Baroque Fables

L'opiniatrete en cas de mariage engendre repentance

L'yvresse hout esue decouvre la folie de l'esprit [?]

Un ami dissimulé est plus nuisible qu'un enemi declare

La Precaution Surmonte la Malice

La vangeance d'un inferieur contre'un puissant est nuisible

La vieillesse sans prudence devient meprisable pour des actions pueriles

L'adulation malicieuse est a la fin de couverte et confondue

{I know I've posted this image before...somewhere}
"... the scene is the room of a wealthy man and the drama is enacted by his pets: two dogs, a monkey, a tomcat, and a parrot, who is the man's cherished favorite. The greedy tomcat attempts to lure the parrot from its cage, so that he may capture and feast upon it. The monkey scolds the cat for his malice and ingratitude toward the man of the house and the two faithful dogs attempt to chase the cat away. When the man discovers what happened, the tomcat meets his demise." [source]

Le faste faisant la nique aux autres est confondu lui-meme

Aussi les petits et les mediocres on quelque chose pour
n'etre pas meprisés des grands et des puissants

C'et vainement travailler que de vouloir
inserer a un gros corps l'esprit de subtilité

La convoitise fier et injuste a une issue funeste

La grande pompe couvre souvent la plus rude esclavage

La pompe et la magnificence ne rendent personne plus sage

[Admission Obvious: the captions above are possibly poorly transcribed and are certain to have been dubiously interpreted (mouseover for english). Click for enlarged versions with german, latin and french captions at the bottom of each print.]


"Johann Elias Ridinger (1698-1766) was a German painter, engraver, draughtsman and publisher. His training included depictions of animals, especially horses, as well as copies of earlier masters. He spent a three-year period in Regensburg where he made many visits to the riding school, which proved decisive for his development. After 1723, he founded an art publishing house, selling prints that he himself designed and engraved: series on hunting, definitions of breeds of horses, illustrated lessons for riding and war-horses, depictions of wild animals and of zoological abnormalities.

Ridinger produced at least 1,600 engraved, etched and scratched sheets showing the characteristic postures of animals in the landscape. In 1759 Ridinger became director of the Augsburg Stadtakademie (school of art). After his death his sons continued to run the publishing house. His most popular series--such as this one-- continued to be reprinted until well into the 19th Century, and were also adapted to other media, such as wall decoration, porcelain and ceramics." [source: a, b]

• 'Lehrreiche Fabeln aus dem Reich der Thiere' (Instructive Fables from the Animal Kingdom) 1744 by Johann Elias Ridinger is online at HAB Wolfenbüttel.
• 25 more animal pictures at the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.
• Ridinger contributed the majority of illustration work to the beautiful 4-volume botanical work by Johann Weinmann - 'Phytanthoza Iconographia' at Illustrated Garden (*).
• Another series of animal plates at Biblioteca Casanatense.
• I'm still not sure what I think about this rather idiosyncratic site (mostly) devoted to Ridinger.
• Abe books on 'Fabeln aus dem Reiche der Thiere'.
  

The Jules Rupalley Album

The Miners - Group of miners around well-like shaft in rocky setting
[Quirot & Company (active ca. 1851-ca. 1853), lithographer and publisher]

California flowering plant -
Morning-glory-like plant with six-petalled white flowers

Peruvian flowering cactus

California flowering Spring plant with roots

California flowering vine -
Stem with small white flowers, seed pod, and individual seed

California flowering plant -
Plant with yellow and white flowers, and roots

California Snow Flower -
Flowering magenta color plant in situ growing from snow

California flowering plant -
Plant in situ showing broad leaves and pale pink flower, and two details

California flowering plant -
Plant with five-petalled pink flowers (cropped)

California flowering plant -
Stem with leaves and large, yellow flowers

Chrysalis of a caterpillar

Caterpillar eating a morning glory leaf

Caterpillars, chrysalises, a butterfly, and insects of California

California insect: enemy of tarantula

Quail's head

View of Greenwood Valley, California. 1851

"Small mining town with main street running from left to right; mostly one-story wooden buildings line each side; small figures, horses and horse-drawn carriages scattered throughout scene; groups of miners, some digging with picks. Sparsely forested hills in distance."

Portrait of Indian man from Stanislaus County, California

Portrait of Indian girl

The Jules Rupalley album forms part of the Robert B. Honeyman, Jr. Collection of Early Californian and Western American Pictorial Material at the Online Archive of California.
It contains "over one hundred watercolor drawings primarily of plants and insects from Northern California. The views were executed during Rupalley's travels across California southern mines, the area south of Stockton and around the Stanislaus and Tuolumne Rivers, and Sierra Nevada foothills (Rupalley calls this area "Californie du Sud"). Some of the drawings have annotations in French and include transliterations of Indian plant names. The album also contains several views executed during Rupalley's travels aboard the ships "Louis" and "Surprise", and a number of published prints (not by Rupalley) related to mining and California life."

