Crest rail of a settee
François Roumier
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The crest rail with its symmetric design was executed during the early stage of the Rococo style known as Régence which encompassed the period of 1715-1723, when Philippe II, duc d’Orléans, served as regent to the young Louis XV. The Régence style was a reaction against the Baroque grandeur and formality of the court under Louis XIV and transitioned to a more frivolous and intimate sensibility developing into the full-blown Rococo with its penchant for asymmetry by circa 1730. The carved ornament on this railing, consisting of trelliswork inscribed by rosettes, flanked by asymmetrical C and S-shaped scrolls, shells, as well as floral decoration, bears resemblance to a design by François Roumier, published in his Livre de plusieurs coins de Bordures of 1724. As a decorative carver employed by the Bâtiments du Roi, the agency in charge of the construction and maintenance of the various French royal palaces, Roumier was during the 1720s responsible for much of the carved interior decoration at the Château de Versailles. Symbolizing love, the winged putti with their bow and quiver, are sleeping. This suggests that the settee of which this exquisitely carved crest rail was once part, was placed either in a private bedroom or in one of the more intimate smaller rooms which, with the increasing desire for comfort and privacy during the eighteenth century, became more and more important.
European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.