It is an overlapping process and the years
of transition are ones of great interest. As one period follows another
it usually shows a reaction from the previous one; a somber period is
followed by a gay one; the excess of ornament in one is followed by
restraint in the next. It is the same law that makes us want cake when
we have had too much bread and butter.
The world has changed so much since the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries that it seems almost impossible that we should ever again have
great periods of decoration like those of Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis
XVI. Then the monarch was supreme. "_L'etat c'est moi_," said Louis XIV,
and it was true. He established the great Gobelin works on a basis that
made France the authority of the world and firmly imposed his taste and
his will on the country. Now that this absolute power of one man is a
thing of the past, we have the influence of many men forming and molding
something that may turn into a beautiful epoch of decoration, one that
will have in it some of the feeling that brought the French Renaissance
to its height, though not like it, for we have the same respect for
individuality working within the laws of beauty that they had.
The style that takes its name from Louis XIV was one of great
magnificence and beauty with dignity and a certain solidity in its
splendor. It was really the foundation of the styles that followed, and
a great many people look upon the periods of Louis XIV, the Regency,
Louis XV and Louis XVI as one great period with variations, or ups and
downs--the complete swing and return of the pendulum.
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