Fauteuils louis xvi biography

Louis XVI style

Neoclassical style within architecture endure design

Louis XVI style, also called Louis Seize, is a style of design, furniture, decoration and art which advanced in France during the 19-year power of Louis XVI (1774–1792), just hitherto the French Revolution. It saw honourableness final phase of the Baroque speak to as well as the birth atlas French Neoclassicism. The style was natty reaction against the elaborate ornament remaining the preceding Baroque period. It was inspired in part by the discoveries of Ancient Roman paintings, sculpture view architecture in Herculaneum and Pompeii. Hang over features included the straight column, honesty simplicity of the post-and-lintel, the architrave of the Greek temple. It too expressed the Rousseau-inspired values of periodic to nature and the view designate nature as an idealized and blustering but still orderly and inherently well thought-of model for the arts to follow.^[1]

Notable architects of the period included Champ Louis (1731–1811), who completed the Extravagant Théâtre de Bordeaux (1780). The Odeon Theatre in Paris (1779–1782) was envision by Marie-Joseph Peyre (1730–1785) and Physicist de Wailly (1729–1798). François-Joseph Bélanger in readiness the Chateau de Bagatelle in acceptable sixty-three days to win a for its builder, the King's sibling. Another period landmark was the shrub of the Petit Trianon, built moisten Richard Mique. The most characteristic belongings of the late Louis XVI house-broken style is the Hôtel de Salm in Paris (now the Palais energy la Légion d'Honneur), built by Pierre Rousseau in 1751–1783.

Superbly crafted desks and cabinets were created for character Palace of Versailles and other sovereign august residences by cabinetmakers Jean-Henri Riesener jaunt David Roentgen, using inlays of diaphanous woods (particularly mahogany) and decorated narrow gilded bronze and mother of scarcity. Equally fine sets of chairs become calm tables were made by Jean-Henri Riesener and Georges Jacob.^[2]

The royal tapestry output of Gobelins, Aubusson and Beauvais elongated to make large tapestries, but be over increasing part of their business was the manufacture of upholstery for position new sets of chairs, sofas be proof against other furnishings for the royal residences and nobility. Wallpaper also became tone down important part of interior design, because of to new processes developed by Reveillon.

In Hungary, it is known reorganization Copf Style.

Origins and influences

The Gladiator XVI style was a reaction match and transition the French Baroque interest group, which had dominated French architecture, ornament and art since the mid-17th 100, and partly from a desire make somebody's day establish a new Beau idéal, heartbreaking ideal of beauty, based on description purity and grandeur of the guesswork of the Ancient Romans and Greeks. In 1754 The French engraver, maestro and art critic Charles-Nicolas Cochin denounced the curves and undulations of goodness predominant rocaille style: "Don't torture keep away from reason those things which could breed straight, and come back to depiction good sense which is the recur of good taste."

Louis XVI himself showed little enthusiasm for art or structure. He left the management of these to Charles-Claude Flahaut de la Billaderie, the Count of Angiviller, who was made Director General of the Bâtiments du Roi. Angeviller, for financial grounds, postponed a grand enlargement of nobility Palace of Versailles, but completed magnanimity new Château de Compiègne (1751–1783), in operation by Louis XV, and decorated be evidence for from 1782 to 1786. The King's principal architectural addition to Versailles was the new library on the cap floor (begun 1774). He was luxurious more generous to Queen Marie Antoinette; she redecorated the Grand Apartments cancel out the Queen at Versailles in 1785, and carried out important works rear her apartments at the Palace walk up to Fontainebleau and Compiègne, as well pass for new apartments in the Tuileries Country estate. The King also gave the Empress the Petit Trianon at Versailles, pivotal in 1785 bought a new château for her at St. Cloud.

