Rococo

Rococo is an artistic movement born in France, which developed progressively between the years 1730 and 1760, approximately.

It is characterized by a taste for bright, soft and clear colors. Forms inspired by nature, mythology, the representation of naked bodies, oriental art and especially gallant and loving themes predominate. It is a basically mundane art, without religious influences, that deals with themes of daily life and human relationships, a style that seeks to reflect what is pleasant, refined, exotic and sensual.

History of the word Rococo

According to Étienne-Jean Delécluze, the term "rococo" was invented around 1797 as a joke by Pierre-Maurice Quays, a student of Jacques-Louis David. Supposedly it would be an association of the French words « rocaille » and « baroque » (baroque), the first of which designates an ornamentation that imitates natural stones and certain curved shapes of mollusk shells. The term "rococo" had a pejorative meaning for a long time, before being accepted in the mid-nineteenth century as a term of art history.

Historical and social context

Its precedent dates back to the beginning of the 18th century, coinciding with the regency of Felipe de Orleans, when the timid changes began that heralded the end of the late Baroque style and its evolution towards the expression of a more contemporary, independent and hedonistic taste, opposed to the official, inflexible and ostentatious art of the reign of Louis XIV. The transition from Rococo, also known as the "Louis XV style", to new artistic forms and expressions began around 1720. Some art historians such as Fiske Kimball trace the genesis of Rococo to various French decorators, such as Claude Audran III, Pierre Lepautre and Gilles-Marie Oppenordt.

This style, called in its time "of modern taste", was despised by its neoclassicist critics and detractors with the word rococo, which is a composition of « rocaille » (stone) and « coquille » (seashell), since in the Early designs of the new style featured irregular shapes inspired by sea rocks, algae, and shells. Other versions trace their origin to rocaille, a type of ornamentation used by grotto decorators in baroque gardens and distinguished by its profuse curling. Although Rococo has been a conventionalist and courtly art, it is an example of how art is an expression of social life and how a style can be directed at individuals within that society and not at their monarchs or gods.

The style is expressed above all in painting, decoration, furniture, fashion and in the design and production of objects. Its presence in architecture and sculpture is less, since its main field is interiors and, to a lesser extent, monumental compositions.

The excavations between 1738 and 1748 at Pompeii and Herculaneum and their disclosure aroused a true fascination with the "Greek flavor", the embryo of what, once consolidated, we would know as Neoclassicism and which coincides with the reign of Louis XVI. During this period the Rococo maintained a great hegemony over the other styles.

History

From Baroque to Rococo

During the reign of Louis XV, court life unfolds in the Palace of Versailles, extending the artistic change of the royal palace and allowing its diffusion to all of French high society. The delicacy and playfulness of Rococo motifs have often been seen as a reaction to the excesses of the Louis XIV regime.

If the Baroque was at the service of absolutist power, the Rococo is at the service of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. The artist begins to work with more freedom and the art market expands. The Rococo is presented as an art at the service of comfort, luxury and party. The scenes in his painting capture this new lifestyle.

With regard to the social aspect, a change began in the role of women, who became organizers of meetings to talk about literature, politics, games of ingenuity or to dance. This environment of high social activity within the upper bourgeoisie is the right place for artists to promote themselves and make clients. Rococo motifs seek to reproduce the typical feeling of aristocratic, carefree, or light novel life, rather than heroic battles or religious figures.

Development and extension

In the development and spread of the new style within French society, the influence of Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour and mistress of the king, played a key role. Her interest in her art that she, as an amateur, she practiced advised by François Boucher or Quentin de La Tour, was transmitted to the wealthy classes of Paris. The 1730s were the period of greatest vitality and development of Rococo in France. The style began in architecture and reached furniture, sculpture and painting (among the most significant works, we find those of the artists Jean-Antoine Watteau and François Boucher). The Rococo style spread mainly thanks to French artists and the publications of the time.

It was quickly welcomed in the Catholic zone of Germany, Bohemia and Austria, where it merged with the Germanic Baroque. In the south in particular, the Germanic Rococo was enthusiastically applied in the construction of houses and palaces; architects often adorn interiors with "clouds" of white stucco.

