History
Antiquity
Cartouches are found on buildings, funerary steles and sarcophagi. The cartouche is generally rectangular, delimited by a molding or one or more incised lines, with two symmetrical trapezoids on the lateral edges.
Roman rectangular cartouche on the
frieze of the entrance of
Horrea Epagathiana et Epaphroditiana,
Ostia, Rome, unknown architect, 145-150 AD
[2] Roman rectangular cartouche on a sarcophagus, 3rd century, marble,
Adana Archaeology Museum,
Adana, Turkey
Roman cartouche on the pedestal of the
Obelisk of Theodosius,
Hippodrome of Constantinople,
Istanbul,
Turkey, unknown architect or sculptor, 390
[3] Roman cartouche on the right leaf of the
Symmachi–Nicomachi diptych,
c.400, ivory,
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
[4]
From the Renaissance to Art Deco
The Renaissance brought back elements of Greco-Roman culture, including ornaments like the cartouche. Compared to their ancient ancestors, the ones from the Renaissance are usually much more complex. Cartouches continue to be used in styles that succeed the Renaissance. Most have the usual look of a symmetrical oval with scrolls developed during the Renaissance and Baroque periods, but some are highly stylized, showing the diversity of styles popular over time. They were used constantly, and were one of the main motifs of Rococo and Beaux Arts architecture.
Their use started to fade in Art Deco, a style created as a collective effort of multiple French designers to make a new modern style around 1910. This is because artists of this movement tried to create new ornaments for their time, most often stylizing motifs used before, or coming up with completely new ones. Art Deco also followed the principle of simplicity, another reason for the rarity of complex ornaments like cartouches or mascarons in Art Deco.
Postmodernism and Retro resuses
At the end of the WW2, with the rise in popularity of the International Style, characterized by the complete lack of any ornamentation, led to the complete abandonment of any ornaments, including cartouches.
They reappear later in some Postmodernism, a movement that questioned Modernism (the status quo after WW2), and which promoted the inclusion of elements of historic styles in new designs. An early text questioning Modernism was by architect Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966), in which he recommended a revival of the 'presence of the past' in architectural design. He tried to include in his own buildings qualities that he described as 'inclusion, inconsistency, compromise, accommodation, adaptation, superadjacency, equivalence, multiple focus, juxtaposition, or good and bad space.' [24] Venturi encouraged 'quotation', which means reusing elements of the past in new designs. Part manifesto, part architectural scrapbook accumulated over the previous decade, the book represented the vision for a new generation of architects and designers who had grown up with Modernism but who felt increasingly constrained by its perceived rigidities. Multiple Postmodern architects and designers put simplified reinterpretations of the elements found in Classical decoration on their creations. However, they were in most cases highly simplified, and more reinterpretations than true reuses of the elements intended. Because of their complexity, cartouches were extremely rarely used in Postmodern architecture and design.
Cartouches enjoyed more popularity in Retro style of the 21st century, through designs inspired mainly by the 18th and 19th centuries.
In European architectural sculpture, an atlas is a support sculpted in the form of a man, which may take the place of a column, a pier or a pilaster. The Roman term for such a sculptural support is telamon.
The Ionic order is one of the three canonic orders of classical architecture, the other two being the Doric and the Corinthian. There are two lesser orders: the Tuscan, and the rich variant of Corinthian called the composite order. Of the three classical canonic orders, the Corinthian order has the narrowest columns, followed by the Ionic order, with the Doric order having the widest columns.
In classical antiquity, the cornucopia, from Latin cornu (horn) and copia (abundance), also called the horn of plenty, was a symbol of abundance and nourishment, commonly a large horn-shaped container overflowing with produce, flowers, or nuts.
A volute is a spiral, scroll-like ornament that forms the basis of the Ionic order, found in the capital of the Ionic column. It was later incorporated into Corinthian order and Composite column capitals. Four are normally to be found on an Ionic capital, eight on Composite capitals and smaller versions on the Corinthian capital.
Pediments are a form of gable in classical architecture, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the cornice, or entablature if supported by columns. In ancient architecture, a wide and low triangular pediment typically formed the top element of the portico of a Greek temple, a style continued in Roman temples. But large pediments were rare on other types of building before Renaissance architecture. For symmetric designs, it provides a center point and is often used to add grandness to entrances.
Neoclassicism, also spelled Neo-classicism, emerged as a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassicism was born in Rome, largely due to the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann during the rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Its popularity expanded throughout Europe as a generation of European art students finished their Grand Tour and returned from Italy to their home countries with newly rediscovered Greco-Roman ideals. The main Neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, eventually competing with Romanticism. In architecture, the style endured throughout the 19th, 20th, and into the 21st century.
