Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)/Louis Quatorze

LOUIS QUATORZE (kä-tōrz′), the name given to a meretricious style of architecture and internal decoration which prevailed in France in the reign of Louis XIV. It was marked by a deterioration of taste, the natural laws of architecture being more and more neglected, and replaced by certain conventional rules for the application of the Roman columnar orders. The windows are larger, the rooms more lofty, than in the preceding period, and in everything there was a striving after pomp and sumptuousness. Gilt stucco work was largely used, the scroll and shell patterns being the characteristic features of ornamental decoration, the panels being formed by chains of scrolls, concave and convex alternately, but symmetry of arrangement was largely neglected.