The 18th century is considered to have begun in 1715 with the death of Louis XIV and ended in 1815 with the fall of Napoleon I and the Congress of Vienna. The “Enlightenment” is a term which designates a dominant cultural and philosophical movement in Europe, and more particularly in France. By extension, they gave the name to the Enlightenment (in French: Lumière) which led to the advent of democracy, in England and the United States with the American Revolution, and in France with the French Revolution. The Rococo style was founded at this time in Paris, then adopted by Austria and Germany. In order to have a clear idea, I will define the rococo style, then introduce two of its pioneers. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get the original essay According to Delécluze, the term “rococo” was coined, around 1797, in derision by Pierre-Maurice Quays. It results from an association of the French word “rocaille” which designates an ornamentation imitating rocks and natural stones and the curved shape of certain shells and the Portuguese word Baroco: “baroque”. The term Rococo long had a pejorative character before being accepted by art historians around the middle of the 19th century and considered as a European artistic movement in its own right. This style was present in architecture, decorative arts, painting and sculpture. It developed from 1715 to 1780, in France then in the Holy Roman Empire, and in Southern Europe (Savoy, Italy, Spain, Portugal). Between rococo and classical art, a remarkable difference. I'll lay it out in a grid below. Cherubs · Light, affectionate and graceful figures · Backgrounds often included delicate depictions of nature Romantic depictions engaging in leisure Balance and perspective Very popular portraits “The Graces Presiding over the Education of Love,” circa 1735 , François Boucher The figure above is considered one of the finest examples of French rocaille, the decoration of the Hôtel Soubise was created by François Boucher, Charles Joseph Natoire and Carle van Loo, among others and remains until to today intact. In addition, William Hogarth and Jean-Baptiste Greuze are two pioneers of Rococo. William Hogarth, child of the Glorious Revolution, recognized very early by critics and identified in France in 1753 by Denis Diderot as a brilliant mind. Hogarth is a complete artist, who embraced several modes of expression, and whose influence continues into the early 20th century. The first free and singular artist of the English school of painting, he did not hesitate to use the press and his networks of friends to defend his ideas, while expressing, as much by the pen as by the brush, the wanderings, the pleasures and morality. contradictions of his time. The famous Wedding-à-la-mode series, generously loaned to the Louvre Museum by the National London Gallery, is based on real events but also on a comedy by Dryden and a little earlier by David Garrick. The paintings are painted in anticipation of their transition to reverse engraving of scenes. This series describes the unhappy marriage of a young man, the son of an improvident and impoverished aristocrat presented as a “end of race”, and the daughter of a rich merchant. The ridiculous, the frivolous, the incomprehension, the ruin then death punctuate each of the six episodes of the series. But here again, the freedom and vanity of the characters, their gestures and outfits, the attention paid to interiors and pets, revealing the tastes of the protagonists, go beyond social satire and constitute one of the peaks of the Enlightenment. Furthermore, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, born in Tournus in 1725, occupied a considerable place in French art.