FRENCH ARMOIRE, LOUIS XIV PERIOD.
MUSEUM OF DECORATIVE ARTS, PARIS.
PLATE XXXIII.
X
THE DRAWING-ROOM, BOUDOIR, AND MORNING-ROOM
The "with-drawing-room" of mediæval England, to which the lady and her maidens retired from the boisterous festivities of the hall, seems at first to have been merely a part of the bedchamber in which the lord and lady slept. In time it came to be screened off from the sleeping-room; then, in the king's palaces, it became a separate room for the use of the queen and her damsels; and so, in due course, reached the nobleman's castle, and established itself as a permanent part of English house-planning.
In France the evolution of the salon seems to have proceeded on somewhat different lines. During the middle ages and the early Renaissance period, the more public part of the nobleman's life was enacted in the hall, or grand'salle, while the social and domestic side of existence was transferred to the bedroom. This was soon divided into two rooms, as in England. In France, however, both these rooms contained beds; the inner being the real sleeping-chamber, while in the outer room, which was used not only for administering justice and receiving visits of state, but for informal entertainments and the social side of family life, the bedstead represented the lord's lit de parade, traditionally associated with state ceremonial and feudal privileges.
SALA DELLA MADDALENA, ROYAL PALACE, GENOA.
XVIII CENTURY.
(ITALIAN DRAWING-ROOM IN ROCAILLE STYLE.)