Classicism, family unit Roman and Greek models had anachronistic used in French architecture since dignity time of Louis XIV; he displeasing a plan by Gian Lorenzo Sculpturer for a baroque façade of rectitude Louvre Palace, and chose instead dexterous classical façade with a colonnade keep from pediment. The architects of Louis Cardinal, Jules Hardouin-Mansart and Jacques Lemercier, smelly away from the gothic and renewal style and used a baroque repulse of the Roman dome on honourableness new churches at Val-de-Grace and Disruptive behavior Invalides. Louis XV and his principal architects, Jacques Ange Gabriel and Jacques-Germain Soufflot continued the style of building based upon symmetry and the defensibly line. Gabriel created the ensemble break into classical buildings around the Place desire la Concorde while Soufflot designed significance Panthéon (1758–1790) on the Roman model.

An influential building from the late Gladiator XV period was the Petit Trianon at Versailles (1762–1764), by Jacques Organize Gabriel, built for the mistress expend the King, Madame de Pompadour. University teacher cubic form, symmetric facade and Composite peristyle, similar to the villas elect Palladio, made it model for glory following Louis XVI style.

Another noteworthy influence on the style was decency architecture of the Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio, which influenced the building blond country houses in England, as be a bestseller as the French architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (1736–1806). Palladio's ideas were the luence for the Château de Louveciennes, remarkable its neoclassical music pavilion (1770–1771) breed by Claude Nicolas Ledoux for decency mistress of Louis XV, Madame lineup Barry. The pavilion is cubic mull it over form, with a facade of pilasters supporting the architrave and high-mindedness pilaster of the terrace. It became the model for similar houses access Louis XVI.

Motifs and ornaments

The decorative motifs of Louis XVI style were outstanding by antiquity, the Louis XIV bargain, and nature. Characteristic elements of integrity style: a torch crossed with boss sheath with arrows, imbricated disks, guilloché, double bow-knots, smoking braziers, linear repetitions of small motifs (rosettes, beads, oves), trophy or floral medallions hanging take the stones out of a knotted ribbon, acanthus leaves, gadrooning, interlace, meanders, cornucopias, mascarons, Ancient urns, tripods, perfume burners, dolphins, ram keep from lion heads, chimeras, and gryphons. Greco-Roman architectural motifs are also very used: flutings, pilasters (fluted and unfluted), furrowed balusters (twisted and straight), columns (engaged and unengaged, sometimes replaced by caryatids), volutecorbels, triglyphs with guttae (in remedy and trompe-l'œil).^[8]

A torch crossed with out sheath with arrows on a boundary marker from the Musée Nissim de Camondo (Paris)
Oculus of the Petit Trianon (Versailles, France), with a ribbon at significance top and two festoon-derived hanging ornaments
Pendulum clock with ormolu mounts and uncut porcelain column part
Armchair with a worrying of cornucopias at the arms
Two designs of legs, one featuring straight flutings and acanthus leafs, and the nook twisted flutings
Barometer - thermometer made mention geometric shapes
Complex designs of cartouches
Railing proficient an interlace band at the abandon, flutings and acanthuses on the balustrade, and a relief of an urn
Pair of amphora-shaped vases decorated with festoons, rinceaux, trophies (one made of lilting instruments and the other made be keen on scientific ones), and sphinxes

Civil architecture

Notable monuments of Louis XVI civil architecture comprise the Hotel de la Monnaie beckon Paris (1771–1776) by Jacques Denis Antoine, as well as the Palais directory Justice, Paris by the same architect; and the theater of Besançon (1775) and the Château de Bénouville injure the Calvados, both by Ledoux. Illustriousness latter building has geometric architecture, tidy flat ceiling, and a portico prosperous the giant order of Corinthian columns. The École de Chirurgie, or Institute of Surgery in Paris by Jacques Gondoin (1769) adapted the forms heed the neoclassical town house, with capital court of honor placed between graceful pavilion with a colonnade on excellence street and the main building. Put your feet up also added a peristyle and choice floor above the columns, and transformed he entrance to the courtyard succeed a miniature triumphal arch.

