The wonderful virtue of simplicity which the Greeks at their best fully valued, seems to have fled from France during the times of Louis XIV. and XV. This, in a degree, was restored by the purer and better tastes of the time of Louis XVI., when there was a reaction toward the classic in both literature and art.
In Fig. 136 we have engraved a vase of the time of Louis XVI., which indicates the improvements made at that time, both in form and decoration. It approaches the classic forms of Greece, and is a step away from that excessive and meretricious decoration which marked the times of Louis XIV. and XV. It was sold at the Bernal sale, and is thus described: “A magnificent centre vase and cover, gros bleu, with upright handles of foliage, a festoon of leaves, raised gilt, encircling the vase and falling over the handles, the lower part fluted with pendant lines of leaves; in the centre is a most exquisite painting of a peasant and two girls gathering cherries, a donkey with panniers filled with cherries at their side, a group of flowers on the reverse—on square plinth, eighteen inches high. Sold to the Marquis of Hertford for eight hundred and seventy-one pounds ten shillings sterling (four thousand three hundred and fifty-five dollars).
Fig. 136.—Sèvres Vase.
I have spoken of the many styles of painting applied at Sèvres, and also of the great carefulness and elaborateness of the modeling. Another skilled body of men was called upon to contribute toward the perfection at which they all aimed; these were the chemists. To devise, to combine, and to adapt many and more and more beautiful colors than any in use, which could be applied to porcelain and would stand supreme heat, required the aid of science. This the chemists gave; and the result has been such rich, such subtile, such brilliant colors as no other manufactory has reached. Some of these colors have become well and widely known under the following names:
Bleu de roi, made from cobalt; a deep lapis lazuli, sometimes veined and sown with gold. Gros bleu, a deeper color of the same.