painted the Grande Singerie and the Petite Singerie at Chantilly, of which the latter bears the date 1735, the same date appearing with the signature of Huet on ten paintings of Chinese and other oriental subjects executed for the Due de Bourbon and likewise preserved at Chantilly. 152 The Grande Singerie adorns a simple panelling of 1722 which has been adapted for the paintings by an inner frame of very richly curved but symmetrical profile, the intervening space being filled by a fine diagonal mosa'ique. The arabesque itself outdoes even Watteau in its atmospheric dissolution of the tabernacles, to which, however, the naturalistic elements are kept subordi- nate. In the vault, as well as on the ceiling of the Petite Singerie, the schemes of Audran are realized even more airily, without any touch of the innovations of the rocaille which had been launched the year before in the engravings of Meissonnier, to which we shall turn. It is as appearing at this time that we should speak of the early works of Jean-Jerome Servadoni ( 1695-1766). 153 Born in Florence as son of a French father, Jean Servan of Lyons, and of an Italian mother, he became the pupil of Panini, from whom he derived the style of his compositions of Roman ruins such as his diploma picture for the Academy of Painting in Paris, 1 73 1 . Meanwhile he had had many wanderings, to Grenoble, to Portu- 150 The treasurer, Herlaut, owned the land from 1 710 to his death in I 716, but (according to documents kindly supplied me by my friend Andre Carlhian, who owned the rooms in 1939) it was still without buildings when ac- quired by Cressart, "syntic des rentes a l'Hotel de Ville," March 18, 1723. It was he who built the house, which he sold in 1733 to the Sieur de Tournelles. Clearly the decorations, as their style shows, are from the period of Cres- sart's ownership, and the house should be called the Hotel Cressart rather than the Hotel Herlaut. 151 Dispersed by sale in 1896. Cf. G. Wildenstein: Lancret, 1924, Nos. 729-737 of the catalogue, which cites the literature but does not attempt to date the work. 152 Macon, of. cit., 1 903, 73-75, citing the earlier literature. 153 M.-L. Bataille: "Servadoni," in Dimier: Les femtres jrancais du XVIIle Steele, II, 1930, where the docu- ments and literature are assembled and the stage models illustrated. [ 151 ] The Creation of the Rococo gal, where he worked for the opera, to England, where he married. His first appearance in Paris was in 1728, where he made a great success with the settings for Orion at the Opera. He continued there as Decorateur-en-Chef for eighteen years. Any idea that his early stage- settings were of classical severity is dispelled by the models belonging to the Marquise de Castelbajac, exhibited in 1929, a "Chinese" temple, purely French, of light baldaquins, a garden portico of contorted treillage. Extravagant as these are, their elements, by contrast with many baroque designs, are placed parallel with the stage, and they contain no trace of any asymmetry. Thus the second impulse in the creation of the rococo, given by the artists of the Regency, began to lose momentum, on the verge of a third impulse at the hands of a new generation. Middle Years of Louis XV With the middle years of the reign, after 1 730, we encounter a fresh creative movement, which was to carry the style in France to its culmination. Again, as in the last years of Louis XIV, it was no political, social or economic change, modifying those already visible under the Regency, which evoked this new artistic development. Again it depended on personal initia- tive of gifted individuals, and was essentially immanent to the field of art. There are, naturally, obvious parallels in other artistic branches, but in painting the great creative achievement, the great personality— that of Watteau — had appeared and disap- peared with the Regency. The death of Watteau, so prematurely, left no one of equal stat- ure to carry on a vital development of painting into the middle years of Louis XV. In decora- tion, on the contrary, these saw an extension of the movements of the Regency, at the hands of men of powerful orginality. Their initiative was taken entirely in private buildings. In those of the Crown, at the mo- ment, the only tasks were the completion of the Chambre de la Reine, and of the Salon d'Hercule, both already well advanced. Nothing new was undertaken before 1738, when the King, at twenty-eight, avowing his course of infidelity, remodelled his private apart- ment and created the Petit Appartement above. Meanwhile men outside the circle of the Bati- ments, working for private clients, had renewed and vitalized the design of interiors. From their work came the fresh influences later to be felt even in the Maisons Royales. We shall speak first of the beginnings of the new phase in the hands of its protagonists, then of its acceptance by artists of the Crown and others, before reaction set in. The Creators of the u genre pittoresque" 1 7 3 o - 1 7 3 5 Through the hardening established lines of the French interior, about 1730, rustled a fresh breeze, bringing new life and movement. The novelty and import were recognized by contemporaries, who, within a generation were to call it the "gout nouveau" or the "genre pittoresque," and to remark on its most striking characteristic, asymmetry — "le contraste dans les ornemens." It is doubtless worth while to glance briefly at the appearance and usage of the words by which the new phase of style was characterized. The Venetian Boschini, enamoured of col- ourism, in his Carta del navegar -pittoresco, 1660, had used "picturesque" as applying to pic- [ ] Evolution torial form generally: "The painter forms without form, or rather with form deforms the formality of appearance, seeking thus picturesque art." The word was already domesticated in France early in the eighteenth century, and had even passed to England, where Steele used it by 1703 and Pope spoke in 171 2 of certain lines of poetry "as what the French call picturesque." Yet we do not find it defined in print in France prior to the Discours sur la peinture of Charles Coypel, read at the Academy in 1726 and published in 1732, as "Un choix piquant et singulier des effets de la nature . . ." 154 This has the overtone which the word has preserved, corresponding exactly to the effects in decorative art which were appear- ing just at this moment. As for symmetry, which Pascal had still used as a synonym for proportion, by the time of Montesquieu's Essai sur le gout in the mid-eighteenth century, it was commonly applied to bilateral identity. The word and its opposite both appear in his dictum "L'ame aime la symetrie, mais elle aime aussi le contraste." Asymmetry in itself, to be sure, was not wholly a novelty in French ornament. The trophy, such a favorite motif since the time of Lebrun, had long comported unsymmetrical arrangement, so notably exemplified in the famous examples of Ladoireau at Versailles. After these were put in place, from 1703, the uses of the trophy multiplied, as we have seen, in the Chapelle de Versailles and elsewhere, with corresponding increase in the familiarity of asymmetric motifs of decorative sculpture. More significant was the unsymmetrical form which the cartouche had occasionally as- sumed. In Italy we find examples well within the seventeenth century ; several were sketched by Oppenord in his sketch book now in Berlin, where we find also holy-water basins with cartels of related form. In the suites engraved by the Italian Mitelli (1609- 1660) we find cartouches with frames and fields of violent asymmetry. Asymmetric car- touches, as we have seen, appear much closer at hand, in the work of Toro after 1 7 1 6. All this time, however, the panel outlines, the mirror heads, had remained rigidly sym- metrical. In panel fillings of ornamental motifs other than representative sculpture, we have found only a single minor exception, even in the work of Oppenord, to the rule of self- contained axial balance. Of the genesis of this new phase of style we have two familiar accounts by younger con- temporaries, men of academic sympathies, both writing after 1750 when reaction was be- ginning. One occurs in Les amours rivaux, ou Vhomme du monde eclaire far les arls } far un homme de lettres [Bastide] £5? -par jeu M. Blondel, published in 1774. Jacques-Francois Blondel, who died in that year, was born in 1 705 j he had himself sponsored early engraved designs by Pineau. 155 He was thus in the best possible position to know who were the innovators in in- terior design after 1730. A propos of the Hotel de Mazarin (1735), he makes one of his interlocutors say: "Ces dessins charmants ont ete donnes par M. Leroux, architecte du Roi, et ont ete executes par Pinault, artiste a qui nous devons toujours une reconnaissance et une admiration infinies pour toutes les jolies choses qui embellisaient nos demures . . ." The other replies: "Les Le Roux, les Le Grand, les Tannevot ne sachant guere qui faire des 154 Quoted by Abbe J. Lacomb: Dictionnaire fortatij des beaux-arts, 1750, 2d edition, 1759, 483. 155 Dargenville, writing in 1787, states that Blondel was a pupil of Oppenord, but Blondel himself in his bio- graphical note on Oppenord in his Cours ^architecture, III, 1772, 33cm, says nothing of any such relationship. [ 153 ] The Creation of the Rococo plans, eurent recours au prestige des embellisemens et s'addresserent aux Pineault, aux Meisonnier, aux Lajoux," whom he names as "les trois premiers inventeurs du genre pit- toresque." Cochin the younger (born ten years after Blondel) published in the Mercure de France in 1754 an attack on the style, and the next year a satirical defense. 156 After attributing to Op- penord the initiative in the previous phase, he says of Meissonnier: 157 "il inventa les con- trastes, c'est a dire qu'il bannit la symmetric," and adds: "L'on peut dire que nous n'avons rien produit depuis dont on ne trouve les semences dans ses ouvrages." Pineau, just dead, he does not name, but devotes a long passage to him, which terminates as follows: "On peut dire a sa gloire que tout ce qui s'eloigne du gout antique lui doit son invention, ou sa perfec- tion." Pineau and Meissonnier: for each of them primacy has been claimed by modern writers. 158 We shall attempt to define their several priorities and contributions more precisely. Juste-Aurele Meissonnier was born in 1695 in Turin. Much has been made of this Italian origin, as bearing on his later style. His father, however, was Provencal, 159 his uncle, Alex- andre Meissonnier, was "officier du roi" in France. We first hear of Juste-Aurele as a gold- smith or silversmith; his engraved works illustrate a piece of silver executed in 1723. At twenty-nine he was admitted to the mailrise, on September 28, 1724, by a brevet as orfevre du roi, working at the Gobelins. 160 We know, however, no single piece of silverwork surely exe- cuted by himself ; the surviving examples after his designs bear the marks of various silver- smiths, of whom Duvivier was the most important. Two years later, on December 6, 1726, he was appointed Dessinateur de la Chambre et du Cabinet du Roi, 161 the post held formerly by Jean Berain and meanwhile by his son. This charge Meissonnier held until his death in 1750. In 1742 we find him listed as in possession of a lodging in the Galeries du Louvre. 