A caryatid is a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head. The Greek term karyatides literally means "maidens of Karyai", an ancient town on the Peloponnese. Karyai had a temple dedicated to the goddess Artemis in her aspect of Artemis Karyatis: "As Karyatis she rejoiced in the dances of the nut-tree village of Karyai, those Karyatides, who in their ecstatic round-dance carried on their heads baskets of live reeds, as if they were dancing plants".
An acroterion, acroterium, is an architectural ornament placed on a flat pedestal called the acroter or plinth, and mounted at the apex or corner of the pediment of a building in the classical style. An acroterion placed at the outer angles of the pediment is an acroterion angularium.
Polychrome is the "practice of decorating architectural elements, sculpture, etc., in a variety of colors." The term is used to refer to certain styles of architecture, pottery, or sculpture in multiple colors.
Bucranium was a form of carved decoration commonly used in Classical architecture. The name is generally considered to originate with the practice of displaying garlanded, sacrificial oxen, whose heads were displayed on the walls of temples, a practice dating back to the sophisticated Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in eastern Anatolia, where cattle skulls were overlaid with white plaster.
A festoon is a wreath or garland hanging from two points, and in architecture typically a carved ornament depicting conventional arrangement of flowers, foliage or fruit bound together and suspended by ribbons. The motif is sometimes known as a swag when depicting fabric or linen.
The Composite order is a mixed order, combining the volutes of the Ionic order capital with the acanthus leaves of the Corinthian order. In many versions the composite order volutes are larger, however, and there is generally some ornament placed centrally between the volutes. The column of the composite order is typically ten diameters high, though as with all the orders these details may be adjusted by the architect for particular buildings. The Composite order is essentially treated as Corinthian except for the capital, with no consistent differences to that above or below the capital.
A putto is a figure in a work of art depicted as a chubby male child, usually naked and very often winged. Originally limited to profane passions in symbolism, the putto came to represent a sort of baby angel in religious art, often called a cherub, though in traditional Christian theology a cherub is actually one of the most senior types of angel.
The acanthus is one of the most common plant forms to make foliage ornament and decoration in the architectural tradition emanating from Greece and Rome.
Egg-and-dart, also known as egg-and-tongue, egg-and-anchor, or egg-and-star, is an ornamental device adorning the fundamental quarter-round, convex ovolo profile of moulding, consisting of alternating details on the face of the ovolo—typically an egg-shaped object alternating with a V-shaped element. The device is carved or otherwise fashioned into ovolos composed of wood, stone, plaster, or other materials.
Romanian architecture is very diverse, including medieval, pre-World War I, interwar, postwar, and contemporary 21st century architecture. In Romania, there are also regional differences with regard to architectural styles. Architecture, as the rest of the arts, was highly influenced by the socio-economic context and by the historical situation. For example, during the reign of King Carol I (1866–1914), Romania was in a continuous state of reorganization and modernization. In consequence, most of the architecture was designed by architects trained in Western European academies, particularly the École des Beaux-Arts, and a big part of the downtowns of the Romanian Old Kingdom were built during this period.
In architecture and the decorative arts, a mascaron ornament is a face, usually human, sometimes frightening or chimeric, whose alleged function was originally to frighten away evil spirits so that they would not enter the building. The concept was subsequently adapted to become a purely decorative element. The most recent architectural styles to extensively employ mascarons were Beaux Arts and Art Nouveau. In addition to architecture, mascarons are used in the other applied arts.
In architecture and the decorative arts, a rinceau is a decorative form consisting of a continuous wavy stemlike motif from which smaller leafy stems or groups of leaves branch out at more or less regular intervals. The English term scroll is more often used in English, especially when the pattern is regular, repeating along a narrow zone. In English "rinceau" tends to be used where the design spreads across a wider zone, in a similar style to an Islamic arabesque pattern.
A medallion is a round or oval ornament that frames a sculptural or pictorial decoration in any context, but typically a façade, an interior, a monument, or a piece of furniture or equipment.
Romanian Revival architecture is an architectural style that has appeared in the late 19th century in Romanian Art Nouveau, initially being the result of the attempts of finding a specific Romanian architectural style. The attempts are mainly due to the architects Ion Mincu (1852–1912), and Ion N. Socolescu (1856–1924). The peak of the style was the interwar period. The style was a national reaction after the domination of French-inspired Classicist Eclecticism. Apart from foreign influences, the contribution of Romanian architects, who reinvented the tradition, creating, at the same time, an original style, is manifesting more and more strongly. Ion Mincu and his successors, Grigore Cerchez, Cristofi Cerchez, Petre Antonescu, or Nicolae Ghica-Budești declared themselves for a modern architecture, with Romanian specific, based on theses such as those formulated by Alexandru Odobescu around 1870:
"Study the remains – no matter how small – of the artistic production of the past and make them the source of a great art (...) do not miss any opportunity to use the artistic elements presented by the Romanian monuments left over from old times; but transform them, change them, develop them ..."
