Historical Dictionary of Rococo Art by Milam Jennifer D.;

Author:Milam, Jennifer D.; [Milam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Published: 2011-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

I

Interior Decoration. The Rococo emerged within French interior decoration around 1700 as a novel type of ornamentation. It spread quickly throughout Europe and to Great Britain, largely through the increased movement of artists, extensive travel of patrons, and the expanded circulation of ornamental prints. Decoration of Rococo interiors included, but was not limited to, ceiling and panel painting, carved wood paneling or boiseries, stucco and plasterwork, as well as the extensive use of mirrors. In paradigmatic examples, such as the Salon Ovale de la Princesse of the Hôtel de Soubise and the Spiegelsaal of Amalienburg, mirrors were used in combination with surface decorations that eroded distinctions between walls and ceilings, replaced defined corners with continuous curves, and masked architectonic features of the room.

Perhaps more than any other period, in the Rococo, the importance of interior decoration rivaled that of architecture itself. As Sébastien Mercier wrote toward the end of the 18th century, “When a house is built . . . nothing is done as yet . . . . Enter the joiner, the upholsterer, the painter, the gilder, the sculptor, the furniture-maker etc.” Interior decoration was a major expense and preoccupation of Rococo building work. Painters, sculptors, and architects often worked in highly organized teams to achieve designs that treated Rococo interiors as a unified whole. This was particularly true in geographic regions with established workshop traditions, such as France and Germany, where expertise in woodcarving was passed down through generations of artists and craftsmen, who were able to work as one under a supervising architect. Since boiseries and stuccowork were of fundamental importance to Rococo interior decoration, such training was indispensable. The domestic and church interiors of the Bavarian Rococo are remarkable for this very reason. By contrast, the English Rococo was reliant upon the imported talents of Swiss-Italian stuccoists, who in turn influenced the designs of local artists working in plaster, which was cheaper and easier to handle.

Louis XIV himself has been credited with giving orders that contributed to the early formation of Rococo interior decoration at the Ménagerie de Versailles. Presented with plans for conventional mythological allegories that would perpetuate the Grand Manner interiors found elsewhere at Versailles, the king rejected the proposal and ordered a scheme that would be appropriately “youthful.” The resulting interior decoration was based around arabesque fantasies invented by Claude III Audran. Audran’s studio and the rival workshop of Jean I Bérain were in high demand among the nobility for their ornamental paintings in the genre of arabesques and grotesques for the interior decoration of châteaux and hôtels particuliers in and around Paris. The new taste for ornamental painting was matched by the “luxury” of carved wood paneling, which, according to the architect Jacques-François Blondel, “introduced sculpture, gilding and mirrors into apartments” during the first decades of the 18th century.

During the regency of Philippe II, duc d’Orléans, and the personal reign of Louis XV, the increasing lavishness of Rococo interior decoration was attributed to the expanding consumer market in Paris. As the

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