In Italy, the late Baroque style of Francesco Borromini and Guarino Guarini evolves towards Rococo in Turin, Venice, Naples and Sicily, while art in Tuscany and Rome is still strongly linked to Baroque, but with its basic characteristics very marked..

In England the new style was regarded as 'the French taste for art'. English architects would not follow the example of their continental colleagues, even though silverware, porcelain and silks were heavily influenced by Rococo. Thomas Chippendale transformed English furniture design by studying and adapting the new style. William Hogarth helped create a theory about the beauty of Rococo; Without intentionally referring to the new style, he stated in his Analysis of Beauty (1753) that the S -curve present in the Rococo was the basis of the beauty and grace present in art and in nature.

Decline of the Rococo

The end of the Rococo began around 1760, when characters such as Voltaire and Jacques-François Blondel extended criticism on the superficiality and degeneration of art. Blondel, in particular, lamented the " incredible mix of shells, dragons, reeds, palms, and plants " in contemporary art. In 1780 Rococo ceases to be fashionable in France and is replaced by the order and seriousness of the neoclassical style promoted by Jacques-Louis David.

The Rococo remained popular outside the great capitals and in Italy until the second phase of the Neoclassical, when the so-called Empire style was imposed thanks to the impetus of the Napoleonic government.

A renewed interest in Rococo appears between 1820 and 1870. England is the first to reassess the Louis XIV style, which is what it was wrongly called at the beginning. With this fashion, significant figures were paid for second-hand rococo objects that could be found in Paris. In France, only important artists such as Delacroix and patrons such as the Empress Eugénie give value to the style again.

Rococo applied to art

Furniture and decorative objects during the Rococo period

The light but intricate subject matter of rococo design is better suited to small objects than to architecture and sculpture. It is therefore not surprising that the French Rococo was used above all in the interior of houses. Porcelain figures, silverware and, above all, the furniture incorporate the Rococo aesthetic when French high society wants to adapt their houses to the new style.

The Rococo appreciates the exotic character of Chinese art and, in France, this style is imitated in the production of porcelain and tableware.

French designers, such as François de Cuvilliés and Nicolas Pineau, exported the style to Munich and Saint Petersburg, while the German Juste-Aurèle Meissonier moved to Paris, although Simon-Philippe Poirier must be considered as the forerunner of Rococo in Paris.. English Rococo tends to be more subdued. The furniture designer Thomas Chippendale maintains the curved line but less pompous than that of French furniture. The greatest exponent of English Rococo was probably Thomas Johnson, a sculptor and furniture designer based in London in the mid-1700s.

Architecture

One of the characteristics of the rococo style will be the difference mark between exteriors and interiors. The interior will be a very ornate place of fantasy and colour, while the façade will be characterized by simplicity and simplicity. The classic orders are abandoned, and the facades of the buildings will be distinguished by being smooth, having, at most, some moldings to separate floors or frame doors and windows. The dominant shape in Rococo buildings was circular. A central pavilion, usually between two low, curved wings and, whenever possible, surrounded by a garden or immersed in a natural park. Other buildings could take the form of linked pavilions, contrary to the typical "block" building, typical of the previous stage.

At this time the window progressively increases in size, up to the French window or French window, obtaining an interrelation between interior and exterior that achieves the ideal fusion with nature, with the landscape and the environment. Right-angled frames, too rigid, are discarded and arched windows are adopted. The use of monumental sculptures is eliminated or reduced, limiting them to the decoration of the gardens.

In any case, the most remarkable aspect of Rococo interiors is the internal layout. The buildings have specialized rooms for each function and a very simple layout. The rooms are designed as a set that, with marked functionality, combines ornamentation, colors and furniture.

By their very nature, these architectural trends had very little reflection in official constructions, whether secular or ecclesiastical. On the other hand, the new style was perfect for the residences of the nobility and the upper bourgeoisie, the classes most eager to change according to the new canons and those most endowed with the financial means to achieve it.

