Photos+meubles style louis xvi biography

These pieces were often used to display imported vases and other porcelain placed on top. The basic forms of writing table, the drop-front desk and cylinder desk had all appeared in the furniture of Louis XVbut their appearance became more classical, geometric and sober under Louis XVI, and the quality marquetry inlays became much finer. The writing tables varied in size, but had leather tops, tapering legs, and usually three drawers.

The corners were often decorated with gilded brass rosettes or other ornaments. The woods used were generally oak, rosewood and amaranth, sometimes with additional mahogany, boxwood and ebony inlays. Some writing tables had additional shelves that could be pulled out for writing surfaces, and some models and a surface that would lift up at an angle.

The updated versions by Jean-Henri Riesenerwere made of oak covered with mahogany, and had simple but elegant gilded bronze drawer handles, keyholes, and a lacy decorative trim fence around the top. The Secretaire an armoire was a vertical piece of furniture which resembled an armoire. The writing surface was pulled down, and the shelves and drawers inside were revealed.

The Secretaire en cabinet also had a writing surface that pulled down, with shelves on either side and drawers beneath. Clocks and other decorative objects could be placed on the marge shelf on top. His desks were famous for the mechanical mechanisms and secret compartments rather than their elegance. The official waking-up of the King was a formal ceremony, could be attended by anyone in the palace.

Photos+meubles style louis xvi biography: Louis XVI furniture is characterized

In the bedchambers of the King and Queen, the bed was behind a balustrade, and a row of stools was placed behind the balustrade for guests. The beds of the nobility and wealthy were usually square or rectangular, with four high posts supporting a canopy called the cielor sky. The ciel could either be fixed to the bedposts, or to the wall.

Curtains were usually hung from the ciel and could be drawn to enclose the bed.

Photos+meubles style louis xvi biography: Louis XVI style, visual arts

In the 18th century different variants of the canopy appeared. In a bed a la Duchesse the canopy covered the entire bed, while in a bed a l'angeor "like an angel", the canopy covered only the head of the bed. The head of the bed, with its ornate chevet or headboard, was usually placed against the wall. A more casual variant, the lit de jour or day bed, was midway between a bed and a sofa, with an upholstered chevet or headboard at one end attached to a long cushion with six legs.

Marie Antoinette had a version made for the bath of her apartments in Versailles. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikidata item. History [ edit ]. Robert Adam bookcase ; his work helped inspire the French neoclassical style. Craftsmen, merchants, designers [ edit ].

Materials [ edit ]. Chairs and sofas [ edit ]. Seating was either pushed against a wall or in the center of the room, likely accompanied by elegant and classically inspired side tables fig. Figure 8. Butchoff Antiques, London. Although the reign of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette did not last, the associated style of decoration and furnishings of this period have been long regarded and admired, and artifacts of this prominent aesthetic will continue to be highly valued and collected.

Figure 9. Vip access Favourites. Notable Sales. Butchoff London. Shop Antiques. By Room. By Region. By Style. By Material. Warehouse Offers. Animal and Animalier Sculpture. Black Forest. Candelabra and Candlesticks.

Photos+meubles style louis xvi biography: Louis XVI style, also called Louis

Carrara Marble. Chest of Drawers. Particularly attractive is the ornamentation at the corners under the seat. I love Louis XVI style dining chairs and always try to have them in my shop and to use them for interior design projects. For me, their elegant but refined silhouettes are especially charming. They are understated, are equally appropriate in formal or informal rooms, and their clean lines enable them to fit well into both contemporary and traditional settings.

I have great fun placing a set of Louis XVI style chairs around a very modern marble or glass dining table — a bit unexpected perhaps, but a beautiful juxtaposition nonetheless. I especially love painted furniture that has worn into a lovely patina. Because the style is so adaptive and unobtrusive, Louis XVI furniture can be at home in contemporary, traditional or transitional settings, and has a timelessness about it.

The chairs can be easily updated with a fabulous contemporary fabric, the perfect way to blend old and new. Why not throw caution to the winds and upholster the back in a different fabric to make these wonderful chairs even more interesting? There is an admirable harmony of proportion in these pieces. It became the model for similar houses under Louis XVI.

The latter building has geometric architecture, a flat ceiling, and a portico in the giant order of Corinthian columns. He also added a peristyle and another floor above the columns, and transformed he entrance to the courtyard into a miniature triumphal arch. Theatres in Paris and Bordeaux were prominent examples of the new style. It featured a portico in the form of a covered gallery and columns in advance of the facade.

