M3W7RococoArtandArchitecture.pptxPresentation by Dr. Marc A. Cirigliano
Rococo in Art & Architecture
For our purposes here, there are three different explanations on the origins of Rococo Style:
William Fleming – Rejection of Baroque formality
Anthony Blunt – Roots in the end of the 17th century
Michael Levey – exploration of le beau reél (the beautiful real)
Let use look at some of the characteristics of the new Baroque style in architecture and painting.
Then, let us look at an explanation of the Rococo’s origins.
A shift in taste from the Baroque to the Rococo
Image from Wikipedia: Enseigne_de_Gersaint
Antoine Watteau, 1720-21, L'Enseigne de Gersaint
oil on canvas, 64" x 121"
A shop sign for art dealer Edme François Gersaint
Very small art shop on the Pont Notre-Dame
Baroque portrait of Louis XIV by Pierre Mignard being put away
Clients being pointed toward the new style, the Rococo
Scenes of love, orgies on the walls, esp. to the right = Rococo
Serious scenes on the left = Baroque
Watteau: L'Enseigne de Gersaint
The Rococo side with a vivacious, flirty client at the counter, along with a new Fêtes Galantes landscape being put up.
The Baroque side with a portrait of Louis XIV being put in a storage box below.
The new Rococo style being unveiled.
A vivacious customer for the new art, a new art that we can see in the pastel colors of the lady’s dress and her informal posture.
Comparing Baroque and Rococo Architecture
Image from Jackeiphotos: jackiephotos.e-monsite
Apollo Salon in the Baroque Style – heavy & formal
Louis XIV Portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud
Louis XIV
Le Roi Soleil
1701
Hiacynthe Riguad
Image from WikiVoyage: Garden_facade_of_the_Palace_of_Versailles
Palace at Versailles (Château de Versailles) in the Baroque Style View from the Garden below the Latona Fountain
The next building has a Baroque exterior, but within, some rooms in the Rococo style.
Image from Wiki Commons: Paris- Archives_Nationales
Hôtel de Soubise
1705-09
Pierre-Alexis Delamair
Image from The Slide Projector: art6lecture7
Salon de la Princesse by Germain Boffrand, 1735
Le style Régence, between Louis XIV & XV, 1700-30
Painting by Charles-Joseph Natoire & sculpture by J.B. Lemoine
Let us compare the design schemes of the Baroque and the Rococo.
Image from Study Blue:
giacomo_barozzi_vignola-_il_gesu
Il Gesu, 1584
Note the nave is defined by bays with an arch, each one flanked by two pilasters on each side that support an entablature that runs up to the domed crossing. The bay motif is similar to an Ancient Roman triumphal arch. Key for us is that these forms are defined by substantive mass, solid material, a heaviness.
Giacomo Vignola & Giacomo della Porta
Let us compare the design schema of the nave of Il Gesu with that of the Salon de la Princesse.
The Rococo is lighter, but do you see any similarity?
The design scheme is nearly identical, but the Baroque is defined by heavy masses, while the Rococo is defined by a light, sinuous line coupled with pastel colors.
Soirées à thème (evening theme parties) with lectures, orchestras (or musical ensembles), etc.
These salons had writers, poets & philosophes (intellectuals)
Galantry in education and spirit
Upper class, grandiose, refined, proper, courteous, graceful and light in behavior in contrast to common behavior of the people in the streets
Everything was smaller, subtler and gallant (light and elegant)
So, the center of art is no longer at Versailles, but in the Salons of Paris …
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Prussian blue was an accident in 1704. Heinrich Diesbach was making Florentine lake, a red pigment, made from boiled cochineal insects, alum, iron sulfate, and potash. Out of potash, he borrowed some from alchemist Johann Conrad Dippel, but it was impure—it had animal oil and blood in it. The next morning, instead of the red Florentine lake, Diesbach found a deep blue color from the iron-cyanide contaminant. This new, readily available blue influenced French Rococo painting and its other arts.
By the way, there is also a new color: Prussian Blue
Louis XIV died in 1715, so the Regent closed Versailles and moved the royal residence & the court back to Paris. This began the Regency (1715-23) of Philippe d'Orléans (1674-1723), hence the phrase le style Régence, The Regent’s Style.