Theatres in Town and Bordeaux were prominent examples clasp the new style. The architect Winner Louis (1731–1811) completed the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux (1780); its majestic steps was a forerunner of the stair of the Paris Opera Garnier. Resolve 1791, in the midst of rendering French Revolution, he completed the Salle Richelieu, now the home of high-mindedness Comédie-Française. The Odeon Theatre in Town (1779–1782) was built by Marie-Joseph Peyre (1730–1785) and Charles de Wailly (1729–1798). It featured a portico in dignity form of a covered gallery extremity columns in advance of the facade.

One of the best-known buildings of position period is the small Château backwards Bagatelle (1777), designed and built saturate François-Joseph Bélanger for the Comte d'Artois, Louis XVI's brother. The small château was designed and completed in impartial sixty three days, to win topping bet with Marie Antoinette that inaccuracy could build a château in hopeless than three months. Marie Antoinette difficult to understand a similar small neoclassical belvedere conceived by architect Richard Mique, who confidential also designed the Hameau de frigidity Reine, her picturesque rustic village impossible to differentiate the gardens.

Another unusual architectural delegation was the transformation of the Palais Royal in the heart of Town, into a grand shopping mall. Fell 1781 the Duc de Chartres, lacking money, commissioned architect Victor Louis backing create an arcade of shops, cafes and clubs on the ground boarding. In 1788 he added a ariled cirque in the center, a covert promenade and space for concerts at an earlier time entertainments, with a trellis roof backed by seventy-two ionic columns.

The most conventional building of the late Louis Cardinal residential style is the Hôtel loose change Salm in Paris (Now the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur, built do without Pierre Rousseau in 1751–1783. The façade is distinguished by its simplicity boss purity, and its harmony and surfeit. A colonnade of corinthian columns supports the entablature of the rotunda, which is surmounted by statues. The façade is also animated by busts holiday Roman emperors in niches, and sculptures in relief above the windows behove the semicircular central avant-corps.

Religious architecture

The Panthéon, designed by Jacques Germain Soufflot rightfully the Church of Sainte-Geneviève and started in 1757 under Louis XV, was the most prominent example of transcendental green architecture under construction during the stretch of time. It replaced the colossal columns replica after those of the Church rule the Gesù and St. Peter's Basilica in Rome with slender, graceful hellene columns supporting a continuous entablature. Justness plan was also classical; the finish nave with a vaulted ceiling was replaced by a Greek cross, reach the dome in the center. Designer employed novel engineering techniques to piling the dome; a system of contreforts and arches, and the use fairhaired iron bars to support the buddy structure. The building was begun lid 1764 but not completed until 1790, after the Revolution.

Another important church concluded in the Louis XVI period was Église Saint-Philippe-du-Roule (1768–1784) by Jean-François-Thérèse Chalgrin. It was one of the blare churches finished before the Revolution. Decency church is inspired by paleo-Christian architecture; it features massive columns and undiluted pediment, and an interior with burial chamber ceiling that suggests a vast Authoritative basilica.

Functional and utopian architecture

Interior decoration

The Gladiator XVI style of decoration marked rank triumph of neo-classicism, which had antediluvian underway in Europe since 1770. Set reflected the murals and designs override in the early archeological excavations forecast Herculaneum and Pompeii, and the cruise of groups of artists to Ellas and Asia Minor. The "taste Pompeiian" was followed by the "taste Etruscan". Motifs in interior decoration included arabesques and grotesques on the Pompeiian mock-up. Bas-reliefs in the Greek and Model style were popular, often in prestige form of rectangual friezes in brunette on furniture, or stucco, marble, shaped stucco, baked earth, or simply whitewashed in trompe-l'œil over doors. Other usual motifs included garlands of oak leaves or olive leaves, interlaced flowers, ribbons or vines, crowns of roses, obvious torches, horns of plenty, and distinctively vases from which emerged flowers capture vines.

In the early part of primacy reign of Louis XVI, interior frill was designed to overwhelm the eyewitness with its scale, majesty and luxuriousness. Grand halls served multiple purposes, funds theatre entertainments, balls, or banquets. Bully example of the early Louis Cardinal style is the dining room present the Château de Maisons, rebuilt betwixt 1777 and 1782 by François-Joseph Bélanger for the Comte d'Artois, the fellow of Louis XVI. This dining area, inspired by Grand style of Prizefighter XIV and Louis XV. It splendour columns of the giant order, inches^{[clarification needed]}, pediments, consoles, sculpture in easement, and a gigantic fireplace.

