Rococo Art

This PowerPoint is a compilation of slides and information from PowerPoints created by Matt Curliss,

Avneesh Kohli, Jade Nguyen, and William V. Ganis, PhD, and from books by Marilyn Stokstad

Dr. Schiller: AP History of Art

“Rococo”

•Style that was mainly used in smaller works, often containing furniture, utensils, and other delicate accessories

•Rococo interiors were lively works of art with elegant furniture, enchanting small sculptures, and plenty cheerful light

•A characteristic of Rococo architecture was its union of various arts

•Many of the accessories that were once in these interiors have been removed or stolen and all that remains are the exquisite relief sculptures and gilded moldings

•Good acoustics for the chamber of music that was played within them

•Born in Paris during the reign of Louis XV•The style was a special display ground for curvilinear, delicate ornamentation with complicated patterns•Artists avoided straight lines•Figures were slender•Like an extreme Baroque, or baroque gone wild

Germain Boffrand

Salon de la Princessewith painting by Charles-Joseph Natoire andsculpture by J.B. Lemoine

Hôtel de Soubise, Paris, France

1737-1740

Gardner plate 24-80

•This room is comparable to the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles

•The only difference is that it is a more softened style and the panels are flexible sinuous curves that adapt to the mirror’s reflections

François de Cuvilliès

the AmalienburgNymphenburg Palace Park, Munich, Germany

early 18th C.

François de Cuvilliès

Hall of Mirrors, the AmalienburgNymphenburg Palace Park, Munich, Germany

early 18th C.

Gardner plate 24-81

•Exhibits the curving flow of lines and planes that cohere in a sculptural unity that conveys a sense of great elegance

•The most famous room is also the circular hall of mirrors which has a silver and blue theme color of architecture, stucco relief, bronze mirrors, and crystal

François de Cuvilliès

Hall of Mirrors, the AmalienburgNymphenburg Palace Park, Munich, Germany

early 18th C.

Francis Mansart

Orléans wing of the Château de Blois

Blois, France

1635-1638

Antoine Watteau

L’Indifferent

ca. 1716oil on canvas10 x 7 in.

Gardner plate 24-82

•Portrayed the pompous majesty in supreme glory

•Portrait of Louis XIV as a young boy as the common heavy or staid style

•It is much more delicate

•The mincing minuet that the king is being depicted doing portrays his playful manner

Antoine Watteau

Return from (or Pilgrimage to )Cythera

1717-1719oil on canvas4 ft. 3 in. x 6 ft. 4 in.

Gardner plate 24-84

•This painting was used for artist’s admission to the royal academy

•It portrays his style as a derivative of Ruben’s style

•The painting represents a group of lovers departing from an island of youth and love, sacred to Aphrodite

•There is an elegant and tender sense of contentment. There is also a carefully crafted attitude of the different figures

•The artist was credited with the creation of fete galante painting

•This picture does not depict every day life as most Rococo paintings usually do

•It has soft and feathery brush strokes, dainty figures, and muted colors

Antoine Watteau

View through the Trees in the Park of Pierre Crozat (La Perspective)

ca. 1715oil on canvas18 3/8 x 21 3/4 in.

Francois Boucher, Cupid a Captive, 1754Gardner plate 24-85

Boucher was a follower of Watteau and the painter for Madame de Pompadour ( the

influential mistress of Louis XV)

His fame was gained through his paintings of graceful allegories, with Arcadian

shepherds, nymphs, and goddesses cavorting in shady glens engulfed in pink

and sky blue light.

“Boucher’s paintings are highly caloric with little nutritional value”

•This painting presents viewers with a rosy pyramid of infant and female flesh set off against a cool and leafy background

•Conveys a sense of masterly composition combined with the dynamic use of criss-crossing diagonal and curvilinear forms

•A common subject of Rococo paintings is the pursuit of love

Francois Boucher, Marquise de Pompadour 1756.

Jean-Honré Fragonard, The Swing, 1766Gardner plate 24-86

Fragonard was a student of Boucher and is considered by many to have surpassed the genius of his master.

This is a typical “intrigue” picture. A young gentleman has managed an arrangement whereby an unsuspecting old bishop swings the young man’s pretty sweetheart higher and higher, while her lover (and the work’s patron), in the lower left-hand corner, stretches out to admire her ardently from a strategic position on the ground.

The young lady flirtatiously and boldly kicks off her shoe at the little statue on the god of discretion, who holds his finger to his lips.

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Bathers, 1766.

Giambattista Tiepolo

The Apotheosis of the Pisani Family

1761-1762fresco

Gardner plate 24-79

A “painted festival for the imagination”

Tiepolo was the last great Italian painter to have an international impact until the 20th century

bright, cheerful colors and relaxed compositions

this fresco shows airy populations fluttering through vast sunlit skies and fleecy clouds, making dark accents against the brilliant light of high noon

the Pisani members are elevated to the rank of gods in a heavenly scene

•The difference between quadro riportato and di soto in sù paintings is that di sotto in sù paintings have figures that are placed as if they were over your head

•Ceiling fresco in the Villa Pisani at Stra in Northern Italy

•Depicts airy populations flying in bright clouds and skies

•This shows how the Pisani family members are being elevated to the rank of the gods

•In his future paintings, Tiepolo painted with less symbolic rhetoric and more with elegance and grace

•used to create ceiling paintings into the Rococo period.

Di sotto in sù

Clodion

Nymph and Satyr

ca. 1775terracotta1 ft. 11 in. high

Gardner plate 24-87

•This sculpture has an open and vivid composition suggestive of its dynamic roots

•There’s an overarching source of erotic playfulness

•To energize him, his eager nymph pours wine into his mouth

•The sculpture’s medium is terracotta

•It is a masterly display of Rococo’s style of sensual exhilaration