Louis XVI
The last quarter of the XVIII century is a period of cultural and artistic news. It had already had a great impact the great discovery of Ercolano and Pompei after the archeological digs. The whole Europe was astonished and almost skeptical, admiring at first the very expensive volumes of the work of Bayard Le antichita' di Ercolano and then the finds exposed in Vienna, seen by many persons coming from everywhere of the Old Continent. Naples was of course the natural cradle of Neoclassicism ; the designs and the sights of Piraesi and Winckelmann fascinated for this contrast between the excess of rococo and late baroque and the linear simplicity of the roman art. The coming of the Austrian Maria Antonietta to the French court started this new fashion. It was the year 1774 when King Louis gave to his queen the permission to furnish the Petit Trianon according to the style that at the beginning was called Gout Grec and the Louis XVI. The fan of this period has the frame formed by thick sticks, spaced and airy; the guards, always richly adorned, are in any case simpler. The pages are often of painted and embroidered silk and they start to put the paillettes, that will become typical of the “directory” period.
The Rebus
