Cartouche (design)
A cartouche (also cartouch) is an oval or oblong design with a slightly convex surface, typically edged with ornamental scrollwork. It is used to hold a painted or low-relief design.[1] Since the early 16th century, the cartouche is a scrolling frame device, derived originally from Italian cartuccia. Such cartouches are characteristically stretched, pierced and scrolling.
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Another cartouche figures prominently in the 16th-century title page of Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, framing a minor vignette with a pierced and scrolling papery cartouche.
The engraved trade card of the London clockmaker Percy Webster shows a vignette of the shop in a scrolling cartouche frame of Rococo design that is composed entirely of scrolling devices.
Gallery

Lion cartouche Stefano della Bella, 1646, the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Duck cartouche by Stefano della Bella, 1647, the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Design of a cartouche, by Stefano della Bella, 1647, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio
Etching of a complex cartouche, by Bernard Turreau, 1716, the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Frontispiece for Figures françoises et comiques by Robert Hecquet, 18th century, the Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Forges of Vulcan, probably by François Boucher, mid-18th century, the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Cartouche decorated with horns of plenty, an architectural ornament of the Louvre._There_is_written_MDCCCXCVI_(1896).jpg.webp)
Cartouche with a monogram of ZNS, with Neo-Renaissance ornaments, in a Venetian window-like relief, on a house, Bucharest
Neo-Renaissance ornaments above a door: in the center a cartouche, in the D.A. Sturdza House (Cărturești Verona), Bucharest
Cartouche surrounded by floral festoons, Bucharest
Neo-Baroque cartouche-window with a male mascaron, Bucharest
Cartouche with angels and clouds, above a door, France
Cartouche with a caduceus, on the roof of the Crédit Lyonnais headquarters, Paris
See also
- Tondo (art): round (circular)
- Medallion (architecture): round or oval
- Architectural sculpture
- Cartouche (cartography)
- Resist: a technique in ceramics to highlight cartouches, etc.
Footnotes
- Ching, Francis D.K. (1995). A Visual Dictionary of Architecture. New York: John Wiley and Sons. p. 183. ISBN 0-471-28451-3.
External links
| Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cartouches. |
