The Baroque Era - France - 4

Mazarin is immortalized in the history of handmade furniture by having a particular type of desk named after him. The bureau Mazarin is a writing table composed of two pedestals, each with three drawers one above the other and four legs to each section, with a kneehole between them and a flat top over them. it is usually decorated with arabesques of brass inlaid into a ground of tortoiseshell veneer in the style known as 'Boulle'. Ironically, this type of desk does not seem to have been invented in Mazarin's lifetime - all examples known appear to date from after his death - and his name only came to be attached to it in the 19th century.

Following Mazarin's death in 1661, Louis XIV assumed personal power for the first time at the age of 23, and set about creating at Versailles a palace which would symbolize the greatness of France and its king. He was aided in this by his minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619 - 1683), a patron of the arts who presided over the first exhibition of paintings by living artists in 1673. Colbert appointed Charles Le Brun (1619 - 1690) to the post of first director of the royal factory, the Manufacture des Gobelins, in 1663. Le Brun had trained as an artist in Rome where he had cultivated a High Baroque style modified and disciplined by classical principles. It was this splendid but rather solemn version of the Baroque which is known today as the Louis XIV style.

A capable designer himself, especially of tapestries, Le Brun's real genius lay in his ability to organize the creations of others into a magnificent, harmonious whole that unashamedly acknowledged foreign contributions but emerged first as a national and then as an international style, imitated and emulated even in the countries that had supplied the initial ingredients. Versailles was finally made ready for the court in 1682, when the king took up residence. Colbert died in the following year and Le Brun fell from royal favour.
Louis' chief designer of fitted and non fitted furniture was Jean Le Pautre (1618 - 1682), who left over 2,000 engraved designs that included beds with canopies (which gave maximum opportunity to the upholsterer), console tables and other gilt furniture that employ a full range of Baroque imagery.
His earlier work is heavy with sculptural figures and nymphs trapped in jungles of foliage. His later designs are less oppressive and anticipate the lighter style of Jean Berain pere (1637 - 1711), whose son (also Jean) adopted his fathers style, one which frequently exhibits a sense of humour not quite in tune with Versailles at its most grandiloquent. He took over from Le Brun and in 1690 moved into an apartment in the Louvre, near that of Andre-Charles Boulle (1642 - 1732), the maitre-ebeniste famous metal marquetry in a ground of tortoiseshell veneer.
By making up a pack of alternating sheets of brass and tortoiseshell and sawing a pattern into them all simultaneously, it was possible to inlay pieces of brass into the spaces cut into the tortoiseshell ('Boullework') and pieces of shell into the spaces cut in the brass ('counter-Boulle').
Recent research casts doubt on whether Boulle himself adopted the ingeniously economic method. It seems far more likely that he started from scratch for each type.

Berain's designs included arabesques, grotesques and the increasingly popular chinoiseries. Colbert had founded the Compagnie des Indes in 1664, which now imported oriental lacquer, porcelain and other works of art. these almost certainly influenced both the shapes and the decoration of some of Boulle's work, and possibly that of Domenico Cucci (c.1635 - 1704) and Pierre Golle (fl.1670 - 1690), both of whom decorated furniture with rich marquetry in exotic woods, tortoiseshell, metal and lapis lazuli, embellished with gilt bronze mounts which were cast and chiselled. Known in English as 'ormolu mounts', they were first intended as protective pieces on the corners of furniture, reproduction furniture often uses similar mounts, but gradually came to be used for purely decorative purposes as well. Curvilinear shapes began to replace rectilinear forms, and vertical legs slowly gave way to scrolled outlines.

.....to be continued with the final part five from France tomorrow