Decorative Games: Ornament, Rhetoric, and Noble Culture in the Work of Gilles-Marie Oppenord (1672-1742)

This book features an extraordinary album of ornament designs by the French architect Gilles-Marie Oppenord (1672 1742). For the first time, this publication reproduces in their initial state the embellishments Oppenord drew over the first French edition of Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia. In lieu of a haphazard succession of sketches, it reveals Oppenord’s fascinating interplay between text, engraved and drawn images, one patterned on the art of conversation and the linguistic games cultivated in elite Parisian circles.