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| Jacques Vigoureux-Duplessis Painted Fire Screen (trompe-l'œil) Chinoiserie Figures supporting Tondo with Jupiter and Danaë ca. 1700 oil on fabric Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Anonymous French painter Cupid as Messenger with Caduceus 18th century oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| attributed to Anne Vallayer-Coster Winter (decorative overdoor) ca. 1770 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
"Rococo with its rocks, shells, and scrolls was the joyful and ironic expression of "controlled formlessness." Space became elastic and objects lost their earnestness as their scale changed from vast (theatrical scenes) to tiny (tobacco boxes). Such decoration comforted the imagination and soothed the mind. It suited a skeptical world, one without illusions, yet pleasure-seeking. It demonstrated its power by clinging to walls, imposing its curves on furniture, endowing frames and borders with endless hooks and crooks, providing cartouches for landscape and genre scenes. It therefore represented a characteristic phase of French taste, an overwhelming commitment to elegance with mannerist, indeed libertine, overtones."
"Looking at things from another angle, rococo could be seen as the triumph of craftsmanship. Rarely was so much skill required of the ironworker, goldsmith, embroiderer who executed complex compositions that nevertheless conveyed solidity. . . . "Rococo is bearable only when extravagant," wrote Victor Hugo in 1837 from Ghent. This fairly accurate view helps explain why, even today, an art so apparently flippant receives little appreciation."
– André Chastel, from French Art: The Ancien Régime, 1620-1775, translated by Deke Dusinberre (Flammarion, 1996)
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| François Boucher Study for a Monument to a Princely Figure before 1770 oil on paper, mounted on board Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| François Boucher Angelica and Medoro 1763 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Nicolas Lancret The Escaped Bird before 1743 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Nicolas Lancret Luncheon Party in a Park ca. 1735 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Jean-Claude Richard, Abbé de Saint-Non The Two Sisters 1770 pastel on paper, mounted on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Hubert Robert The Swing 1777 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Claude-Joseph Vernet Landscape with Waterfall and Figures 1768 oil on canvas Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Jean-Baptiste Greuze Aegina visited by Jupiter ca. 1767-69 oil on canvas (unfinished) Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Pierre Subleyras Brother Luce the Hermit with the Widow and her Daughter (illustration to La Fontaine) ca. 1745 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Pierre Subleyras Brother Philippe's Geese (illustration to La Fontaine) ca. 1745 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Charles-Joseph Natoire The Rebuke of Adam and Eve 1740 oil on copper Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |