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Arabesque style.
Term used, mainly in France, to describe painted ornament in the late 18th century incorporating grotesques, STRAPWORK and the foliate scrollwork inspired by the Moresque style. Contemporaries referred to the style, which was in evidence from 1775 and developed until the collapse of the ancien régime, as ‘goût étrusque’ (see ETRUSCAN STYLE) or ‘genre arabesque’, or sometimes used the double appellation ‘goût arabesque et étrusque’. It derives in part from surviving examples of the grotesque in Rome (see GROTESQUE and fig. 1) and is characterized by naturalistically shaped ornamental motifs, which pivot on a central axis to form a mirror image (see ARABESQUE and fig.). The principle of composition of the style lies in the curvilinear ACANTHUS scroll, symmetrically aligned on an axis and rolling up to form a spiral. Spirals are also found in the scroll friezes, in scroll motifs turning in on themselves to become spirals and in flutings. This naturalistic imagery is diametrically opposed to the heavy forms, sober abstract friezes and the severe and solemn pictorial inventions of early Classicism and the goût grec.
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