Marie Antoinette had a similar small neoclassical belvedere created by architect Richard Miquewho had also designed the Hameau de la Reineher picturesque rustic village in the photos+meubles styles louis xvi biography. Another unusual architectural project was the transformation of the Palais Royal in the heart of Paris, into a grand shopping mall.

In the Duc de Chartresneeding money, commissioned architect Victor Louis to create an arcade of shops, cafes and clubs on the ground floor. In he added a covered cirque in the center, a covered promenade and space for concerts and entertainments, with a trellis roof supported by seventy-two ionic columns. A colonnade of corinthian columns supports the entablature of the rotundawhich is surmounted by statues.

Peter's Basilica in Rome with slender, graceful corinthian columns supporting a continuous entablature. The plan was also classical; the long nave with a vaulted ceiling was replaced by a Greek crosswith the dome in the center. Soufflot employed novel engineering techniques to support the dome; a system of contreforts and arches, and the use of iron bars to support the stone structure.

The building was begun in but not completed untilafter the Revolution. It was one of the last churches finished before the Revolution. The church is inspired by paleo-Christian architecture; it features massive columns and a pediment, and an interior with vaulted ceiling that suggests a vast Roman basilica. The architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux specialized in designing functional buildings in greatly simplified the classical style.

Examples included his simplified neoclassical design for the customs barrier at La Villette in Paris —with its classical facade and rotunda. He was especially known for his project for the Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans — This was a model industrial site, in an elliptical shape, with the house of the factory director in the centre, with a rustic neoclassical colonnade, surrounded by the workshops, storerooms and offices in concentric rings.

His project for an enlargement of the Royal Library was even more dramatic, with a gigantic arch sheltering the collection of books. While none of his projects were ever built, the images were widely published and inspired architects of the period to look outside the traditional forms. The Louis XVI style of decoration marked the triumph of neo-classicism, which had been underway in Europe since It reflected the murals and designs found in the early archeological excavations in Herculaneum and Pompeiiand the travels of groups of "photos+meubles styles louis xvi biography" to Greece and Asia Minor.

The "taste Pompeiian" was followed by the "taste Etruscan". Motifs in interior decoration included arabesques and grotesques on the Pompeiian model. Other popular motifs included garlands of oak leaves or olive leaves, interlaced flowers, ribbons or vines, crowns of roses, flaming torches, horns of plenty, and particularly vases from which emerged flowers or vines.

In the early part of the reign of Louis XVI, interior decoration was designed to overwhelm the viewer with its scale, majesty and opulence. Grand halls served multiple purposes, for theatre entertainments, balls, or banquets. It features columns of the giant order, inches [ clarification needed ]pedimentsconsolessculpture in relief, and a gigantic fireplace.

The Pompeiian style featured mythical animals, such as sphinxes and griffons, horns of plenty, and vases of flowers mounted on tripods. The style also was frequently used in friezes and cameosin medallions and in white on blue Wedgwood porcelain. In the later years of the Louis XVI style, the decorative panels were divided into often geometric divisions, either circles or octagons, [ 15 ].

Louis XVI style furniture, particularly the furniture made for the royal palaces, is among the most finely-crafted and valuable ever produced in France. Among the notable craftsmen of the period were Georges Jacobwho made a suite of sofas and chairs for the apartments of Marie Antoinette at Versailles and for those of the Comte d'Artois, the King's brother, at the Temple.

Oakmahogany and walnut were the woods most commonly used. The chairs of the early period made for Marie Antoinette were richly decorated gilded carvings, usually with floral patterns. The chairs and sofas were usually upholstered in satin, with more elaborate medallions embroidered in silk attached. Later in the period, more exotic themes, often taken from popular theatre productions in Paris, appeared in decoration of furniture.

These included Chinese, Arabesque, and Etruscan figures. A variety of specialized pieces of furniture were created, including lightweight chairs for men sitting at gambling tables, and specialized chairs for boudoirs, dressing rooms, libraries, and antechambers. The beds, especially in the chambers de parade or ceremonial bedrooms of the royal palaces, were of monumental proportions and were usually separated from the rest of the room by a balustrade.

The sculpted and gilded wood frame of the silk embroidered canopy over the bed of Marie Antoinette at Fontainebleau, installed inwas so heavy that two additional columns were placed under it at night avoid its collapse.