In Germany, especially in Bavaria, the Rococo enters with great force and surpasses the baroque formulas. Unlike France, the ability to adapt the style to religious constructions achieved by the German Rococo stands out. Among the authors of the most outstanding works we find French and German artists such as François de Cuvilliés, Johann Balthasar Neumann and Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff, who carried out the preparation of Amalienburg near Munich, the residence of Würzburg, Sanssouci in Potsdam, Charlottenburg in Berlin, the Augustusburg and Falkenlust Palaces in Brühl, the Bruchsal Palace, the Solitude Palace in Stuttgart and Schönbrunn in Vienna.

Paintwork

Although Rococo owes its origin purely to the decorative arts, the style also showed its influence in painting, reaching its peak in the 1730s. This painting should be properly called Gallant Painting and not Rococo Painting. because this term encompasses the aesthetic context in which it was found. The painters used light and delicate colors and curvilinear forms, decorating the canvases with cherubs and myths of love. His landscapes with gallant and pastoral parties often collected meals on the grass of aristocratic characters and amorous and courtly adventures. Mythological characters that intermingle in the scenes were recovered, endowing them with sensuality, joy and freshness.

Portraiture was also popular among Rococo painters, in which the characters are portrayed with great elegance, based on the artificiality of palace life and courtly environments, reflecting a friendly image of society in transformation.

Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) is considered the most important Rococo painter, creator of a new pictorial genre: fêtes galantes (gallant parties), with scenes imbued with lyrical eroticism. Watteau, despite dying at the age of 37, had a great influence on his successors, including François Boucher (1703–1770) and Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806), two masters of the late period. Also the delicate touch and sensitivity of Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) reflect the Rococo spirit.

Sculpture

Sculpture is another area in which Rococo artists intervened. Étienne-Maurice Falconet (1716–1791) is considered one of the best representatives of French Rococo. In general, this style was best expressed through delicate porcelain sculpture, rather than imposing marble statues. Falconet himself was director of a famous porcelain factory in Sèvres. The loving and joyful motifs are represented in the sculpture, as well as nature and the curved and asymmetric line.

Designer Edmé Bouchardon depicted Cupid carving his love darts with Hercules' club, an excellent symbol of the Rococo style. The demigod is transformed into a tender child, the bone-breaking club transforming into heart-piercing arrows, at the moment when marble is replaced by stucco. In this period we can mention the French sculptors Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, Robert le Lorrain, Michel Clodion and Pigalle.

Music

The gallant style was the equivalent of Rococo in the history of music, situated between baroque music and classical music, and it is not easy to define this concept in words. Rococo music developed outside of Baroque music, particularly in France. It can be considered as a very intimate music made in an extremely refined way. Among the greatest exponents of this current we can mention Jean Philippe Rameau, Georg Philipp Telemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Johann Christian Bach.

Rococo in France

France is the cradle of the style and from here it spread to the rest of Europe, especially to the Germanic-speaking countries, where it acquired extraordinary strength due to the strong relations between Frederick II of Prussia and the French crown.

Furniture

Furniture design is the main activity of a whole dynasty of Parisian cabinetmakers, some of whom were born in Germany, who developed a three-dimensional curved line style, where the varnished surfaces were completed with bronze marquetry. The invoice of these works corresponds, mainly, to Antoine Gaudreau, Charles Cressent, Jean-Pierre Latz, Françoise Oeben and Bernard van Risen Burgh.

In France, the style remains very sober, since the ornaments, mainly made of wood, were less massive and were presented as compositions of floral motifs, scenes, grotesque masks, paintings and stone inlays.

The upholstery was an important chapter to achieve comfort in the furniture. The seats reached heights of comfort unimaginable just a few years before. The general trend in favor of luxury and comfort meant that courtiers and hall-goers were now able to sit down (and even lean back and stretch) at gatherings, unlike the earlier era, when it had been compulsory to stay in. foot for protocol reasons. This new concept of comfort and a more carefree attitude towards the human body (which was allowed in moments of intimacy to escape and get rid of rigid postures), the concern to develop intellectual and recreational activities in private spaces, fosters the development of new furniture designs.