Aristocrats and the middle class (bourgeoisie) wanted more intimacy & refinement, less pomp and flamboyance. This spread throughout Europe, but was dominated by French taste that influenced architecture, painting, furniture, dress, costume & manners.
The term “Rococo," a pejorative term, was possibly invented 1797 by Pierre-Maurice Quays, a student of Jacques-Louis David, from French word rocaille, imitation rocks and natural stone; cocaille or sea shells; and, baroco, Portuguese for “Baroque.”
Le style Régence & Rococo, as explained by William Fleming
Preserved Baroque motion and energy
Turned substantial masses into long, sinuous lines
Dematerialized heavy Baroque masses
Not heavy colors, but lighter ones
Lightness & Wit in thematic treatment, not deep conceits = the Swing, Venus Bathing, etc., which we will examine in more detail later in this presentation
Rococo stylistic characteristics
So, William Fleming presents the Rococo as the result of the death of Louis XIV, the lighter taste of the Regent for the young Louis XV, and the move of the cultural and political center of France from Versailles to Paris.
However, the scholar Anthony Blunt presents a different argument.
And, after him, the scholar Michael Levey presents another one.
Everyone agrees that the first Rococo painter and the inventor of the style was the French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). (Watteau’s name is pronounced Vah-toe, with the W pronounced as a soft V.)
1699 Salon of the Académie
Traditional Baroque manner
Academic classicism, a la Poussin
Boullognes family – lighter mythological style [Frankly, I do not see this—Marc Cirigliano]
Anthony Blunt: Roots of the Rococo are at the end of the 17th century and beginning of 18th
1704 Salon of the Académie
A new mood appears
Playful genre paintings like the small Dutch masters
An extension of the naturalism of earlier masters
Catered to a new bourgeoise taste
Small and intimate works
For informal salons in personal residences of the 18th century, not the grand galleries of the 17th
Anthony Blunt: Roots of the Rococo are at the end of the 17th century and beginning of 18th
Anthony Blunt: Roots of the Rococo are at the end of the 17th century and beginning of 18th
Claude Gillot’s scenes from Italian stage comedy – a fantastical style
A new style comes out of this based on the:
Color of Rubens
Lightheartedness of La Fosse
Naturalistic observation of the Dutch school
The fantasies and whims of Claude Gillot
Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) – inventor of new Rococo style
These usual causes (Fleming & Blunt)…
the death of Louis XIV in 1715
the frivolous and dissolute court of the Regent, Duc d’Orléans
…actually had nothing to do with the invention of the Rococo
However…
Instead, a better cause would be the idea of the return of Nature
Study of past masters: Correggio, Veronese, Rubens
Antoine Coypel: “One must join the solid and sublime beauty of Antiquity with the research, the variety, the naiveté and the soul of Nature.”
So, more emphasis on Nature than on Antiquity and other past masters
Étienne Maurice Falconet said: “…the Beautiful, that which we call the ideal, in sculpture as in painting, must be an abstract of the beautiful real of Nature.”
Exploring nature, then, moved the subject matter beyond history painting into genre, landscape and still life.
Michael Levey – explorations of le beau reél de la Nature (the beautiful real of Nature)
The big issues beyond Poussinism vs. Rubenism were:
What was better, following the Ancients or breaking the rules?
Following the Royal Court or following the city of Paris?
Breaking the rules and following Paris both win out.
Michael Levey – explorations of le beau reél de la Nature (the beautiful real of Nature)
Let’s compare a Baroque painting of aristocrats partying in the country with one by Watteau, who invented the Rococo style. Watteau’s painting is a fête galante, an outdoor party or picnic where people flirted with each other.
Image from Wikipedia:
Los Borrachos
(The Drunks),
also known as The Triumph
of Bacchus
1628-1629
165 x 225 cm
Museo Nacional del
Prado, Madrid
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez
A Baroque Painting
Image from Wikipedia: The_Embarkation_for_Cythera
Pilgrimage to Cythera
1717
oil on canvas
4' 3" x 6' 4 1/2“
Cythera is the legendary birthplace of Aphrodite, the Ancient Greek goddess of love.
Antoine Watteau
A Rococo Painting
This painting was Watteau’s official application to become a member of the Académie in 1717. As such, it is known as his morceau de réception (reception piece) to the Académie royale de peinture. In fact, they created a special genre for this type of fête champêtre (the sort of garden party we saw two centuries earlier in Giorgione's painting in Venice). They called this new genre the fête galante, or flirting party.
