Superbly crafted desks and cabinets were created for the Palace of Versailles and other royal residences by cabinetmakers Jean-Henri Riesener and David Roentgen, using inlays of fine woods (particularly mahogany) and decorated with gilded bronze and mother of pearl.

He left the management of these to Charles-Claude Flahaut de la Billaderie, the Count of Angiviller, who was made Director General of the Bâtiments du Roi.

[4] Angeviller, for financial reasons, postponed a grand enlargement of the Palace of Versailles, but completed the new Château de Compiègne (1751–1783), begun by Louis XV, and decorated it from 1782 to 1786.

The architects of Louis XIV, Jules Hardouin-Mansart and Jacques Lemercier, turned away from the gothic and renaissance style and used a baroque version of the Roman dome on the new churches at Val-de-Grace and Les Invalides.

Louis XV and his chief architects, Jacques Ange Gabriel and Jacques-Germain Soufflot continued the style of architecture based upon symmetry and the straight line.

Gabriel created the ensemble of classical buildings around the Place de la Concorde while Soufflot designed the Panthéon (1758–1790) on the Roman model.

[6] An influential building from the late Louis XV period was the Petit Trianon at Versailles (1762–1764), by Jacques Ange Gabriel, built for the mistress of the King, Madame de Pompadour.

Its cubic form, symmetric facade and Corinthian peristyle, similar to the villas of Palladio, made it model for the following Louis XVI style.

Palladio's ideas were the inspiration for the Château de Louveciennes, and its neoclassical music pavilion (1770–1771) built by Claude Nicolas Ledoux for the mistress of Louis XV, Madame du Barry.

Characteristic elements of the style: a torch crossed with a sheath with arrows, imbricated disks, guilloché, double bow-knots, smoking braziers, linear repetitions of small motifs (rosettes, beads, oves), trophy or floral medallions hanging from a knotted ribbon, acanthus leaves, gadrooning, interlace, meanders, cornucopias, mascarons, Ancient urns, tripods, perfume burners, dolphins, ram and lion heads, chimeras, and gryphons.

The École de Chirurgie, or School of Surgery in Paris by Jacques Gondoin (1769) adapted the forms of the neoclassical town house, with a court of honor placed between a pavilion with a colonnade on the street and the main building.

[10] One of the best-known buildings of the period is the small Château de Bagatelle (1777), designed and built by François-Joseph Bélanger for the Comte d'Artois, Louis XVI's brother.

Marie Antoinette had a similar small neoclassical belvedere created by architect Richard Mique, who had also designed the Hameau de la Reine, her picturesque rustic village in the gardens.

In 1781 the Duc de Chartres, needing money, commissioned architect Victor Louis to create an arcade of shops, cafes and clubs on the ground floor.

[12] The Panthéon, designed by Jacques Germain Soufflot as the Church of Sainte-Geneviève and begun in 1757 under Louis XV, was the most prominent example of religious architecture under construction during the period.

The church is inspired by paleo-Christian architecture; it features massive columns and a pediment, and an interior with vaulted ceiling that suggests a vast Roman basilica.

He was especially known for his project for the Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans (1775–1779) This was a model industrial site, in an elliptical shape, with the house of the factory director in the centre, with a rustic neoclassical colonnade, surrounded by the workshops, storerooms and offices in concentric rings.

[14] Etienne-Louis Boullée (1728–1799) was another visionary architect of the period; his projects, never built, included a monument to Isaac Newton (1784) in the form of an immense dome, with an oculus allowing the light to enter, giving the impression of a sky full of stars.

It reflected the murals and designs found in the early archeological excavations in Herculaneum and Pompeii, and the travels of groups of artists to Greece and Asia Minor.

Among the notable craftsmen of the period were Georges Jacob, who made a suite of sofas and chairs for the apartments of Marie Antoinette at Versailles and for those of the Comte d'Artois, the King's brother, at the Temple.

[16] The beds, especially in the chambers de parade or ceremonial bedrooms of the royal palaces, were of monumental proportions and were usually separated from the rest of the room by a balustrade.

The sculpted and gilded wood frame of the silk embroidered canopy over the bed of Marie Antoinette at Fontainebleau, installed in 1787, was so heavy that two additional columns were placed under it at night avoid its collapse.

[18] The tables and cabinets were usually decorated with sculpted and gilded bronze ornament, often in the forms of stylized roses, knotted ribbons, or pine cones.

In 1784, they received the title of Royal Manufactory, opened a large depot near the Tuileries Palace, and hired a group of noted artists and illustrators, including the son of the painter Boucher, to design wallpaper.

Another popular style that developed during the period was the decoration of rooms with panoramic scenes, composed of a number of painted or printed panels put together.

The salon of the pavilion of the Countess of Provence in Montreuil, and the country cottage of Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé at Chantilly had a similar panorama installed in 1775.

His major early works included Belisarius Begging for Alms (1781), Andromache Mourning Hector (1783), and especially Oath of the Horatii (1784), exalting the willingness of Roman soldiers to give their lives for the nation.

The sculptors who were most prominent in the period included Étienne Maurice Falconet, who created table sculptures on classical and romantic themes for many Parisian salons, as well as the famous Bronze Horseman, a statue of Peter the Great on horseback for Saint Petersburg.

The most celebrated portrait sculptor was Jean-Antoine Houdon, known for his busts of leading figures of the period, including, in 1790, in the midst of the Revolution, Louis XVI himself.

Louis-Simon Boizot was prominent for making busts of the nobility, including Marie Antoinette, but also for modeling figures for the Sevres porcelain factory, which became better known than his more formal sculpture.