Rococo ( or ), less commonly roccoco, also referred to as " Late Baroque ", is an 18th-century artistic movement and style, which affected several aspects of the arts including painting, sculpture, architecture, interior design, decoration, literature, music and theatre.

The Galante Style was the equivalent of Rococo in music history, too, between Baroque and Classical, and it is not easy to define in words.

Boismortier and Rameau both lived during the Rococo era of Louis XV and upheld the French tradition, composing music of beauty and sophistication that was widely appreciated by the French musical public

A portmanteau of the words Baroque and Rococo, the term was originally used as a criticism of the characteristic ease with which the average listener could enjoy this style of music at the height of Baroque revival in the first half of the 20th century.

In the 18th century, Baroque Art was replaced by the more elegant and elaborate Rococo style.

The term Rococo was derived from the French word " rocaille ", which means pebbles and refers to the stones and shells used to decorate the interiors of caves.

Hence the Rococo style was highly dominated by the feminine taste and influence.

Francois Boucher was the 18th century painter and engraver whose works are regarded as the perfect expression of French taste in the Rococo period.

What was new was a refusal to credit the higher status of certain types, where the taxonomy implied a preference for tragedy and the sublime to comedy and the Rococo.

Renaissance architecture was keen to revive the classical vocabulary and styles, and the informed use and variation of the classical orders remained fundamental to the training of architects throughout Baroque, Rococo and Neo-classical architecture.

The style was used in bronze by Bernini for his spectacular St. Peter's baldachin, actually a ciborium ( which displaced Constantine's columns ), and thereafter became very popular with Baroque and Rococo church architects, above all in Latin America, where they were very often used, especially on a small scale, as they are easy to produce in wood by turning on a lathe ( hence also the style's popularity for spindles on furniture and stairs ).

Boucher was a Rococo painter, but tastes were changing, and the fashion for Rococo was giving way to a more classical style.

Jacopo Amigoni ( 1682 – 1752 ), also named Giacomo Amiconi, was an Italian painter of the late-Baroque or Rococo period, who began his career in Venice, but traveled and was prolific throughout Europe, where his sumptuous portraits were much in demand.

Rococo art and architecture in such a way was ornate and made strong usage of creamy, pastel-like colours, asymmetrical designs, curves and gold.

In the book The Rococo, it is written that there was no other culture which " has produced a wittier, more elegant, and teasing dialogue full of elusive and camouflaging language and gestures, refined feelings and subtle criticism " than Rococo theatre, especially that of France.

Towards the end of the 18th century, Rococo started to fall out of fashion, and it was largely supplanted by the Neoclassic style.

Owing to Rococo love of shell-like curves and focus on decorative arts, some critics used the term to derogatively imply that the style was frivolous or merely modish.

The Rococo style was spread by French artists and engraved publications.

In Great Britain, Rococo was always thought of as the " French taste " and was never widely adopted as an architectural style, although its influence was strongly felt in such areas as silverwork, porcelain, and silks, and Thomas Chippendale transformed British furniture design through his adaptation and refinement of the style.

In Germany, late 18th century Rococo was ridiculed as Zopf und Perücke (" pigtail and periwig "), and this phase is sometimes referred to as Zopfstil.

The Rococo additionally played an important role in theatre.

Rococo is a species of Baroque that is played on a 10x10 board for the purposes of captures, but on the inner 8x8 square just inside it for the purpose of movement.

Next to the market place is the Old Town Hall, built in 1737 in Rococo style, under the rule of Clemens August of Bavaria.

After the Rococo Hall at Grand Hotel opened in 1894, annual balls in the Carnival season were arranged until the hall was destroyed in a fire in 1957.

File: Bremgarten Schloss Rokokosaal. jpg | The Rococo Hall of Bremgarten Castle

Of the several buildings of Baroque, Rococo and Classicist style, there is one that catches everyone ’ s eyes: the Town Hall.

The interiors of the house were given delicate touches including Rococo ceiling plasterwork in the Entrance Hall, Morning Room and Velvet Drawing Room.

Its Great Hall ( Riddersalen ) featured woodcarvings ( boiserie ) by Louis August le Clerc, paintings by François Boucher and stucco by Giovanni Battista Fossati, and is acknowledged widely as perhaps the finest Danish Rococo interior.

The palace and its outbuildings contain some 360 rooms, all decorated in eclectic historic styles: Neo-Renaissance ( reception room, parlor ), Gothic Revival ( dining room ), Russian Revival ( Oak Hall ), Rococo ( White Hall ), Byzantine style ( study ), Louis XIV, various oriental styles, and so on.

The word Rococo is seen as a combination of the French rocaille, meaning stone, and coquilles, meaning shell, due to reliance on these objects as motifs of decoration.

The styles, despite both being richly decorated, also had different themes ; the Baroque, for instance, was more serious, placing an emphasis on religion, and was often characterized by Christian themes ( as a matter of fact, the Baroque began in Rome as a response to the Protestant Reformation ); Rococo architecture was an 18th-century, more secular, adaptation of the Baroque which was characterized by more light-hearted and jocular themes.

Rococo architecture also brought significant changes to the building of edifices, placing an emphasis on privacy rather than the grand public majesty of Baroque architecture, as well as improving the structure of buildings in order to create a more healthy environment.

Here, on the Kentian mantel, the crowd of Chinese vases and mandarins are satirically rendered as hideous little monstrosities, and the Rococo wall clock is a jumble of leafy branches.

Antoine Watteau, Embarkation for Cythera | Pilgrimage on the Isle of Cythera ( 1717, Louvre Museum | Louvre ) captures the frivolity and sensuousness of Rococo painting.

An interesting illustration of the hostility sometimes aroused by this style ( similar to that of early Modernists to High Victorian style ) can be found in the critical view of Rococo taken by the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, especially on the unsuitable nature of Rococo for ecclesiastical contexts.

Tchaikovsky ’ s contribution to the genre is a series of Variations on a Rococo Theme.

Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme for cello and orchestra have an important place in the instrument's repertoire.

François Boucher () ( 29 September 1703 – 30 May 1770 ) was a French painter, a proponent of Rococo taste, known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories representing the arts or pastoral occupations, intended as a sort of two-dimensional furniture.

This however, does not give anything more than an indication of Mozart's own personal taste, based on the fact that he was an educated late Rococo / Classical composer.

Some of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's works, such as his Variations on a Rococo Theme and Serenade for Strings, employ a poised " Classical " form reminiscent of 18th century composers such as Mozart ( the composer whose work was his favorite ).

His style of decoration, described by Pevsner as " Classical Rococo ", drew on Roman " grotesque " stucco decoration.

* 1993 Prokofiev: Sinfonia Concertante / Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme ( Sony 48382 )

Rococo architecture emphasizes grace, ornamentation and asymmetry ; Neoclassical architecture is based on the principles of simplicity and symmetry, which were seen as virtues of the arts of Rome and Ancient Greece, and were more immediately drawn from 16th century Renaissance Classicism.

* Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky-Variations on a Rococo Theme ( 1991 )

* Bergensiana, Rococo Variations on an Old Melody from Bergen " Jeg tog min nystemte Cithar i Hænde " ( I Took Up My Newly Tuned Zither ) ( 1913 )

The following concentrates on painting in pictures, but genre motifs were also extremely popular in many forms of the decorative arts, especially from the Rococo of the early 18th century onwards.