Rococó

The not-so-discreet charm of the Bourgeoisie

“Versailles, which had subscribed to Girardon’s elegant Classicism and then to Coysevox’s lively Baroque, gave birth to the new Rococo style. Just as Baroque was the style of the Roman Catholic Church in the 17th century, Rococo was the style of the French court in the 18th century.”

Maddalena Spagnolo

Rococo in France: Salon de la princesse, at the Hôtel de Soubise, Paris. Photograph by NonOmnisMoriar ·· Jean-Honoré Fragonard: “The Swing”, 1767. Wallace Collection, London.

At the beginning of this brief presentation on the Rococo style, I consider appropriate that the first point to be discussed is not about identifying the main characteristics of the movement, nor to name its most prominent protagonists, nor even to establish its time frame, but to raise the question of whether there really was a style of its own that we could define as Rococo.

For a long time, the Rococo was seen as a simple derivation (or even “degeneration”) of the Baroque. For example, Fiske Kimball -who considered such an idea “aberrant”- pointed out that “Rococo has ordinarily been interpreted as a specific last, extreme phase of the baroque — somewhat as the Flamboyant is of the Gothic” (Fiske Kimball: “Creation of Rococo”, 1943), pointing to Andreas Lindblom (“The Origin of Rococo”, 1924) and many others as promoters of such an idea. Even some authors, with a more positive view of the Rococo, do not seem inclined to consider it as a movement independent of the Baroque. “The Rococo was really a continuation in a lighter, more graceful, vein of tendencies already established in the Baroque” (Edmund Burke Feldman: “Thinking about Art”, 1985). In that sense, for some authors the Rococo deserves no more recognition than Mannerism, generally considered a late variation of the Renaissance style, although the nature of the two is quite different, for while Mannerism went against several of the characteristics of the Renaissance, the Rococo reinterprets and sometimes exaggerates the main characteristics of the Baroque.

One of the problems in recognising the Rococo as a syle of its own is that it arose after two periods of colossal importance in the history of art, each dominating the European art scene for more than a century: the Renaissance and the Baroque. In contrast, the Rococo had a rather short life, generally established between 1730 and 1760, and its presence in some countries, for example Spain, is scarce or even nonexistent. Nevertheless, in France and neighbouring areas, from Northern Italy to central and southern Germany, the Rococo, during its short life, had its own personality and unique characteristics that clearly distinguish it from the Baroque. “Rococo was considered a late degeneration of Baroque, but it was a style in its own right with its own identifiable characteristics“, concludes Maddalena Spagnolo (“Baroque and Rococo”, 2004). These characteristics include the intense use of decoration (sometimes with oriental motifs), curved and sometimes asymmetrical forms, and -in the case of painting- a taste for cheerful, light-hearted themes, generally celebrating the happy, carefree life of the bourgeoisie.

Rococo appeared in France during the reign of Louis XV. In contrast to the usually imposing Baroque, the Rococo style was more suited to the decorative arts and furniture, where it could also better reflect the influences of oriental art, already known in France at the time. In painting, the initiator of Rococo in France was Antoine Watteau, whose style influenced the works of François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard, the latter’s work being fully Rococo. Rococo architecture is characterised by the intense use of interior ornamentation, and was particularly favoured by the nobility and the bourgeoisie. “Rococo architecture is therefore secular and refined, associated with aristocrats and the emerging bourgeoisie, while the Church continued to prefer the classicist Baroque (although in Germany Rococo does transcend the ecclesiastical)“. (José Enrique García Melero: “Historia del Arte Moderno. El arte del siglo XVIII”).

Rococo beyond France: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo: “Juno and Moon”, c.1735-45. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ·· Hall of Mirrors at the Amalienburg, Munich. Photograph by Massimop.

In Italy, the Rococo style was mainly present in the northern cities, with a greater French influence. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, an artist who was highly appreciated during his lifetime and described by Michael Levey as “the greatest decorative painter of eighteenth-century Europe”, was the most prominent figure. Venice developed a particular genre of painting, the veduta, whose major representatives were Canaletto and Francesco Guardi, and which is often considered to be part of the Rococo style.

German architecture -and to a lesser extent Austrian architecture- was, along with French architecture, the most enthusiastic adopter of the Rococo style, in buildings such as the Amalienburg in Munich or the Augustusburg in Brühl. As noted above, in Germany the Rococo style can be found in some religious buildings, as can be seen in the interior of the Vierzehnheiligen Basilica. In the United Kingdom, Rococo was present in furniture and decorative arts, like in the works of Thomas Chippendale or Thomas Johnson.

G. Fernández · theartwolf.com