Thursday, February 09, 2006
Gloomy last years of Louis XIV
-military defeat
-finds religion
-death of son and grandsons
-dies in 1715
-Louis XV is only five years old
-Philippe II, Duke of Orleans becomes Regent
Phillippe II of Orleans
-eccentric, licentious, and innovative
-Son of Philippe I, brother of Louis XIV, and German Princess, Elizabeth-Charlotte or Liselotte
A break with the past:
-Relaxed and pleasure-loving
-Baroque to Rococo
-Public to Private
-Economic shifts
Paris building boom
-Philippe II lived at the Palais-Royale; other aristocrats moved into town too
Renewed position of aristocrats in the government
-Polysynodie
Foreign Policy
-Triple Alliance (France, England, Dutch Republic)
Financial Experiment:
-John Law: State Bank, expansion of credit, overseas trading company
-Disaster of the "Mississippi Bubble"
Cultural change:
-Legalization of the Italian Comedy
Antoine Watteau (1684-1721)
-Flemish
-Nature and Humanity
-Went to Paris
-did decorative arts, including chinoiseries and singeries
-suffered from tuberculosis
-Patrons: family Crozat
-Italian Opera
-Gilles
-Embarkation from Cythera (1717)
-The Faux-Pas
-L'Enseigne de Gersaint (1721)
