Rococo

Question 1

Rococo

Answer 1

• Louis XIV dies amid the splendors of his palace at Versaille in 1715
• French nobles became bored with the pompous magnificence of Baroque and so they cast off courtly restraints and etiquette and subscribed to a philosophy of pleasure summed up in the dictum of Madame du Châtelet (Volatire’s mistress):

“we must begin by saying to ourselves that we have nothing else to do in the world but seek pleasant sensations and feelings”

-Europe’s courts turned to a less formal style of architecture, sculpture, and painting: Rococo

Highly ornamented, intended to beguile

Used rocaille: use of colorful pebbles, seashells, etc

• In the past, order and symmetry had been the architectural ideal, but the trend to carefree living the expression of individual fancies became the goal
• While Baroque artists focused on grand religious themes, Rococo concentrated on trivialities

Contemporary aristocratic life with exquisitely clad men and women amusing themselves with masquerades, acting out pastorals, or playing at love in confectionary landscapes

Question 2

Answer 2

François Boucher

• most influential painter in Europe at the time
• First Painter to the King, president of the French Academy, and protégé to Madame de Pompadour, the King’s mistress
• Works included sets for operas and ballets, cartoons for tapestries, designs for porcelain products
• Pastorale, 1761

Lounging in an idealized rustic setting, a love-smitten young shepherd and shepherdess appear oblivious to all but the satisfaction of their desire

Question 3

Answer 3

Antoine Watteau

• coquettish love affairs, though separated himself from most followers of Rococo by adding an often poetic melancholy to his paintings
• blended fantasy with a close observation of nature

Question 4

Answer 4

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

• Venetian who captured the joie de vivre better than any other artist
• Less concerned with conveying a profound message than creating a feast for the eye, replete with swirling forms and joyous colors
• frescoed ceiling paintings for palaces and churches featured hosts of airborne figures joyously afloat in boundless blue skies
• Apollo Conducting Beatrice of Burgundy to Barbarossa, 1751-2

Dissolves the architecture overhead and opens onto an expanse of sky where scintillating pageants of saints, gods, and heroes

Question 5

Answer 5

William Hogarth

• England’s first great native painter
• Paintings and engravings ridiculed the foibles of high society
• Extolled middle class virtues

Temperance, industry, honesty

• Displayed life as it really was
• A Rake’s Progress, Scene in a Tavern, 1732

The debauched son of a nobleman indulges in a last revel in a London tavern, his inheritance fast dwindling

Question 6

Answer 6

Thomas Gainsborough

• portraits of aristocrats in all their finery, yet probed beneath to capture their essential character
• Mrs. Henry Beaufoy, 1780

While the poetic landscape background is reminiscent of Rococo master Watteau, Mrs Beaufoy’s likeness demonstrates Gainsborough’s gift of naturalism in portraying her as a living personality rather than a fashionably clad effigy