Since the Island of Cythera in the Aegean Sea was the birthplace of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, the trip embodied in this painting was devoted to pleasures of love. Can you see the lighter mood here through the composition, the use of pastel colors and the ideal pastoral setting?
How about the use of perspective through the landscape and also atmospheric perspective? And the interaction among all the figures? Btw, the women wear what will become known as the Watteau gown. And, above all, enticing beauty in a natural setting about the most natural of human emotions: love?
Further, we can see:
Statue of Aphrodite, goddess of love
Cupids push away Eros, the god of love
Seashells on the boat, symbols of Aphrodite
Colors and light brushwork embody the refinement and light flirtatiousness of the participants
Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris, "Antoine Watteau, Pilgrimage to Cythera," in Smarthistory, December 13, 2015, accessed May 5, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/antoine-watteau-pilgrimage-to-cythera/.
Click on the image to start the video.
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Image from Wikipedia:
L'Indifférent
1717
The theme of aristocratic boredom, the always fashionable “ennui.”
Also, the figure’s expression is ambiguous, and, to be sure, shows an insight into people’s character back then of not being happy when one should be. In this sense, Watteau is one of the first artists to depict human alienation.
Antoine Watteau
Image from Wikipedia: Pierrot_(painting)
Pierrot
1717-18
The stock sad clown figure from the Italian theater, Commedia dell’Arte.
As in “L'Indifférent,” we see a theme of alienation, in a character who should be happy, but is instead, sad.
So, we have an insight into the social reality of the time during which Watteau lived.
Antoine Watteau
We see a variety of moments and moods in this study of women’s heads by Watteau, so the previous two paintings’ “moods” should come as no surprise.
As Michael Levey writes, his drawings were “the fruit incessant study and the product of marvelously matched eye and hand.”
Indeed, as with previous masters, drawing from nature.
Another masterful drawing, Two Seated Women, done with chalk.
Image from Wikipedia:
The Monkey Sculptorc. 1710
More social commentary from Watteau.
A satire of both the pretentiousness of the art world and the lack of imaginative art during his lifetime?
Antoine Watteau
Let us go forward into the Rococo, looking at themes of love, flirtation, overt eroticism and, perhaps, even pornography.
Image from Wiki Commons:
The Toilet of Venus
1751
Influenced by Peter Paul Rubens and Jean-Antoine Watteau
Cupids and doves = attributes of Venus
Flowers = patroness of gardens
Pearls = her birth from the sea
François Boucher (1703-1770)
Image from Wiki Commons:
The Toilet of Venus (detail)
1751
Influenced by Peter Paul Rubens and Jean-Antoine Watteau
Cupids and doves = attributes of Venus
Flowers = patroness of gardens
Pearls = her birth from the sea
François Boucher (1703-1770)
Image from Wikipedia:
Diana Leaving the Bath
1751
The goddess Diana rests after the hunt, assisted in her ritual toilet by a nymph. Under the veneer of the mythological subject matter, this painting is a hymn to the female body. The refined drawing, glowing skin, gentle touch, and luminous palette attest to the artist's maturity.
Francois Boucher
Denis Diderot, the Enlightenment philosophe, on Boucher’s painting:
“ … false ... ridiculous ... I would not mind having this painting. Every time you come to my house, you would say something bad about it, but you would still look at it.”
Said the Neoclassical painter Jacque-Louis David, jokingly:
“There is not a Boucher that is lacking.”
Continuing on, Diderot says of Boucher:
What colors! What variety! What a wealth of objects and ideas! This man has everything except the truth. ... It is done to turn the heads of two kinds of people: its elegance, its cuteness, its romantic gallantry, coquetry, taste, ease, its variety, its brilliance, its artificial skin tones. Its debauchery must captivate fops, young women, young people, people of the world, the crowd who are strangers to true taste, to truth, the right ideas, to the (serious simplicity) austerity of art.
How do they resist the salient, the licentiousness, the effect, the boobs with nipples, the buttocks, the wit of Boucher? Artists bow before him as they see how much this man has overcome the difficulties of painting and how little that is appreciated. He is their god. The others make no case.
