Last updated Mosaic border of rinceaux and animals, from the Via Panisperna in Rome, late 2nd - early 1st century BC
In architecture and the decorative arts, a rinceau (plural rinceaux; from the French, derived from old French rain 'branch with foliage') 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 Islamicarabesque pattern.
The use of rinceaux is frequent in the friezes of Roman buildings, where it is generally found in a frieze, the middle element of an entablature, just below the cornice. It is also decorated in the jamb ornaments and capitals of Romanesque structures and in friezes and panels of buildings in the various Renaissance styles, where tiny animals or human heads also appear.[1]
The rinceau experienced a return to the simpler Classic style in the 17th century, and in the subsequent century it was applied more freely, without a strict repetition of identical forms.[2]
Gallery
Ancient Greek rinceau on a mosaic of a stag hunt, Pella, Greece, unknown architect or craftsman, 4th century BC
Romanesque rinceaux on a casket of courtly love, both on the lid and on the rest, c.1180, champlevé enamel om gilded copper, British Museum, London[12]
Gothic rinceaux on a page of the Codex Salemitanus IX c, 15th century, tempera colors, gold paint, gold leaf, and ink on parchment, Heidelberg University Library, Heidelberg, Germany
Baroque rinceaux on a commode, by André-Charles Boulle, c.1710–1720, walnut veneered with ebony, marquetry of engraved brass and tortoiseshell, and gilt-bronze mounts, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Rococo rinceaux in the Bibliothèque du Dauphin du Château de Versailles, Palace of Versailles, Versailles, France, unknown architect, early or mid-18th century
Mughal and European-influenced rinceaux of the Peacock Gate of the City Palace, Jaipur, India, unknown architect or painter, 1729-1732[17]
Baroque Revival rinceaux with putti on a ceiling in the apartments of the minister of state, currently known as the Napoleon III Apartments, Louvre Palace, unknown architect or sculptor, c.1860
Art Nouveau rinceaux on the of Lavirotte Building (Avenue Rapp no. 29), Paris, designed by Jules Lavirotte and decorated with sculpture and ceramic tiles made by Alexandre Bigot, 1901
Highly stylized Vienna Secession rinceaux on a poster called Nocturnal Conversation, by Moriz Jung, 1907, colour lithograph, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Beaux Arts fresco with cartouches and foliage spirals on the upper part of the facade of Strada Occidentului no. 11, Bucharest, painter: C. Cora, architect: Cesare Fantoli, 1910[21]
Neo-Louis XVI style panel with rinceaux and an urn in the Nicolae T. Filitti/Nae Filitis House (Calea Dorobanților no. 18), Bucharest, by Ernest Doneaud, c.1910[22]
Romanian Revival rinceau in the Gheorghe Petrașcu House (Piața Romană no. 5), Bucharest, by Spiru Cegăneanu, 1912[23]
Postmodern Baroque Revival rinceaux on a box, part of the Le Jardin de Versace collection, designed by Versace and produced by Rosenthal; c.2015, porcelain, unknown location
Notes
↑ Cf. J. Ward, Historic Ornament: Treatise on Decorative Art and Architectural Ornament, BiblioBazaar (2009), s.v. Rinceau.
↑ Cf. A. Speltz, The History of Ornament: Design in the Decorative Arts, Portland (1989), s.v.
↑ Oprea, Petre (1986). Itinerar Inedit prin Case Vechi din București (in Romanian). Editura Sport-Turism. p.59.
↑ Marinache, Oana (2015). Ernest Donaud - visul liniei (in Romanian). Editura Istoria Artei. p.79. ISBN978-606-94042-8-7.
↑ Mariana Celac, Octavian Carabela and Marius Marcu-Lapadat (2017). Bucharest Architecture - an annotated guide. Ordinul Arhitecților din România. p.80. ISBN978-973-0-23884-6.
Home Economics Archive: Tradition, Research, History (HEARTH) An e-book collection of over 1,000 books on home economics spanning 1850 to 1950, created by Cornell University's Mann Library. Includes several hundred e-books on decorative art and design, particularly that created within the home.
The Baroque is a Western style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from the early 17th century until the 1750s. It followed Renaissance art and Mannerism and preceded the Rococo and Neoclassical styles. It was encouraged by the Catholic Church as a means to counter the simplicity and austerity of Protestant architecture, art, and music, though Lutheran Baroque art developed in parts of Europe as well.
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.
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 meander or meandros is a decorative border constructed from a continuous line, shaped into a repeated motif. Among some Italians, these patterns are known as "Greek Lines". Such a design may also be called the Greek fret or Greek key design, although these terms are modern designations even though the decorative motif appears thousands of years before that culture, thousands of miles away from Greece, and among cultures that are continents away from it. Usually the term is used for motifs with straight lines and right angles and the many versions with rounded shapes are called running scrolls or, following the etymological origin of the term, may be identified as water wave motifs.
A monogram is a motif made by overlapping or combining two or more letters or other graphemes to form one symbol. Monograms are often made by combining the initials of an individual or a company, used as recognizable symbols or logos. A series of uncombined initials is properly referred to as a cypher and is not a monogram.
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.
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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.
The scroll in art is an element of ornament and graphic design featuring spirals and rolling incomplete circle motifs, some of which resemble the edge-on view of a book or document in scroll form, though many types are plant-scrolls, which loosely represent plant forms such as vines, with leaves or flowers attached. Scrollwork is a term for some forms of decoration dominated by spiralling scrolls, today used in popular language for two-dimensional decorative flourishes and arabesques of all kinds, especially those with circular or spiralling shapes.
The history of architecture traces the changes in architecture through various traditions, regions, overarching stylistic trends, and dates. The beginnings of all these traditions is thought to be humans satisfying the very basic need of shelter and protection. The term "architecture" generally refers to buildings, but in its essence is much broader, including fields we now consider specialized forms of practice, such as urbanism, civil engineering, naval, military, and landscape architecture.
A rosette is a round, stylized flower design.
A cartouche is an oval or oblong design with a slightly convex surface, typically edged with ornamental scrollwork. It is used to hold a painted or low-relief design. Since the early 16th century, the cartouche is a scrolling frame device, derived originally from Italian cartuccia. Such cartouches are characteristically stretched, pierced and scrolling.
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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.
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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 ..."
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