The Louis XIII style or Louis Treize was a fashion in French art and architecture, especially affecting the visual and decorative arts. Its distinctness as a period in the history of French art has much to do with the regency under which Louis XIII began his reign (1610–1643). His mother and regent, Marie de’ Medici, imported mannerism from her homeland of Italy and the influence of Italian art was to be strongly felt for several decades.

Louis XIII-style painting was influenced from the north, through Flemish and Dutch Baroque, and from the south, through Italian mannerism and early Baroque. Schools developed around Caravaggio and Peter Paul Rubens. Among the French painters who blended Italian mannerism with a love of genre scenes were Georges de La Tour, Simon Vouet, and the Le Nain brothers. The influence of the painters on subsequent generations, however, was minimised by the rise of classicism under Nicolas Poussin and his followers.

Louis XIII architecture was equally influenced by Italian styles. The greatest French architect of the era, Salomon de Brosse, designed the Palais du Luxembourg for Marie de’ Medici. De Brosse began a tradition of classicism in architecture that was continued by Jacques Lemercier, who completed the Palais and whose own most famous work of the Louis XIII period is the chapel of the Sorbonne (1635). Under the next generation of architects, French Baroque would take an even greater classical shift.

Main features
Many foreign influences (Flemish, Italian or Spanish)
Straight lines
Using several types of shootings:
Turning Tors : Helical Turning
Rosary turning: succession of ovoid masses
Baluster turning: pear shape
Drum spinning: circular bosses
Filming in Salomonic : spirals
trim
Sandpile
Cake tips
Diamond spikes
Persistence of the spacer in H
The seats keep a cross of the facade reminiscent of seats with non-openwork of the Renaissance ( sgabello )

Ornamentation
guilloche
Oves
Pedestals and cornices
Rinceaux of acanthus leaves
Torso columns
Diamond spikes

Fine Arts and Crafts
French painting at the time of Louis XIII. For a long time, the focus was very much on Italian and Flemish models. Only with artists such as Georges de la Tour or the brothers Le Nain developed a French style, which was particularly noticeable in genre scenes and was in the tradition of Caravaggio. In sculpture , Jacques Sarazin and Jean Warin were leading, however, these two artists produced no really outstanding works.

For the time being, the Huguenot wars in France were ended and the land was pacified by the Edict of Nantes . The king and his court now spent much time in their own residences, rather than in army camps . This resulted in a growing demand for comfortable and at the same time luxurious wooden furniture, which was mainly made of oak and fir. The carpentry experienced a strong upswing, because even everyday furniture such as chairs and tables have now been decorated and made in numerous variants. Despite carved or turned ornaments, the furniture was still built very bulky, because stability was still in the foreground, which is why the style Louis-treize by Renate Dolz as “stark splendor” is characterized. Popular motifs in the carving were cherub heads , ornate festoons , cartouches , garlands of fruits or flowers, and grotesques and acanthus ornaments . Smooth surfaces were often made by inlaid work of precious materials such as marble or ebony , with the veneer made of ebony by Maria de ‘Medici come into vogue . Distinctive features of Louis-Treize furniture are curved supports in twisted or balustered forms, especially on legs or cross braces. Two main types of seating furniture can be distinguished: the chair with a high back area and the chair with armrests and a low back area. Often they were equipped with fabric or leather upholstered and upholstered seat and back surfaces.

The time of Louis XIII. and the associated peace phase also brought with it the introduction of new comfortable pieces of furniture that had not previously been commonplace. These include the many drawers equipped cabinet cabinets for storing precious objects and precious as well as magnificent beds with canopies from valuable fabrics. Louis XIII. He often completed his official receptions in a magnificent bed, and at that time the taburets , small seating set up next to the bed, became fashionable.

Architecture
Probably the most productive artistic area during the time of Louis XIII. was the architecture, which – like all other art areas as well – was strongly influenced by the Italian Renaissance. A hallmark of the architectural style of the time was the tri-color of the buildings. Red brick masonry was interrupted by Eckschaderungen and window and door frames made of light Haustein , a technique that is called in French Brique-et-Pierre . However, it was already common under the French king Henry IV. And lived in the Louis-style treks just further. The buildings constructed in this technique usually had a high roof covered with black shingles, which contributed to the third color. Examples of this technique are the houses around the Paris Place des Vosges , the first stage of the Versailles Palace and the Balleroy Castle designed by François Mansart . Even in designs by Jacques Lemercier was still the Italian influence felt. His designs were commissioned by Cardinal Richelieu, for example, in 1635 begun and finished in 1642 the Sorbonne church.

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On the other hand, the purely classical building of Gastons d’Orléans at Blois Castle already announced the stricter neoclassical style. The most famous architect of the Louis-Treize style was Salomon de Brosse , who designed both the Palais de Justice in Rennes and the Palais du Luxembourg for Maria de ‘Medici. His designed façade of the Saint-Gervais church in Paris is one of the earliest examples of classical architecture, as is the Mansart-designed church of the Val-de-Grâce Abbey .

However, they also embrace the quest for unity and grandeur that the Renaissance favored as a “return to the antique”. They seek simplicity of lines; the ancient repertoire (columns, curved pediments) is more monumental, like the castle (destroyed) of Richelieu , the king building only very little … if not the first Versailles . Indeed, the reign of Louis XIII is characterized by countless wars financed by the taxes of the French, and being aware of the trouble they had to finance all military campaigns, the King refused to also impose the cost of buildings for he loved his people and saw himself particularly affected when he suffered.

The Place des Vosges in Paris is emblematic of this double trend, at once charming and picturesque, and strictly regular, almost without ornamentation. Inaugurated by the young Louis XIII , it had however been ordered by his father Henri IV .

Furniture

Common furniture
Armchairs and chairs with arms : the armchair keeps its low back as in the Renaissance. The backrest no longer protrudes the head of the occupant and the amounts are slightly inclined. It becomes more comfortable thanks to the appearance of reed trim (called rattan ) and also the birth of the balls of horsehair (which hardly exceeds 3 cm ) covered with fabric, tapestries or leather, usually leather Cordoba .
The base is usually turned wood, rosary or spiral column (so-called salomonic ) , all reinforced by a spacer in H. We also see the appearance of the console and the baluster on these legs.

Office tables
Stools
The bench and the chest remain, with the stools, the major furniture in most lodgings of this time. It is in the form of a simple bench, curvaceous bench, arch bench, chest bench or trunk often covered with black leather .
New furniture
Cabinets : it appears at this time and has a pronounced relief decoration often diamond tip.
Cabinet : furniture whose entire front has drawers, sometimes including a base with twisted columns. The most precious are ebony veneers. It is mainly used to preserve precious objects.

Materials
Native wood ( walnut , beech ) for frames and for seats
Exotic wood (mainly ebony ) for decoration

Techniques and tools
Veneer technique
This technique consists of covering non-precious native wood frames with thicknesses of about 10 to 12 millimeters of exotic wood in order to carve bas-reliefs . Appearance of the so – called cabinetmaking technique in the manufacture of furniture.

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