Cartouche (design)

Cartouche on a Neo-Baroque house from Bucharest, Romania

A cartouche (also cartouch) is an oval or oblong design with a slightly convex surface, typically edged with ornamental scrollwork. It is used to hold a painted or low-relief design.^[1] Since the early 16th century, the cartouche is a scrolling frame device, derived originally from Italian cartuccia. Such cartouches are characteristically stretched, pierced and scrolling.

Another cartouche figures prominently in the 16th-century title page of Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, framing a minor vignette with a pierced and scrolling papery cartouche.

The engraved trade card of the London clockmaker Percy Webster shows a vignette of the shop in a scrolling cartouche frame of Rococo design that is composed entirely of scrolling devices.

Gallery[]

Roman rectangular cartouche on the frieze of the entrance of Horrea Epagathiana et Epaphroditiana, Ostia, Rome, 145-150 AD^[2]
Roman rectangular cartouche on the base of the Obelisk of Theodosius, Istanbul, Turkey
Brâncovenesc cartouche on a damaged stone in the courtyard of Antim Monastery, Bucharest, Romania
Two Renaissance cartouches, a big one with Alexander the Great and a smaller one with an inscription, 1574-1637, the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Renaissance cartouche, 1601, Rijksmuseum
Baroque cartouche, with festoons, cornucopias and mascaron, 1645, the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Baroque cartouche, mostly gilded, on the , Bruxelles, Belgium
Design of a Baroque cartouche, by Stefano della Bella, 1647, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio
Etching of a complex Baroque cartouche, by Bernard Turreau, 1716, the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Baroque Frontispiece for Figures françoises et comiques by Robert Hecquet, 18th century, the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Rococo cartouche from the Second Livre de Cartouches, circa 1710-1772, Rijksmuseum
Rococo cartouche with a mascaron in it, on the facade of house no. 404 on Rue Saint-Honoré (Paris)
Louis XVI style cartouche with festoons, based on a Greco-Roman came, circa 1770, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Renaissance Revival cartouche on Rue des Archives in Paris
Rococo Revival stucco with cartouches in the corners, on a ceiling of the Cantacuzino Palace, Bucharest
Romanian Revival cartouche above a window of house no. 60 on Bulevardul Dacia, Bucharest
19th century Eclectic Classicist cartouche with a mascaron, above the entrance door of the Académie d'Agriculture de France in Paris
19th century Eclectic Classicist cartouche with a caduceus, on the roof of the Crédit Lyonnais headquarters, Paris
19th century Eclectic Classicist rectangular cartouche of the Printemps Haussmann, Paris
19th century Eclectic Classicist cartouches in and under a pediment of Hala Traian, Bucharest. The rectangular one is a revival of Ancient Roman ones, that had the exact same shape
Beaux-Arts cartouche of the Pont Alexandre III, Paris
Three designs of Art Nouveau cartouches
Complex Art Deco cartouche in the New York State Museum, Albany, New York
Stalinist cartouche of the Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw, Poland

Footnotes[]

^ Ching, Francis D. K. (1995). A Visual Dictionary of Architecture. New York: John Wiley and Sons. p. 183. ISBN 0-471-28451-3.
^ Fullerton, Mark D. (2020). Art & Archaeology of The Roman World. Thames & Hudson. p. 87. ISBN 978-0-500-051931.

External links[]

[1] Ching, Francis D. K. (1995). A Visual Dictionary of Architecture. New York: John Wiley and Sons. p. 183. ISBN 0-471-28451-3.

[2] Fullerton, Mark D. (2020). Art & Archaeology of The Roman World. Thames & Hudson. p. 87. ISBN 978-0-500-051931.

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Cartouche (design)

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