Architecture

With the shift away from the culture of court palaces, the characteristic constructions of this period were houses far from the city center or in the middle of the countryside: « folies », « bergeries », « bagatelles » or « hermitages ». In urban residences, the " hôtel " or mansion in the city, the floor plan is divided into relatively small spatial units, thus obtaining specialized areas, of different sizes depending on their function: living room, dining room, bedroom, antechamber, gallery, cabinet.

In this way, a more practical distribution than the previous «enfilade » appeared, now the rooms would be independent and with individual access. The corners of the rooms were cut obliquely to place secondary stairs in the gained spaces and these communicated with each other through corridors, corridors and galleries.

Among the most prominent representatives we find Jean Courtonne and Robert de Cotte, appointed architect of the court, and who was involved in almost all the important works that were done in France for 30 years.

Sculpture and porcelain objects

France occupied an important place in the production of porcelain during the eighteenth century. It was made in Rouen, Strasbourg, Saint-Cloud, Mennecy, Chantilly and at the Royal Porcelain Manufacture in Sèvres.

After a difficult beginning (1741) in Vincennes, the Royal Manufacture moved to Sèvres in 1756. Sèvres porcelain was characterized by its drawings surrounded by pebbles ornamentation on a white ground, although this white quickly changed to colors in very vivid shades such as bleu de Roi (after Rococo), bright yellow, turquoise blue, and Pompadour pink (from 1757), which were in fashion for ten years and were named in recognition of Madame Pompadour's personal interest in the manufacturing development.

From the 1750s the placement of Sèvres plaques as decoration of small furniture or accessories became fashionable. Bernard van Risen Burgh was the first known cabinetmaker to decorate his works with porcelain plates, a practice that quickly became popular. They were widely used by cabinetmakers Martin Carlin and Weisweiler. The architect Alpha Mariel Polanco has done a great deal of research on the Rococo.

Rococo in Italy

The Italian Wars resulted in the hegemony of Spanish power over Italy. Although many states, such as Venice, did not belong to the Spanish crown, Italy depended on Spain for protection from external aggression. Spanish control was replaced with Austrian hegemony in the 18th century except for a few states that remained under Spanish control.

Also in Italy, following the French example, the Rococo created a notable renewal, especially in the field of interior decoration and painting. It occurred above all in the northern region (Liguria, Piedmont, Lombardy and Veneto), while in central Italy, due to the influence of the church, the style did not develop appreciably.

On the other hand, in Sicily an evolution of the Baroque of its own character was developed, with a more Hispanic taste, very similar to the Plateresque.

Architecture

The main representatives of the Rococo style in Italian architecture are Guarino Guarini, very active in Piedmont and Messina, and Filippo Juvarra, who works a lot in Turin as an architect for the House of Savoy.

The most important works of Guarino Guarini are: the church of San Filippo, the church of the Somaschi Fathers and the house of the Theatine fathers, all in Messina, the chapel of the Holy Shroud of Turin and the Carignano palace also in Turin.

Among the most important achievements of Filippo Juvara there are: the dome of the Basilica of Saint Andrew in Mantua, the dome of the cathedral of Como, the bell tower of the cathedral of Belluno, the basilica of Superga near Turin, the castle of Rívoli, the hunting lodge of Stupinigi, the Royal Palace of Venaria Reale and the Madama Palace in Turin.

Paintwork

In the field of painting, the greatest interpreters of the Rococo can be considered the artists who worked in the Republic of Venice, highlighting the large detailed landscapes with representations of the main spaces of the city: the canals, San Marco square and the Doge's Palace, following the current called veduta.

Among the most important figures to consider we find: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, whose Portrait of Antonio Riccobono, San Rocco and Hercules suffocates Antaeus stand out. Tiepolo spent four years in Würzburg before returning to Venice and finally went to work in Madrid, at the court of Charles III, the city where he finally died. Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto, who carried out works, among others: Saint Mark's Square, Saint Christopher, Saint Michael and Murano, Saint Mark's Horses in the Square, Rialto Field in Venice and River Walk with Column and Arch of triumph. Canaletto also worked in England but without reaching the splendor of the landscapes of his native city. Francesco Guardi, with a touch style, represents the collapsing Republic with his most faded and dark landscapes, making nearly eight hundred and sixty works, among which the Miracle of a Dominican Saint, Concert at the Casino of the Filarmonici and La Caridad stand out.