162 His earliest known design, for the "Seau a rafraichir execute pour M. le Due en 1723," engraved as Figure 58 of his collected works, 163 is still entirely symmetrical, with moulded profiles of Louis XIV character. Any new feeling appears only in the rugous forms of the triple borders of the armorial cartouche and of the marine figures and dolphins which form the handles. 156 "Supplication aux orfevres," December, 1774., 178-187 and "Lettre a M. l'Abbe R." February, 1775, 148-1 71. 157 The full passage on Meissonnier is quoted, more accessibly, by Destailleur: Notes sur quelques artistes jran- qais, 1863, 224-226. He does not quote the passage on Pineau, which, although referred to by Deshairs, has thus escaped the many who have relied on Destailleur, at second hand, for the text of the Mercure. 158 For Meissonnier, M. L. Bataille in L. Dimier: Les feintres jrancais du XVIII' siecle, II, 1930, 365-378; for Pineau, E. Biais: "Nicolas Pineau, inventeur du contraste," in Reunion des societes des beaux-arts des defarte- ments, 1899, 384. The following account of the early work of Meissonnier appeared in the Gaxette des beaux- arts, VI e per. XXII, 1942, 27-40. 159 Obituary of Meissonnier in the Mercure, October, 1750, 138-141. 160 The documents regarding him, including also the inventory after his death, are cited by R. Carsix in the Revue de Part ancien et moderne, vol. 26, 1909, 393-401. 161 lx 68, fol. 257. The appointment was reported in the Mercure, January, 1727, 133-136, which describes the design for fireworks "sur lequel il a ete agree." 162 Piganiol de la Force, 1 742 ed., II, 162, a mention which seems to have escaped other students. 163 Oeuvre de Juste Aurelle Meissonnier, feintre, sculfteur, architecte, et dessinateur de la Chambre et Cabinet du Roy. Premiere fartie executee sous la conduite de Pauteur. a Paris chez Huquier, n.d. [ 154 ] Evolution In the "Cadran a vent de Mr. le Due de Mortemar en 1724" (Figure 198), engraved as Meissonnier's Figure 98, while the frame of the dial is itself symmetrical, the whole effect is made violently asymmetric by the diagonal pose of the unbalanced figures above and below. We cannot confidently assume that its architectural setting, in the engraved plate, was not supplied subsequently; certainly it cannot have been found acceptable for actual execution at so early a date. In the large wall panel, extending to the floor without any dado, there are not merely loosely straying stems; the central leaf below is twisted out of frontality. The shutter is even more advanced in character, with both the central, distorted cartouche-like motif and the terminal scrolls and sprays wholly unsymmetrical, in a way not found executed anywhere in interiors before 1 730. The "Garde d'Epees d'or pour les presens du Manage du Roi en 1725," Figure 51 of Meissonnier's folio, were no doubt among his first works for the Crown, even prior to his appointment in the Menus-Plaisirs. It is hard to see anything particularly free or novel in them. Another early dated work of Meissonnier, which received the praise of the Mercure, is the "Soleil Execute en argent pour les Religieuses Carmelites de Poitiers en 1727," Figure 78 of the engraved folio (Figure 199). An instructive comparison may be made with the related monstrance given to Notre Dame in 1708 by Antoine de la Porte (Figure 200). 164 As seen from the front this is entirely symmetrical except for the variety of the Apocalyptic figures, themselves disposed with general symmetry. The support of the glory is still articulated, with consoles and other architectonic elements. The monstrance of Poitiers has, to be sure, a base of sufficiently conventional form, derivative from Berain or Boulle. In the shaft, how- ever, clouds wind spirally up from the base among symbolic ears of wheat and sprays of grape. The interpretation in the Mercure 165 concludes: "Ce morceau est tout-a-fait dans le gout des celebres Pietro da Cortona & Puget, dont l'ficole a toujours fait Pobjet des etudes de l'Auteur." A new development is in germ, but as yet in germ only. By 1728, however, the germ had developed, in silverwork, into almost full flower, as we see by the "Chandeliers de sculpture en argent invente by J. Meissonnier Architecte en 1728," which were engraved as Figures 10 to 12 of his works (Figure 201). These three are actually three views of the same candlestick from different sides— something which would never have been necessary with more uniform, earlier works, showing that Meissonnier clear- ly appreciated that this one was the manifesto of a new character. Even in the base, its three elements, equally spaced, are all varied in detail: the shells and scrolls which buttress it are unlike; the scrolls which rise to support the stem are both unlike one another and unsym- metrical in themselves. Above it is not merely the figures of cherubs which are unbalanced, it is the entire stem and socket, composed of a multitude of characteristic elements: distorted scrolls, a twisted cartouche, spiral fronds of palm, all differing in every aspect. Just this very work— of which the illustrations are missing in many copies of the engraved folio, and which has escaped the attention of scholars— is the crucial one in the origin of the genre -pktoresque> which shows it fully formed at the hands of Meissonnier— so far as craft objects are con- cerned—in the year 1728. 164 From a contemporary engraving of the design at the Cabinet des Estampes, Va 254b. The monstrance also appears on the altar in Jouvenet's painting La messe du chainoine de la Porte already cited. 165 January, 1727, 135-136. [ 155 ] The Creation of the Rococo If the prevalent beliefs as to Italian influence on the formation of Meksonnier's style < justified, we should expect to find works of Italian silverwork wfakfa a n< ppn g i e the rhmrtrr of this piece. Actually I have been unable to find there anything remotely related to such a design- One might be tempted to suppose that Meissonnier had actually looked in quite another direction, to the north, and derived a hint from the dp«agn< of such artists as the Dutchman Adam van Ylanen (d. 1627). There had indeed been considerable asymmetry ir. the designs f these r. ^rthern artists before any in Italy, from the time of Christian Jamnitzer's Gntta- kadmch of 1610. The designs for silverwork issued as Adam van Vianen's by his son,**" actu- ally with some additions of his own, appeared about 1 652-1 654- 1 * 7 They have obviously some superficial resemblance to Meissonnier's much later work, and he may indeed have been familiar with them and have derived some stimulus from them When, however, we analyse the 'nasi: schemes E these late mannerist silverworks, we see they are far from anticipating fully the genre pittaresqmeoi the rococo. Vianen's pitchers, ewers, and sauce-boats are uniformly shown in profile, and thus their representations are inevitably unsymmetrical It is rare, though, for them to have any thoroughgoing organic asymmetry in all aspects, such as characterizes the work of Meissonnier.Their vocabulary of forms is also very different. Its basis is the baroque cartouche with bulging plastic field, here with an auric- ular border. In Meissonnier"; « irk, on the other hand, the chief elements are those devel- oped by the early rococo, the scroll and the palmetto realized as a shelL In spite of some ap- parent similarities, Meissonnier's designs were essentially new. "PSttoresque" also is one of the chief pieces of surviving silverwork after a design of Meissonnier which is datable by its marks. They are those of Claude Duvrvier and of the period 1734- 1 735, on a candelabrum reproducing the model on Figure 73 of Meissonnier's engraved works. *** Here base, stem, and socket, of cartilagenous scrollwork, are all spirally twisted, the bask baluster-like profile disguised by leaf, shell and flower, again fully unsym- metrical. So are also the terrines of the marvelous pair executed in 1735 for the Duke of Kingston, 1 '* illustrated in Figure 1 15 of Meissonnier's works (Figure 202). The aesthetic value of such works is very high, from their inner fire, their molten unity of form, earning into every part the unequalled verve and energy of die artist. Interesting features may be observed in Meissonnier's designs for the frame of the "Carte Chronologique du Roy fait en 1735," of which several details were engraved. The car- touches which crown the several panels end in varied unbalanced shell motifs. The flanking pilasters are filled, in part, with distorted and fragmentary cartouche scroiis. Very probably of the same time, as we shall see, are the details of a "Bordure pour le portrait du Roi," like- wise included in the sixth book of hiseneraved works. Here the mouldings at the sides of the - '•' 1 he Modellen, with tide also m Lati R. ZSlch: Emsuhunr ct:
- ts 5oH at the Hote] Droiiot March, 191 1, pi
- ~ 1 r tas ^^t-^ sat irrr : — . : . rroanara st_ aat ~ u iraarirt : : a_ v rc a* sun aSataua
- »: Fiau-t t: ; si aursh aa-naat assiai- naLzLn
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References to figures are given in italics.
Ala grecque, 218-219. Academy of Architecture, 9, I3» 18, 35, 36, 37, 38, 57, 60- 61, 66, 78, 90, 92, 131, 132, 143, 149, 150, 174, 181, i86«, 190, 197, 199, 201, 203, 208«, 212, 223. Academy of Inscriptions, 1 86. Academy of Painting and Sculp- ture, 9, 13-14, 19, 61, 78, 141, 151, 153, 170, 173, 186, 201, 213.
Academy in Rome, French, 9, 14, 26«, 38, 57, 91, 92, 93, 187, 199, 201, 202, 212, 213, 223
Academism, 13-15, 17, 18-19, 33, 40, 41, 54, 57, 60, 66, 78, 88, 89, 109, no, 153, 166, 185, 187, 197, 201, 203, 204, 207, 209, 212, 214, 216, 218, 219, 223, 225.
Adam, the, 178, 179.
Adam, Robert, 210, 213, 214, 217, 219-220, 221, 222w, 225, 231, 232.
Addison, 209.
Aesop, 1 80.
Aix, 135, 136.
Alberti, the, 43 ; Leon Battista, 14. Alembert, 197. Algardi, 187.
Altars, 12, 13, 26, 59, 75-77, 79-
82, 84-85, 92, 100, IOI-I02, 109, 119, 124, 145, 157, 185, i<?2> I99» 75-79> 82-83, 92, 104-107.
Amalienburg, I 79^.
Amiens, altar of Saint John, 102,
jo6; organ, 83. Anet, 106. Anglomania, 210. Anguier, Michel, 12, 25, 27, 223. Anne, Empress of Russia, 134. Anne of Austria, 15, 16. Antin, Due d', 78, 79«, 102, 103,
124-125, 171, 174. Antoine, 213.
Arabesques, 28-33, 54~57> 68-69,
83, 87, 91, 93«, 103, 106-109, no, 117, 123, 134, 135, 136- 138, 151, 165, 173, 180, 184, 193, 196, 209, 219, 221, 223, 5-10,39-42,113-1 18,172-173.
Arcades, 127, 128, 148, 197. Ardemans, Teodoro, I 24.
Argenson, Comte d', 148. Argenson, Marquis d', 175, 191. Argenton, Mme. d', 99. Armenonville, Fleuriau d', 139. Artois, Comte d', 213, 219W, 221-
222.
Asnieres, 191.
Asymmetry, 3, 134, 136, 141, 152-161, 164-173, 177, 180, 187, 189, 192, 198, 200, 202, 205, 206, 211, 221, 224.
Athens, 208.
Aubert, Jean, 78, 130, 1 3 1, 147- 148, 149, 175, 183, 157-158, 187-189.
Aubry, Claude-Guillot, 1 50.
Audran, Claude I, 20.
Audran, Claude III, 62, 64, 79, 93, 96, 103, 106-109, III, 123, 136, 137, 138, 229, 113- 114, 1 17- 1 18.
Aumont, Due d', 21 2.
Auricular style, 156.
Avignon, 135.
abel, 179, 193, 198, 253-
254.
Bagatelle, 221, 222.
