French Art: The Ancien Regime 1620-1775

The third volume of Andre Chastel's sweeping history of French art explores the extraordinary painting, sculpture, and architecture that emerged during the reigns of Louis XIII, Louis XIV, and Louis XV.
During this 150-year period, three major styles dominated French art. Under Louis XIII, the official court painter was Peter Paul Rubens, and the order of the day was the baroque, a continuation of the Italian influence which had spread to France during the Renaissance. However, over the course of Louis XIV's 60-year reign, a uniquely French style of triumphal classicism emerged, whose monumental proportions reflected the Sun King's drive for French hegemony in Europe. This striving for glory was expressed artistically in the grandiose architecture of Versailles and its complex painted and sculpted allegorical program. Louis XV's tastes were very different from those of his celebrated predecessor. He had the monumental apartments at Versailles subdivided to create more refined, intimate settings, and had them hung with charming rococo pastoral scenes and fetes galantes. This period also saw a flowering of the decorative arts, in which stylistic developments paralleled those in painting, sculpture, and architecture.