Illustrated History of Furniture, fifth ed.: From the Earliest to the Present TimeLitchfield, Frederick
History
Illustrated History of Furniture, fifth ed.: From the Earliest to the Present Time
Litchfield, Frederick
Furniture -- History
Gradually, under the new régime, architecture became more simple. Broken
scrolls were replaced by straight lines, curves and arches were introduced
when justified, and columns and pilasters reappeared in the ornamental
façade of public buildings. Interior decoration necessarily followed suit:
instead of the curled endive scrolls enclosing the irregular panel, and
the superabundant foliage in ornament, we find rectangular panels formed
by simpler mouldings, with broken corners, having a patera or rosette
in each, and between the upright panels there is a pilaster of refined
Renaissance design. In the oval medallions supported by cupids, is found a
domestic scene by Fragonard or Chardin; and portraits of innocent children
by Greuze replaced the courting shepherds and mythological goddesses of
Boucher and Lancret. Sculpture, too, became more refined and decorous in
its representations.
As with architecture, decoration, painting and sculpture, so also with
furniture. The designs became more simple, but were relieved from severity
by the amount of ornament, which, except in some cases where it was
over-elaborate, was properly subordinate to the design and did not control
it.
Mr. Hungerford Pollen attributes this revival of classic taste to the
discoveries of ancient treasures in Herculaneum and Pompeii, but, as these
occurred in the former city so long before the time we are discussing
as the year 1711, and in the latter as 1750, they can scarcely be the
immediate cause; the reason most probably is that a return to simpler and
purer lines came as a relief and reaction from the over-ornamentation
of the previous period. There are not wanting, however, in some of the
decorated ornaments of the time distinct signs of the influence of these
discoveries. Drawings and reproductions from frescoes, found in these old
Italian cities, were in the possession of the draughtsmen and designers of
the time; and an instance in point of their adaptation is to be seen in
the small boudoir of the Marquise de Serilly, one of the maids of honour
to Marie Antoinette. The decorative woodwork of this boudoir is fitted up
in the Kensington Museum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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