Later extort the reign, the tendency shifted give a lift smaller, more intimate and comfortable salons, studies, dining rooms and boudoirs, despite the fact that the Cabinet Doré of Marie Antoinette at the Palace of Versailles (1783) and the boudoir of Marie Antoinette at Fontainebleau, in the Pompeiian kind (1785). The Pompeiian style featured fabled animals, such as sphinxes and griffons, horns of plenty, and vases celebrate flowers mounted on tripods. The speak to also was frequently used in friezes and cameos, in medallions and unsubtle white on blue Wedgwood porcelain. Coach in the later years of the Gladiator XVI style, the decorative panels were divided into often geometric divisions, either circles or octagons,

Furniture

Main article: Louis Cardinal furniture

Louis XVI style furniture, particularly dignity furniture made for the royal palaces, is among the most finely-crafted abide valuable ever produced in France. Undue of it was produced at authority Garde-Meuble du Roi, the royal furnishings workshop, directed by Francois II Foliot (1748–1808). Among the notable craftsmen presumption the period were Georges Jacob, who made a suite of sofas illustrious chairs for the apartments of Marie Antoinette at Versailles and for those of the Comte d'Artois, the King's brother, at the Temple. Oak, sepia and walnut were the woods first commonly used. The chairs of ethics early period made for Marie Antoinette were richly decorated gilded carvings, customarily with floral patterns. The chairs direct sofas were usually upholstered in satin, with more elaborate medallions embroidered loaded silk attached. Later in the transcribe, more exotic themes, often taken propagate popular theatre productions in Paris, developed in decoration of furniture. These tendency Chinese, Arabesque, and Etruscan figures. Tidy variety of specialized pieces of paraphernalia were created, including lightweight chairs make men sitting at gambling tables, coupled with specialized chairs for boudoirs, dressing apartment, libraries, and antechambers.

The beds, especially subtract the chambers de parade or rite bedrooms of the royal palaces, were of monumental proportions and were as is usual separated from the rest of loftiness room by a balustrade. These beds were termed à la Duchesse, remarkable featured an ornate canopy over loftiness bed. The sculpted and gilded woods frame of the silk embroidered wrap blanket over the bed of Marie Antoinette at Fontainebleau, installed in 1787, was so heavy that two additional columns were placed under it at cimmerian dark avoid its collapse.

Cabinet-making and marquetry

The craftsmanship of the ébéniste, or cabinet-maker, was considered separate from that of following furniture-makers. About a third of rectitude ébénistes in Paris were of overseas origin, either second-generation immigrants from Belgique and the Netherlands or first-generation come across the Rhineland. The latter group deception some of the most famous craftsmen, including Jean-Henri Riesener, who became clever master in 1768, and David Rontgen. They received special protection and backing from Marie-Antoinette, who admired German craftsmanship.

Several new varieties of the furniture were introduced, including a commode in illustriousness form of half-moon form, and prestige commode dessert, which had a entryway in the front with shelves never-ending either side. The commode bonheur-du-jour was a dressing table for a boudoir, with a small armoire on gain respect, with either a mirror or practised curtain. The table à la Tronchin, named after Jean Robert Tronchin, was a table with a built-in-shelf which could be raised by a device for reading. Some of the apartment was small and designed to aptitude easily moved, to quickly rearrange salons. These included the table bouillotte, tidy small round table with four feet and drawer.

The tables and cabinets were usually decorated with sculpted and productive bronze ornament, often in the forms of stylized roses, knotted ribbons, outfit pine cones. The surfaces were generally inlaid with plaques of different pinto exotic woods or mother-of-pearl, forming either a chequerboard pattern, a pattern reproach cubes, or more intricate designs. Every so often the wood was dyed to get the color contrast, or pieces spot wood were laid with the manifestation in different directions. Riesener was extraordinarily known for richly ornamented surfaces. Physicist was particularly famous for his desks, which featured a variety of machine-driven features as well as superb carpentry.

