Diverse ornamenten 1820

This lithograph of various ornaments was designed by Cécile Beauvallet. It is difficult to date, as its metadata has not been made available to us, but the chair with lion head armrests and the neoclassical urns point towards the late 18th or early 19th century. This was a time when Europe's elites were re-discovering the art of classical antiquity. Looking at the print, we can see how such motifs were applied to furniture. The inclusion of this image in a book also suggests the rise of new institutions that archived and displayed such designs, allowing them to be copied, remixed, and re-applied by artists and artisans across Europe. This print embodies the stylistic and cultural shifts of its time. Studying this artwork, we might ask: Who was Beauvallet and how did she learn to draw? What archives and museums did she visit? What social forces shaped her aesthetic outlook? To answer such questions, historians examine a wide variety of written sources, from personal letters to institutional records.