Image from Wilipedia: The_Blonde_Odalisque
Blond Odalisque
(Marie-Louise O'Murphy, petite maîtresse to King Louis XV)
1752
Francois Boucher
The Background to Mary-Louise and the King, from Wikipedia,
based in the main on Camille Pascal’s book
Paris police inspector Jean Meunier wrote on May 8, 1753:
They say that the youngest Morfi, fourth sister and therefore the youngest served as a model of the Boucher painting, he painted her naked and gave or sold the painting to Monsieur de Vandières [brother of Madame de Pompadour] and when the King saw it, became intrigued if the painter hadn't flattered the model, so he asked to see the youngest Morfi, and after their meeting, he found her even better than the painting.
In fact, Dominique-Guillaume Lebel, the first valet of the King's chamber, had a secret mission to negotiate her “virginity" and then bring her to the King at Versailles. Marquis d'Argenson wrote in his diary "Lebel was in Paris to bring a new virgin ... then he contacted a dressmaker named Fleuret, who provides the lovers with dresses from his shop at Saint Honoré.“
In this manner, Mary-Louise became a petite maîtresse (little mistress) of Louis XV, never formally presented at court, nor an official mistress (maîtresse-en-titre), so she did not have an apartment at the Versailles Palace.
After a miscarriage that almost killed her, King Louis felt closer to her because she almost died “in service" to him, proof of her genuine affection for the King. She then gave birth to Louis XV's illegitimate daughter, Agathe-Louise de Saint-Antoine de Saint-André, born in Paris, who was sent to a convent, with royal male legal guardians who watched over her.
One tart summary of Marie-Louise O’Murphy’s life comes from Camille Pascal, who writes in her book:
From Marie-Louise O'Murphy, history has retained neither the name nor the face, but the ass. An ass to which Casanova, Boucher and Louis XV, three fine connoisseurs, have given, each in their own way, a marvelous tribute.
We should, perhaps with this as our starting point, look deeper at this erotic portrait.
Was this portrait showing her, as we have seen in other contemporary painting, getting prepped for an enema?
Is this related to the then practice of binge eating at a banquet and then purging through an enema?
Or, was the enema a preparation for anal sex?
Or, was it simply a medical procedure for general health?
We can look at an analogous drawing and painting by Watteau.
Image from The Getty: jean- antoine - watteau -the-remedy
Jean-Antoine Watteau, The Remedy, c.1716 – 1717 Red, black, and white chalk (aka, les trois crayons), 9 3/16 x 14 5/8” Drawing of a preparation for an enema, for the painting The “Remedy”
Image from The Norton Simon Museum: nortonsimon.org
The Remedy
the finished painting, trimmed down from the original, with the background painted over
Jean-Antoine Watteau
Image from Wikipedia:
The Swing
c. 1767
oil on canvas
Wallace Collection, London
Jean-Honoré Fragonard Nickname: Frago
Commissioned by Baron de Saint-Julien in 1767
His mistress is pushed on a swing by a Catholic bishop
Saint-Julien was the Receveur général des biens du clergé – that is to say, the Receiver General of the Benefits of the Clergy
So, the joke here is that a clergyman is pushing a benefit—the lady—towards him
The Swing
The Bishop pushes the swing
Baron de Saint-Julien
receiving the “benefits”
Letting him look up her skirt while kicking off her shoe = very suggestive = like, “I wanna do it” suggestive
Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, "Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Swing ," in Smarthistory, November 24, 2015, accessed May 5, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/jean-honore-fragonard-the-swing/.
Click on the image to start the video.
Contrast these Rococo “flirtations” with a serious Baroque history painting like Rubens’ The Horrors of War just so you get a sense of the Difference between the two eras.
Image from Wikipedia: Consequences_of_War
Peter Paul Rubens, The Consequences of War, 1638-39
oil on canvas, Palatine Gallery, Palazzo Pitti, Florence
The Painterly Technique
Image from Wikipedia:
The Swing
c. 1767
oil on canvas
Wallace Collection, London
Jean-Honoré Fragonard Nickname: Frago
Image from Wikipedia: Inspiration
Inspiration
(Self-portrait)
1769
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Image from Wikipedia: Jean- Claude_Richard
Abbe de Saint-Non
Painterly technique
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Image from Wikipedia: Jean- Claude_Richard
Abbe de Saint-Non
Painterly technique
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Compare the techniques of Boucher and Fragonard
Subtle glazing vs. the painterly brush
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