Annotated Mona Lisa, The - Strickland, Carol.original_ [50]
NEOCLASSICISM : ROMAN FEVER
From about 1780 to 1820, Neoclassic art reflected, in the words of Edgar Allan Poe, “the glory that was Greece, /And the grandeur that was Rome.” This revival of austere Classicism in painting, sculpture, architecture, and furniture was a clear reaction against the ornate Rococo style. The eighteenth century had been the Age of Enlightenment, when philosophers preached the gospel of reason and logic. This faith in logic led to the orderliness and “ennobling” virtues of Neoclassical art.
The trendsetter was Jacques-Louis David (pronounced Dah VEED; 1748-1825), a French painter and democrat who imitated Greek and Roman art to inspire the new French republic. As the German writer Goethe put it, “the demand now is for heroism and civic virtues.” “Politically correct” art was serious, illustrating tales from ancient history or mythology rather than frivolous Rococo party scenes. As if society had overdosed on sweets, principle replaced pleasure and paintings underscored the moral message of patriotism.
NEOCLASSICISM
VALUES: Order, solemnity
TONE: Calm, rational
SUBJECTS: Greek and Roman history, mythology
TECHNIOUE: Stressed drawing with lines, not color; no trace of brushstrokes
ROLE OF ART: Morally uplifting, inspirational
FOUNDER: David
In 1738, archeology-mania swept Europe, as excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum offered the first glimpse of well-preserved ancient art. The faddish insistence on Greek and Roman role models sometimes became ridiculous, as when David’s followers, the “primitifs,” took the idea of living the Greek Way literally. They not only strolled about in short tunics, they also bathed nude in the Seine, fancying themselves to be Greek athletes. When novelist Stendhal viewed the nude “Roman” warriors in David’s painting “Intervention of the Sabine Women,” he was skeptical. “The most ordinary common sense,” he wrote, “tells us that the legs of those soldiers would soon be covered in blood and that it was absurd to go naked into battle at any time in history.”
The marble frieze statuary brought from Athens’ Parthenon to London by Lord Elgin further whetted the public appetite for the ancient world. “Glories of the brain” and “Grecian grandeur” is how the poet John Keats described the marbles. Leaders of art schools and of the French and British Royal Academies were solidly behind the Neoclassic movement and preached that reason, not emotion, should dictate art. They emphasized drawing and line, which appealed to the intellect, rather than color, which excited the senses.
The hallmark of the Neoclassical style was severe, precisely drawn figures, which appeared in the foreground without the illusion of depth, as in Roman relief sculpture. Brushwork was smooth, so the surface of the painting seemed polished, and compositions were simple to avoid Rococo melodrama. Backgrounds generally included Roman touches like arches or columns, and symmetry and straight lines replaced irregular curves. This movement differed from Poussin’s Classicism of a century earlier in that Neoclassical figures were less waxen and ballet-like, more naturalistic and solid.
Ancient ruins also inspired architecture. Clones of Greek and Roman temples multiplied from Russia to America. The portico of Paris’s Pantheon, with Corinthian columns and dome, copied the Roman style exactly. In Berlin, the Brandenburg gate was a replica of the entrance to Athens’ Acropolis, topped by a Roman chariot. And Thomas Jefferson, while serving as ambassador to France, admired the Roman temple Maison Carrée in Nimes, “as a lover gazes at his mistress.” He renovated his home, Monticello, in the Neoclassical style.
FRENCH NEOCLASSICISM
DAVID: PAINTING