Rococo

ROCOCO. - Term that came into use in France in the 1700s to denote, together with the other term "rocaille", a particular kind of decoration - inlays of shells, imitations of rocks, bizarre arabesques - with which, under Louis XIV and especially under Louis XV, rustic constructions (baths, grottoes, fountains) and furnishings were adorned. Today, in a broader sense, the term r. denotes the figurative civilization of the 1700s, which, developing out of the Baroque, accentuates its whimsicality and its curvilinear dynamism, in a search for grace, lightness, and decorative effects: these are contributed to not so much by architecture, which often repeats the forms of the preceding century, as by painting and sculpture and above all by the so-called minor arts, in the most minute details of furnishing, which, entrusted to qualified artists, are refinedly attuned to their setting.

I. ARCHITECTURE

Rococo forms were being realized as early as the third decade of the 1600s by Borromini (1599-1667), working in Rome in rivalry with Bernini. His style spread throughout Italy and abroad, whence it returned to us enriched with French elements (Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy) and Spanish ones (southern Italy).

A very active center of the Rococo was Piedmont, where the Theatine father Guarino Guarini of Modena (1624-1683), a follower of Borromini, worked, along with the Messinese F. Juvara (1676-1736), B. Alfieri and G. B. Planteri. In Rome and Naples the Rococo divided the field with resurgent classicizing forms (represented by A. Galilei, by L. Vanvitelli and, in part, by F. Fuga) and often appears fused with them, as in the facade of S. Croce in Gerusalemme (D. Gregorini, P. Passalacqua), classical in the single order of its monumental Corinthian pilasters, but Rococo in the curvilinear movement and the lively jaggedness of its crowning. The Rococo takes on particular characteristics in Sicily and Apulia; here on the one hand, from the 1600s onward, the hackneyed "plateresque" decoration (from the Spanish platero, silversmith) flourished, fed by Spanish influences, with its center at Lecce, where the local stone offers a suitable material; on the other hand, ingenious architects such as G. B. Vaccarini, rebuilder of Catania after the earthquake of 1693, and P. Picarale (Syracuse, Cathedral), assert a sense of grace and measure. The structural forms remain those of the Baroque: especially in church facades, with curvilinear movement and superimposed orders (for the most part two: Rome, church of the Maddalena by G. Sardi [1680-1753], Madonna della Quercia by F. Raguzzini; three superimposed orders in Sicily and southern Italy: Ragusa, S. Giorgio; Catania, Cathedral) in which the upper is sometimes connected to the lower with volutes; and often it is only the decorative facing (in which stucco is used with great frequency) that confers the Rococo imprint. In the interior of churches a single circular hall (Turin, chapel of the Holy Shroud by Guarini) or an elliptical or semicircular one (Carignano, Cathedral by B. Alfieri) replaces the traditional arrangement in naves already partly abandoned in the 17th century: chapels and niches animate the contours, often with the function of connecting to a quadrangular outer perimeter (Turin, S. Lorenzo of the Theatines, by Guarini), creating effects of lively and picturesque scenography, to which the abundance of colored marbles, sculptures, stuccoes and bronzes contributes. The role of the sculptors is often predominant, as in the chapel of the Monte della Pietà in Rome, entirely covered with reliefs, and in the Palermitan oratories where Serpotta lavishes the grace of his stuccoes.

In civil architecture the use of stucco decorations, which are not very costly, allows even multiple-dwelling houses to adorn themselves with a Rococo imprint. Adapting to the needs of a more practical and intimate life, noble palaces too are divided into apartments, replacing the solemn 17th-century salons with small and numerous rooms, to which the multiplication of openings on the facades corresponds; this, with the sinuous movement of the wall curtains and the varied and subtle design of the moldings, confers a graceful and light appearance. In Rome, examples of Rococo building are the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj (G. Valvassori), the piazza S. Ignazio laid out as a stage set (F. Raguzzini), the staircase of the Trinità dei Monti

(F. De Sanctis). In Piedmont one may cite the Palazzo Carignano in Turin (Guarini), with its broad sinuous front, and the hunting lodge at Stupinigi (Juvara), with its mansard roof like the French châteaux and four wings radiating from an oval central body. In southern Italy the palaces often have a cheerful and brilliant appearance to which French influences are not extraneous: one may cite the most elegant courtyard of the Palazzo Bonagia in Palermo.

In France the Rococo, rather than through architecture (in which the disciples of Mansart: Robert de Cotte, Boffrand, Jacques Gabriel, repeat the measured and solemn forms of the great century) expresses itself in the arrangement and decoration of interiors, especially of civil building. In the hôtels, which had become less monumental, more comfortable and brighter, with the collaboration of sculptors of genius such as J. B. Lemoyne, the Adams, the Slodtz, Guibert, environments of exquisite elegance are created, such as the oval salon of the Hôtel Soubise in Paris or the rooms of the Petit Trianon at Versailles, in which flexible motifs of ribbons and garlands, of grasses and flowers, of cupids and nymphs unfold - in stucco.

