Rococo art

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-Mitali Gondaliya 01
-Darshan Bavadiya 04
-Urmila Dhameliya 09
-Nikhilesh Dhaduk 10
-Vatsal Gadhiya 11
-Dipti Patel 28
-Darshan Savsaiya 34
-Ridham Vekariya 39
Rococo
Late Baroque

Mannerism
Origin of Baroque
Fall of Renaissance
Age of Enlightenment
Counter Reformation
Council of Trent (War of 30 years )
Restoration (Comedy)
Liberalism
X Roman Catholics Protestants
French Revolution
Rococo

• The word is seen as a combination of the French rocaille (stone)
and coquilles (shell), due to reliance on these objects as decorative motifs.
• The term may also be a combination of the Italian word "barocco" (an irregularly
shaped pearl, possibly the source of the word "baroque") and the French
"rocaille" (a popular form of garden or interior ornamentation using shells and
pebbles).
• The style received harsh criticism and was seen by some to be superficial and of
poor taste, especially when compared to neoclassicism; despite this, it has been
praised for its aesthetic qualities.
• By the end of the 18th century, it replaced by the Neoclassic style.
• In 1835 the Dictionary of the French Academy stated that the
word Rococo "usually covers the kind of ornament, style and design associated
with Louis XV's reign and the beginning of that of Louis XVI".
Intro to Rococo… Origin

Intro to Rococo… Origin
• is an 18th-century artistic movement and style, affecting many aspects of the
arts including painting, sculpture, architecture, interior design, decoration,
literature, music, and theatre.
• Developed in the early 18th century in Paris, France as a reaction against the
grandeur, symmetry, and strict regulations of the Baroque, especially of
the Palace of Versailles.
• Rococo artists and architects used a more jocular, florid, and graceful approach
to the Baroque. Their style was ornate and used light colours, asymmetrical
designs, curves, and gold.
• The interior decoration of Rococo rooms was designed as a total work of art
with elegant and ornate furniture, small sculptures, ornamental mirrors,
and tapestry complementing architecture, reliefs, and wall paintings.

Development of Rococo…
• Although Rococo is usually thought of as developing first in the decorative arts
and interior design, its origins lie in the late Baroque architectural work
of Borromini (1599–1667) mostly in Rome but also in Vienna, Prague, Lisbon, and
Paris.
• An exotic but in some ways more formal type of Rococo appeared in France
where Louis XIV's succession brought a change in the court artists and general
artistic fashion.
• By the end of the king's long reign, court life moved away from Versailles and this
artistic change became well established, first in the royal palace and then
throughout French high society.
• The 1730s represented the height of Rococo development in France. The style
had spread beyond architecture and furniture to painting and sculpture,
exemplified by the works of Antoine Watteau & François Boucher.

Potsdam, Germany Tea
House
In the 17th and 18th century
it was summer residence of
Prussian Kings and German
Emperors.

• The beginning of the end for Rococo came in the early 1760s as figures
like Voltaire and Jacques-François Blondel began to voice their criticism of the
art.
• Blondel decried the "ridiculous jumble of shells, dragons, reeds, palm-trees and
plants" in contemporary interiors.
• By 1785, Rococo had passed out of fashion in France, replaced by the order and
seriousness of Neoclassical artists like Jacques-Louis David.
Voltaire Jacques-Louis David

•The Enlightenment encouraged criticism of the corruption of Louis XVI and the
aristocracy in France, leading to the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789. In
1792, Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, were beheaded along with
thousands of other aristocrats believed to be loyal to the monarchy.
•Rococo not only confined till decorative arts, but also affected the living of French
high Society (also clothing style). Louis XIV turned France into a beacon of art,
fashion and culture.
•30 years after the Rococo period receded, the French Revolution shook France and
shattered its class system. It became the great European revolution of the 18th century that
shaped our modern political world.
•The French Revolution heralded a new era, with no monarchy, no aristocracy and it closed
the final chapter of the ancient regime that lasted more than a thousand years. It caused a
major cultural shift, not only in visual art but also in fashion and hairstyles. Even shoes
changed radically.

Inventions in Rococo…
 Discovery of oxygen & hydrogen.
Metric system.
Cataract Surgery
Steam Engine by James Watt.....steam boat
Hot air balloon
Parachute
French press : method to make coffee
Military got uniformed (clothing)
Telegraph
Modern pencil
Paper machine
Piano instrument (used for operas)
Electricity….by Benjamin Franklin

Painting
Music Sculpture
Architecture
Interior
Garden
Furniture
Rococo

Rococo Art… 1. Interior Design
•Rococo is fully in control, sportive, fantastic & sculptured forms are expressed
with abstract ornament using flaming, leafy or shell-like textures in asymmetrical
sweeps and flourishes and broken curves; intimate Rococo interiors
suppress architectonic divisions of architrave, frieze & cornice expressed in
materials like carved wood & stucco.
•Walls, ceiling, furniture & works of metal & porcelain present a unified ensemble.
The Rococo palette is softer and paler than the rich primary colors & dark
tonalities favored in Rococo tastes.
•Plasterwork (POP) in ceiling was started in this era, by Italian-Swiss artists like
Bagutti and Artari.
•In general, Rococo is an entirely interior style, because the wealthy and
aristocratic moved back to Paris from Versailles. Paris was already built up and so
rather than engaging in major architectural additions, they simply renovated the
interiors of the existing buildings.

