21 OCTOBER 1922, Page 12

ROCOCO.*

THE publication of Dr. Jesscn's collection of Rococo Engravings is an event in the world of architecture and decoration that we can by no means let pass unrecorded. The Doctor has selected two hundred eighteenth-century plates which, beauti- fully reproduced in collotype, give one a dazzling impression of the Baroque period at its zenith. He has contrived to compress into a five-page introduction a concise history of " The Vivacious Style," and even the short pasage that we quote below gives an excellent idea of the movement :-- " When Watteau and Gillot died in 1721 and 1722 respectively the firebrand had begun his career who was destined to transform the ' scherzo ' of the Regency into the furioso ' of Rococo at its height. Juste-Aurele Meissonnier, a native of Turin, was by profession not an architect but a goldsmith. It was as if his southern home and his familiarity with the technique of emboising had determined the channel into which his artistic spirit would flow. Shaking free his boundless sense of form from all restraint, dis- daining straight lines and symmetry, enriching curves and harsh profile with all manner of motifs taken from Nature, he was led by his joy in creation far beyond the limits of a goldsmith's shop. He tried his hand recklessly and with complete success at snuff-boxes, luxurious rooms, facades, church decorations and all that is implied by 'fine art.' The true inventor of that shell-work which has impressed itself upon the world as the leitmotiv of the Rococo, he supplied a whole generation at home and abroad with models of form."

If the tendency of the best work being done at the moment is towards a rather staid if not severe sort of architecture, there is still a place for the gay flourish when it comes to interior embellishment, especially in such details as decorative wall panels, and anyone in search of inspiration for the light- heartedly fantastic, the joy and grace of easy-flowing move- ment or the teacup-storm excitement of broken convolutions will find Dr. Jessen's plates most invigorating. Apparently the arbitrary and question-begging criticism of Ruskin has still power to make many of the serious-minded shy of Renaissance work in general and actively hostile to the style called Baroque. For example :—

" It (Renaissance building) is base, unnatural, unfruitful, • Rococo Engravings. Selected by Dr. Peter Tessen. London : Benn Brothers, Ltd. [ES Ss.] unenjoyable and impious. Pagan in origin, proud and unholy in its revival, paralysed in its old age . . . an architecture invented as it seems to make plagiarists of its architects, slaves of its workmen, and sybarites of its inhabitants ; an architecture in which intellect is idle, invention impossible, but in which all luxury is gratified and all insolence fortified.-"—( The Stones of Venice.) But if we chose to substitute the word " Rococo " for " Gothic in the following most eloquent pleading there is nothing to vitiate the argument, which, indeed, seems more applicable to Rococo than to " the Christian style " :— " Gothic is not only the best, but the only rational architecture, as heing that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble. . . . It can shrink into a turret, expand into a hall, coil into a staircase, or spring into a spiral with and graded grace and unexhausted energy. . . . Subtle and flexible like a fiery serpent, but ever attentive to the voice of the charmer."—( The Stones of Venice.) But Mr. Geoffrey Scott has sufficiently rehabilitated the Baroque in his brilliant book, The Architecture of Humanism, where he says :- " The Renaissance ended by reconciling the picturesque with classic-architecture itself. The two were blended in the Baroque. It is not the least among the paradoxes of that profoundly great style that it possesses, in complete accord, these contrary elements. To give the picturesque its grandest scope, and yet to subdue it to architectural law—this was the Baroque experiment and it is achieved. The Baroque is not afraid to startle and arrest. Like Nature, it is fantastic, unexpected, varied and grotesque. It is all this in the highest degree. But, unlike Nature, it remains subject rigidly to the laws of scale and composition. It enlarged their scope, but would not modify their stringency. It is not, therefore, in any true sense accidental, irregular, or wild. It makes—for the parallel is exact—a more various use of discords and suspensions, and it stands in a closely similar relation to the simpler and more static style which preceded it, as the later music to the earlier. It enlarged the classic formula by developing within it the principle of movement. But the movement is logical. For Baroque archi- tecture is always logical ; it is logical as an aesthetic construction, even where it most neglects the logic of material construction. It insisted on coherent purpose, and its greatest extravagances of design were neither unconsidered nor inconsistent. It intellectualised the picturesque."

We quote this authority at some length in the hope that any doubters who may open Dr. Jessen's picture-book may be thereby encouraged to enjoy what it contains without reserve or apology—whether it be a Baroque high altar, a Rococo grotto, or an exuberant wall decdration in the Chinese taste. The examples illustrated are masterpieces in their particular genre, and both the collector and the publishers are to be congratulated on producing so beautiful a book. In lettering, typography and paper it is worthy of what it illultrates, and our only regret is that the edition should be limited to so small a number as two hundred and fifty copies.