This dominating classic and academic ideal produced acres of stupid historical, Biblical and classic canvases whose only virtue was their size and a certain soundness in drawing. Two influences were, however, at work, to mitigate this dearth of vitality The first was a strain of pure naturalism, coming down from an earlier tradition; its master was the great portraitist Philippe de Cham paigne (1602-1674), and an allied genius, the landscape painter Claude Lorrain (i600-I 682) . (See PAINTING.) Similarly, in sculpture, it is the realistic work of Girardon (1628-1715), as in the tomb of Richelieu in the church of the Sorbonne, which seems vital; the fashionable classicisms of the Versailles gardens by Coyzevox (164o-172o) are either dry or tortured into over-baroque theatricalness of posture.
To all of this combination of realism, classicism and baroque contortion the close of the reign of Louis XIV. put a definite end ; and the development in general from 1715 on was towards graciousness, delicacy, fanciful invention and a continual ever more facile technique. In the work of Watteau (1684-1721) the transition is already made, and his later pictures show all the free dom and the daintiness of the new style without the superficial prettinesses that occasionally disfigured it.
In sculpture, the demands of the material prevented any such complete debacle. Yet if the architectural sculpture of the period is of a universally high level, the little statuettes which were the most common forms which sculpture took, those of Clodion (1738-1814), for example, paralleled as far as possible the soft nudes the painters loved. Across this movement, and with little relation to it lies the work of the one great sculptor of the period, J. A. Houdon (1741-1828), who profited by the technical ad vances of his time, and used them to create sculpture, mostly portraiture, which is magnificent in its combination of realistic vision and sculptural sense. (See SCULPTURE, History.) During the reign of Louis XIII., furniture was in a state of transition from the stiff heaviness of the early Renaissance to more free and gracious forms; furniture was taking its modern generic shapes and types. This movement reached the first climax in the lavish and gorgeous period of Louis XIV., who was as gen erous a patron of the decorators as of the architects. The work of the time is distinguished by solidity, dignity, surface richness. Toward the end of the reign lacquer began to be introduced in imitation of the Chinese and Japanese furniture that was oc casionally imported. (See INTERIOR DECORATION, European.)
Under Louis XV., the rococo style, which dominated interior architecture, was supreme in furniture as well. The heavy rich ness of Louis XIV. work yielded to the graceful curves, the delicate carving, and suave lines of that of Caffieri (1725-1792) and Slodtz (1655-1726). (See Rococo.) The reaction to delicate straight-lined classicism during the period of Louis XVI. was as marked in furniture as in all interior woodwork. The structural simplicity of the best Louis XIV. work returned, and with it there came an additional refinement and delicacy of every line.
In textiles a similar progress is evident. The age of Louis XIV. found ample expressions for its love of the grandiose in tapestry design, the establishment at the Gobelins in Paris under the direction of Le Brun being especially famous for its large works, and that at Beauvais for smaller pieces. More and more they were reserved for ecclesiastical use ; in domestic work brocades and brocatelles usurped their place. Under Louis XVI. printed cloths began to assume importance, especially that type of printed cotton known as toile de Jouy, which was to gain such impor tance in the early 19th century. (See TEXTILES AND EM BROIDERIES, Europe.) In ceramics, the period was distinguished by the founding in 1738 at Vincennes of a great porcelain manufactory, which, in 1756 was moved to Sevres and became the property of the gov ernment in 1759. Here, first soft porcelain, and after 1769 hard porcelain resembling Dresden ware was produced, in designs which followed the rococo spirit of the Louis XV. period, and then, like the interior architecture and the furniture, reacted to classicism and restraint under Louis XVI. (See also POTTERIES AND PORCELAINS.) Throughout the arts there thus runs through the reigns of these four Louis a continual struggle between academic classicism and the rococo, between restraint and licence, between monu mentality and fantastic invention. Richness and luxury dominate all the manifestations. A semi-official court-supported art could go no further; it was almost as if in the arts, as well as elsewhere, a revolution was inevitable ; the last shreds of the Renaissance tradition were thus unravelled, and the old texture of the arts perished along with the ancien regime. (T. F. H.)