Rococo Art… 2. Furniture & decorative objects
•French Rococo art was at home indoors. Metalwork, porcelain figures and
especially furniture rose to new pre-eminence as the French upper classes sought
to outfit their homes in the now fashionable style.
•Rococo style took pleasure in asymmetry, a taste that was new to European style.
This practice of leaving elements unbalanced for effect is called contraste.
•During the Rococo period, furniture was lighthearted, physically
and visually. The idea of furniture had evolved to a symbol of
status and took on a role in comfort & versatility.
•Mahogany was widely used in furniture construction due to its
strength, resulting in the absence of the stretcher as seen on
many chairs of the time.
•Also, the use of mirrors hung above mantels became ever
more popular.

•Furniture could be easily moved around for gatherings, and many specialized forms
came to be such as the fauteuil chair, the voyeuse chair, and the berger en gondola.
Changes in design of these chairs ranges from cushioned detached arms,
lengthening of the cushioned back & a loose seat cushion.
•Furniture was also freestanding, instead of being anchored by the wall.
Design for a table by Juste-Aurele
Meissonnier, Paris 1730
Apron, legs, stretcher have all been
seamlessly integrated into a flow of
opposed c-scrolls and "rocaille."
The knot of the stretcher shows the
asymmetrical "contraste" that was
a Rococo innovation.

•In French furniture the style remained
somewhat more reserved, since the ornaments
were mostly of wood.
•wood-carving…less robust & naturalistic & less
exuberant in the mixture of natural with
artificial forms of all kinds (e.g. plant motives,
grotesques, masks, badges, paintings, precious
stones).
•British Rococo tended to be more restrained.
Thomas Chippendale's furniture designs kept
the curves and feel.
•The most successful exponent of British
Rococo was probably Thomas Johnson, a gifted
carver and furniture designer working in
London in the mid-18th century.

Abstract and asymmetrical Rococo
decoration: ceiling stucco

Rococo Art… 3. Painting
• Though Rococo originated in the purely
decorative arts, the style showed clearly
in painting.
• These painters used delicate colors and
curving forms, decorating their canvases
with cherubs and myths of love.
• Portraiture was also popular among
Rococo painters.
• Painters turned from grand, heavy works
to the sensual surface delights of color and
light, and from weighty religious and
historical subjects—though these were
never ignored completely—to more
intimate mythological scenes, views of daily
life, and portraiture.
Still Life with Glass Flask and Fruit by
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin

•The popularity of the Rococo style was inspired in part by the works of the
celebrated painter Antoine Watteau.
•Watteau's elegant paintings perfectly embody the Rococo ideal of grace &
playfulness. In addition, the painter's compositions often were asymmetrical.
This stylish asymmetry in turn became an important characteristic of
Rococo art & design.
Pilgrimage on the Isle of Cythera captures the frivolity and
sensuousness of Rococo painting.

• Watteau was not the only champion of the Rococo style,
however. Two artists, François Boucher & Jean-Honoré
Fragonard also created artistic confections that
dazzle viewers with their charm and sophistication.
• Boucher, Best known for his fashionably frivolous
depictions of rosy-cheeked aristocratic ladies & idealized
mythological subjects.
Francois Boucher
Jean-Honore Fragonard
Oil Painting by
Boucher

•Fragonard’s works reflect the carefree world enjoyed by France during the Rococo
period. The colors are bright and shiny & the brush strokes are very delicate. He
had a great imagination, wit & refinement that combined to create poetic
canvases.
A Young Girl Reading by FragonardThe Swing by Fragonard

Self Portrait by Vigiee LeBrunPortrait of Marie Antionette
Marie Antionette & her children

Rococo Art… 4. Sculpture
•Sculpture was another area where the Rococo was widely adopted. Étienne-
Maurice Falconet is widely considered one of the best representatives of French
Rococo.
•In general, this style was best expressed through delicate porcelain sculpture
rather than imposing marble statues. The themes of love were reflected in
sculpture, as were elements of nature, curving lines & asymmetry.
•In this connection, the French sculptors, Jean-Louis Lemoyne, Jean-Baptiste
Lemoyne, Robert Le Lorrain, Louis-Simon Boizot, Michel Clodion & Pigalle may be
mentioned in passing.

