French Art: The Ancien Regime 1620-1775 - Hardcover

Chastel, Andre

9782080136176: French Art: The Ancien Regime 1620-1775

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 2080136178 ISBN 13: 9782080136176

Publisher: Flammarion, 1996

The third volume of Andre Chastel's sweeping history of French art explores the extraordinary painting, sculpture, and architecture that emerged during the reigns of Louis XIII, Louis XIV, and Louis XV.
During this 150-year period, three major styles dominated French art. Under Louis XIII, the official court painter was Peter Paul Rubens, and the order of the day was the baroque, a continuation of the Italian influence which had spread to France during the Renaissance. However, over the course of Louis XIV's 60-year reign, a uniquely French style of triumphal classicism emerged, whose monumental proportions reflected the Sun King's drive for French hegemony in Europe. This striving for glory was expressed artistically in the grandiose architecture of Versailles and its complex painted and sculpted allegorical program. Louis XV's tastes were very different from those of his celebrated predecessor. He had the monumental apartments at Versailles subdivided to create more refined, intimate settings, and had them hung with charming rococo pastoral scenes and fetes galantes. This period also saw a flowering of the decorative arts, in which stylistic developments paralleled those in painting, sculpture, and architecture.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Andre Chastel was a professor at the Sorbonne and the College de France.

From Library Journal:

Chastel completes his exquisite art historical trilogy (French Art: The Renaissance, 1430-1620, LJ 12/95; French Art: Prehistory to the Middle Ages, Flammarion, 1994) with this volume on the visual arts of the reigns of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI. With an effortless command of both the material and its scholarship, he skillfully guides readers over the wonderfully wide-ranging achievements of French art of the 17th and 18th centuries. Not only are the monuments within the traditional universe of architecture and painting adeptly scrutinized; areas as diverse and significant as urban planning, garden and interior design, furniture, and the crafts also receive their due. Great and less-than-great works are succinctly evoked and ably placed within a context of period styles, function, and patronage. The significance of the salon, oral criticism, the Academy, and art theory is also ably suggested. All this is set within a flexible chronological embrace that sensibly unfolds the development of the national tradition. Although the volume is awash with beautiful color reproductions, its usefulness is somewhat vitiated by too numerous cited but unillustrated works. Still, this is highly recommended for all art collections.?Robert Cahn, Fashion Inst. of Technology, New York
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.