Louis XV style
The façades designed by Gabriel were carefully rhymed and balanced by rows of windows and columns, and, on large buildings like the Place de la Concorde, often featured grand arcades on the street level, and classical pediments or balustrades on the roofline.
Major examples include the Church of Saint-Genevieve (now the Panthéon), built from 1758 to 1790 to a design by Jacques-Germain Soufflot, and the Église Saint-Philippe-du-Roule (1765–1777) by Jean Chalgrin, which featured an enormous barrel-vaulted nave.
[2] Interior decoration during the reign of Louis XV fell into two periods; the first especially featured rocaille ornament, sculpted sinuous curves and counter-curves, often in floral and vegetative patterns, applied to the panels of the walls, often with medallions in the center.
It usually featured gilded bronze ornament, but during the reign of Louis XV, it was also covered with plaques of exotic woods of different colors in geometric patterns or floral shapes.
A particular variation, called the façon de Chine or "Chinese fashion" emerged, which contrasted the gilded bronze against black lacquered wood.
They included Jean-François Oeben, Roger Vandercruse Lacroix, Gilles Joubert, Antoine Gaudreau, and Martin Carlin.
[6] A variety of other new types of furniture appeared, including the chiffonier, a cabinet with five drawers, and the table de toilette, a kind of desk-table with three shutters, the central one having a mirror.
It took its inspiration from Greek mythology and architecture, with friezes, vaulting, sculpted trophies, bronze lion heads, and other classic, elements.
Later in the reign, when Louis began to construct new apartments within the palaces of Versailles and Fontainebleau, his tastes turned more to pastoral scenes and genre painting.
[10] Other notable painters included Jean Baptiste Oudry, whose hunting scenes decorated royal apartments in Versailles, and were made into tapestries and popular engravings; the portrait artists Maurice Quentin de la Tour and Jean-Marc Nattier, who made portraits for the royal family and aristocracy; and the genre painter Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin.
In the later part of the reign of Louis XV, sculptors began to give greater attention to the faces; the leaders of this new style were Jean-Antoine Houdon noted for his busts of celebrated authors and statesmen, and Augustin Pajou, who made notable portrait busts of the natural scientist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon and Madame du Barry.
Sculpture began to reach a larger popular audience during this period, thanks to reproductions made from terra cotta and unglazed porcelain.
