ARABESQUE

(French.) Painting and Sculpture, after the Arabian taste. This is a term applied to a species of ornament, capricious, fantastic, and imaginary, consisting of fruits, flowers, and other objects, to the exclusion, in pure Arabesques, of the figures of animals, which religion forbade. That the Arabians originated this sort of ornament is not the fact; it was known to and. practised by the ancients at a very early period. Foliage and griffins, with ornaments not very di imilar to those of the Arabians, were by no means unfrequent in the friezes of temples; and on many of the ancient Greek vases at Herculaneum, on the walls at the baths of Titus, at Pompeii, and many other places, elegant examples of this species of decoration are to be found. It is, however, to Raphael that we owe the most splendid specimens of the style, which he dignified, and left in it nothing to be desired. Since his time it has been practised with varying and inferior degrees of merit, especially by the French in the time of Louis XIV. Arabesuues lose their character when applied to large objects, neither are they appropriate where gravity of style is required. [s. 83]