This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
When Louis XIV died in 1715 after seventy-two years on the French throne, the court and aristocracy that had lived under the rigid formality of his rule at Versailles were ready for something different. Rococo emerged in Paris in this moment as a deliberate reaction against Baroque heaviness and institutional grandeur, favoring instead a light, sensuous and intensely decorative style suited to private townhouses rather than state palaces. Its very name reflects its visual vocabulary: rococo derives from rocaille, the French term for the shell and rock ornament used to decorate artificial grottoes, and Rococo design is built from short curves, scrolls and counter-curves elaborated with fantasy rather than the strict symmetry that had governed Baroque interiors. Rooms decorated in the Rococo manner used pale pastel colors, ivory white and gilding, with mirrors deployed to multiply light and suggest airy, extended space. Where Baroque art had so often served to express the power of church and monarchy, Rococo turned toward secular, intimate subjects, aristocratic leisure, flirtation, gardens and pastoral fantasy, that suited the salons and private residences of the wealthy rather than cathedrals or throne rooms. Painters including Jean-Antoine Watteau, who pioneered scenes of elegant outdoor gatherings known as fetes galantes, Francois Boucher, and later Jean-Honore Fragonard developed a fluid, spontaneous technique and a palette of delicate, often blush-toned color to match the mood. The style did not remain confined to France. It spread to the Catholic German-speaking lands and to Italy, where architects and painters adapted it to soaring, ecstatic church interiors and ceiling frescoes quite different in purpose from its French origins in secular decoration, while in England painters such as William Hogarth and Thomas Gainsborough developed sturdier, more robust versions suited to local taste.