HOME
*



picture info

Louis XIV Style
The Louis XIV style or ''Louis Quatorze'' ( , ), also called French classicism, was the style of architecture and decorative arts intended to glorify King Louis XIV and his reign. It featured majesty, harmony and regularity. It became the official style during the reign of Louis XIV (1643–1715), imposed upon artists by the newly established (Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture) and the (Royal Academy of Architecture). It had an important influence upon the architecture of other European monarchs, from Frederick the Great of Prussia to Peter the Great of Russia. Major architects of the period included François Mansart, Jules Hardouin Mansart, Robert de Cotte, Pierre Le Muet, Claude Perrault, and Louis Le Vau. Major monuments included the Palace of Versailles, the Grand Trianon at Versailles, and the Church of Les Invalides (1675–1691). The Louis XIV style had three periods. During the first period, which coincided with the youth of the King (1643–1660) and the rege ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Versailles Chateau
The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, Yvelines, Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, under the direction of the Ministry of Culture (France), French Ministry of Culture, by the Public Establishment of the Palace, Museum and National Estate of Versailles. Some 15,000,000 people visit the palace, park, or gardens of Versailles every year, making it one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world. Louis XIII built a simple hunting lodge on the site of the Palace of Versailles in 1623 and replaced it with a small château in 1631–34. Louis XIV expanded the château into a palace in several phases from 1661 to 1715. It was a favorite residence for both kings, and in 1682, Louis XIV moved the seat of his court and government to Versailles, making the palace the ''de facto'' capital of France. This ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including the Iberian Peninsula it continued, together with new styles, until the first decade of the 19th century. It followed Renaissance art and Mannerism and preceded the Rococo (in the past often referred to as "late Baroque") and Neoclassical styles. It was encouraged by the Catholic Church as a means to counter the simplicity and austerity of Protestant architecture, art, and music, though Lutheran Baroque art developed in parts of Europe as well. The Baroque style used contrast, movement, exuberant detail, deep colour, grandeur, and surprise to achieve a sense of awe. The style began at the start of the 17th century in Rome, then spread rapidly to France, northern Italy, Spain, and Portugal, then to Austria, southern Germany, and Russia. B ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Italian Baroque Architecture
Italian Baroque architecture refers to Baroque architecture in Italy. Central Italy Rome The Baroque architecture period began in the Italian period of the basilica with crossed dome and nave. One of the first Roman structures to break with the Mannerist conventions (as exemplified in the Church of the Gesù) was the church of Church of Saint Susanna, designed by Carlo Maderno in 1596. The dynamic organisation of columns and pilasters, central massing, and the protrusion and condensed central decoration add complexity to the structure. Most Baroque buildings present domes. There is an emerging playfulness with the rules of classic design, still maintaining rigour. The same emphasis on plasticity, continuity and dramatic effects is evident in the work of Pietro da Cortona, illustrated by Santi Luca e Martina (1635) and Santa Maria della Pace (1656). Santa Maria della Pace, with its concave wings devised to simulate a theatrical set, fills a tiny piazza in front of it. Other Roma ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Nicolas Fouquet
Nicolas Fouquet, marquis de Belle-Île, vicomte de Melun et Vaux (27 January 1615 – 23 March 1680) was the Superintendent of Finances in France from 1653 until 1661 under King Louis XIV. He had a glittering career, and acquired enormous wealth. He fell out of favor, accused of peculation (maladministration of the state's funds) and ''lèse-majesté'' (actions harmful to the well-being of the monarch). The king had him imprisoned from 1661 until his death in 1680. Early life Nicolas Fouquet was born in Paris to an influential family of the ''noblesse de robe'' (members of the nobility under the Ancien Régime who had high positions in government, especially in law and finance). He was the second child of François IV Fouquet (who held numerous high positions in government) and of Marie de Maupeou (who came from a family of the ''noblesse de robe'' and who was famous for her piety and charitable works).:18–23, Contrary to the pretensions of the family, the Fouquets did not com ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Vaux Le Vicomte
The Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte (English: Palace of Vaux-le-Vicomte) is a Baroque French château located in Maincy, near Melun, southeast of Paris in the Seine-et-Marne department of Île-de-France. Built between 1658 and 1661 for Nicolas Fouquet, Marquis de Belle Île, Viscount of Melun and Vaux, the superintendent of finances of Louis XIV, the château was an influential work of architecture in mid-17th-century Europe. At Vaux-le-Vicomte, the architect Louis Le Vau, the landscape architect André Le Nôtre and the painter-decorator Charles Le Brun worked together on a large-scale project for the first time. Their collaboration marked the beginning of the Louis XIV style combining architecture, interior design and landscape design. The garden's pronounced visual axis is an example of this style. History Once a small château between the royal residences of Vincennes and Fontainebleau, the estate of Vaux-le-Vicomte was purchased in 1641 by Nicolas Fouquet, an ambi ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Louis XV Style
The Louis XV style or ''Louis Quinze'' (, ) is a style of architecture and decorative arts which appeared during the reign of Louis XV. From 1710 until about 1730, a period known as the Régence, it was largely an extension of the Louis XIV style of his great-grandfather and predecessor, Louis XIV. From about 1730 until about 1750, it became more original, decorative and exuberant, in what was known as the Rocaille style, under the influence of the King's mistress, Madame de Pompadour. It marked the beginning of the European Rococo movement. From 1750 until the King's death in 1774, it became more sober, ordered, and began to show the influences of Neoclassicism. Architecture The chief architect of the King was Jacques Gabriel from 1734 until 1742, and then his more famous son, Ange-Jacques Gabriel, until the end of the reign. His major works included the Ecole Militaire, the ensemble of buildings overlooking the Place Louis XV (now Place de la Concorde; 1761-1770), and the Pet ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Grotesque
Since at least the 18th century (in French and German as well as English), grotesque has come to be used as a general adjective for the strange, mysterious, magnificent, fantastic, hideous, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or disgusting, and thus is often used to describe weird shapes and distorted forms such as Halloween masks. In art, performance, and literature, however, ''grotesque'' may also refer to something that simultaneously invokes in an audience a feeling of uncomfortable bizarreness as well as sympathetic pity. The English word first appears in the 1560s as a noun borrowed from French, and comes originally from the Italian ''grottesca'' (literally "of a cave" from the Italian ''grotta'', 'cave'; see grotto), an extravagant style of ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered at Rome at the end of the fifteenth century and subsequently imitated. The word was first used of paintings found on the walls of basements of ruins in Rome that were called at that time ''le Gro ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Arabesque
The arabesque is a form of artistic decoration consisting of "surface decorations based on rhythmic linear patterns of scrolling and interlacing foliage, tendrils" or plain lines, often combined with other elements. Another definition is "Foliate ornament, used in the Islamic world, typically using leaves, derived from stylised half-palmettes, which were combined with spiralling stems". It usually consists of a single design which can be ' tiled' or seamlessly repeated as many times as desired. Within the very wide range of Eurasian decorative art that includes motifs matching this basic definition, the term "arabesque" is used consistently as a technical term by art historians to describe only elements of the decoration found in two phases: Islamic art from about the 9th century onwards, and European decorative art from the Renaissance onwards. Interlace and scroll decoration are terms used for most other types of similar patterns. Arabesques are a fundamental element of ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Wrought Iron
Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content (less than 0.08%) in contrast to that of cast iron (2.1% to 4%). It is a semi-fused mass of iron with fibrous slag Inclusion (mineral), inclusions (up to 2% by weight), which give it a wood-like "grain" that is visible when it is etched, rusted, or bent to structural failure, failure. Wrought iron is tough, malleable, ductile, corrosion resistant, and easily forge welding, forge welded, but is more difficult to welding, weld electrically. Before the development of effective methods of steelmaking and the availability of large quantities of steel, wrought iron was the most common form of malleable iron. It was given the name ''wrought'' because it was hammered, rolled, or otherwise worked while hot enough to expel molten slag. The modern functional equivalent of wrought iron is Carbon steel#Mild or low-carbon steel, mild steel, also called low-carbon steel. Neither wrought iron nor mild steel contain enough carbon to be ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Jean Bérain The Elder
Jean Berain the Elder (1640 – 24 January 1711) was a draughtsman and designer, painter and engraver of ornament, the artistic force in the Royal office of the Menus-Plaisirs du Roi where all the designs originated for court spectacle, from fêtes to funerals, and many designs for furnishings not covered by the Bâtiments du Roi. The "Berainesque" style of light arabesques and playful grotesques was an essential element in the ''style Régence'' that led to the French Rocaille and European Rococo. Born in Saint-Mihiel, Meuse, in the Austrian Netherlands, he was the son of a master gunsmith, in whose line of work engraving was a prominent technique. He spent his career in Paris. Long after his death the connoisseur Pierre-Jean Mariette wrote of him, "Nothing was done, in whatever genre that it might have been, unless it were in his manner, or where he had given designs for it." Through his engravings and those of his son, his style was highly influential beyond the court and Pa ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