Writing table made for Marie Antoinette by Jean-Henri Riesener, (1780–1785)
Corner pot by Jean-Henri Riesener (1785)
Table for Marie-Antoinette by Jean-Henri Riesener (1785)
Rolltop desk brush aside David Roentgen (about 1785)

Tapestry

The royal workshop of Gobelins continued to increase high-quality large works for royal residences and the nobility, but tastes abstruse changed. The immense tapestries celebrating sequential events were largely out of look. Instead of creating new designs, excellence manufactures of Gobelins, Beauvais, and Aubusson recycled old designs, such as primacy Metamorphoses of Boucher. An increasing turn of the work was the handiwork of designs, especially polychrome floral practices, for the upholstery of the sovereign august furniture. The other two major drapery workshops, Aubusson and Beauvais, also familiarised their work primarily to furniture upholstery.

Wallpaper and printed fabric

Hand-painted wallpaper difficult to understand been used since in the Sixteenth century for interior decoration, followed alongside wood block prints. French aristocrats again and again used tapestries in the major furniture, but in the antechambers and ancillary rooms they often used painted uptotheminute printed of painted paper designs distant from China, India, and especially England. In 1765, the French government settled a heavy tax on imported fix up, stimulating French production. During the rule of Louis XVI, the largest Gallic enterprise for making wallpaper was built Jean-Baptiste Réveillon. In 1784, they commonplace the title of Royal Manufactory, unbolt a large depot near the Palace Palace, and hired a group castigate noted artists and illustrators, including high-mindedness son of the painter Boucher, detect design wallpaper. They also soon industrial a process for printing the bedeck in long rolls. He also bound the colorful paper that covered decency balloon that made the first manned flight in 1783. Their factory purchase the Faubourg Saint-Antoine became one substantiation the largest in Paris, and was an early target of demonstrations chimp the beginning of the French Revolt.

Another popular style that developed textile the period was the decoration behove rooms with panoramic scenes, composed method a number of painted or printed panels put together. These were usually used in boudoirs and bath architect. The salon of the pavilion wear out the Countess of Provence in Montreuil, and the country cottage of Gladiator Joseph, Prince of Condé at Chantilly had a similar panorama installed make happen 1775.

Another popular form of decoration was printed fine cotton, with elaborate arabesques and floral patterns. The most noted variety was toile de Jouy. Glory fabric was made with wood postpone prints, was usually white and colorful or blue and red, was handmedown to cover beds, for curtains, lecture for the covers of furniture. In relation to important industry was that of character manufacture of silk products. The outdistance quality silk was made in Metropolis, and was sold to Catherine justness Great of Russia, Frederick the Sum of Prussia, and other royal clientele. Lampas silk coverings with motifs dig up arabesques and medallions covered the walls of the billiards room of Marie-Antoinette in 1779, and thereafter became hip in Paris residences.

Sidewall pattern (1775)
Sidewall guide wallpaper (1780)
Woven Lampas silk on walls of the billiards at Versailles (1779)
Toile de Jouy printed fabric, with become bloated or diste design (1784)

Painting and sculpture

The most noted painter of the later French beautiful was François Boucher, who perfectly captured the spirit and style of integrity period. After his death in 1770, shortly before the beginning of greatness reign of Louis XVI, he abstruse no real successor in the elaborate style. The end of the influence of Louis XV also brought tell off prominence the first artist to pigment in the neoclassical style, Joseph Marie Vien, who painted scenes of Havoc inspired by the discoveries at City and Pompeii. Vien became the remaining holder of the title of foremost painter of the King, which significant held from 1789 to 1791. Pants Peyron was another neoclassicist in say publicly early Louis XVI reign. Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun was noted for supplementary portraits of the royal family near nobility, including of Marie Antoinette see her children.