"Born near Caen, France on March 1, 1810. Rupalley arrived in San Francisco with the Gold Rush in 1851 aboard the ship Louis. He lived in Benicia and Vallejo and spent several years in Stockton. As well as the pursuit of gold, he was an avid botanist. Active in northern California until 1857, he then returned to his family in Caen where he was a tax collector for the city. Most of his watercolors and sketches are of flora and fauna in the Sierra and around the Stanislaus and Tuolumne Rivers. His name was given to a California flower called Rupalleya volubilis." [source]

'Splendide Californie - French Artists' Impressions of the Golden State, 1786-1900' at the California Historical Society (note the 'Image Gallery').

Empire Design

French architects Charles Percier (1764-1838) and Pierre François Léonard Fontaine (1762-1853) first met while attending the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the early 1780s. Their deep friendship and shared professional tastes were solidified during a subsequent three year sojourn at the French Academy in Rome, where they studied the design styles of classical antiquity.

Back in France they were appointed dual Set Directors for the Paris Opéra - close collaboration throughout their lives makes distinguishing individual contributions to their joint designs virtually impossible. During this period -- the mid-to-late-1790s -- the pair undertook private furniture and architectural design work which brought them to the attention of Josephine de Beauharnais, who engaged their services for the remodelling of the Château de Malmaison, near Paris. So, in turn, were Percier and Fontaine introduced to Josephine's husband, Napoleon, lately returned from a successful campaign in Egypt (introducing further stylistic elements to the pair's developing neoclassical design aesthetic) and busily endeavouring to install himself at the helm of the French government.

Napoleon hired Percier and Fontaine as his official architects and during the next fifteen years their design and redecoration assignments included the Louvre, Tuileries Palace, the Château de Saint-Cloud, palaces at Versailles, Strasbourg and Fountainebleau, the Rue de Rivoli and bridges across the Seine. Their most demonstrable legacy in architectural terms, is undoubtedly the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, in the forecourt of the Louvre, and modelled after the Roman Arch of Septimius Severus. The structure was built as a monument to Napoleon's victories and supports the notion that he sought a masculine and military design aesthetic which glorified his reign by association with ancient empires. As to the extent to which Napoleon hoped also to inspire a decorative movement in opposition to the rococo and baroque stylistic excesses favoured by the ousted Ancien Régime - that remains a matter for conjecture.

The interior designs of Percier and Fontaine were particularly influential -

"Their ideas were incorporated and propagated in their Recueil de Décorations Intérieures (1801 and 1812; “Collection of Interior Decoration”). The strong archaeological bias of the Empire style led to direct copying of classical types of furniture and accessories; to this was added a new repertory of Egyptian ornament, stimulated by Napoleon's campaigns in Egypt. Mahogany-veneered furniture with ormolu mounts assumed the shapes of Roman, Greek, and Egyptian chairs and tables with winged-lion supports and pilasters headed with sphinxes, busts, or palm leaves. Where no classical prototypes existed, contemporary designs were enlivened with ancient ornamental motifs, often with symbolic implications in reference to Napoleon's reign e.g., winged victory and the laurel wreath used as decorative symbols of triumph; bees, sheaves of grain, and cornucopias for prosperity; and fasces and sphinxes for conquest."

Building on the formal neoclassicism of the late eighteenth century and championed by Percier and Fontaine's successful pattern books, the Empire Style inspired local adaptations such as Greek and Egyptian revivals and the Regency, Biedermeier and late-Federal styles.

• The hand coloured 1801 version of 'Recueil de Décorations Intérieures' is available in three sections from the Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture at the University of Wisconsin (~eighteen plates in total).
• The expanded version of 'Recueil de Décorations Intérieures' from 1812, featuring all seventy two b&w plates is online at NYPL [the b&w image above] {amazingly, the site is not working properly right at the moment: the cache of the first thumbnail page allowed me to see the enlarged images}.
• The image below comes from the book of sketches made by Percier and Fontaine when they were in Rome: 'Palais, Maisons et Autres Édifices Modernes, Dessinés a Rome' was published in 1798 and is available from the Polish Digital Library.
• Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine at the glbtq culture site.
• The French Ministry of Culture Joconde site provides direct access to a fair number of original sketches by (or inspired by) both Percier and Fontaine.
• I'm not sure if Joconde have all the works from the Graphic Arts Department at the Louvre (search on 'percier et fontaine').
• Percier and Fontaine Collection at The Art Institute of Chicago (mostly just inventory, but the images at the top of the page are viewable)
• Empire Style 1800-1815 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• Empire Style: i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi, vii.
• Saint-Cloud; Malmaison: i, ii, iii; Arc de Triomphe de Carrousel [flickr]
• Just because I found it: 'Paris - Saint Petersbourg 1800-1830. When Russia spoke French'.