Baldaquins, 16, 17, 28, 31, 55, 56, 75, 76, 101, 103, 107, 1 10, 185, 192, 199, 200.
Bandol, Boyer de, 135.
Bandwork, 28-33, 49, 54-57, 66, 68, 96, 103, 106-109, IIO > 117, 120, 137, 223.
Barbet, 26.
Barlow, Francis, 1 80.
Baroque, 5, 6, 1 1-13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 33, 41, 44, 52, 53, 57, 68, 75, 76, 78, 88, 89, 91, 92, 101, 102, 109, no, 114, 117, 119, 125, 138, 145, 146, 147, 157, 158, 164, 190, 200, 209, 216, 218, 223, 224, 228, 229, 230, 231.
Barreau, 210.
Bat's wing, 54, 5 5, 1 19, 1 20, 1 2 1, 164, 179, 187, 200.
Batiments du Roi, 7, 8, 15, 16-17, 18, 34, 36-39, 40, 60-62, 63, 78, 90-91, 128, 131, 140, 143, 174-175, 178, 182, 186, 188, 1 9 1 «, 198, 199, 200, 204, 207, 212, 223.
Bavaria, 172.
Bayonne, Maison de Brethous,
158, 161, 204-205. Beaulieu, 61. Bee, Abbaye, 1 3». Bec-de-corbin, see Hawk's bill. Bedford, Duchess of, 218. Belanger, Francois- Joseph, 2 1 2-
213, 214, 219-220, 221-222. Bella, Stefano della, 11, 26-27,
104, 119, 160, 161, 223. Bellan, 86.
Bellevue, 7, 194, 195, 200, 221, 258.
Bellicard, 201, 208. Benouville, 219.
Berain, Jean, 3 iw, 32, 40, 44^, 46, 47- 5i» 54» 62, 63, 68-69, 71. 78, 80, 83, 91, 93, 96, 98, loon, 101, 103, 106, 108, no, in, 116, 121, 125, 133, 135, 1 36, 139* 154, 155. i57» 200, 223, 224, 225, 229, 9, 70, 39-
43, 4 6 > ii5- IZ 6- Bercy, 95-97, 103, 121, 123, 124,
1 27, 128, 98-99. Berlin, Hedwigskirche, 201-202. Bernard, 165.
Bernini, n, 12, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 31, 42, 47, 92, 146, 154, 223, 232.
Berri, Duchesse de, 139.
Bertrand, 83, 86.
Besangon, Hotel de Grammont,
105, 112.
Besenval, Jean-Victor, 159. Besenval, Pierre-Victor, 160. Bielenski, Frangois, 159. Bill-hook, see Hawk's bill. Blaikie, Thomas, 222. Blanc, Honore, 135. Blenheim, 211.
Blondel, Frangois, 18-19, 2 4> 2 7* 36, 43, 78, 204.
Blondel, Jacques-Frangois, 3, 36, 52», 53», 115, 143, 149, 153- 154, 162, 163, 164, 165, 167, 168-169, 170, 174, 184, 185,
- 93> ! 95> I 97»> 203-204, 208//,
210, 211, 225.
Blondel, Jean-Frangois, 172, 185.
Boffrand, Germain, 38, 78, 91, 93> 9 6 > 97-IOO, 105, 109, 122, 125, 126, 129-130, 139, 143, 145W, 148-149, 167^, 168,
[ 233 ]
Index
1 78-1 8 1 , 184, 188, 193, 224,
228, 100-102, 154-156, 190-
191, 235-238. Boissonet, Georges, 29, 6. Bolingbroke, 210. Bonn, Electoral Palace, 104W, 121,
122, 126-127, I2 8, 176, 141-
147. Bonnac, 186.
Bonnier, Michel, 103, 143. Bonnier de la Mosson, 170-171, 197.
Bookbindings, 29^.
Borromini, Francesco, 12, 15, 27, 42, 47, 68», 81, 88, 92, 116, 117, 125, 143, 146, 202, 203, 232.
Boschini, 152-153. Bottger, 228.
Bouchardon, Edme, 184^, 186,
187, 190. Boucher, Francois, I37«, 170,
173, 178, 181, 190, 193, 194,
200, 201, 206, 218. Boudoir, usage, i88«. Boufflers, Duchesse de, 193. Bouillon, Dues de, 92. Boulanger, Antoine, 214. Boulle, Andre-Charles, 45, 65. Bourbon, Due de, 1 3 1, 154. Bourgogne, Duchesse de, 50, 59,
90, 107-108. Bove, \\bn. Bowood, 213, 220. Boyceau, 29, 223, 5. Boyer de Bandol, 135. Bramante, 92.
Brandenburgh House, Hammer- smith, 185.
Brinckmann, A. E., 228», 229- 230.
Briseux, Charles-Etienne, 142,
191, 193, 198, 253. Brongniart, 160. Bruand, Liberal, 18. Bruant le jeune, go. Bruce, Romane, 133. Bullant, 14.
Bullet, Pierre, 51, 90, 93, 1 97;
le fits, 90. Burckhardt, Jacob, 5, 6. Burlington, Earl of, 208, 209, 210,
218, 231, 232. Butterfly wings, 44, 71.
Caen, Notre Dame de la Glo- riette, 102; Sainte-Trinite,
102.
Caffieri, Jacques, 189, 214. Caffieri, Philippe, 23, 33.
Cailleteau, see Lassurance. Camot, 55. Campan, 22.
Campbell, Colen, 209, 216.
Candelabra, 25, 28, 1 16, 118, 119, 120, 155, 156, 165.
Carlier, Rene, 62, 64^, 70, 124, 125; cadet, 78.
Carpets, 26, 48, 84.
Carracci,- the, II, 12, 14.
Cartaud, Jean-Sylvain, 91, 93, 144, 181.
Cartouches, 13, 25, 26-27, 3°> 33> 53, 68, 84, 85, 87, no, 116, 117, 119, 121, 123, 125, 127, 128, 134, 135, 136, 137, 139, 141, 144, 154, 155, 156, 160, 161, 164, 165, 166, 107, 170, 171, 172, 173, 176, 178, 180, 181, 183, 184, 187, 190, 193, 196, 198, 205, 218, 170, 220, 255-
Casinos, 210, 216, 220. Castelli, Johann Peter, 149. Castelnau, Marquis de, 197. Catelan, 139. Catherine I, 133. Catherine II, 213, zzzn. Cauchy, 37, 38, 62, 90, 125. Cauvet, 55«.
Caylus, Comte de, 138, 185, 1 86- 187, 190, 208, 212, 219, 225.
Cayot, 82, 85, 86, 87.
Ceilings, 13, 24-26, 32, 33, 43, 44, 45, 47, 51, 53, 55-56, 57, 74, no, 116, 119, 121, 122, 128, 131, 141, 149, 150, 159, 160, 163, 164, 170, 176, 205, 206, 217, 220, 228, 49, 113- 114, 116-117, 151, 188-189, 212, 231.
Chaillou, 122.
Chalgrin, 201.
Challe, 2 1 2.
Chambers, Sir William, 210, 217,
220, 221. Chamblin, 196, 260. Chamillart, I03«. Champaigne, Philippe de, 14. Champs, 99, 194, 257. Chantelou, Paul Freart de, \ Chantilly, 128, 13 1, 1 5 1, 194,
I57-I5 8 - Charmeton, 19, 31. Charpentier, 104. Chateauroux, Mme. de, 175, 188. Chaumont, Mme., \\^n. Chauveau, 32«. Chauvelin, 138.
Chesterfield, Earl of, 210. Chevotet, g\n.
Chimney pieces, 23-24, 26, 41, 42, 43-44, 45-46, 48, 49> 50, 52, 63, 64-69, 70-71, 72, 74, 85, 89, 95, 96-97, 103-104,
105, Il6, II7, II9, 121, 122, I24, 126, 127, 128, I29, I30,
133, 143, 148, 150, 158, I59» 164, 165, l66, I90, I92, I93, 217, 44-45, 50-52, 57-59, 103, ^ 141, 223, 225.
Chinese motifs, 106, 127, 138- ^ 140, 151, 152, 172, 194. Chiswick, villa, 209, 216. Choisy, 7, 38, 51, 189, 206-207. Chupin, Simon, 38. Clagny, 7, 35, 37, 40-41, 42, 43,
47, 48, 51, 52, //. Classicism, 207-222, 225, 226, 231.
Clerisseau, Charles-Louis, 213,
214, 2 2 2W. Clocks, 85, 141, 188, 777. Cluny, 92.
Cochin, Charles-Nicholas, 147, 154, 163, 169, 188, 190, 199- 201, 204, 207, 208, 211, 213, 218-219, 221, 224, 225.
Colbert, 14, 15, 16-17, !8«, 19, 20, 21, 33, 34, 35, 38, 39, 41, 44, 46, 57, 63, 230.
Cologne, Elector of, 122, 127.
Colonnades, 17, 209, 214, 215, 219.
Colour, 50, 53, 176, 178, 188, 189, 217.
Compiegne, 189, 207, 215; Her- mitage, 195.
Contant d'lvry, 196, 1 97-198, 207, 212, 213, 215, 219, 224, 264-265.
Conti, Prince de, 123.
Conti, Princesse de, 5i«, 71, 102, I03«, 107, 123, 150, 167, 186, 189.
Contraste, see Asymmetry. Copland, H., 210, 22711. Cordemoy, Abbe de, 2 1 1 . Cornices, 22, 31, 44, 45, 46, 47,
49, 5°, 53, 73, 74, 94, 95> 96, 99, 100, 122, 124, 127, 128, 130, 131, 148, 149, 151, 158, 159, 160, 164, 165, 166, 170, 176, 177, 179. 184, 185, 190, 193, 196, 217, 228, 70-72; arched, 44, 47, 49, 74, 109, 1 10, 121. Cortona, Pietro da, 12, 22, 25, 27, 44, 1 55, 1 59. 223.
[ 234 ]
Index
Cottart, 45«.
Cotte, Jules-Robert de, 125-126, 143, 184.
Cotte, Robert de, 8, 36, 37, 52, 60-61, 70, 73, 76, 78, 79, 8572, 89, 90, 94, 99, 104-105, 112, 115, 117, 118, 121, 122, 1 24, 125-129, 135, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 149, 175, 224, 228,
- 5"P5> 111-112, 124-128, 141-
i53, J 74-i76, *7 8 , H9- Courtonne, \~]\n; Jean, 132, 150, 168.
Coustou, Guillaume, 83. Coustou, Nicolas, 80, 81, 86. Coypel, Antoine, 59, 116, 119. Coypel, Charles, 153, 186, 201. Coypel, Noel, 19, 54-57. Coy se vox, 42. Crecy, 194. Croix-Fontaine, 191. Cronstrom, 47, 53, 55, 106, 10872. Crossettes, 74, 98, 130, 133, 149,
151, 159, 180, 185, see also
Hawk's bills. Crozat, Antoine, 93, 197. Crozat, Pierre, 93, 1 3 7«, 144,
146.