•The sculptor Edmé
Bouchardon represented
Cupid engaged in carving
his darts of love from the
club of Hercules; this
serves as an excellent
symbol of the Rococo
style—the demigod is
transformed into the soft
child, the bone-
shattering club becomes
the heart-scathing
arrows, just as marble is
so freely replaced
by stucco.

Companion of Diana by Jean-Louis Lemoyne Bacchus by Le Lorrain

Tomb effigy of Amalia Mniszech

Rococo Art… 5. Music
•A Rococo period existed in music history, although it is not as well known as the
earlier Baroque.
•The Rococo music style itself developed out of baroque music both in France,
where the new style was referred to as style galante ("gallant" or "elegant" style),
and in Germany, where it was referred to as empfindsamer stil ("sensitive style"). It
can be characterized as light, intimate music with extremely elaborate and refined
forms of ornamentation.
•Musicians include Jean Philippe Rameau, Louis-Claude Daquin & François
Couperin in France; in Germany, the style's main proponents were C. P. E.
Bach and Johann Christian Bach, two sons of the renowned J.S. Bach.

•In music, galant refers to the style which was fashionable from the 1720s to the
1770s. This movement featured a return to simplicity after the complexity of the
late Baroque era.
•This meant simpler, more song-like melodies, decreased use of polyphony, short
periodic phrases, a reduced harmonic vocabulary emphasizing tonic and dominant,
and a clear distinction between soloist and accompaniment.
•The word "galant" derives from French.
•In the early 18th century, a Galant Homme described a person of fashion; elegant,
cultured and virtuous.
Rococo Art… 5. Music

Rococo Art… 6. Garden Design
• French found landscaping & gardening as their new style statement….to show
royalty, grandeur & how prosperous they were.
•Developed their own Garden style….known as French Gardens & then it got spread
throughout the Europe…..known as European Gardens.
•Examples designed by André Le Nôtre:
i. Gardens of Versailles
ii. Vaux-le-Vicomte
iii. Château de Chantilly

Rococo Art… i. Gardens of Versailles
Area 800 ha.
Designer •André Le Nôtre
•Charles LeBrun
Plants •2,00,000 trees
•2,10,000 flowers planted annually
Features •50 fountains
•620 water jets (fed by 35 km. piping)
•5.57 km Grand Canal (surface area 23 ha).
• Gardens of Versailles are part of the Palace of Versailles, France.
•Situated to the west of the palace.
•manicured lawns, parterres of flowers, and sculptures are the fountains.
•Dating from the time of Louis XIV and still using much of the same network of
hydraulics as was used first, the fountains contribute to making the gardens of
Versailles unique.

•In 1662, minor modifications to the château
were undertaken; however, greater attention
was given to developing the gardens.
Existing parterres were expanded & new ones
created. Most significant among the creations
at this time were the Orangerie and
the Grotte de Thétys.
•The Versailles Orangery, designed by Louis Le Vau,
located south of the château, a situation that took
advantage of the natural slope of the hill. It
provided a protected area in which orange trees
were kept during the winter months.
•The Grotte de Thétys, which was located to the
north, formed part of the iconography of the
château and of the.
Garden plan, c. 1663

View of the Orangerie in 1695 as painted
by Jean-Baptiste Martin
• In the winter, the Versailles Orangerie houses more than a thousand trees in boxes.
•It is under the flowerbed known as "parterre du midi". Its central gallery is 155m in
length, and its frontage is directed towards the south. The “Parterre Bas” is bordered on
its south side by a balustrade.
•The central gallery is framed by two side galleries. It is lit by large arched windows,
which enclose the lower bed. In the centre, is a large circular pool, surrounded by six
fields of grass.
Parc de Versailles, with the orange trees in
boxes

• Grotto was as the cave of the sea. A freestanding structure located just north of
the château. The interior, which was decorated with shell-work to represent a sea
cave, contained the statue group depicting the sun god, his attendants & his horses.
•Technically, the Grotte de Thétys played a critical role in the hydraulic system that
supplied water to the garden. The roof of the grotto supported a reservoir that
stored water pumped from the Clagny pond and which fed the fountains lower in
the garden via gravity.
Exterior Interior

Grand Canal
•With a length of 1,500 m, a width of 62 m, was built between 1668 and 1671, along
the E-W axis to the walls of the Grand Parc.
•the Grand Canal served as a venue for boating parties. In 1674, Louis XIV ordered
the construction of Petite Venise – Little Venice. Located at the junction of
the Grand Canal and the junction of the northern transversal branch, Little Venice
housed the caravels and yachts.
• It also served a practical role. Situated at a low point in the gardens, it collected
water it drained from the fountains in the garden above. Water from the Grand
Canal was pumped back to the reservoir on the roof of the Grotte de Thétys via a
network of pumps.

