ROCOCO IN FRANCE AND ITALY

This is my tenth and final piece on the Rococo style I enjoy so much. I have written on the tremendous Rococo treasures in Germany, especially Southern Germany, in Central and Eastern Europe, touched on those in Spain and her old Empire and celebrated the great Rococo collections of England. This brief article sketches in some of the surviving Rococo glories of France and 18^th century Italy.

The Triumph of Galatea by Jean-Baptiste van Loo (1720)

The Embarkation for Cythera by Antoine Watteau (1719)

The term “Rococo” was invented by the French, as a combination of Rocailles (stones) and Coquilles (sea-shells). It was often used disparagingly but the style, a witty and graceful extension of the overpowering Baroque, soon became the mode and influenced many art forms. One of the most striking French manifestations of the Rococo spirit is in the world of painting with the compositions of Watteau, Fragonard, Boucher, Lancret and van Loo. These works were often fantastical, heavy with classical allusion, carefree and patrician. Another notable French medium for Rococo was in porcelain, where delicate sculpture was perfected in biscuit colour by the Sèvres factories, especially by the master Etienne Maurice Falconet.

Falconet: The Teaching of Love

Sevres Rococo candle-holders

            

Rococo is associated with the long absolutist reign of Louis XV (1723-74): Mme de Pompadour was an eager patroness. The French, being ever-fashionable, in time dropped the Rococo style for the later revolutionary and Napoleonic certainties of Neo-Classicism. They were astonished when English collectors paid good money for “yesterday’s art” in the 1820’s salerooms.

Italy took to Rococo in many fields, not least in architecture. Italy was fragmented into at least 8 sovereign states and each had its own cultural idiosyncrasies. The House of Savoy ruled in Piedmont and in 1729 commissioned the talented architect Filippo Juvarra to build the lavish Royal Hunting Lodge of Stupinigi outside Turin. This is an astonishing Rococo interior to a Baroque exterior serving as the main reception palace for Savoy state functions.

Stupinigi Hunting Lodge, Turin

In the Spanish Bourbon fiefdom of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Rococo flowered in the delicate, fanciful porcelain produced by the Capodimonte factories outside Naples from 1743. 

Porcelain decoration at Capodimonte Palace

Rococo found a natural home in surrealistic Venice, then in 18^th century decline, but still ruled by her Doge and replete with cultural icons. The great painter Gianbattista Tiepolo, whose apotheoses enliven many a church and who had lavished his genius on the Bishop’s Palace at Würzburg, was commissioned in 1746 to produce the lovely frescoed Ballroom at the Palazzo Labia depicting the love of Antony and Cleopatra. Appropriately this Rococo palace was the venue for one of the 20^th century’s last great costumed balls in 1953 attended by the “glitterati” including Dali, Christian Dior and launching the career of Pierre Cardin. 

Palazzo Labia, Venice, with frescoes by Tiepolo

My pieces on Rococo are those of an enthusiastic amateur and not those of a scholar. I know that I have only provided a glimpse of this ravishing style but I hope I have stimulated some to visit and enjoy these lovely places and objects. From pilgrimage churches to monastic libraries, from palaces to chapels, from porcelain figurines to paintings, desks and snuff-boxes, the Rococo spirit brings grace and joy to enrich our lives.

SMD

28.03.15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015

ROCOCO AND CHURRIGUERESQUE IN SPAIN

I have written 9 articles on the Rococo mainly centred on the flowing South German version and its wide influence in Central and Eastern Europe. Rococo was an evolution of Baroque and there are of course tremendous Baroque buildings too in France, Italy and Spain. Habsburg and then Bourbon Spain was not culturally close to the rest of Europe at the end of the 17th and in the early 18^th century and her transition from Baroque was in her own characteristic style and it is known by the names of Rococo, Late Baroque and Churrigueresque, all of which to some degree overlap. The exuberant Spanish style was monumental, elaborately decorative and instantly recognisable.

Facade of Cathedral of Santiago de Compostella

The first Spanish protagonist of this style was José Benito de Churriguera (1665-1725) who worked mainly in Madrid and Salamanca and his style absorbed some Moorish influences. Grand porticos and entrances are a common thread, typical examples being the imposing façade of the pilgrimage Cathedral of Santiago de Compostella and The Old Hospice in Madrid.

The Old Hospice, Madrid

   

The geometric asymetry of German Rococo is not so evident but there is twisting foliage and intricate, often stucco, decoration in abundance – some may say over-abundance. But the detail can be very elegant as in the entry hall to Our Lady of Solitude at Nules, Valencia.

Entry Hall floor at Our Lady of Solitude, Nules

                     

                                           

Elaborate Doorway in Valencia

A later fine Spanish Rococo architect was Ventura Rodríguez (1717-85) whose masterpiece was his remodelling of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar at Zaragoza, a many times rebuilt church, and a place of devout reverence for Spanish Catholics.

Our Lady of the Pillar, Zaragoza, by the Ebro. (from Williton)

Many other Spanish buildings thrill the visitor, the Cathedral of Murcia in South East Spain or The Palace of the Marquis of Dos Aguas in Valencia. In this period the reach of Spanish architecture was long, and was not confined to Iberia. The Spanish Netherlands, now mainly Belgium, were graced by many spectacular buildings like glorious St Michael, Louvain. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was also a Spanish fiefdom and at Lecce, right on the heel of Italy in Puglia stands an astonishing collection of buildings in so-called Lecce Baroque including the ravishing Santa Croce, mainly by Rococo master Giuseppe Zimbalo (1620-1710).  I last visited in 1993 and for the student of Rococo, Lecce is a wholly unexpected joy.

