TOMASO COSTO (CA. 1545-probably 1613) was a Neapolitan literary scholar and author. He was involved with various elite literary and social circles in Naples-then the largest city in Italy-and published poems, historical works, essays and dialogues, biographies, letters, and other works. Il Fuggilozio (“The Cure for Indolence”) first appeared in Naples in 1596, and was republished numerous times in Venice, starting in 1600. At least sixteen editions appeared by 1700. The title defines the book as a tool to escape, or chase away, ozio, idle leisure that can have morally corrupting effects. The book offers to chase that away through entertainment that is both agreeable and wholesome, indeed morally improving.

Costo's Naples

Naples in the late sixteenth century was the capital of a kingdom that since 1503 had been held by the King of Spain (together with the island kingdoms of Sicily and Sardinia). The kingdom was the largest state in Italy, then divided into numerous principalities and republics, and Naples, with about 300,000 inhabitants around 1600, was by far the largest city in the peninsula (and one of the two or three largest in Christian Europe). The kingdom was not rich, and many of its provinces were indeed quite poor, dominated by traditional and, on the whole, unproductive agriculture. But the capital city was rich and lively. It housed the viceroy, almost always a Spanish aristocrat who governed in the king's name, and a substantial bureaucracy, with numerous administrative, financial, and judicial bodies staffed by a large professional class. Many of these bureaucrats, judges, and administrators were trained in the university founded in Naples in 1224, which was then, and would long remain, the only university in the Italian South. The city government, under the watchful eye of the viceroys, was run mainly by the city's old noble elite, with rich professional and mercantile families holding a secondary role within it. In addition to its old urban nobility, Naples also attracted rich aristocratic families from all over the Italian South, whose wealth came generally from large landed (and often feudal) estates in the kingdom's provinces, but most of whom, by the late sixteenth century, spent a substantial part of their time and money in the capital.

To the Readers

EVERYONE KNOWS HOW necessary it is to flee from harmful idleness, as long as one does it with honest and irreproachable means. Therefore, I am confident that the labour I set for myself will be most welcome to anyone who sees its result, and that my work will have the effect one can wish for from a pleasing and exemplary lesson.

I am well aware that there may be some who, moved by a hatred that-because of their accursed nature-is rooted in their hearts, will try to destroy my work with a thousand calumnies. To such, I say that I send it out with as much freedom as one does a victim to its sacrifice: just as those willing to regard it with humane and benign eyes will be able to enjoy it and draw from it some benefit, so those who wish to bite it with hateful teeth may devour it as they please. Perhaps it will be with them as with those rabid dogs who, crazed with fury, assault a man who is holding a sword, and seem, in their canine rage, almost to wish to swallow his sword, and in the end those miserable beasts find themselves mortally wounded and killed by that metal and by their own fury.

Leaving these people aside, as they are unworthy of being regarded as human, I say to my other readers that this is a condiment made with various things, namely, witticisms, clever sayings, and tales which, narrated by eight gentlemen and two ladies, brought about both in their tellers and their listeners that good effect which I, having decided to write them down and publish them, hope to bring about in my readers. They are further enriched by wise statements and proverbs, and by some beautiful examples drawn from history, whenever the tellers happened to relate them. I have taken special care to avoid mentioning any holy things, or religious figures, as those writers have irreverently done who believe that one cannot delight one's readers without also endangering them.

In a small oval gallery at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the beautifully lit vitrines draw the immediate attention of many of its visitors. As a consequence, they might fail to notice the gallery's ornate painted ceiling, which was designed in 1725 by Claude III Audran (1658–1734) and preserved from an eighteenth-century Paris mansion, the Hôtel de Verrue (Plate 1). A gilded frieze of singerie, playful monkey figures dressed and imitating human behavior, set against a blue background borders an interior field of arabesque designs. The ease with which the identification of this ceiling can be overlooked typifies the underappreciation of Audran's oeuvre despite a career spanning nearly forty years, from the 1690s until his death.

During this period, Claude III Audran played a critical, yet largely overlooked, role in the development of Rococo design to suit the elite tastes of the period. He created a new kind of ornamentation that updated the grotesque, a form of ancient Roman painted ornament featuring fantastic animals and decorative elements that was rediscovered in the Italian Renaissance. His designs tapped into topical motifs instead of the propagandistic themes of absolutism conveyed in design from Louis XIV's early decades. French decorative style changed from the severity of the Baroque to the light, whimsical aesthetic of the Rococo, and Audran's work in its entirety reflects this evolution of elite taste. Audran achieved artistic and enduring professional success due to his creation of arabesque ornament, which blended venerable motifs with those drawn from popular culture into a sort of generic hybridization.

In the last decade of the seventeenth century, when Claude III Audran had completed his training and sought to establish himself professionally, he chose the arabesque as his mode of ornamental expression. This choice may have been suggested by his mentor or derived from other influences, but the definitive reason for his selection remains unknown. Audran joined a long tradition advanced by French artists, namely the use of decorative motifs that originated from the ancient Roman grotesque. He became especially well known for the facility with which he revitalized the ornamental vocabulary by introducing into it elements from popular culture. To elucidate Audran's achievement, this chapter begins with a brief history of the grotesque when it reached France. Use of the decorative motif spread through trade, such as decorative metalwork or the print media. A seminal moment occurred when François I enticed artists from Italy to come and work at Fontainebleau.

The original term “grotesque” was applied to the painted decorations that covered the walls and ceilings of the Domus Aurea or “Golden House” (64–68 CE), a large villa built in ancient Rome for Emperor Nero (r. 54–68 CE). After the emperor's death, the house was filled in with earth, and, when excavated some 1,400 years later, in the late fifteenth century, its rooms were mistaken for underground chambers or grottoes.

