Italy had given up the leadership in the department of art: it had passed over to France. It was at the court of Louis XV. that the rococo taste found expression, as the baroque phase had been inaugurated in that of Louis XIV., and it was at the court of Louis XVI. that the spirit of soberness came in vogue. The three art-directions might be named from these three monarchs were not attention given to the fact that some of the peculiarities of art appeared elsewhere much earlier or much later. Thus, the new palace at Stuttgart, begun in 1746, displays scarcely any traces of the baroque (Louis Quatorze), and is yet devoid of the sobriety of the Louis XVI. manner, while it has architectonic details and decora tions which show sufficiently the widespread influence of a return to the antique, though at this date the much more widespread baroque reminis cences are found in other places, and the rococo—the negation of every architectonic idea—was still in full sway.
art of the eighteenth century had its seat in the courts of the princes; it had its branches in the dwellings of the burghers, but there it had not always that delicacy which pleased as in the courtly stem. We have stated before that the essentially Gothic city-residence with its gable and oriel ornamented with baroque decorations endured throughout the entire seventeenth century; the sober tendency of the eighteenth century did away with the greater part of these baroque forms, and greater simplicity—that is, a still more thoroughgoing homely plain ness—took its place. Nevertheless, a few unsymmetrical rococo volutes curled over the surface above the window-architraves, and proved that the old tendency remained intact. The honorable burgher in the seventeenth century retained his cherished home, his modes of thought, and his occu pations, yet dressed them in modern forms which he had derived from church and palace, as if to show that he was abreast of his time; perhaps even with the secret thought that he would do as the great lords did—that he would accept the deception of the time as his education, just as he had brought many of the manners of the court into his house.
As the necessity for an architectonic set of forms came in; as men began to compare the rococo with really parer forms and learnedly dis cussed the necessity of replacing degeneracy with something better; as the educated architect, in the conviction that now all must be done other wise than it had been, constructed his works theoretically, but never very practically,—it came about that through the foreign set of forms which lie used the plain burgher's residence fell into disgrace, and the burgher at last believed that an educated architect must understand his wants, his occupation, and his modes of life better than he himself understood them.
Then he despoiled his dwelling of all its essential parts and built it of the unessential: he made his home in a palace shrunk to a minimum, and even contented himself with a fragment of such a shrunken palace; and, since the house would not accommodate his trade and his modes of life, he adapted his trade and his modes of life to his house.
It was indeed in good part a result of the great deception of the eigh teenth century that the aristocracy, when looking out of the windows of their palaces, desired to see as far as was practicable on the outside a con tinuation of that unreal world with which the rococo supplied them within. They wished to gaze, not upon irregular streets with houses as diverse as were the occupants themselves, but upon symmetrically-arranged dwellings in which nothing but uniformly ideal shepherds might he imagined, while in the quiet streets no inharmonious crowd should offend their ears. Still, now and then some burgher was cruel enough to destroy this ideal by a dung-heap in front of his doors or by something absolutely essential to his trade, thus showing how rude and unideal this real world is.
Thcatres.—It was natural that the theatre should have a surpassing importance for such a world, and thus in all the princely courts arose theatres which were not entirely meant for the small circle of the court, but, that they might be filled, were open to the well-dressed burghers, who were expected, or even enjoined, to attend in the evening to add to the splendor of the show and to make more attractive the spectacle which met the gaze of His Serene Highness when lie entered his box. These theatres, with their luxuriously-ornamented auditoriums, afforded a rich field for the exercise of the rococo. Most of them were afterward burned, and those remaining were adapted in their interiors to the ideas and tastes of other times; still, that of Baireuth and the Royal Theatre of Munich, together with a few others, show in what manner the architects, and still more the decorators, executed their tasks. Not only must the auditorium be decorated, but the stage itself must be in harmony with it, and must have its ideal landscapes, shepherds, etc.