The Rococo fashion spread across Europe to the courts of minor royalties, where many Frenchmen were employed to provide up-to-date buildings and schemes of decoration. In France the Gobelins factory became restricted mainly to the output of tapestries; equally fine work is seen in Aubusson and Beauvais carpets and tapestry. Improvement in glass manufacture resulted in larger mirror panels and brilliant crystal chandeliers.
The Louis XVI, or Neoclassical, style began, in fact, to take root before the death of Louis XV in 1774; Mme de Pompadour and her brother, the Marquis de Marigny, were among the first to be attracted by the new classical style in the 1750s. From 1748 onward the characteristically French regard for formality was stimulated by the archaeological discoveries at the sites of the ancient Roman cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii and by the other surveys of classical remains published at this time.
Model of a Louis XVI style boudoir, c. 1780, mixed-media model by the workshop of Mrs. James Ward Thorne, c. 1930–40; in the Art Institute of Chicago.Gift of Mrs. James Ward Thorne, 1941.1209/Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago
It is sometimes forgotten that contemporary English styles also had influence in France, mainly through the published works of the architects Robert and James Adam. The asymmetrical, sinuous lines of the Rococo were slowly replaced by a more restrained form of decoration based once again on straight lines, right angles, circles, and ovals, arranged symmetrically. The lightness and fine moldings were retained, but the decorative forms were once more contained by the architectural framework. New motifs, many of them selected from antique Roman wall painting, decorated the panelling, in paint or in flat relief; palmettes, husks, urns, tripod stands, sphinxes, trophies of arms or musical instruments were frequently combined in the decorative schemes. Gilt bronze was used with wood and plasterwork for moldings and ornamental fillets, emphasizing the rectilinear character of the design. The work of J.-A. Gabriel in both the Chambre du Conseil at the École Militaire (begun 1751) and the Galerie Dorée, Ministère de Marine (begun 1762) may be cited as Parisian examples. The keynote of colouring, as well as design, is refined simplicity. Silk tapestry wall hangings with fine flower and ribbon motifs appear in pale blues, greens, rose, and lilac. Similar colourings were used for satin and velvet upholstery. The fine wood carving of the brothers Rousseau, gilt bronze work by Clodion (Claude Michel), and furniture pieces by David Röntgen, C.E. Riesener, and Jean Oeben show Louis XVI decoration at its highest. Apartments for Queen Marie-Antoinette at Versailles and her boudoir at Fontainebleau are full of this extravagant delicacy, soon to be obliterated in the French Revolution.
mechanical tableMechanical table by French cabinetmaker Jean-François Oeben, c. 1761–63; in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.The Metropolitan Museum, New York City, The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection, 1982 (1982.60.61)
Spain
In Spain, Moorish influence mingled with subsequent Western classical styles to produce a unique flavour in decorative design. The style known as Mudéjar (c. 12th–17th century) was the early outcome of these blended Christian and Arab ideas and consists in essence of tiled floors and skirtings in polychrome, plain white walls, carved stucco friezes, and intricately decorated beamed wooden ceilings. The Duke of Alba’s palace, Sevilla (Seville), contains fine interiors decorated in this style.
Yellow tiles decorated with freehand motifs in blue became common in the 16th century. Tiles were often used on the ground floor of summer living rooms. Since fireplaces were seldom used in southern Spain, these rooms were vacated in the winter for the upper rooms.
The discovery of the New World, with the riches Spain subsequently drew from Mexico and Peru, created a period of Spanish ascendancy in the 16th century that encouraged building and coincided with the spread of Renaissance ideas throughout Europe. The influence of decorative craftsmen from Italy, together with the abundance of precious metal, encouraged the development of Plateresque (“silversmith-like”) decoration. This type of Renaissance decoration was first seen in church interiors, in the form of tombs, retablos (a decorative structure behind an altar), and ironwork screens. The Italian motifs were used in a totally non-Italian manner, encrusting the surfaces as in the late Gothic or Mudéjar style.
This unique Spanish blend of widely separate styles produced the fine interiors of the late 15th-century Panteón de los Duques del Infantado, Guadalajara, by Vazquez, and the Palacio de Peñaranda de Duero (c. 1530), probably by Francisco de Colonia, where interlaced ceiling beams and timber panels were supported on honeycomb cornices and finely ornamented friezes. (Unfortunately, much of this work is now damaged or destroyed.)
Smaller houses as well as palaces were built around a patio, usually colonnaded and with modelled or carved friezes, columns, and bracket capitals.
Window grilles, or rejas, often form an important part of the decorative scheme, the ironwork being traditionally of a high degree of excellence. Love of closely patterned decoration, enveloping all surfaces that could easily be carved or modelled, is an important characteristic of early Renaissance work in Spain, and of the contemporary Manueline style in Portugal. Similar, if rather coarser, work in this style flourished in the American colonies.
High Renaissance decoration in Spain was influenced deeply by the austere character of Philip II and his vast combined palace and monastery, El Escorial (1559–84), near Madrid. This was built for him by Juan Bautista de Toledo and Juan de Herrera. Much of the granite of which the monastery is built is left unadorned, and frescoed vaulted ceilings are the main decorative features of interior design.
A revival of decorative arts took place in the late 17th century under the influence of José Benito Churriguera, his family and followers. The Churrigueresque, which also remained a peculiarly Spanish style, expressed the Baroque feeling of the 17th century in extravagant polychrome. Surfaces were broken into scrolls, rosettes, volutes, and fantasticated moldings; bunches of fruit and flowers hung from broken or inverted cornice moldings; and the whole interior—for example, the Sacristy of the Cartuja, Granada (1727–64)—appears to drip with ornament. Here, even cupboards and doors were inlaid with silver, tortoiseshell, and ivory, and the only plain surface is the checkerboard tiled floor. Remarkable among domestic examples of this style is the Palacio del Marqués de Dos Aguas, Valencia (1740–44).
Under the Bourbons, French and Italian influence increased, as can be seen in the interiors of the Royal Palace at Madrid (1738–64), with its handsomely painted ceilings and brocade wall hangings. Here, also, subsequent changes of taste are echoed in the lighter Rococo treatment of the Gasparini Saloon. Toward the end of the 18th century the Neoclassical movement gained a limited footing, though regional styles continued to incorporate the Baroque and older forms.