Cuvillies, Francois de, 167, 172- 173, 17972, 193-194, 2U,
227», 228, 229-230, 256.
Czartoriska, Princesse, salon for, 190, 193, 2 47 .
DAGUSSEAU, I 28. Damascus, 22772. Dargenville, 36, 5272, 147, 1 8 1 . Dauphin, Grand, 4672, 50, 51, 64,
65, 90, 102. Dauphin (son of Louis XV), 140, 188, 189, 190, 191, 200, 207. Dauphin (grandson of Louis XV)
see Louis XVI. Dauphin, architect, 184. Daviler, Charles-Augustin, 38-39,
45«, 49, 62, 100. David, Jacques-Louis, 4. De Cotte, Robert, see Cotte, Rob- ert de. Deffand, Mme. du, 200. Delafosse, Jean-Charles, 221. Delamair, Pierre-Alexis, 91, 93,
98, 101, 143. Delanois, 220. Delisle-Mansart, 197. Delorme, 14. Denmark, 211. Desauziers, 106.
Desgodetz, Antoine, 18, 2272, 38, 42, 62, 78, 90, 20372, 16.
Deshaiis, Leon, 8, 9. Desjardins, 65, 82, 85, 86. Desportes, 103, 107. Destailleur, Henri, 572. Dezaigres, 65. Diderot, 197. Dolivar, 56, io8«. Domes, 36, 45, 209, 215. Domfront, 12572.
Doors, 23, 27, 42, 44, 50, 53, 71, 81, 89, 96, 10072, 117, 119,
121, 122, I23, 1 29, I32, I33,
i34> i35> 136, 148, 158, 159. 160, 163, 166, 176, 178, 183,
184, 190, 192, 196, 197, 198, 205, 206, 217.
Dorbay, Frangois, 18, 20, 22, 23,
36, 37. 38, 39. 40, 4i> 43. 44,
48, 78, 149,3, 17-18. Dorigny, Michel, 30/z. Dragons, 127, 130, 134, 136, 139,
148, 149, 151, 162, 172, 174,
187, 196, 198. Dresden, 191 ; Green Vault, 47. Du Barry, Mme., 175, 207, 213,
2 1 5, 220. Dubois, Abbe, 99. Dubos, 114. Dubuisson, 135.
Ducerceau, Jacques Androuet, 28,
31, ro6», 139. Ducereau, Paul Androuet, 29. Dugoullons, 77», 79, 81, 82, 86,
87, 105, 140, 141, 148, 168,
175, 182. Du Mont, 104. Duquesnoy, Francois, 187. Diirer, 27, 1 1 372, 1 1472. Dussaulx, 221. Dussieux, L., 8. Duvivier, 1 54, 156.
EASTBURY, 209, 210. Ecouen, organ, 83. Embroideries, 29, 223, 6. England, 59, 88, 114, 152, 173,
185, 186, 187, 208, 209-211, 212, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219-220, 221, 224, 225, 227; see also specific towns and build- ings.
Errard, Charles, 11, 14, 16, 17, ^ 19, 30, 32, 38, 54, 223. Estrades, Mme. d', 191.
Felibien, Andre, 18, 78. Felibien, J.-F., 90. Fels, Comte de, 8. Ferri, Ciro, I 2.
Feuillet, 84.
Floors, 26, 45, 47, 48, 84, 86.
Florence, Palazzo Pitti, 12, 13, 22, 25.
Floris, Cornelis, 28.
Fontainebleau, 26, 38; Apparte- ment du Roi, 79, 8922, 1 66, 1 78, 206, 267, 260; Cabinet de la Reine, 1 78 ; Chambre d'Anne d' Autriche, 30; Escalier du Roi, 24; Galerie d'Ulysse, 178; Hermitage, 194-195, 21672.
Fontainebleau, School of, 28.
Fontenay, 191 ; Claude (?), 84, 86.
Foot's Cray, 216. Fouquet, Nicolas, 13, 19. Freart de Chambray, Roland, 1 1. Freart de Chantelou, Paul, 1572. Francart, Francois, 18, 26. Francart, Laurent, 4572, 52??. Fresco, 2 1 . Frets, 218.
Furniture, 29//, 31, 45, 65, 89, 133, 136, 220, 221.
Garriel, Ange- Jacques, 7972, 82, 131, 175-178, 182, 18472, 188-189, I 9 I > 1 9S n J 201, 204-207, 20872, 212, 214- 218, 220-221, 224, 84, 231-
2 34, 2 43- 2 4 6 > 2 73~ 2 74- Gabriel, Jacques, 61, 63, 74, 90,
130, 131, 147-148, 175, 17872. Gaillard, 81.
Gaines, 107, 164, 176, 217. Galleries, see Clagny, Louvre,
Saint-Cloud, Trianon, Tuileries,
Versailles, Hotels Lambert, de
Toulouse, Palais-Royal. Garden design, 29-30, see also
Landscape garden. Gamier d'Isle, 194. Genre fittoresque, 3, 147, 152-
174, 178, 190-194, 198, 204,
205, 207, 211, 221, 224, 230. Geoffrin, Mme., 200. Germain, Thomas, 185, 188. Germany, 6, 172, 209, 227, 228,
229, 230, 231; see also specific
towns and buildings. Gervaise, 31. Geubel, Franz, 54/2. Geymiiller, H. von, 5, 229. Giardini, 1 47. Gibbons, Grinling, 88. Gibbs, James, 216. Giedion, S., 231. Gillot, Claude, 93, 103, 1 36-137,
138, iji.
[ 235 ]
Index
Gilly, 231. Girard, 45». Girardon, 12, 92, 223. Gissey, 40.
Gittard, Daniel, 18; le fils, 90. Giulio Romano, 54, 92. Glass, 22-23, ^O, see also Mirrors. Gobelins, 17, 18, 32, 39, 40, 48,
60, 1 54. Gobert, 90.
Goncourt, E. and J. de, 5, 186, 200.
Gondouin, 212, 213, 214. Gontier, 3 1 . Goodwood, 216. Gothic revival, 209, 210. Goupy, 68.
Greece, 1 86, 201, 208. Greenwich Hospital, 21 \n. Griffins, 2 I 7.
Grimm, Baron, 1 8 1 , 218, 222«. Grimod de la Reyniere, 222/z. Grotesques, see Arabesques. Guarini, 15, 157, 200. Guerchy, de, 218. Guiffrey, Jules, 9. Guillain, Simon, 13.
Hardouin, Michel, 40. Hardy, 65. Harewood, 220. Hauberat, I 26«.
Hawk's bills, 54, 55, 56, 68, 77, 145, 191/2, 205, 218, see also Crossettes.
Hawkes, John, 2l6«.
Herculaneum, 200, 201, 208.
Here de Corny, 212, 227.
Herms, 42, 44, 48, 55, 66, 93, 134, 165, 195.
Herpin, Louis, 150, 168.
Holkham, 217.
Holland, 28, 56, 57, 156, 186, 212.
Horace, 181, 187.
Huet, Christophe, 151, 194, 196,
261. Hugo, Victor, 4.
Huquier, 115, 1 1 6, 137, 138,
147, 160, 173. Husks, 207, 219, 220.
INFANTA, I9O, 200. Intarsia, 30-31, see also Mar- quetry. Isenghien, Prince d', 1 91. I ssy> 5 !> 93-
Italy, see specific towns and build- ings.
Jamnitzer, Christian, 156. Jardin anglais, see Landscape garden. Jeanson, 195. Jefferson, 2i6«. Jessen, Peter, 229. Jeurat, 193. Jomart, 37.
Jones, Inigo, 209, 210. Jossenet, 78, 125. Jouvenet, 84, 1 5 5». Ju, I20».
KAMSETZER, 222». KaufTman, Angelica, 222». Kent, William, 209, 210. Kew, 220, 221.
La Baronniere, 31, 32. J La Bruyere, 114?/. La Celle, 194. Lace, 29.
Ladoireau, 82, 134, 153, 206.
La Fontaine, 139.
La Fosse, Charles de, 59, 144.
Lan franc, 65.
La Granja, 124, 138-140.
La Guepiere, Jacques de, 95.
La Guepiere, Philippe de, 95».
La Hire, 78, 90.
Lajoue, Jacques de, 138, 153, 167, 170-172, 173, 193, 197, 203, 226-227.
Lalande, 86.
La Live de Jully, 2 1 9.
La Malgrange, 100, 105, 130, 102.
Lamour, Jean, 227.
La Muette, 7, 136, 139, 191.
Lambert, 78, 90.
Lancret, 1 5 1 , 1 70, I 76W.
Landscape garden, 209, 210, 211, 219, 220, 221, 222.
Langre, 37.
Languet de Gergy, 144, 145, 157.
La Pierre, 81, 82, 83.
Lapis, 23, 47, 48.
La Porte, Antoine de, 84, 1 5 5 .
Lassurance, 38, 39, 46, 47, 48, 49, 57, 62, 63, 64, 68, 71, 79«, 90, 94, 125, 130-131, 147, 223,
225> 2 3> 2 5'38- Lassurance II, 1 3 1 w, 132, 194-
196, 258. La Teuliere, 91, 92. Laugier, Abbe, 2 1 1 -2 1 2. Launay, 75.
Lauraguais, Comte de, 219. Lavalliere, Due de, 194. Law, John, 113.
Leblanc, Abbe, 186, 187-188, 199, 200, 202, 210, 225.
Leblond, J.-B. A., 66«, 91, 93, 98, 100-101, 103, 132-133, 103, 162-163.
Le Brun, Charles, 8, 12, 14, 16, 17-18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 39, 40, 41, 43, 46, 47, 48, 51, 53. 54. 55> 57> 68, 96, 97, no, 116, 136, 147, 153, 223, /, 2, 4, 8-10, 13-15.
Le Camus, 15.
Le Carpentier, 191.
Le Clerc, Salomon, \%0n.
Le Clerc, Sebastien, 40.
Ledoux, Claude-Nicolas, 213, 219, 220.
Le Due, 1 3 .
Legeay, 201-202.
Le Goupil, 86, 140, 175, 182.
Le Grand, 149, 153, 167.
Le Lorrain, 219; Robert, 7772, 81, 82, 93».
Lcmaistre, 6 1 , 90 ; le jeune, 90.
Lemercier, 15, 21.
Lemoines, the, 31, 32.
Lemoyne, Frangois, 141.
Le Muet, 24.
Le Negre, 45.
Lenormant de Tournehem, 1 1 5 186, 187, 191;;, 198, 199, 200, 225.
