from ceiling but allows them to À ow together. The windows push toward
the ceiling; the structure is masked by the decoration. The salon is capped
by an airy dome looking more like a garden pergola that ¿ nally contains the
À owing interior.
Turning back to painting, we see works by Jean-Baptiste Greuze and Jean-
Honoré Fragonard. We see ¿ rst The Village Bride (1760–1761) by Jean-
Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805). This is a narrative painting that represents a
father giving his daughter and her dowry to a suitor, the serious young man
who has just received the bag of coins. Greuze presents this family drama
in a shallow stage space, arranging his ¿ gures in a frieze across the canvas.
He concentrates on the emotions of the players, and to modern eyes, they
frequently overact. Our next artist is Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806),
whose Denis Diderot (c. 1765) we see here. Diderot is holding the pages of
what was undoubtedly a volume of his Encyclopedia and has had his attention
momentarily distracted.Fragonard also painted The Swing (1766), depicting
an elegantly dressed woman on a swing! Note the spotlight effect—on her,
on the cupid statue, and on the young man in the bushes below. At right, an
older man in the shadows pulls the rope to propel the swing.
The Meeting, from the Progress of Love (1771–1773), was commissioned by
Mme. du Barry, who had succeeded Pompadour as Louis’ mistress. Together
with three other panels, it was intended as a decoration in a new dining
pavilion in the garden of her chateau at Louveciennes. Like The Swing,
this painting shows adults playing at love and has the passing charm that
accompanies the refusal to grow up. The scene is a little ambiguous.
In a detail of the lovers, we see that the girl seems to have heard something
but has mistaken the direction of the noise. While she looks toward her right,
with her left arm extended in alarm, a young man is coming over the low
wall. He seems to stop in mute admiration of the girl. Venus, with Cupid, in
the form of a statue, looks down to observe the scene. A large fan-like tree
rises behind the statue, its soft, billowing shape as unreal as the rest of this
amorous pursuit.
We associate the Rococo style with France, and the term is best applied
there. But the stylistic features, with national modi¿ cations, are found