Baroque art and architecture Article
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The Rococo style originated in Paris about 1700 and was soon adopted throughout France and later in other countries, principally Germany and Austria. Like the Baroque style, Rococo was used in the decorative arts, interior design, painting, architecture, and sculpture. It is often characterized as the final phase of the Baroque, but the style differs from its predecessor in its intimate scale, asymmetry, lightness, elegance, and exuberant use of curving natural forms in ornamentation. Rococo painting in France, for example, began with the graceful, gently melancholic paintings of Antoine Watteau, culminated in the playful and sensuous nudes of François Boucher, and ended with the freely painted genre scenes of Jean-Honoré Fragonard. French Rococo painting in general was characterized by easygoing, lighthearted treatments of mythological and courtship themes, the introduction of the family as subject, rich and delicate brushwork, a relatively light tonal key, and sensuous colouring.
