2-755-771 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Painted plaster ornament, France, 18th century, (1898). 'Fig 1: Wood carving on a wainscot in the music room of the arsenal library at Paris, style of Louis XV [c1715-1774]. Figs 2 and 3: Carved pilaster from the wainscot of a saloon at Paris, style of Louis XVI [c1774-1792]. Fig 4: Painted frieze from the boudoir of Queen Marie Antoinette in the Castle at Fontainebleau, style of Louis XVI. Fig 5: Panel of a stucco cavetto at a ceiling of a saloon at Paris, style of Louis XVI. Fig 6. Carved wall panel above a saloon door in the Hôtel de Ville at Bordeaux, style of Louis XVI..."Zopfstyle" - this term is sometimes mistaken for Barocque, even Rococo, whilst it signifies merely the style, (certainly rather barren and stiff sometimes), which art chose under Louis XVI, in opposition as it were, to the pompous and confused style under Louis XV, by returning to the antique. Compared with the extravagances of Rococo the quiet, strict forms of the Zopfstyle produce a feeling of satisfaction in the mind of the beholder, unless, as is often the case, repose degenerates into rigidness, and strictness into barrenness'. Plate 84 from "The Historic Styles of Ornament" translated from the German of H. Dolmetsch. [B.T. Batford, London, 1898]