Rococo architecture had a luxuriant flowering in the Germanic countries, particularly in Vienna, Dresden and Potsdam. In religious building Italian models are followed, while in civil building French influences for the most part operate, brought by R. de Cotte, by F. Cuvilliès and by other French architects and artists exiled in the wake of the religious wars. Renewed after its liberation from the Turkish threat (1685), Vienna, which had welcomed Italian influences since the 17th century, stamps its Rococo with the style, sober in the exteriors and most elegant in the interiors, of L. von Hildebrandt (born in Genoa and a pupil of Carlo Fontana), author of the Palazzo Kinsky and the Palazzo Belvedere; but it also feels the French taste imported by J. N. Jadot, who built the Palazzo dell'Accademia delle scienze. In Dresden, a destination of French and Italian architects, the Rococo expresses itself moreover in the pompous forms of the Zwinger pavilion (M. D. Poppelmann), in the heavy ones of the Frauenkirche and in the bizarre scenography of the Hofkirche (G. Chiaveri). In Potsdam, finally, the Sans-souci pavilion, erected by Frederick the Great on his own designs (arch. G. W. von Knobeldorff) is inspired by the Grand Trianon. The castles deserve a separate mention: the most grandiose, that of Würzburg (arch. D. Neumann, frescoed by Tiepolo) is a typical example of the sumptuous German Rococo.

In Spain, after the extravagances of the "churrigueresque" style - only partly attributable to J. de Churriguera, who died in 1725 - such as are seen in the portal of the Hospice in Madrid and in the Palazzo di S. Telmo in Seville, a return to measure is marked by the advent of F. Juvara, to whom Philip V entrusted the construction of the Royal Palace of Madrid (completed by G. B. Sacchetti). On that line of style works, among others, Ventura Rodriguez.

II. DECORATION AND FURNISHING

Alongside stucco and marble, one of the materials most used for decoration is ceramics, whose working, perfected by the discovery of hard-paste porcelain (at the beginning of the 18th century in Meissen in Saxony), spread to Venice, to Doccia (Ginori), to Capodimonte (Naples), while it intensified at Delft and at Sèvres (under the direction of the sculptor Falconet), for the manufacture not only of statuettes and tableware, but also of panels and furnishings, as in the Japanese Palace of Dresden, which Augustus II had imagined entirely decorated with Dutch ceramics, or in the First Trianon (now destroyed), called precisely the Porcelain Trianon. The art of tapestry also received a great impulse, especially in France, a model for all of Europe, for the tapestries of Beauvais and of the Gobelins drawn from compositions by Boucher, by Fragonard, by Coppel. In Italy the manufactories of the Medici had renown, as did that of Turin, in which the painters of Savoy collaborated (the Venetian G. B. Crosato, the Neapolitan F. De Mura, the Frenchman Pêcheux, the Turinese Beaumont), and the manufactory of Naples, which often used French models.

In the field of decoration and furnishing, France leads with the decorator J. A. Meissonnier, from Turin, «dessinateur... du Roi»; with C. Cressent, cabinetmaker, sculptor, chaser, creator of exquisite furniture

Louis XV; with the spread of exotic taste and in particular of Chinese lacquers, first imported, then skillfully imitated by the Martin brothers in the decoration of furniture and especially of sedan chairs; with the working of bronzes, for which the Caffieri were highly esteemed, of wrought iron (the grilles of Versailles and of Place Stanislas in Nancy are very beautiful), of precious metals, of gems.

French taste spread particularly in Germany, in the decoration of Sanssouci, the work of Swiss artists who were followers of Robert de Cotte, as well as in the interiors of Bavaria (the castles of Schleissheim and Nymphenburg; the Theater of Munich), where F. Cuvilliès worked, the author of the "Civil Baukunst Werk" (1738). In Italy, while Piedmontese decoration (the palaces of Carignano, Saluzzo-Paesana, of the Accademia Filarmonica, the Royal Palace in Turin; the castles of Moncalieri, Rivoli, Stupinigi) was influenced by French models, also in the furniture of Piffetti, inlaid with ivory, mother-of-pearl, tortoiseshell and metals, Venetian decoration, in the casini and ridotti of the city and in the sumptuous villas of the Brenta, expressed a style of its own in the carved furniture of Brustolon, in pieces lacquered with flowers and figures and adorned with mirror inlays, in the exotic motifs of panels, tapestries and splendid brocades (the "chinoiseries"), and in the glass of Murano.

Elegant and restrained in Austria, modeled on France but not without a strong local color in Russia under Empress Elizabeth (Catherine II instead favored a revival of classicism), Rococo decoration has an autonomous accent in England, especially in furniture, with a marked tendency toward linearism and simplicity in the three periods of Queen Anne, Chippendale and Sheraton - See plate LVIII.

Amalia Mezzetti