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Fantastically French! Design and Architecture in 16th- to 18th-Century Prints
OPENS
March 05, 2022
CLOSES
August 14, 2022
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About the Exhibit
From arabesques to grotesques and from sphinxes to snails, French printmakers combined ancient decorative motifs with newly invented ones to create designs for everything from jewelry to architectural façades. Beginning in the mid-sixteenth century with ornamentation for the royal hunting lodge of Fontainebleau, through garden designs at the palace of Versailles, to patterns for eighteenth-century home furnishings, prints were important sites of invention and served as vehicles for the proliferation of decorative motifs across a variety of media. Drawing primarily from the Blanton’s extensive holdings of French prints, this exhibition invites visitors to look closely at exquisite details, marvel at fantastic forms, and take delight in ornate embellishments that celebrate the creativity of artistic imagination across three centuries.
Curated by Holly Borham, Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings and European Art, Blanton Museum of Art
Download our Fantastically French! coloring pages for a #MuseumFromHome activity!
Members get free admission.
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Audio Guide
#1 Introduction
#2 Vulcan Forging Cupid’s Wings
#3 Fontainebleau’s Frames
#4 Stefano della Bella
#5 Jean-Philippe Boulle
#6 Jean de Gourmont
#7 Jean-François Janinet
#8 Pierre Moreau
#9 The Pleasures of the Enchanted Isle
#10 Jean Honoré Fragonard
Image Gallery
Feature Image Credit
Copy after Pierre Milan and René Boyvin, The Nymph of Fontainebleau, after Rosso Fiorentino and Francesco Primaticcio, circa 1560, engraving, 12 3/16 x 19 ¾ in. Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Purchase through the generosity of the Still Water Foundation, 1990