Sculpture

In the sculpture sector, the poorest in this period, Giacomo Serpotta stands out, who, especially in Palermo, carried out works for various churches in the city, among which we can mention the oratories of Ciudad Santa, San Lorenzo and del Rosary in San Domenico and the church of San Francisco de Asís. It can be considered that some sculptors who made fountains in Rome and in the Palace of Caserta were inspired by the Rococo style.

Rococo in Spain

In the eighteenth century, the Spanish baroque walks towards a much more ornate style. Sculpture, painting and carving merge with architecture, sometimes to animate the classic architectural schemes that are still valid in plans and elevations. Opposite the usually austere exteriors, vibrant interiors are created. In the 1730s, this late baroque -which used profusely ornamental motifs such as the acanthus leaf, with classical roots- began to be impregnated with the influence of French Rococo, fundamentally exemplified by the spread of a new ornamental motif: the rockery (from the french rocaille), consisting of complicated sets of "C" and "S" that generate asymmetrical shapes and are also reminiscent of marine shapes. The rockery began to be known in Spain through three fundamental ways: its diffusion through the pattern books or books of patterns, the import of furniture and other decorative arts from Europe and its direct hand brought by foreign architects, case of the Portuguese Cayetano deAcosta.

In this way, for the Spanish case it is difficult to speak of the existence of a pure rococo but, rather, of a late baroque that borrows elements from the French rococo. The generic denomination of rococo for the Spanish art of the 18th century obeys an outdated tendency to consider the rococo as the logical evolution of the baroque. Keep in mind that the style was born in France, a country in which the art of the previous century, known as the Grand Siécle, was substantially different from the Hispanic case, due to its more classic character. Therefore, the style was born more as a reaction than as an evolution of the French XVII. On the other hand, rococo is an eminently bourgeois and secular art, difficult to reconcile with religious art, the most abundant of the Spanish baroque. This traditional terminological confusion has been contributed to by the presence in the Spanish 18th century of Italian architects and solutions brought from the Italian Baroque (more moved in plan), alien to Rococo but confused with it.

However, apart from the debatable imprint of the rococo in the Spanish religious art of the 18th century, it is possible to trace some examples of the rococo in Spain, fundamentally in the civil typologies and, above all, in the courtly sphere, in the heat of the new Bourbon dynasty.

Paintwork

They can be considered transitional painters, but already with an atmosphere and a chromatic delicacy that announces the new rococo sensibility that was beginning to triumph in Rome, Naples and Venice, some of the works of Miguel Jacinto Meléndez (1675-1734) or the young painters cameraman Juan Bautista Peña (1710-1773) and, more markedly, the Aragonese Pablo Pernicharo (1705-1760), who, retired in Rome and disciples of Agostino Masucci, show in their works from 1740 a symbiosis between the academic baroque and rococo.

Gaya Nuño, in an article from 1970, estimated that the rococo current had had little acceptance in Spain because of the hindrance that the last Spanish baroque had caused it, a genuine national creation unlike the imported rococo. In what, in his view, little Spanish Rococo, painting had developed paradoxically in the midst of the reign of the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts and had manifested itself in a reduced and blurred way in the cartoons for tapestries by Goya, Francisco and Ramón Bayeu or José del Castillo, and especially in an extraordinary rococo painter, Luis Paret y Alcázar. A decade later Jesús Urrea outlined an Introduction to Rococo painting in Spainand defended the existence of such pictorial current and gave some of the lines of study and interpretation of it.

• The contributions and achievements of the Spanish painters trained in Italy in the atmosphere of the academic baroque and rococo renewal (Hipólito Rovira (1693-1765), José Luzán Martínez (1710-1785) and Antonio González Velázquez (1723-1793)
• The presence of great Italian painters at the court of Madrid in the middle of the century (Michel-Ange Houasse, Bartolomeo Rusca, Jacopo Amigoni, Corrado Giaquinto, Giovanni Battista Tiépolo), with their vast decorative achievements and their teachings in the reign of Ferdinand VI and in the first stage of Carlos III.

