ARABESQUE

(French.) Painting and Sculpture, after the Arabian taste. This is a term applied to a species of ornament, capricious, fantastic, and imaginary, consisting [ii fruits, flowers, and other objects, to the exclusion, in besques, of Hie figures of animals, which religion lot bade. That the Arabians originated this sort of ornamonl is not the fact; it was known to and practised by the 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, 07i the walls at the baths of Titus, at Pompeii, and many es, elegant examples of this species of decoration arc 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 specially by the French in the time of Louis XIV. Arabesques lose their character when applied to large obisher are they appropriate where gravity of style is required. [s. 84]