Le Notre, 1 6, 49. Leonardo, 1 13//. Leoni, Giacomo, 210. Lepautre, Antoine, 18, 20, 4i«, 1 10.
Lepautre, Jacques, 62.
Lepautre, Jean, 1 2, 1 9, 27, 62, 8 1 .
Lepautre, Pierre, 45«, 46W, $2n, 57, 62-64, 66-84, 93. 95. 9°. 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 109, 110, 111, 114, 115, 116, 117, 119, 121, 122, 125, 126, 127, 128, 130, 135, 143, 149, 183, 186, 205, 207, 223-224, 225, 229, 232, 21, 2 5~ 2 7, 44-45> 47S 2 > 57'6i, 7°-75» 77-$3> 89-91, 98-99.
Lepicie, 201.
Le Pileur, 65.
Leroux, Jean-Baptiste, 149-150, 153, 162, 165, 167, 168, 170, 174, 192, 192-196.
Leroy, 201, 208, 210, 212, 2i$n.
Lescuyer, 38.
L'Espine, 90.
Lespingola, 65.
[ 236 ]
Index
Lesseville, 35.
L'Estrange, Sir Roger, 180. Lesueur, 30.
Le Vau, Frangois, 18, 95. Le Vau, Louis, 13, 1 5- 1 6, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 34, 36, 40, 57, 109. Levenvolde, I 34. Lhuillier, 213, 214, 221, 222. Liebaux, 63. Lisbon, 4. L'Isle, 90. Lochon, 68.
Lock, Matthew, 210, 220, 227^.
Locke, John, 1 14, 209.
Lodoli, 211.
Loir, Alexis, 3 1 .
Loir, Nicolas, 19, 31.
London, Burlington House, 209; Chesterfield House, 210; Kens- ington Palace, 209; Saint Mar- tin-in-the-Fields, 21 1; Saint Paul's, 59, 88, 185, 209, 210, 211, 215.
Lorenzo Tedesco, 102.
Lorrain, Claude, 1 1.
Lorraine, 97, 100, 129, 227.
Louis XIV, 10, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, 33-34, 41, 58, 61, 65, 67«, 68, 73, 76, 90, 107, 108, 113, 124, 182.
Louis XV, 112, 123, 131, 139, 140, 142, 152, 175, 177, 182, 1 86, 195, 212, 221.
Louis XVI, 218, 220.
Louis, Victor, 213.
Louveciennes, 220.
Louvois, 20, 34, 39, 46, 47, 53, 63.
Lugny, 192. Luton, 220.
Lyons, 199, 201, 230; Hotel Dieu, 199; Saint-Bruno des Char- treux, 185, 199.
Machy, 21 5«. Maclaurin, Oudot de, 185. Maderna, Carlo, 12. Madrid, 85, 105. Magnien, L., 8. Mailly, Mme. de, 175, 182. Maine, Due du, 1 27. Maine, Duchesse du, 109, 148, 184.
Maintenon, Mme. de, 59, 113. Maisons, 21, 24, 204, 222. Major, J., 208.
Mannerism, 11, 21, 26, 28, 43,
66, 209, 223. Mansart, Frangois, 21, 24, 25, 27,
34, 36, 104, 204.
Mansari, Jacques-Hardouin, 190, 191, 192.
Mansart, Jules-Hardouin, 8, 33, 34-36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 50, 57, 60-61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 74, 75, 78, 89, 90, 92, 99, 100, 107, 116, 175, 223, 11, i2, 16-38, 44-45, 47-83, 96-97.
Mansart de Jouy, Jean, 169. Marble, 22, 26, 30-31, 41, 42,
43, 46, 47, 49, 50, 5!> 5 2 «» 53» 57, 60, 68, 84, 86, 88, 89, 96, 97, 103, 105, 121, 126, 127, 129, 159, 165.
Marble Hill, Twickenham, 216.
Marchand, 61.
Marie-Antoinette, 140, 188, 207,
218, 220, 221. Marie Leczinska, 140, 142, 188,
212.
Marie-Therese, 16, 46, 142.
Mariette, Pierre-Jean, 36, 38, 40, 61, 62, 63, 89, 100, 142, 147, 168, 169, 185, 187, 190, 202, 225.
Marigny, Marquis de, 1 98-1 99,
201, 202, 206, 208», 212, 214,
215, 225. Marin de la Haye, I Jin, 197. Marly, 7, 34, 35, 38, 48, 52, 53,
59, 63, 70, 7«, 72. 73, 74, 89.
90, 109, 113, 216, 223, 47-49;
chimney pieces, 67-69, 81, 87,
94, 95, 102, 50-52. Marot, Daniel, 56, 57. Marot, Jean, 21, 98. Marquet de Vasselot, J., 8. Marquetry, 26, 29/z, 30, 45-46,
47-48, 86. Marteau, 86. Matthieu, 90. Maurepas, 186.
Max-Emmanuel of Bavaria, 172. Mazarin, II, 12, 13, 15, 16, 25,
139-
Mazin, 1 50.
Meaux, jube, 145-146.
Medallions, 28, 30, 31, 33, 44, 54«, 55, 68, 98, 124, 148, 150, 164, 175, 176, 177, 180, J 93> !95> i9 6 > 20 5» 206, 218, 220, 221.
Meilleraye, Due de la, 30«.
Meissen, 228.
Meissonnier, Alexandre, 154.
Meissonnier, Juste-Aurele, 5«, 138, I45», 146, 151, 154-162, 164, 167, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 176, 185, 186, 188,
189, 190-191, 193, 202, 203, 211, 224, 225, 229, 230, 232, 198-210, 247.
Melcombe, Lord, 185.
Menagerie de Versailles, see Ver- sailles, Menagerie.
Menus-Plaisirs, 40, 62, 154, 155, 189, 190, 19IW, 199, 212.
Mereworth Castle, 216.
Meudon, 7, 20, 21, 50, 51, 59, 62, 64, 66, 90, 106; Chateau Neuf, 79, 109; Cabinet du Dauphin, 4572, 46, 50, 64-66, 69, ioo«, 46, 113-114.
Michelangelo, 231.
Middelbourg, Comte de, 191.
Mignard, Pierre, 12, 20, 26, 34, 39, 41, 46, 47, 48, 53, 223; Pierre II, 18, 90.
Mique, Richard, 212, 221.
Mirrors, 22-23, 4 2 , 45, 46-47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 63, 66, 67, 71, 72, 73, 95, 97, 99, 103- 104, 1 10, 116, 117, 118, 121, 122, 126, 127, 128, 129, 132, 133, 141, 143, 148, 149, 150, 158, 159, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 176, 177, 178, 179, 182, 183, 188, 190, 192, 193, 194, 195, 205, 207, 217, 221, 230.
Mitelli, 136, 139, 153, 161.
Mollet, Armand-Claude, 131-132, 159-161.
Mollet, Claude, 29, 223.
Mondon, Jean, 167, 172, 193, 228.
Monitor, 116, 121, 185. Monnoyer, Jean-Baptiste, 547/. Monopteros, 209, 220, 221. Monsieur, frere du Roi, 90. Monstrances, 155. Montean, 104.
Montespan, Mme., de, 35, 56W.
Montesquieu, 153, 210.
Montfaucon, 208.
Montmorency, 93, 100, 144.
Montpelier, 39.
Moransel, 206.
Moresques, 29, 30.
Morris, Robert, 185, 216, 272.
Mortemart, Due de, 155.
Mosaique, 33, 48, 56, 71, 72, 78, 80, 84, 87, 96, 97, 106, 121, 126, 130, 136, 141, 148, 149, 1 5 1 » J 75, 183, 205, 217.
Mouldings, 76, Ii6», 117, 163, 169, 196, 197, 198, 217.
Mouret, 168, 192.
Munich, 172, 193.
Muralt, 210.
[ 237 ]
Index
Nancy, 4, 97, ioo, 227. Natoire, 179, 201. Nelle, Jean de, 86. Nesle, Mmes. de, 175. Nettuno, 92«. Neufforge, 221.
Neumann, Balthasar, 37, 126,
129/z, 228. Newbern, Tryon's Palace, 2i6«. Newby, 216. Newton, 21 \ n. Niccolo delP Abbate, 24. Nivelon, 40.
Noailles, Cardinal de, 1 24. Noel, 81.
Nolhac, Pierre de, 8, 9. Nymphenberg, 1 79/z.
OEBEN, 220. Offhman, 104. Ogier, 97. Ollivier, 123.
Oppenord, Gilles-Marie, 5, 9, 12, 3i«, 85, 90, 91-93. 97»> 9 8 > 101-102, 103-104, 105, 112, 1 1 4-1 1 7, 118, 119, 120-124, 125, 126, 128, 130, 134, 137,
139. H3-H7> i53» 154. 156, 157, 158, 164, 169, 173, 176, 179, 183, 184, 185, 186, 200, 203, 211, 224, 225, 229, 230, 232, 105-110, 119-123, 129-
140, 180-186.
Oppenord, Jean, 45, 48, 91, 1 14. Organs, 56, 83-84, 87. Orleans, Chevalier d', 123. Orleans, Due d', 90, 99, 1 1 3 , 114,
115, 128, 131, 139. Orleans, Duchesse d', 109;/, 140. Orleans, Cathedral, 77-78, 80, 83,
87, 88, 89, 96, 102, 134, 80-
81; Saint-Aignan, 157; Semi-
naire, 146W. Ornament, painted and engraved,
26-33, 53-58, 106-109, 134-
138, 151, 160-161, 171-174,
194, 196, 219, 221. Ornamentalists, 7, 1 06- 1 09, 132-
138, 151, 160-161, 170-174,
193, 221, 230. Orry, 175, 186. Ouchacoff, 134. Oudry, 189.
Overdoors, 23, 49, 71, 72, 74, 96, 122, 123, 124, 127, 128, 130, 132, 134, 141, 143, 148, 149, 150, 160, 178, 183, 18472, 188, 192, 195, 196, 197, 205, 206, 207.
PAESTUM, 208. Pajou, 210, 218, 221. Palladio, 14, 19, 48, 92, 208,
209, 210, 216. Palm, 47, 68, 83, 84, 102, 116, 141, 165, 169, 174, 177, 180, 183, 194, 196, 198, 202. Palmettes, 29, 31, 54, 55, 68-69, 71, 72, 87, 95, 117, 120, 128, 1 56, 161, 166, 193, 223. Panelling, 21, 22, 41, 42, 45, 46, 49, 50, 51, 52, 57, 58, 66, 72, 73> 74. 95-96, 99, 103, 104, 1 10, 116, 117, 1 18-1 19, 1 20, 122, 123, 124, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 134, 141, 144, 145, 14722, 148, 149, 150, 151, 154, 158, 160, 163, 164, 166, 169, 170, 173, 177, 178, 179, 180, 182, 183, 188, 190, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 205, 206, 217, 220, 223, 228.