1689—Château d’Anet, Anet, Louis-Joseph de Bourbon, duc de Vendôme.

1690–1694—Hôtel de Conti, Paris, Pavillon des bains, princesse de Conti.

1695–1698—Hôtel de Soissons, Paris, princesse de Carignan.

1696—Hôtel de Bouillon, Paris, duc and duchesse de Bouillon

1697—Hunting lodge, Clichy-la-Garenne, Philippe de Bourbon and Françoise Moreau

1699—Château de Meudon, Meudon, Louis of France, Grand Dauphin.

1690–1705–1710—Hôtel de Flesselles, Paris, Pierre Delisle-Mansart.

1702–1705—duchesse de Bourgogne and princesse douairière de Conti, Versailles, unspecified painting.

1703–1704—Completion of Coronelli globes, Marly, Louis XIV.

1704—Château de Sceaux, Sceaux, Louis-August de Bourbon, duc de Maine, and Anne- Louis-Bénédicte de Bourbon-Condé, duchesse du Maine.

1704—Appointed concierge of Luxembourg Palace, Paris.

1709—Château de Versailles, Versailles, ceiling of a small bed chamber, princesse de Conti.

1708–1709—Gobelins set of tapestries, Les douze mois grotesques, Château-Neuf, Meudon, Louis of France, Grand Dauphin.

1709–1712—Château de La Muette, Paris, Fleuriau d’Armenonville.

—Château de Versailles, Versailles, Ruckers and Couchet double clavichord.

1708—Hôtel de Nointel, Paris, Louis de Béchameil, marquis de Nointel.

1709—Château de Marly, Marly, Louis XIV, Berceau des singes.

1714—Château de Fontainbleau, Fontainebleau, antechamber ceiling.

1719—Hôtel Angran de Fonspertuis, Paris, Louis-Austin Angran de Fonspertius.

1720—Hôtel de Verrue, Paris, Jeanne-Baptiste d’Albert de Luynes, comtesse de Verrue.

1723—Hôtel de Peyrenc de Moras, Paris, Abraham Peyrenc de Moras.

1731—Château de Réveillon, Réveillon, Jules-Robert de Cotte.

1733—Château d’Anet, Anet, duc and duchesse du Maine.

Other potential Audran commissioned works

Ceiling of a cabinet for J.-B. Massé, place Dauphine, Paris, as noted in Roger-Armand Weigert, “Liste chronologique des travaux datés de Claude III Audran.” In Dessins du Nationalmuseum de Stockholm, collections Tessin and Cronstedt: Claude III Audran (1658-1734): dessins d’architecture et d’ornements, edited by Carl David Moselius, J. Vallery-Radot, and Roger-Armand Weigert. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1950, and Colin B. Bailey, “‘A Long Working Life, Considerable Research and Much Thought’: An Introduction to the Art and Career of Jean- Baptiste Oudry (1685–1755).”

The case studies presented in the previous chapters explain Audran's work within the cultural milieu of his times and describe how he succeeded in his career. From the last decades of Louis XIV's reign through the Régence and to the beginning of the reign of Louis XV, the aesthetics of Audran's commissions responded in each period to the demands and desires of his patrons. Previous scholarship has confirmed Jean Berain's influence on draftsmen such as Pierre Lepautre (1659–1744), who is best remembered for his chimney designs. Additionally, Lepautre inaugurated the use of C-scrolls, curves, and counter-curves in three-dimensional carved panel design. Audran's arabesques often employed curves and counter-curves that became ubiquitous elements of Rococo style. His commissions at Meudon and the Ménagerie at Versailles, among others, set a new standard for noble patrons, creating a ripple effect of influence benefitting other craftsmen, artists, and architects.

This chapter begins by presenting a number of works by Audran's contemporaries to note Audran's influence in their work. Included is one example of a fellow member of the Maîtrise and others by various craftsmen and architects. In the course of Audran's career, he chose artists to assist him, and examples of their subsequent work will be discussed. These artists include Alexandre-François Desportes, Jean- Antoine Watteau, Nicolas Lancret, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, and Jean-Baptiste Huet.

The artist Pierre-Paul Sevin (1650–1710), a Parisian guild master, painted the parliamentary room in the Palais de Justice at Trévoux in 1698. This project provides a sense of the design approach used by the Maîtrise craftsmen, which appears markedly different from Audran's manner. Accompanying further examples of interior design commissions completed by Audran's contemporaries are explanations of the nature of their design projects and their use of alternative media.

A red chalk drawing completed by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) dated 1709 may be the only known image of Claude III Audran. Although the identification of the sitter has been debated, Watteau worked as Audran's assistant for several years, and the drawing shows the subject devising the sort of arabesque design for which Audran was known. Watteau's sitter, seen in profile, sits on a cushioned stool, the luxuriousness of which, along with the sitter's formal attire—coat, breeches, and a periwig—would indicate the level of prestige Audran had attained by this date.

The small size of this drawing (7-15/16 by 5-5/16 inches) and the fact that there are no known portraits of Audran to which it might be compared correspond to the paucity of biographical information available on this artist. In 1906, Pierre Marcel, in his La peinture française au début du dix-huitième siècle, 1690–1721, noted the regrettable absence of details regarding Audran. Given these limitations, this chapter relates known facts drawn from previous scholarship and primary materials. From these sources, it is possible to piece together Audran's life and to begin to explain his career.

The biography begins with Audran's family background and training. The second part starts when Audran embarks on his independent career as a master craftsman in the 1690s, and the third section relates to Audran's later career following the reign of Louis XIV