Speaking generally, two-thirds of the seventeenth century may be said to have been taken up in a laborious effort on the part of French artists to assimilate all the foreign decorative styles of the time, and to evolve from them a definitely national style, which won for Louis XIV. more truly than did any historical event, the honour of giving his name to the whole epoch.

During the reigns of Henri IV. and Louis XIII. it seemed as if the aesthetic feeling of the whole country was becoming ever more and more tainted by the influence of the foreign products that crossed the frontier, and that the effeminate mannerism of the Court of Henri III. had finally discouraged original effort on the part of French craftsmen. Italian work was in special favour, as was but natural, in view of the marriage of the new King to a Medici, who, of course, attracted her fellow countrymen to her Court; but Spanish artists were also thought highly of, and the Ambassador from Spain exercised a very powerful influence over the narrow-minded Queen, whilst under pretext of aiding the Catholics in the religious wars Spanish troops were poured into the country. Nor were Flanders, Germany - whence came the piece of furniture presented by the City of Paris in 1619 to Talon, the first Avocat-General of the Parlement - Portugal, or the Low Countries neglected. The last-named were themselves already imbued with Italian ideas, and, almost simultaneously with France, they had endeavoured to stamp them with their own individuality - but, it must be added, without the genius of a Du Cerceau or a Sambin to aid them.

In a word, France seemed in danger of drifting into a decadence of the worst type, no longer drawing her inspiration direct from Italy, but aimlessly vacillating between this style and that, becoming ever more and more anaemic and emasculated. Henri IV., a man of no little intelligence, could not fail to notice the discouragement under which the artists of his country laboured, and he set to work to find a remedy for it, hitting on one which seemed likely to hasten the final catastrophe, for he sent craftsmen to Holland to study the process of carving in ebony, and on their return installed them in the Grand Gallery of the Louvre, side by side with foreigners. This example was followed by his son, for the accounts of Louis XIII. reveal the fact that even in his palace the art of decoration was taught by masters - such as the German Hanemann, the Fleming Stabre, and the Swiss Pierre Boulle - of every nationality except Italian.

Plate XXV. CHAIR. Louis XIII. Cluny Museum.

Before proving that, in spite of this invasion of France by foreign styles, she did succeed in bringing about a new manifestation of her own individual genius, secretly, as it were, turning to account the superabundant models at her disposal by her recognition of their defects, it is necessary for us to define the characteristics of those styles and of those models.

We repeat that for more than a century and a half Italy had never ceased to exercise an influence upon her neighbour, and the accession of a second Medici had certainly not tended to weaken that influence. Moreover, in 1603 certain allies, even more important than the Queen herself and her Florentine Court, came to its support, for in that year the Jesuits, who had been expelled from France in 1595, were recalled. Their religious zeal led them to begin at once to build colleges and churches on every side, and they chose as director-general of these works the so-called "temporal coadjutor," Etienne Martellange, who had passed the time of the exile of the Congregation at Rome, where he had acquired a remarkable knowledge of the science of architecture, which made up to some extent for his want of imagination and very inferior taste. For thirty years he was engaged in raising up all over France pretentious structures, cold and correct, but uninteresting, in the pseudo-classic Roman style, inaugurating in building as in furniture the kind of thing too well known under the name of the Jesuit style.

Another incidental and less accidental reason for the persistence of Italianism in domestic furniture was the rage for cabinets which first set in during the reign of Henri III. Strictly speaking, a cabinet is nothing more than an ordinary chest placed upon a stand, opening, not, as at first, at the top, but with one or more folding-doors on one side, with drawers inside. It may really be called an armoire de luxe for keeping valuable articles, and for this reason the makers delighted in decorating it as lavishly as possible. There is no doubt that the cabinet is of Oriental origin, but it is difficult to decide whether it was first used in Europe, in Spain or in Venice. However that may be, it was Italian artists who chiefly excelled in the construction, and still more in the decoration, of cabinets, with the result that from the end of the sixteenth century the demand for those exported from the Peninsula became immense. Italian manufacturers used for them costly-exotic woods, which they inlaid with coloured marqueterie, ivory, shells, mother-of-pearl, etc, all enriched with jewellery. The new impulse given by such delicate decorative work to artisans and craftsmen will be recognised at once.

The use of bronze in the ornamentation of French furniture, of which so many examples exist, was without doubt suggested by the delightful combinations of gold and silver designed by cabinet-makers on the otherside of the Alps. The use of tortoise-shell plaques, in which the Boulles excelled, was also evidently suggested by the mosaics which Florentine artists began in the middle of the sixteenth century to work into their little cabinets and the tops of their tables. Strange to say, at the beginning of the century an incomprehensible and melancholy whim led Northern craftsmen to use ebony, originally a mere accessory of marqueterie, as the material for the whole of the cabinets made by them without anything to relieve it, and it was to study this kind of work that Henri IV. sent some carefully selected workmen to Holland, assigning to them quarters in the Louvre on their return, and dubbing them menuisiers en ebene, which is the origin of the name of "ebenistes," given to-day to makers of furniture of every kind. A great many Italian cabinets have been preserved in France, one of which in the Cluny Museum may be quoted as a typical example.