Panini, 151, 208. Paparel, 15022. Papillon de la Ferte, 212. Paris, Arsenal, 21, 30, 184.
Bibliotheque Royale, 1 42-1 43, 170.
Chancellerie (Hotel de Pont- chartrain), 94-95, 96, 97, 105, 127, 96-97; (Hotel de Rourvallais), I 27-128, 148. Chancellerie d'Orleans, 99, 148-
149, 190. Churches: Madeleine, 213, 215. Notre Dame, choir, 59, 75- 77, 80, 83, 84-88, 89, 95, 96, 105, 117, 124, 145, 192, 229, 77-79, 90, 93- 94 ; altar, 75-77, 84-86, 92, 101, 102, 117, 119, 157. 75-76, 92, 104; jube, 76, 84, IOI, 146, 91; monstrance, 155, 200; chapel of the Virgin, 1 24. Oratoire, 145. Pantheon, 215. St.-Eustache, 84. Ste.-Genevieve, 215; library, 170.
St. -Germain des Pres, altar, 85, 102, 157, 105.
St. -Jacques de la Boucherie, 102, 107.
St. -Leu, 157.
St. -Louis du Louvre, 185.
St.-Marcel, 14672.
St.-Roch, 14422, 184.
St.-Sulpice, 10, 144-145, 157, 159, 184-185, 215. St.-Victor, 102. Theatins, 15. Val-de-Grace, 13, 76.
£cole de Chirugie, 212; Mili- taire, 214.
Fontaine de Grenelle, 18422, 185-186, 187.
Garde-Meuble de la Couronne, 217-218.
Hotels: Amelot de Gournay, 99; d'Antin, 10322, 136; Argen- ton, see Chancellerie d'Or- leans; d'Assy, 120, 121, 122- 123, 124, 143, 148, 150,
177. 179, 136-137; d'Au- mont, 21; d'Auvergne, 94; de Beauvais, 20, III; de Be- senval, 159, 207; de Be- thune, 94; Bielenski, 159, 174, 206; de Biron, 98, 136, 148; de Blair, 98; Bonnier de la Mosson, 170-171,227; Boulevard Beaumarchais No. 43, 16722; de Boullogne, 151; Bouret, 191 ; de Bourvallais, 127-128, 148; Boutin, 168, 169, 222; de Brancas, 219; de Broglie, 98; Chanac de Pompadour, 101, 160, 193, 254; de Chauvelin, 138; de Clermont, 100; de Colbert, 1 20«, de Conti, 127; de Cot- te, 37, 128-129, 149, 752- 153; Cressart, 15 1; Crozat (Place Vendome), 197-198; Crozat (Rue de Richelieu), 14572, de Curzay,99; Daugny, 191, 193; Delisle-Mansart, 197,262-263 ; Desmares, 133, 14472, 150, 192; Desmarets, 94; Dodun, 196, 260; de Duras, 99; d'Estrees, 94, d' Evreux (Elysee), 1 31-132, I43-H4, 195. 1 59-i6i, 184- 185; d'Evreux (Place Ven- dome), 197, 198, 264; Gau- dion, 144, 146; Gontaud Saint-Blancard, 166-167; du Grand Prieur, 123; Grimod de la Reyniere, 22222; Hall- weil, 219; Herlaut, 1 5 1 w ; de Jars, 21; de Janvry, 14422; de La Fare, 150-151, 197; Lambert, 13, 21, 2 2, 25, 26, 27, 30, 1 71 197; de La Roche-Guyon, 12072; de Las- say, 130, 147-148, 149, 175,
[ 238 ]
176, 187-189; Lauzun, 21, 23, 25, 30, 97, 99, ioi, 119, 1 22, 1 28 ; de La Vrilliere (de Toulouse, q.v.), 27, 104; Le Brun, 99; de Lesdiguieres, 133; de Lionne, see Chan- cellerie; de Livry, 98; de Lorges, 50, 51, 52, io$n; de Louvois, 20; de Lude, 94, 95, 170; de Luxembourg, 191; de Mailly, 51, 53, 55- 56, 107, 108, 39-41; de Maisons, 94, 192, 224, 251- 2 52 ; de Matignon, 1 32, I 50, 162-163, '64, 168, 211-212; de Mayenne, 96, 98-99, 168 ; de Mazarin, 153, 162, 164, 167; de Mesmes, 98; de Monbason, 130; de Mont- morency, 219; de Montmo- rency (Amelot), 99; de Mo- ras, 98, 136, 148; de Na- vailles, 129; de Noailles, 94; de Noirmoutiers, 132; de Parabere, 130, 156; du Pe- tit-Luxembourg, 98, 122, 12972, 148, 179, 100-101; Pillet-Will, 166; de Pom- ponne, 9722, 103-104, 143, 108; de Pontchartrain, see Chancellerie ; du Premier- President, 98; de Rohan, 92, 180, 196, 261; de Roque- laure, 130, 149-150, 151, 162, 165-166, 177, 192, I 93 > 224> '92-/96, 2/9-227 ; de Rothelin, 94; de Rouille, 144/2, 162, 163-164, 176, 179, 185, 193, 224, 213- 216; Rue du Bac, Nos. 118- 120, 136; de Salm, 212; de Seignelay, 99, 196, 259; de Sens, 1 32 ; de Soubise, 93, 98, IOO, 101, 168, 176, 177, 1 78-1 81, 184, 193, 224, 235-238; de Soyecourt, 192, 224, 251-252; de Sully, 21 ; de Thiers, 1 97, 1 98 ; de Tor- cy, 99; de Toulouse, 5622, 85, 104-105, 1 1 7-1 19, 121, 124, 12622, 127, 128, 136, 141, 151, 182, 211, 224, ///, 126-128; de Travers, 10322; Tuboeuf, 2472; de Tugny (Tunis), 197; d'Uses, 219; de Vendome, IOO-IOI, 133; de Verrue, 136; de Villars, 9822, 1 29-1 30, 144, 162, 163, 164-165, 224, 154-155, 217- 218; de Villequier, 163; de
Index
Villeroy (Desmares), 133, 14472, 192, 204, 224, 248; de Vilette, 221.
Invalides, 44, 63, 91; Chapelle Royale, 10, 36, 59, 62, 8972; altar, 76.
Louvre, 15, 16, 17, 19, 33, 204; Antichambre du Roi, 24, Ap- partement de Colbert 1872, d'Ete, 16, 21, 25, dela Reine,
16, 30; Galerie d'Apollon,
17, 19, 21, 22, 26, 31-32, 33,41, 52, 55, 8972, 2, 9, 10; Grande Galerie, 24, 26; Pa- vilion de 1'Horloge, 21, du Roi, 16, 21; Rotondes, 13, 15, 21; Salle des Antiques, 22/2.
Luxembourg, 30.
Observatoire, 27.
Palais Bourbon, 130, 1 47- 148; Petits Appartements, 221.
Palais-Royal, 7, 16, 90, 112, 115-117, 121-122, 158, 164, 165, 224, 134-135; Apparte- ment des Bains, 16, 30 ; du Regent, 115, no; Chambre de Parade, 197, 265; Grand Appartement, 113, 116, 117, 120, 1 31-132; gallery, 51, 116, 118, 119; hemicycle, 1 16, 1 5 1, 21 1, 224, /20; Pe- tite Galerie, 115; Petits Cab- inets, 113,1 1 6-1 17; Salon d' Angle, 1 1 8- 1 19, 133; Salon a l'ltalienne, 116, 120, 121- 123; stables, 120, 120-130.
Place Louis XIV (de Vendome), 37» 38, 59, 93> 99> 127, 13072, 150, 151, 197-198; Louis XV (de la Concorde), 181, 214.
Porte Saint-Denis, 19, 204.
Temple, 123, 136.
Tuileries, 19, 23, 24, 2622, 32, 33, 41, 48, 51, 112, 159. Parquet, 26, 47. Parterres, 29, 31, 223, 5. Pascal, 153. Passements, 29.
Patte, Pierre, 36, 5272, 17972, 21 1,
214, 215. Pattigny, 40. Pavements, 84, 86. Pecquigny, Due de, 171. Perrault, Claude, 14, 17, 18, 27,
34» 57> 59> 62, 204, 220. Perrault, Charles, 16, 34, 59. Perrier, Frangois, 27. Peter the Great, 133-134.
Peterhof, 133-134, 164, 166-169. Petit Trianon, 189, 206,215-217, 218, 220, 221, 224, 2J0-2JI,
273-274-
Petitbourg, 124-125, 133.
Petitot, 218.
Peyre, 213.
Peyrotte, 193.
Philip V, 1 24, 1 26.
Philippon, 12, 19.
"Picturesque," 152-153, see also Genre fittoresque.
Pierre, 189, 206.
Piles, Roger de, 59.
Pinard, 42?/, 20372.
Pineau, Nicolas, 13 2- 1 3 4, 137, 14372, 146, 148, 149, 153, 154, 158, 160, 162-170, 172, 173, 174, 176, 177, 179, 183, 184, 185, 186, 189, 191-193, 196, 197, 198, 203, 207, 224, 225, 232, 162, 164-169, 211-225, _ 248-252.
Piranesi, 208, 213, 21972, 22272.
Pirro Ligorio, 92.
Pitt, Ann, 218.
Pitzler, 48.
Plotinus, 1 1 372.
Poerson, 1 1 6».
Poitiers, monstrance, 155, 199.
Poland, 158, 159, 174, 190.
Pompadour, Mme. de, 5, 6772, 13122, 175, 186, 188, 189, 191, 194-196, 198, 199, 200, 204, 207, 214, 215, 2l6«.
Pompeii, 208.
Pontchartrain, 90, 94.
Pope, Alexander, 153, 209, 210.
Porcelain, 21 1, 228.
Portici, 200.
Porticoes, 185, 208, 209, 2IO, 211, 214, 215, 219, 220.
Portugal, 152, 158, 190.
Potain, 202, 212, 217.
Poussin, 11, 12, 14, 16, 24-25, 209.
Pozzo, 157.
Premier Architecte, 8, 9, 10, "7, 34, 35. 36, 60, 78, 125, 175, 188, 201.
Premier Peintre, 17, 39, 186, 201.
Provence, Comte de, 213.
Puget, Pierre, 12, 135, 155, 223.
Pulpits, 82-83, 88.
(^ UAI > Maurice, 4.
RAINCY, 21. Rambouillet, 97/2, 176, 181- 184, 204, 259-242.
[ 239 ]
Index
Raphael, 13, 28, 30, 32, 54, 57, 70//, 91, 109, 180, 223.