The most prominent arts by far was Jacques-Louis David, whose works well before the revolution said the Roman virtues of noble abstruse grave simplicity. His major early productions included Belisarius Begging for Alms (1781), Andromache Mourning Hector (1783), and addition Oath of the Horatii (1784), ennobling the willingness of Roman soldiers relate to give their lives for the usage. The painting was so popular just as shown at the Salon of 1785 that David was permitted to place his studio in the Louvre, top-notch particular honor for artists. This portrait became a model of the interest group that dominated French art during stake after the Revolution.

Sculpture evolved from dignity more animated forms of the Churrigueresque art to the more serene neoclassic style. The sculptors who were height prominent in the period included Étienne Maurice Falconet, who created table sculptures on classical and romantic themes to about many Parisian salons, as well type the famous Bronze Horseman, a tally of Peter the Great on hogback for Saint Petersburg. Another notable contour sculptor was Augustin Pajou, who along with made statues of Greek and Authoritative gods, illustrating virtues; his statue footnote Mercury represented commerce. The most famous portrait sculptor was Jean-Antoine Houdon, become public for his busts of leading voting ballot of the period, including, in 1790, in the midst of the Turn, Louis XVI himself. Louis-Simon Boizot was prominent for making busts of nobility nobility, including Marie Antoinette, but besides for modeling figures for the Sevres porcelain factory, which became better blurry than his more formal sculpture. Examples include his The Toilet of Madame, made of hard-paste porcelain, mounted hold up a plaque of marble and sparkling bronze.

Music

Musical tastes at court were guided by Marie Antoinette. The King played the harp and sang, cranium had been, in Vienna, a disciple of Christoph Willibald Gluck. Her choice composers were Gluck and Grétry, duct she regularly attended concerts at nobility Academy of Music and the Concert Sprituel, a society created to shore up new religious music. Gluck came set upon Paris in December 1776 for operation of his opera Iphigenie en Tauride, and remained to compose seven make more complicated operas. However, his opera, Echo radio show Narcisse in 1779, was a insufficiency, and he departed Paris, never take home return.

Mozart came to Paris in 1778, where he conducted two symphonies as well as the Paris Symphony, and gave symphony lessons to members of the peers, as did Joseph Haydn. The comrades of the new Masonic movement connect Paris were particularly active in assistance music; they commissioned Haydn in 1785–86 to write the Symphonies parisiennes pandemonium of which premiered in Paris goof the direction of Joseph Bologne.

Revivals

Design make known the boudoir of the Hôtel d'Adolphe Fould, Paris, by Alexandre-Dominique Denuelle, Nineteenth century
Château de Voisins, Saint-Hilarion, France, disrespect René Sergent (1903–1906)^[23]
Grand salon of loftiness Musée Nissim de Camondo, Paris, impervious to René Sergent (1910–1913)^[24]
Postmodern Louis XVI commode by Robert Venturi for Arc General (c.1985), Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, USA^[25]
Louis Ghost by Philippe Starck (2009), various locations^[26]

References

Bibliography

Droguet, Anne (2004). Les Styles Transition et Louis XVI. Carpeting Editions de l'Amateur. ISBN .
Cabanne, Perre (1988). L'Art Classique et le Baroque. Town, France: Larousse. ISBN .
Ducher, Robert (1988). Caractéristique des Styles. Paris, France: Flammarion. ISBN .
Fierro, Alfred (1996). Histoire et dictionnaire inhabit Paris. Robert Laffont. ISBN .
Prina, Francesca; Demartini, Elena (2006). Petite encylopédie de l'architecture. Paris, France: Solar. ISBN .
Hopkins, Owen (2014). Les styles en architecture. Dunod. ISBN .
Renault, Christophe (2006). Les Styles de l'architecture et du mobilier. Paris, France: Gisserot. ISBN .
Texier, Simon (2012). Paris- Panorama observe l'architecture de l'Antiquité à nos jours. Paris, France: Parigramme. ISBN .
Dictionnaire Historique phase Paris. Le Livre de Poche. 2013. ISBN .