Robe à la française

Although the silhouette of this dress is emphatically of the period, the rose motif represents an old form, the cabbage rose which, through Dutch breeders, had been propagated throughout Europe by 1600. Like much eighteenth-century design, the floral design equivocates between naturalism and stylization: the standard centifolia (rose de peintre) is naturalistic at bloom, stem, and leaves, but the surround is abstracted. Significantly, though, the bloom's sculpted shading suggests the weavers' proficiency with naturalism as well as with stylization.