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Louis XVI ► Louisiana I 1141
viding decorative motifs. Notable artists and designers include Jean- Honore Fragonard, Francois Boucher, and Jean-Baptiste Oudry.
Louis XVI (b. Aug. 23, 1754, Versailles, France—d. Jan. 21, 1793, Paris) Last king of France (1774-92) in the Bourbon line preceding the French Revolution. In 1770 he married Marie-Antoinette, and in 1774 he suc¬ ceeded to the throne on the death of his grandfather, Louis XV. Immature and lacking in strength of character, he was unable to give the necessary support to his ministers, including Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot and Jacques Necker, in their efforts to stabilize France’s tottering finances. Restoration of the Parlements in 1774 shifted power to the aristocracy. Aristocratic opposition to the economic reforms of Charles-Alexandre de Calonne forced the king to summon the Estates-General in 1788, setting the Revolution in motion. Dominated by the reactionary court faction, he defended the privileges of the clergy and nobility. He dismissed Necker in 1789 and refused to sanction the achievements of the National Assem¬ bly. His resistance to popular demands was one cause for the royal fami¬ ly’s forcible transfer from Versailles to the Tuileries palace in Paris. He lost credibility further when he attempted to escape the capital in 1791 and was caught at Varennes and returned to Paris. Thereafter he was dominated by the queen, who encouraged him to a policy of subterfuge instead of implementing the Constitution of 1791, which he had sworn to maintain. In 1792 the Tuileries was captured by the people and mili¬ tia, and the First French Republic was proclaimed. When proof of his counterrevolutionary intrigues with foreigners was found, he was tried for treason. Condemned to death, he went to the guillotine in 1793. His dig¬ nity during his trial and execution only somewhat redeemed his reputa¬ tion.
Louis XVI style Style of the visual arts produced in France from c. 1760 to the French Revolution. The predominant style in painting, archi¬ tecture, sculpture, and the decorative arts was Neoclassicism—a reaction against the excesses of the Rococo style and a response to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s call for “natural” virtue, as well as a response to the excava¬ tions at Pompeii and Herculaneum. The most prominent painter was Jacques- Louis David, whose severe compositions recalled the style of Nicolas Poussin. The foremost sculptor of the day was Jean-Antoine Houdon. The style in furniture was classical, yet workmanship was more complex than in any earlier period. Jean-Henri Riesener and other German craftsmen were among the most prominent cabinetmakers. See also Classicism and Neo- classicism.
Louis XVII orig. Louis-Charles (b. March 27, 1785, Versailles, France—d. June 8, 1795, Paris) Titular king of France from 1793. The second son of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, he became heir to the throne on his brother’s death, shortly after the outbreak of the French Revolution. In 1792 he was imprisoned with the rest of the royal family. When his father was beheaded in 1793, the French emigre nobility proclaimed Louis- Charles king. He died in prison at age 10, but the secrecy surrounding his last months gave rise to rumours that he was not dead, and over the next few decades more than 30 persons claimed to be Louis XVII. DNA tests in 2000 established that the child who died in 1795 was in fact the son of Louis XIV and Marie-Antoinette.
Louis XVIII orig. Louis-Stanislas-Xavier, count de Provence
(b. Nov. 17, 1755, Versailles, France—d. Sept. 16, 1824, Paris) King of France by title from 1795 and in fact from 1814 to 1824. He fled the country in 1791, during the French Revolution, and issued counterrevo¬ lutionary manifestos and organized emigre-nobility associations. He became regent for his nephew Louis XVII after the 1793 execution of Louis XVI, and at the dauphin’s death in 1795 he proclaimed himself king. When the allied armies entered Paris in 1814, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand negoti¬ ated the Bourbon Restoration and Louis was received with jubilation. He promised a constitutional monarchy, and the Charter of 1814 was adopted; after the interruption of the Hundred Days, when Napoleon returned from Elba, he resumed his constitutional monarchy. The legis¬ lature included a strong right-wing majority, and though Louis opposed the extremism of the ultras, they exercised increasing control and thwarted his attempts to heal the wounds left by the Revolution. He was succeeded at his death by his brother, Charles X.
Louis, Joe in full Joseph Louis Barrow (b. May 13, 1914, Lafay¬ ette, Ala., U.S.—d. April 12, 1981, Las Vegas, Nev.) U.S. boxer. Louis was bom into a sharecropper’s family and only began boxing after the family moved to Detroit. He won the U.S. Amateur Athletic Union title in 1934 and turned professional that year. During his career he defeated
six previous or subsequent heavyweight champions: Primo Camera, Max Baer, Jack Sharkey, James J. Braddock, Max Schmeling, and Jersey Joe Walcott. Nicknamed “the Brown Bomber,” Louis gained the world heavy¬ weight championship by defeating Braddock in 1937 and held the title until 1949. Two of Louis’s most famous bouts, those with the German boxer Max Schmeling, were invested with nationalist and racial implica¬ tions, as Schmeling was seen, unfairly, as the embodiment of Aryanism and the Nazi party. Louis lost to Schmeling in 1936 but defeated him in one round in 1938, causing much jubilation among Americans, and espe¬ cially African Americans. He successfully defended his title 25 times (21 by knockout) before retiring in 1949. His service in the U.S. Army dur¬ ing World War II no doubt prevented him from defending his title many more times. He made unsuccessful comeback attempts against Ezzard Charles in 1950 and Rocky Marciano in 1951.
Louis, Morris orig. Morris Louis Bernstein (b. Nov. 24, 1912, Baltimore, Md., U.S.—d. Sept. 7, 1962, Washington, D.C.) U.S. painter. He studied painting at the Maryland Institute and worked as an easel painter for the WPA Federal Art Project. Inspired by Helen Frankenthaler’s colour stain technique, in 1954 he began a series of paintings titled Veils, featuring stained vertical waves of colour; these works had an impersonal, nonpainterly quality. During this period he became associated with the New York school of Abstract Expressionism. His later work featured diago¬ nal parallel streams of colour that flowed across the bottom comers of the picture plane. In his last series, Stripes, bunched, straight vertical bands of colour are surrounded by empty canvas.
Louis, St. See Louis IX
Louis-Napoleon See Napoleon III
Louis-Philippe known as the Citizen King (b. Oct. 6, 1773, Paris, France—d. Aug. 26, 1850, Claremont, Surrey, Eng.) King of the French (1830-48). Eldest son of the duke d’ Orleans, he supported the new gov¬ ernment at the outbreak of the French Revolution and joined the Revo¬ lutionary army in 1792 but deserted during the war with Austria (1793) and lived in exile in Switzerland, the U.S., and England. He returned to France on the restoration of Louis XVIII and joined the liberal opposition. Following the July Revolution (1830) and Charles X’s abdication, he was proclaimed the “Citizen King” by Adolphe Thiers and elected by the leg¬ islature. During the subsequent July Monarchy, he consolidated his power by steering a middle course between the right-wing monarchists and the socialists and other republicans but resorted to repressive measures because of numerous rebellions and attempts on his life. He strengthened France’s position in Europe and cooperated with the British in forcing the Dutch to recognize Belgian independence. Mounting middle-class oppo¬ sition to his arbritrary rule and his inability to win allegiance from the new industrial classes caused his abdication during the February Revolu¬ tion of 1848.