Giltwood Carving

A retable fragment in shellwork and scrolls, with traces of inset mirrors — the rococo vocabulary that replaced, by the middle of the eighteenth century, the gravity of the twisted columns of the so-called national style.

The change is not merely one of ornament. Carving in the national style covered the whole chapel in solid gold, without pause; rococo opens it up, lets white and blue in between the scrolls, and trades weight for grace. The mirrors, of which fragments remain here, served to return the light of the candles to the interior of the church.