Style Louis XIV

The style Louis XIV

Two periods: 1661/1700 and 1700/1715

It is the first time that one has a politically decided style, the creation of one style to the height of the size of the king.

One witnesses a unified French artistic creation, mainly directed by Lebrun which gives inspiration out of our borders. That becomes a European inspiration. Lebrun is the coordinator of the ornemanists activities, paysagites, cabinetmakers, etc

Rules

Absolute symmetry. An important and ostentatious dimension. Italian inspiration and antique (Rome victorious, gracious, Julius Caesar, etc).

Architectural references

Interior decoration

  • First period: Decorative parquet floors, skirtings, marbles coloured, gildings, stuccos…
  • Second period: Gradually, Lebrun is replaced by Bérain, ornemanist. It exploits the most gracious reasons and takes as a starting point the East (creation of the Compagnie of the Indies: the ships make outward journeys and returns and import invaluable wood, stones, spices, wrought irons, Porcelaine of China, etc).
The polychrome Marbre S disappear with the profit from skirting. Development of the parts of intimacy. The painted decorations become mouldings with the ceiling.

    • decorative Elements of Louis XIV:

  • garlands of fruits and flowers
  • masks, masks erased
  • palmettes
  • sheets of acanthus
  • heads of lion, feet of lion
  • lily
  • oak
  • shells
  • bay-trees
  • dolphins
  • trophies
  • balusters
  • consoles
  • sets of funds in rhombuses on the pieces of furniture
  • marquetry Swell

Furniture

The movable is increasingly luxurious, but contrary to the preceding styles, it is not inspired almost more Architecture. There are 2 kinds of furniture: The furniture of pageantry with much of platings (Ball), gilded timber sawn and middle-class sawn timber furniture.

Pieces of furniture:

  • Beds with the duchess, canopied fourposter beds.
  • Cabinets which gradually becomes offices.
  • Tables (they become increasingly monumental but are still not used to eat above!) the spacers out of H become X.
  • Consoles of medium.
  • Pedestal tables (the ancestors of pedestal tables were flares).
  • Cupboards.
  • Bonnetières.
  • Dressers (low of cupboards).
  • Convenient (as from the XVIIIe century).
  • Chairs: diagonal cross braces which are not any more out of turned wood, the files slightly tilted and are separated from base, arm-rests rolled up in the alignment of the feet.
  • Couches, forms (ancestors of the settee).
  • Armchairs with auricles or confessionnals.
  • Seats claim or bending.
Gradually bases will be decorated with a cushion out of wooden gilded, fabrics, needle-worked tapestries (large points, small points or gilded or corrugated leather), velvet of Genoa, Damas, etc, fixed by small nails hidden by strainers.

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