Every age has impressed its artistic standards strongly upon the
furniture of the period. Long after Gothic cathedral building had
ceased, the cabinetmakers of northern Europe continued to carve their
delicate window tracery upon the panels of chests and buffets and to
copy the moldings of pier and mullion.
[Illustration: FRENCH OR FLEMISH CABINET OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY]
The Renaissance brought a great change in the surface appearance of
furniture, and in Italy, France, Flanders, and Germany the new art
spirit manifested itself in different forms, each of which reflected
the peculiar genius of the people of the land.
But all the earlier developments in furniture were overshadowed by
the splendid achievements of French art in the latter part of the
seventeenth century. These began under Louis XIV, and continued with
undiminished productiveness and refinement of design through the reigns
of Louis XV and Louis XVI, to a decline under the Empire.