The Rococo--in the plastic arts--presupposes the Renaissance, and I
believe it has even been called the Renaissance gone crazy. One might
say more justly that when the Renaissance got intoxicated it became the
Rococo. And if the Rococo is the drunken debauch of the Renaissance then
the Pigtail would be the seediness which follows after it.
But I must rein in my steed to a quieter pace and give a more scholastic
definition.
In the Renaissance, antique forms were born again, at first within and
beside the medieval, finally replacing them entirely. But the new age of
the sixteenth century had new needs, new senses, new passions, which
the antique could satisfy no more fully than could the Gothic. When a
person is no longer an old Roman he cannot quite build and fashion like
the old Romans. For this reason the antique was pulled and stretched and
fitted on the new man as well as could be managed. It is, however, just
as hard to adapt forms of art as to alter coats which have been cut out
for some one else's body. Only a few of the greatest architects and
sculptors succeeded for a little while in reconciling the inner
contradiction between the new life and the old art. No period of art had
so short a flourishing period as the genuine Renaissance; when it came
into the world it bore the birthmark of mannerism on its forehead.
This mannerism in its fulness and maturity is the Rococo.
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