One of the most curious motives of ornamentation in this period was the human ear. The lines of the outer rim and the lobe, as well as those of the whole ear, were carried to excess and distorted and tortured into scrolls and curves of all sizes and shapes. Rabel was one of the chief exponents of the genre auriculaire (from auricle) in France. Several Dutch designers published plates of drawings, among whom were John Lutma and Gerbrandt van den Eeckhout; but it was in Germany that this peculiar style met with the greatest favor. The plates of Friederich Unteutsch, published in Frankfort in 1650, show the ear prominent as an ornament on all kinds of furniture; and nothing could be more eccentric.

Three chairs from the Parma Museum of Antiquities (Plate XVIII.) exemplify Italian taste in the second half of the Seventeenth Century. The legs, stretchers and arms show whence the French designers under Louis XIV. drew their inspiration. The backs also have a family likeness to chairs that came into fashion later in England, France and Holland. The scroll work on the chair in the centre is almost as unrestrained as in the designs of Meissonnier and Chippendale. The curves of the rococo and the genre auriculaire are both present.

When we examine the old furniture of the palaces and museums of Italy, we are sometimes amazed to find that the forms and styles particularly of seats are almost identical with those of France, England, or the Netherlands. Thus, the beautiful chair covered with Cordovan leather on Plate XIX., owned by Count Stefano Orsetti in Lucca, is a product of the Seventeenth Century; and yet the scrolled bars that connect the legs and the legs themselves greatly resemble the Dutch furniture made for Hampton Court in 1690. Again, the chair, Plate XX., No. 3, is similar in its turned supports, front rail and the tall panelled back to the cane chairs in vogue under Charles II. and William and Mary; and yet it is a Roman chair of the Seventeenth Century, now in the Museo Civico, Milan.

Plate XIII - Carved Bedstead, Francois I. Cluny Museum

It is well known that famous French and Flemish masters of decorative design studied in Italy in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, but the Italians did not seek inspiration north of the Alps, so that when we find identical forms, we look to Italy as the leader, or seek a common origin.