As Spanish painters of the 18th century, close to Rococo but with an academic tendency, Luis Meléndez and Luis Paret stand out; also the Italian Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, who worked in Spain together with Mengs.

A disciple of José Luzán and later of Corrado Giaquinto was the Aragonese Juan Ramírez de Arellano (1725-1782), who was strongly influenced by the latter, but abandoned painting for music. The youngest painter who would later come under Mengs's orbit and was trained in Rococo was the Valencian Mariano Salvador Maella; Within the rococo aesthetic, but apart from the environment created by Giaquinto, two French painters who arrived at different times moved in Spain; the first was Charles-Joseph Flipart (1721-1797), a painter and engraver who came to Spain in 1748 accompanying his teacher Jacopo Amigoni and was a court painter in 1753; the other was Charles-François de la Traverse (1726-1787), who was in Madrid accompanying the French ambassador Marquis of Ossun and decided to stay; he was a disciple of Boucher,

Also noteworthy is the pictorial work of Antonio Viladomat and Francesc Tramulles Roig, a disciple of the former and less known due to the ephemeral nature of his work. Francesc Pla, known as "El Vigatà", showed a slight Rococo influence in the paintings of the Moja Palace in Barcelona, ​​although the rest of his work must be placed within a Baroque language. Other painters of this trend were Antonio's brothers, Luis González Velázquez (1715-1763) and Alejandro González Velázquez (1719-1772), the Madrilenian of Aragonese descent and disciple of Giaquinto José del Castillo (1737-1793); the Aragonese Juan Ramírez de Arellano (1725-1782) and the Valencian José Camarón y Boronat (1731-1803). In Seville, the rococo is infected by the Murillesco influence in the work of Juan de Espinal (1714-1783).

Architecture and altarpieces

In the courtly atmosphere of Madrid we find the most beautiful examples of Spanish Rococo. In the Royal Palace of Madrid, ordered to be built by Philip V in 1738, is the superb Gasparini Hall and the Porcelain Hall. In the same palace we find the Throne Room, an impressive set with many examples of rococo furniture such as the twelve monumental mirrors accompanied by their corresponding consoles and the royal throne. In Aranjuez, also in Madrid, we find a unique piece in the Porcelain Hall of the Royal Palace, a true jewel profusely decorated in times of Carlos III with Chinese motifs very much in the taste for the orientalizing and exotic Rococo. Also in the capital of Spain there are some temples that show the influence of Rococo, such as the Basilica of San Miguel,

In Valencia, the Palacio del Marqués de Dos Aguas (1740–1744) stands out, with a façade designed by the painter and engraver Hipólito Rovira and executed by Ignacio Vergara and Luis Domingo, undoubtedly one of the key buildings of Spanish Rococo.

Regarding the architecture of altarpieces, some of the altarpiece artists who were seduced by the rockery were Narciso Tomé and Cayetano de Acosta, always working under a typology as characteristic of the Spanish Baroque as the altarpiece.

Sculpture

Beyond the nationally inspired post-baroque sculpture known as churrigueresca (after the brothers José Benito, Joaquín and Alberto Churriguera), the rococo aesthetic developed in the decorative arts and in the lavish and sumptuous furnishings of monumental mirrors and porcelain salons such as the that is in the Royal Palaces of Madrid and Aranjuez. In terms of wood carving, the Murcian Francisco Salzillo stands out, inspired by the delicate forms of the Rococo and famous for his Italianate nativity scenes; Francisco Hurtado Izquierdo, also an architect of the Churrigueresque, can also be included. On the other hand, the largest concentration of rococo sculpture in Spain is found in the Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso, where the mythological scenes stand out; and in the Paseo del Prado in Madrid, with the Neptune and Cibeles fountains,

Rococo in Germany

Paintwork

One of the major Germanic figures is Franz Anton Maulbertsch, active in a vast region of Central and Eastern Europe decorating numerous churches; he is one of the great fresco masters of the 18th century, often compared to Tiepolo for the high quality of his work. Also to be included as important masters of monumental Germanic Rococo are Johann Baptist Zimmermann, Antoine Pesne, Joseph Ignaz Appiani, Franz Anton Zeiller, Paul Troger, Franz Joseph Spiegler, Johann Georg Bergmüller, Carlo Carlone, among many others, who left a mark on their works. works in palaces and churches.