André Charles Boulle
André-Charles Boulle (11 November 164229 February 1732), ''le joailler du meuble'' (the "furniture jeweller"), became the most famous French cabinetmaker and the preeminent artist in the field of marquetry, also known as "inlay". Boulle was "the most remarkable of all French cabinetmakers". Jean-Baptiste Colbert (29 August 1619 – 6 September 1683) recommended him to Louis XIV of France, the "Sun King" (), as "the most skilled craftsman in his profession". Over the centuries since his death, his name and that of his family has become associated with the art he perfected, the inlay of tortoiseshell, brass and pewter into ebony. It has become known as '' Boulle Work'', and the École Boulle (founded in 1886), a college of fine arts and crafts and applied arts in Paris, continues today to bear testimony to his enduring art, the art of inlay. Life in 1677, on his marriage certificate, André-Charles Boulle gave his birth date, for posterity, as being 11 November 1642. No other d ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Marquetry
Marquetry (also spelled as marqueterie; from the French ''marqueter'', to variegate) is the art and craft of applying pieces of veneer to a structure to form decorative patterns, designs or pictures. The technique may be applied to case furniture or even seat furniture, to decorative small objects with smooth, veneerable surfaces or to freestanding pictorial panels appreciated in their own right. Marquetry differs from the more ancient craft of inlay, or intarsia, in which a solid body of one material is cut out to receive sections of another to form the surface pattern. The word derives from a Middle French word meaning "inlaid work". Materials The veneers used are primarily woods, but may include bone, ivory, turtle-shell (conventionally called "tortoiseshell"), mother-of-pearl, pewter, brass or fine metals. Marquetry using colored straw was a specialty of some European spa resorts from the end of the 18th century. Many exotic woods as well as common European varieties ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]