Ratabon, 15, 17.
Regent, see Orleans, Due d'.
Restout, 179.
Revett, Nicholas, 208.
Reymond, Marcel, 6.
Rheims, organ, 83.
Richelieu, 16.
Riesener, 220.
Rigaud, Jacques, 210, 220.
Rivet, Antoine, 68, 71 ; fils, 62, 64//, 92.
Robert, Hubert, 221.
Robillon, 162.
Rocaille, usage, 3-4, 5, 161, 172, 193-
Rocailles, 3-4, 138, 160, 161, 181, 199, see also Shellwork.
Rococo, usage, 3-6; background, 11-58; genesis, 59-1 n ; evolu- tion, 112-222; diffusion, 227- 228; interpretation, 228-232.
Rohan, Cardinal de, 128, 196.
Rollwork, 28-29, 30, 116, 165.
Romanelli, 12, 15, 21, 25, 27, 223.
Rome, Academy, see Academy in Rome.
Churches: Sant' Agnese, 92; Sant' Andrea del Quirinale, 157; S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, 12, 91; Sta. Croce in Gerusalemme, 185; S. Filippo Neri, 12, 91 ; S. Gi- rolamo della Carita, 116; Sant 1 Ignazio, 146; Sant' Ivo della Sapienza, 12, 68», 92; St. John Lateran, 27, 47, 92, 117, 157; Sta. Maria del Carmine, 7 ; Sta. Maria Ma- dellena, 6; Sta. Maria Nuova, 31 ; Sta. Maria dell' Orto, 6; Sta. Maria della Pace, 44; St. Peter's, 199, baldachino, 12, 1 7, 76, colonnades, 1 7, tab- ernacle, 12; S. Pietro in Montorio, zjn; Sto. Spirito in Sassia, 102.
Palaces: Altieri, 1 17; Barberini, 12-13, 2I > 2 5> 4 2 ; Doria, 6; Falconieri, 12; Farnese, 11, 14, 25, 26/2; del Grillo, 6.
Pantheon, 201.
Propaganda Fide, 92.
Vatican, 14, 28, 43, 54, 1 16.
Villas: Albani, 213; Farnesina, 1 80 ; di Papa Giulio, 28. Roquet, 14522; Nicolas, 21 1. Rosalba, 1 3 7».
Rose, Hans, 230-231.
Rossi, G. A. de, 117; Mattia, 13.
Rouen, Fontaine de la Grosse
Horloge, 1 86. Rousham, 209.
Rousseau, Antoine, 195, 204, 205,
218, 220. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 209. Rousseau, Pierre, 212. Roussel, 75.
Rubens, II, 13, 14, 59, 229, 232. Russia, 93, 132-134, 162, 213, 224, 227.
Saint-Albin, Charles de, 143. Saint-Cloud, 7, 20, 26, 41, 47,
^ 5i> 52, 53> I23> 139- Saint-Denis, funerary chapel, 36. Saint-Fargeau, 21. Saint-Germain, 23, 34. Saint-Martin, 1 98//. Saint-Maur, 131. Saint-Quentin, organ, 56, 83. Saint-Simon, 16, 34, 39, 78//, 90. Saint- Yves, 147. Salvator Rosa, 209. Sardi, 6, 9272. Sautray, 65. Saverne, 128, /50-/5/. Savonnerie, 26, 48, 60, 84. Scamozzi, 19, 24, 186. Sceaux, 20, 43, 109, 139. Schinkel, 231 .
Schmarsow, August, 6, 23, 229.
Scrollwork, 5, 28-33, 55"57> 68- 69, 71, 72, 74, 75, 85, 95, 96, 104, 107, no, 117, 120, 123, 130, 131, 132, 145, 154, 155, 156, 161, 164, 165, 176, 180, 183, 193, 207, 223.
Selwyn, George, 210.
Semper, Gottfried, 228, 229.
Sens, baldaquin, 185.
Servadoni, Jean-Jerome, 145, 151- 152, 156, 184-185, 199.
Shaftesbury, Earl of, 1 1 3- 1 14, 209.
Shardeloes, 219, 22222.
Shellwork, 3-4, 5, 13, 27, 104, 119, 120, 141, 155, 156, 160, 161, 164, 165, 171, 173, 174, 1 80, 198, 205, 207, 217.
Silverwork, 154-156, 161, 202, 224, 199-202.
Singeries, 106, 107, 109, 113, 151, 196, 261.
Skylight, 20.
Slodtz, the, 189-190, 212. Soufflot, Jacques-Germain, 185,
199, 201, 208, 212, 215, 22022,
225.
Souvre, 1 5022.
Soyecourt, Marquis de, 192. Soyer, 65.
Spain, 85, 105, 124, 126, 158,
227, 228. Spalatro, 213.
Spatial form, 20-21, 46, 99, 105, 109-IIO, 121, 125, 144, 145, 170, 190, 197, 223, 229-230.
Sphinxes, 42, 96, 127, 130, 1 36, 151.
Stanislas Leczinski, 100, 159, 212. Steele, Sir Richard, 153, 21 1». Stendahl, 4. Stourhead, 216. Stowe, 209, 210, 220. Strapwork, 29, 5472. Stuart, James, 208. Sucy-en-Brie, 24. Suffolk, Countess of, 216. Suresnes, 191.
Surintendant des Batiments, 15, 17, 34, 60.
Sweden, 55, 106.
Symmetry, 153, see also Asym- metry.
Syon, 220.
TANCHE, 8222. Tannevot, 149, 153, 167, 174.
Tapestries, 21, 27, 32-33, 42, 49, 53> 54> 5°. 96, 103, 107, 109, 132, 137. I73> 43, n8.
Tarlet, 71.
Taupin, 68, 86, 175, 182. Temples, 201, 208, 209, 210,
21 1, 213, 220, 221. Tessin, 44-45,47, 52, 53, 55, 106. Tetes en esfagnolette, 81, 87, 121,
123, 1 26, I 28, I 77, 205. Thierry, 81, 82. Tingry, Prince de, 132, 150. Tintoretto, 232. Torcy, 146.
Toro, 1 34-i 3 6 > 139, 153, 161, 170.
Tortoise shell, 47, 48. Toulon, 135.
Toulouse, Comte de, 56, 102, 103,
117, 181. Toulouse, Comtesse de, 18 1, 182,
204.
Tournehem, see Lenormant de Tournehem.
Tremolieres, 179, 199.
Trianon (Grand), 35, 49, 52, 53, 54, 59, 68, 89, 90, 94, 113, J 3 5> 2 5 -2 7>' Appartement du Roi (Aile Gauche), 49, 6222,
[ 24O ]
Index
28-31, 70-7 2, (Avant-Corps) , 73-74, 77, 65-69; Cabinet des Glaces, 49, 73, 74, 74, de Mme. de Maintenon, 6222; Chambre de la Duchesse de Bourgogne,
5°, 59. 33 > du Roi ( Aile Gauche), 6922, 70, 55-56; Salon de la Chapelle, 49, 74, 73, Frais, 74, 101, 206, de Musique, 74, Rond, 49, des Sources, 7222, 75 ; Trianon-sous-Bois, 74, 97, 139. Trianon, Pavilion Octogone, 189,
2 I 622.
Trianon (Petit), see Petit Trianon. Trianon de Porcelaine, 20, 23, 49, 139-
Trophies, 27-28, 33, 42, 48, 53, 73, 76, 77-78, 80, 81-82, 83, 93, 95, 97, 103, 104-105, 116, 1 1 8-1 1 9, 123, 129, 134, 135, 141, 143, 144, 145, 156, 166, 171, 176, 179, 183, 192, 205, 206, 218, 221, 15, 80, 82, 87, 108-110, 111, 124-125, 128, '5°, '55, 164-169, 184.
Troy, de, 17672.
Turin, 15, 154, 157, 200; Palazzo Carignano, 157.
■^Jshakov, 1 34.
ANBRUGH, 209, 210.
Van Cleve, 72, 80, 82.
Van der Meulen, 48.
Vandieres, Marquis de, see Ma- rignv.
Van Herselle, 5422.
Vanloo, 201, 206.
Van Obstal, 13, 22.
Van Orley, 5422.
Van Vianen, 1 56.
Vasse, Antoine, 78.
Vasse, Francois-Antoine, 78-79, 81-83, 85-88, 89-90, 102, 104- 105, 1 10, ill, 115, 1 1 7-1 19, 122, 124-125, 126, 127, 130,
«33> 1 34, 1 35, 140-142, H3, 157, 165, 175, 177, 182, 183, 211, 224-225, 229, 232, 92 124-128, 174-177.
Vaux-le Vicomte, 12, 13, 19, 21, 22,^23,25,26,31,32,33,/.
Vendome, Due de, 106.
Venice, San Giorgio Maggiore, 9222.
Verberckt, Jacques, 140, 141, 142, 175, 176-178, 182-184, 188- 189, 191, 195, 204-207, 214, 224, 231-234, 239-242.
Vernansal, 56.
Versailles, 7, 19-20, 33, 34, 35, 36, 41, 57, 59, 63, 78, 81, 89, 90, 113, 135, 140, 174, 193, 214-215, 217; Petit Chateau, 19-20, 32, 42; Chateau Neuf, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 2 °> 32, 33, 4i, 44, 5 2 ; Aile du Midi, 41, 43; chapel, 36, 44, 59, 72», 79-84, 85, 87, 89, 93, 96, 97, 100, 105, 153, 168, 173, 205, 229, 82-89; gardens, 19, 29, 35,5; Grotto, 23; Her- mitage, 194-195; Hotel de Pompadour; Menagerie, 50, 52, 53, 58, 59, °4«, 90, 107-108, 34-38, 117; Opera, 218; Or- angerie, 35; Saint-Louis, 192; stables, 35, 41.
Apartments: des Bains, 20, 22, 23, 33, 204; of the Dauphin (Monseigneur), 23, 128; Grands, 21, 22, 26, 40, 46, 47, 53, 113; of Mme. Ade- laide, 205, 206, 207, 220, 226; of the Due de Bour- gogne, 70, 142, 53-54; of Mme. de Montespan, 23, 32; of the Princesse de Conti, 71, 107; de la Reine, 26, 70; du Roi, 12, 20, 26, 41, 42, 46, 47, 52, 68, 71-73, 105; Pe- tit Appartement du Roi (Lou- is XIV), 43, 46, salon, 42, 46, 53: Petit Appartement du Roi (Louis XV), 152, 175-176.
Antichambres: Premier, 46, 47, 70; Seconde (des Bassans), 46, (de l'Oeil de Boeuf), 72, 81, 102, 63.
Bains du Roi (Louis XV), 183, 204.
Bibliotheque du Dauphin, 205 ; du Roi, 220.
