330 



RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 



the free and strict tendencies established under 

 Le Brun. While architecture proper tends to 

 greater severity, decoration grows gayer and 

 emancipates itself more and more from rule. 

 Though it maintains as yet its general char- 

 acter its somewhat emphatic solemnity begins 

 to be mitigated. Even Louis XIV. sometimes 

 thought the palatial manner " too serious," and 

 wrote on the margin of a scheme submitted 

 to him for the decoration of the Menagerie 

 that it should be enlivened by scenes from 

 childhood. Jean Berain (1640-1711), who 

 had been employed under Le Brun ; Daniel, 

 son of Jean Marot (i66i-r. 1720), who par- 

 ticipated in his father's work and continued 

 it till the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes 

 drove him to carry his talents to Holland and 

 England ; and Pierre, son of Jean Le Pautre 

 (died 1716), who was employed as an engraver 

 and draughtsman by J. H. Mansart, and is 

 said to have collaborated in much of his later 

 work, all published volumes of decorative de- 

 signs in which, as well as in executed work of 

 the period, new departures may be observed. 



BERAIN AND LATER DECORATIVE DE- 

 SIGNERS. As the irresponsible, nature-loving 

 La Fontaine could never subject himself to 

 the Procrustean rules of Boileau and the 

 Alexandrine, so Berain and his artistic kin 

 refused to be bound by the prevailing for- 

 mality. A gayer, lighter feeling pervades their 

 designs (Fig. 315). Slim sphinxes in rakish 

 feathered caps and playful genii with butterfly 

 wings, humorous figures in contemporary 

 dress, natural birds and beasts, and natural 

 sprays of flowers and foliage make their ap- 

 pearance among the conventional vegetation, the mythologies and 

 allegories. Straight lines are mixed with curves in running or inter- 

 lacing ornaments which had hitherto been composed either of one or 

 the other exclusively : rectilinear stems, breaking hither and thither 

 after the manner of a fret, appear in arabesques, and straight portions 

 interrupt the flow of volutes. Sharper contrasts are sought between 

 curves of contrary flexure, and curves are more varied. Where two 

 curved members, or a curved and a straight member, of a frame 



SIS- 



ARABESQUE BY 

 BERAIN. 