First & Second Expansion by Kings Louis XIII-IV (till 1670s), includes :
1. The Versailles Orangery
2. Grotte de Thétys
3. Grand Canal
4. Bassin de Latone
5. Bassin d’Apollon
6. Parterre d’Eau
7. Evolution of the Bosquets
8. Bassin des Sapins
9. Pièce d’Eau des Suisses
• Located on the east-west axis just west and
below the Parterre d’Eau, is the Bassin de Latone.
•Further along the east-west axis is the Bassin
d’Apollon – the Apollo Fountain. depicts the sun god
driving his chariot to light the sky.
•forms a focal point in the garden
4
5

• Parterre d’Eau : Situated above the Latona Fountain is the terrace of the
château, known as the Parterre d’Eau. Forming a transitional element from the
château to the gardens below and placed on the N-S axis of the gardens.
-In 1664, Louis XIV commissioned a series of 24 statues intended to decorate the
water feature of the Parterre d’Eau.
Evolution of the Bosquets : Expanding the layout, Le Nôtre added 10 bosquets:
The Bosquet du Marais in 1670; the Bosquet du Théâtre d’Eau, Île du Roi and Miroir
d’Eau, the Salle des Festins (Salle du Conseil), the Bosquet des Trois Fontaines in
1671; the Labyrinthe and the Bosquet de l’Arc de Triomphe in 1672; the Bosquet de
la Renommée (Bosquet des Dômes) and the Bosquet de l’Encélade] in 1675; &
the Bosquet des Sources in 1678.
-In addition to the expansion of existing bosquets and the construction of new
ones, there were two additional projects that defined this era, the Bassin des
Sapinsand the Pièce d’Eau des Suisses.

Water Management of Bosquet Salle de Bal in 1670s.

Bosquet of the Salle de Bal (present)

• In 3rd & 4th expansion, existing fountains & bosquets were modified.
• The first major modification to the gardens during this phase occurred in 1680
when the Tapis Vert – the expanse of lawn that stretches between the Latona
Fountain and the Apollo Fountain.
•the Grotte de Thétys was demolished.
•To compensate for the loss of the reservoir on top of the Grotte de Thétys and to
meet the increased demand for water, Jules Mansart designed new & larger
reservoirs. Canal de l'Eure was inaugurated in 1685; it was intended to bring
waters of the Eure over 80 km, including aqueducts of heroic scale.

Plan of the gardens in 1746
•Louis XV did not undertake the costly building campaigns at Versailles that Louis
XIV had. During the reign of Louis XV, the only significant addition to the gardens
was the completion of the Bassin de Neptune (1738–1741).
•He constructed and maintained les jardins botaniques– the botanical gardens, in
1750.

•Upon Louis XVI’s ascension to the throne, the gardens of the Versailles underwent
a transformation.
•the winter of 1774-1775 witnessed a complete replanting of the gardens. Trees
and shrubbery dating from the reign of Louis XIV were felled or uprooted with the
intent of transforming the gardens of Le Nôtre and Hardouin-Mansart into an
English-style garden.
•This attempt to convert the masterpiece into an English-style garden failed due to
the topology of the land, the gardens replanted in the French style.
•clipped hedging that formed walls in the bosquets – to be replaced with rows of
lime trees or chestnut trees. Additionally, a number of the bosquets dating from the
time of the Sun King were extensively modified or destroyed.
•The most significant contribution to the gardens during the reign of Louis XVI was
the Grotte des Bains d’Apollon. The rockwork grotto set in an English style bosquet
was the masterpiece of Hubert Robert in which the statues from the Grotte de
Thétys were placed.

Grotte des Bains d’Apollon (present)

Gardens of Versailles (present)

•While Baroque art was serious, Rococo was playful. Baroque art depicted heroism,
martyrs and biblical stories, but Rococo painters showed lovey-dovey themes and
aristocracy at play.
•Larger-than-life religious or political themes were replaced with light-hearted themes
revolving around fun, lovers and naughty behaviour. Baroque used dark colours, Rococo
used soft and bright colours in a very optimistic “life is beautiful” ambiance.
•Also, unlike Baroque, Rococo art was not intellectually deep, provocative or
challenging. Even the size of paintings went through a drastic change, Baroque paintings
had to be large and easily visible from afar, but Rococo paintings were much smaller in
order to make them ideal for decoration. Purely decorative Rococo art is the reason why
it did not earn much respect from art scholars.
•Neither the Church nor governments played any role in the rise of this art movement. It
was a sign that French society was less devoted to religion. While some churches were
built in and decorated in the Rococo style, generally the religious element was
nonexistent in Rococo paintings.
Difference between Baroque & Rococo Art…

Rococo art

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