Boudoir de la Reine, 1 88-1 89.
Cabinets: du Dauphin (Mon- seigneur), 45-46, 47, 53, 64; de la Reine, 142, 188, 234, 243-246, de Marie Antoin- ette, 220; du Roi, 42, 46, 47, 74, 175, 176, 177-178; Pe- tits Cabinets du Roi, 1 13, 142, 176; Arriere Cabinets du Roi, 1 7622.
Cabinet d'Angle, 176, 177, 179, 182, 231, 268 ; des Bains, 22, 43, 3; du Billard, 46, 52, 177, 21; du Conseil, 43, 47, 49, 50, 69, 73, 74, 75, 205,
[ 241 ]
206, 214, 218, 22, 64; of Mme. de Lavalliere, 23; des Medailles (des Bijoux, des Curiosites, des Raretes), 44- 45, 47-48; de la Meridienne, 188; Ovale (de la Pendule),
177, 182, 183, 205, 233; a Pans, 176, 177, 179, 182, 23 1 ; Cabinet de la Reine, Grand, 188, 189, Petit, 188- 189, en Niche, 142, 177-
178, 178; du Roi, see Cabi- net du Conseil, Grand, 43, Petit, 42, 46, 16; des Ta- bleaux, 176; des Termes (des Perruques), 42, 47, 205 ; Vert, 176, 183.
Chambre du Conseil, see Cabi- net du Conseil; aux Fili- granes, 20, 23; aux Miroirs, 20, 23 ; du Regent, 128, 149; de la Reine, 52, 69;/, 140- 141, 152, 175, 177, 178, 182, 183, 206, 218, 174- 175; du Roi (Louis XIV),
41, 42, 45, 50, 52, 69, 71- 72, 16, 20, 60-62, (Louis XV), 177, 182, 191, 205, 232.
Escalier de la Reine, 43, 46, 51, 17-18; du Roi (des Ambas- sadeurs), 20, 22, 23, 27, 32, 33, 40, 41, 43, 44, 51, 53,
^ 204, 230, 4.
Galerie Basse, 41 ; Grande (des Glaces), 20/2, 41-42, 43, 44, 47, 52, 53, 54, 73, 12-14; Petite, 47, 48, 53, 205, 23- 24.
Salle d'Abondance, 44, 47, 49; d'Apollon, 22, 26; des Bains (Louis XV), 2 20; de Diane, 22, 27, 41, 47, 49, 153; des Gardes de la Reine, 43, 19; du Roi, 46, 47; a Manger du Roi, 183, 204, des Cabinets du Roi, Grand, 205, 206; de Mars, 22, 26, 4122, 47.
Salons, 41, 43, 47, 52, 54, 57, 97; de la Guerre, 42, 47, 53, 134, 15; d'Hercule, 44, 88-
89, 97, 105, I l6, 120, 121, 141, 152, l82, 224, 229,
95, 176; de Musique, 205; Ovale, 49-50, 32; de la Paix,
42, 47, 68; des Porcelaines, 205 ; de la Reine, 43.
Theatre des Cabinets, 19122, 199.
Vicenza, Villa Rotonda, 48.
Index
Vierzhnheiligen, 10. Vigarini, I 5. Vigneux, 37. Vignola, 1 9.
Vilette, Marquis de, 221. Villa rotonda, 48, 209, 210. Villacerf, Marquis de, 34, 91, 92. Villars, Due de, I 29. Villers-Cotterets, 123. Vincennes, 16, 112. Vitruvius, 14. Voltaire, 173, 210. Voss, Hermann, 6«. Vouet, 30, 31, 223. Vredeman de Vries, 28.
Wailly, Charles de, I48n, 213.
Walpole, Horace, 210, 218, 219. Ware, Isaac, 210. Watelet, 219.
Watteau, 3, 59, 91, 103, 109, 113, 131, 137, 138, 139, 146, 151, 152, 161, 165, 170, 171, 173, 229, 173.
Weenix, 103.
Whately, 219.
William III, 59.
Wilton, 213.
Winckelmann, 187, 208.
Windows, 41, 49, 52-53, 122, 145, 148, 159, 165, 190, 205.
Woburn, 218.
W6lfflin, Heinrich, 6.
Wren, Sir Christopher, 210, 21 in.
Wiirzburg, palace, 126, 129, 149, 191.
Wyndham, Thomas, 185.
York, Assembly Rooms, 209. Yvart, 18, 26.
y^ AHN, A. von, 228.
[ 242 ]
Illustrations
Figure 12. Versailles: Plan for the Grande Galerie, 1678.
Figure 17. Versailles: Escalier de la Reine, 1680
Figure 19. Versailles : Salles des Gardes de la Reine, 1679- 168 1 .
Figure 20. Versailles: Chambre du Roi, 1684.
Figure 21. Versailles: Cabinet du Billard, 1684. Figure 22. Versailles: Cabinet du Conseil,
Engraved by Pierre Lepautre. 1684.
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Figure 32. Versailles: Salon Ovale, 1692. Design by Lassurance. Figure 33. Trianon: Chambre de la Duchesse de Bourgogne, 1698. Design by Lassurance. Figures 34—36. Versailles: Chateau de la Menagerie. Interiors and details. Designs by Lassurance.
Figures 39—41. Hotel de Mailly: Ceilings and arabesques designed by Berain.
Figure 46. Meudon: Cabinet du Dauphin, March-June, 1699. Designed by Berain.
Figure 47. Marly: Grand Salon, as remodelled 1699 ft".
Figures 48-49. Marly : Chambre du Roi, 1699. Designs bj Pierre Lepautre,
Figures 55—56. Trianon : Chambre du Roi, Aile Gauche, February, 1700. Designs of Carlier.
Figure 64. Versailles: Cabinet du Conseil, I 701, remodelled 1 755-1756.
Figure 65. Grand Cabinet, first study. Figure 66. Grand Cabinet, final design.
Figure 69. Window walls of the apartment.
Figures 65-69. Trianon: Appartement du Roi, 1703. Atelier of De Cotte.
Figures 70-72. Trianon: Cornices, 1 703-1 706. Engraved by Pierre Lepautre.
Figure 74. Trianon: Cabinet des Glaces, 1706. Engraved by Pierre Lepautre.
Project for the altar of Notre Dame, 1699. Design by Pierre
Figures 7 7 — 79. Projects for the Choir of Notre Dame, 1703. Designs by Pierre Lepautre.
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93- Notre Dame : Throne, 1711-1712.
Figure 95.
Versailles: Salon d'Hercule, 171 1 ff.
Figure 94. Notre Dame: Stalls, 17 10-17 11.
Design by Pierre Lepautre.
Figure 101. Petit-Luxembourg : Chambre d'Apparat, 1710.
ure 104. Project for the altar of Notre Dame, 1699. Design by Oppenord.
Figure 105. Altar of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, 1704. Design by Oppenord.
Figure III. Hotel de Toulouse : Stairway, 17 14-17 I 5.
Figure 112. Besangon. Hotel de Grammont: Chambre, 17 14. Atelier of De Cotte.
Figures 1 21—123. Palais-Royal: Projects for the Salon a 1'Italienne, 17 17.
Figures i 24-125. Hotel de Toulouse : Projects for the gallery, 1 7 1 8. Designs by Vasse.
Figures 126-127. Hotel de Toulouse : Gallery, 17x8-1719.
Figures 136-137. Hotel d' Assy : Salon, 1 7 1 9.
Figure 141. Bonn: Electoral Pa Atelier oi
Figures 142— 147. Bonn:Buen
ce. Chimney pieces, 17 16-17 17. )e Cotte.
etiro, 17 17. Atelier of De Cotte.
Figure 148. Hotel de Bourvallais: Grand Salon, about I 7 17.
Figures 152-153. Hotel de Cotte, 1 72 1-1 722. Designs by Robert de Cotte.
Figure 156. Hotel de Parabere, 1718-1720.
Figure 158. Chahtilly : Salon de Musique, 1722.
Figures 159—161. Hotel d'Evreux (Elysee) : Interiors, 1720.
Figure 187. Hotel de Lassay: Grand Salon, after 1725.
Figures 188-189. Hotel de Lassay : Ceilings, after 1725.
Figure 190. Chancellerie d'Orleans: Salon, about 1725.
Figure 191. Wtirzburg: Project for the Bishop's apartment, 1724.
Design by Boffrand and Castelli.
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Figures 208-2 10. Ornaments by Meissonnier, 1734.
Figure 212. Hotel de Matigrion : Figure 211. Hotel de Matignon: Antichambre, about 1 73 1 .
Ceiling rosette of Salle a Manger, about 1 73 1.
Figures 2 1 3-2 16. Hotel de Rouille ; Interiors, about 1732.
F igure 221. Hotel de Roquelaure : Salon Rouge, 1733.
Figure 222. House of M. Boutin: Figure 223. Chimney piece from
Salle de Compagnie, 1738. BlondePs Maisons de Plaisance,
Design by Pineau. I 73%-
Figure 224. Hotel de Soubise : Project for a Salle de Compagnie, about 1732.
Figure 227. Hotel Bonnier de la Mosson: Overdoor of Cabinet, 1734. Painting by Lajoue.
Figure 235. Hotel de Soubise: Chambre du Prince, 1736. Drawing after BofFrand.
Figure 236. Hotel de Soubise: Chambre de la Princesse, about 1737.
Figure 238. Hotel de Soubise: Salon de la Princesse, 1 738-1 740.
Figures 239-240. Rambouillet: Salons, about 1735.
Figure 243. Versailles: Piece h Pans de la Reine, 1 746-1 747. Design by Gabriel.
Figures 245-246. Versailles: Boudoir de la Reine, 1 738, 1746-1747. Designs by Gabriel.
Figures 25 I— 252. Hotel de Maisons: Salle de Compagnie, about 1750.
Figure 253. Panels from Briseux' Maksim de Camfagne, 1743. Engraved by Babel.
Figure 254. Hotel Chanac de Pompadour: Petite Chambre a Coucher, about 1743.
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Figure 255. Cartouche by Babel, about 1743.
Figure 256. Ornaments by Cuvillies about 1 753-
Figure 259. Hotel de Seignelay : Grand Salon, about 1752.
Figure 260. House of M. Dodun: Grand Cabinet, about 1750.
Figures 262-263. Hotel Delisle-
Mansart: Interiors, about 1750.
Figure 264. Hotel d'Evreux: Grand Salon, about 1 750.
Figure 269. Fontainebleau: Antichambre du Roi, 1 752-1 754.
Figures 270-27 1. Petit Trianon: Earl)' project, 1762. Designs by Gabriel.
Figure 272. Design from Robert Morris' Select Architecture,
before 1757.
Figure 274. Petit Trianon : Salon, 1768.
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