Santa Croce, Lecce

Even further afield, Spanish Latin America took its lead from its colonial master. Fine cathedrals were erected in Lima, Peru and in Mexico including the spectacular Cathedral of Zacatecas, in colonial times made wealthy by nearby silver mines. The Cathedral, built 1729-45, is in pink sandstone and is a prime example of Mexican Churrigueresque.

The Cathedral of Zacatecas, Mexico

In time, Spain lost her empire, her wealth and she was torn by continental and civil wars. Her architectural legacy survived and there was a revival of interest in Spanish colonial architecture in the US after a 1915 Exhibition. A relic of this is the playful pastiche Casa del Prado at Balboa Gardens, San Diego, CA, evoking much of the spirit of the flamboyant Spanish Rococo Style.

Casa del Prado, Balbao, San Diego

         

SMD

5.02.15. 

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015

GREAT ROCOCO LIBRARIES

I have written extensively about the magnificent Rococo Churches and secular buildings, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, and about the wonderful Rococo artistic collections in England. I have neglected a description of one of the most spectacular types of buildings – the Rococo Library.

The State Hall, National Library, Vienna

The template for Rococo libraries is the secular National Library in Vienna, part of the huge Hofburg Palace, home of the Habsburgs. It was completed in 1721 by the favourite court architect J.B Fischer v Erlach and is a riot of frescoes, heroic statues and rich ornamentation.

The imperial example was followed by a succession of Austrian and South German Abbeys who expended great treasure on their ecclesiastical libraries. We would expect fine libraries at Melk and at Ottobeuren but others are in remoter places. An example is Benedictine Altenburg in Lower Austria, built in 1740 by Joseph Munggenast, with frescoes by Paul Troger.

Altenburg Abbey Library, Austria

The frescoes depict the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of God and the Light of Faith. All this makes me uneasy. Rococo is an aristocratic style which in secular buildings celebrates Joy and Life: in religious buildings it is emotionally devotional and transcendental. These libraries were meant for learned monks, novices and theological students. Our modern concept of a Library as a place where sources of knowledge are to be found and promoted was not current in the 18^th century although gradually modern scientific books were added to the collections. We may doubt that Newton, Locke, Diderot or Voltaire adorned the revered shelves, let alone later Darwin!

Similar to Altenburg is Schussenried, a Premonstratensian monastery in Upper Swabia, with a library by the famed architect Dominicus Zimmerman in 1763.

Schussenried Abbey Library, Upper Swabia, Germany

Fresco of Divine Wisdom, Schussenried

The Library is magnificent but it is clearly an ultra-Catholic building with a fine fresco of the workings of Divine Wisdom and statues of 8 False Teachers arrayed against 8 True Teachers, elegant 18^th century propaganda.

Wiblingen, near Ulm, in Baden on the Danube, is another fabulous and huge Abbey with a memorable Library by Christian Wiedemann from 1730 assisted by the creator of Ottobeuren J.M Fischer. It was a Benedictine Abbey, later secularised by Napoleon, and much of the Abbey is now the medical faculty of Ulm University. Again the Library is a stately Rococo confection, hugely enhanced by elegant statues and painted ceilings.

Wiblingen Abbey library

The final German library is Waldsassen Abbey’s, a Cistercian outpost in Bavaria built in 1726, with carving by Karl Stilp. 

The Library at Waldsassen with its limewood carving

This idiosyncratic Library features carved limewood grotesques depicting vices like Vanity, Ignorance and Boastfulness.

A Grotesque from Waldsassen

From the same Rococo period we find the sumptuous Library at St Gallen Abbey, Switzerland, the work of the Austrian architect Peter Thumb. The abbey was dissolved in 1805 but its very valuable collection of rare books was preserved.

St Gallen Abbey Library, Switzerland

Moving outside the wholly German-speaking world, we find the restrained and historic Rococo library at Rolduc in the Netherlands, famous in its time as a centre of Catholic learning, in an area rent by sectarian divisions. 

The Library at Rolduc, Netherlands

Much larger and more significant was Strahov Abbey, Prague in former Bohemia and the modern Czech Republic. This vast abbey has one of the finest of libraries, with the Rococo Theological Hall of 1720 complementing the later Neo-classical Philosophical Hall of 1779. Beautiful ceilings and frescoes give light and lustre to this ravishing place.

Strahov Abbey Library, Prague

My final library is in Austria and is said to be the largest monastic library in the world. This is Admont Library attached to the Benedictine Abbey and completed by the architect Joseph Huebst in 1776.

It is totally splendid and its Rococo design and decoration are matchless. Yet just think how the world was in 1776. The United States had declared its Independence in stirring and unforgettable language: Britain was well into its Industrial Revolution eventually enriching its citizens beyond their wildest dreams. The whole world was changing quickly and old ideas were being overthrown in the Age of Reason.

We would revere these lovely Rococo Libraries so much more if those who studied there were in the vanguard of the new knowledge and its science. But the fact is their denizens were largely fortresses of reaction and resistance to change, last-ditch defenders of a world soon to be swept away. 

Enjoy their breath-taking beauty and their uplifting architecture and draw a discreet veil over their historic negativity.

The Library at Admont Abbey, an anachronism by 1776

SMD

20.10.13

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2013