Sculpture

Joseph Anton (1696-1770) and the Bavarian Johann Baptist Straub (1704-1784) stand out.

Architecture

The French rococo, when breaking into Germany, merges with the Germanic baroque. He also drank from the ornate baroque and of Italian origin. Architects such as Borromini or Guarino Guarini served as a source of inspiration for the small German courts that wanted to imitate the French and frequently resorted to architects from that origin. The Basilica of Ottobeuren (Bavaria), the Solitude Palace in Stuttgart, the Augustusburg Palace in Brühl or the Falkenlust Palace, also in Brühl; It is also noticeable in churches and bell towers alone or in pairs, especially in the south of the country, where on rare occasions they let glimpses of the splendors they housed from the outside. Examples of this are the Ottobeuren basilica, in Bavaria, or the Wieskirche (meadow church), designed by Dominikus Zimermann and located near Füssen and Oberammergau, also in southern Bavaria. It was the architect François de Cuvilliés who carried out the works most directly related to French Rococo models, just as he did in the decoration of the Nymphenburg Palace. Another architect of recognized prestige was Johann Balthasar Neumann, who, relying on the models of Guarino Guarini, built structures using the characteristic decoration of the rococo. Among his most outstanding projects are the residence of the Elector Bishop of Würzburg and the churches of Neresheim and Vierzehnheiligen. In Potsdam, Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorf built the Sanssouci Palace for Frederick the Great, in the image and likeness of the Trianon. In Prussia, Matthaus Daniel Poppelmann (1662-1736), builds the Zwinger party pavilion in Dresden, taking care that it harmonizes with the landscape. The stairs with curves in all directions give joy to both the building and the gardens while the grottoes and fountains house all kinds of mythological characters. The Belvédère castle in Vienna is another example of this style.

Literature

One can include in the rococo Friedrich Hagedorns, Ewald Christian von Kleist and the Swiss Salomon Gessner, famous for his Idylls, but also as a painter. There was a group of rococo poets at the University of Halle who were noted for their anacreontic and little poems; they were Johann Peter Uz, Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim and Johann Nikolaus Götz.

The Rococo and the Catholic Church

A critical view of the Rococo in the ecclesiastical context was held in the Catholic Encyclopedia. For the church, the Rococo style could be assimilated to secular music, as opposed to sacred music. The lack of simplicity, exteriority and frivolity had the effect of distracting from recollection and prayer.

However, once its most explicit exteriority was eliminated, the result could be accepted as in keeping with an environment dedicated to worship. In the development of the Rococo, we find a decoration compatible with the sacred aspect of the churches.

The French artists seem never to have considered the beauty of the composition of the main object, while the Germans make the power of the lines their main characteristic. Inside the churches, the Rococo could be tolerated, since the objects were small like a glass, a small table with a heart, a light, a railing or a balustrade and were not too obvious to the eye. It turns out to be more in line in the sacristy and in environments not properly for worship, rather than in the church itself. The Rococo style is very badly adapted to the solemn office of the religious function, with the tabernacle, the altar or the pulpit.

In the case of large objects, Rococo sculpture is beautiful, but at the same time there is a resemblance to the Baroque. The fanciful elements of this style do not suit the great walls of churches. In any case, everything has to be according to the local situation and circumstances. There are truly beautiful Rococo pieces, while some others do not respond to the canons and try to be assimilated to sacred objects.

Among the materials used in the Rococo style are carved wood, iron and bronze, used in the construction of balustrades and portals. A distinctive element is the gold that covers the cold metallic materials, more acceptable for implantation in non-profane environments.