Excerpt from The Creation of the Rococo Hotel de Mailly: Ceilings and arabesques designed by Berain. Berain arabesque engraved before 1 693. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This catalogue accompanied an exhibition at the Groeninge Museum, Bruges, which celebrated one of the greatest European artists of the late fourteenth century, André Beauneveu, apparently born in Valenciennes c. 1335. Active throughout the Southern Netherlands, his reputation grew swiftly and in 1364 he was commissioned by the King of France, Charles V, to create a group of royal tombs at St Denis. In the 1370s he oversaw another ambitious funerary project, for Louis de Mâle, Count of Flanders, at Courtrai, whilst continuing to undertake major civic commissions at Ypres, Mechelen and his home town of Valenciennes. Beauneveu spent the last years of his career in Bourges working for the most celebrated royal patron of all, Jean, Duc de Berry.

"During his lifetime (1690-1743), and throughout the greater part of the eighteenth century, Nicolas Lancret was one of the most celebrated artists in France. After nearly two centuries of having been overshadowed by the work of certain contemporaries (notably Watteau), the singular appeal and sophisticated charm of Lancret's genre paintings are once more widely recognized and appreciated." "This is the first book in English about Lancret, a key force in the development of the visual arts in eighteenth-century France. As one of the leading artists of his time, Lancret counted among his patrons the crowned heads of Europe, along with major connoisseurs among the aristocracy and in the financial community. He was also the favorite genre artist of Louis XV, who commissioned paintings from him for various royal residences--especially Versailles and Fontainebleau." "The reasons for Lancret's popularity and success are apparent in the paintings and drawings splendidly reproduced in this book. His pictures tell lively and intelligible stories, his themes are inventive and entertaining, and his color combinations are bright and striking. His images made the transition from decorative painting to engraving with ease, and then proceeded to capture the popular imagination in much the same way as amusing gossip." "As he matured, Lancret developed his talent for narrative--for a visual form of storytelling that is subtle and sophisticated, yet also ingenuous and folkloric. This tradition in European art was strong and continuous, as reflected in the work of its most famous adherents, Hogarth and Greuze. No eighteenth-century painter was more firmly centered and active in that tradition than Nicolas Lancret."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved