François de Cuvilliés

François de Cuvilliés, sometimes referred to as the Elder (23 October 1695, Soignies, Hainaut – 14 April 1768, Munich), was a Spanish Netherlands-born Bavarian decorative designer and architect.

Cuvilliés was so diminutive in stature that it was as a court dwarf that he first came to the notice of the then-exiled Max Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria,[1] who detected the young dwarf's aptitude and had him tutored in mathematics, then underwrote his further education with Joseph Effner and sent him to Paris from 1720 to 1724, where he trained in the atelier of Jean-François Blondel,[2] On his return to Munich, he was appointed court architect, at first in conjunction with Effner.

The contents of the Schatzkammer fortunately had been spared, and Cuvilliés was commissioned to design the panelling of a new interior, to be executed by the court's premier carver Joachim Dietrich[3] with four rococo gilded console tables on scrolling legs with playful dragons.

He wrote several treatises on artistic and decorative subjects, which were edited by his son, François de Cuvilliés the Younger, who succeeded his father at the court of Munich.

[5] From 1738 he embarked on his lifelong series of suites of engravings of wall-panelling, cornices, furniture and wrought-iron work, which were then published in Munich and distributed in Paris and doubtless elsewhere;[6] they served to disseminate the Rococo throughout Europe.