Concept
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. 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. 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. Ostia, horrea epagathiana 01.JPG|[[Ancient Roman architecture|Roman]] rectangular cartouche on the [[frieze]] of the entrance of [[Horreum|Horrea]] Epagathiana et Epaphroditiana, [[Ostia (Rome)|Ostia]], Rome, 145-150 AD{{cite book |last1=Fullerton|first1=Mark D.|title=Art & Archaeology of The Roman World|date=2020|publisher=Thames & Hudson|isbn=978-0-500-051931|page=87|language=en}} Heiligtum mainz4.jpg|Roman rectangular cartouche-shaped tablets from the [[Sanctuary of Isis and Magna Mater, Mainz|sanctuary of Isis and Magna Mater]] in [[Mainz]] Stone in the courtyard of the Antim Monastery 19.jpg|[[Brâncovenesc architecture|Brâncovenesc]] cartouche on a damaged stone in the courtyard of [[Antim Monastery]], [[Bucharest]], [[Romania]] Alexander de Grote als een van de negen helden De negen helden (serietitel), RP-P-1890-A-15504.jpg|Two [[Renaissance art|Renaissance]] cartouches, a big one with [[Alexander the Great]] and a smaller one with an inscription, 1574-1637, the [[Rijksmuseum]], [[Amsterdam]], the [[Netherlands]] Pediment war cour Carree Louvre.
