What is Neoclassicism in Art? Characteristics, Artists and Most Important Works of Neoclassical Art and Architecture.
Neoclassicism in art
Neoclassicism is an artistic movement that developed in the second half of the eighteenth century as a consequence of the Enlightenment culture and an era of great revolutions, proposing itself as an antithesis to the excesses of the Baroque and Rococo .
Neoclassicism is characterized by the aspiration to rediscover and revitalize classical antiquity, a process stimulated by archaeological finds at Herculaneum and Pompeii. These excavations provided examples of buildings, wall paintings, and domestic artifacts from the cities destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. The term Neoclassicism was coined in the late 19th century and initially used critically to describe art considered unoriginal, impersonal, and too tied to academic conventions.
It is first of all a rediscovery of the classical world , as Winckelmann, the greatest neoclassical theoretician, states, who wanted to underline its canons of harmony, noble simplicity and quiet grandeur. For the neoclassical movement, the representation of the soul – which is great and noble – must be represented only in a state of harmony, of rest, therefore depicting the subjects in the moment before or after the action.
Artists of Neoclassicism: Jacques Louis David
An exponent of the neoclassical movement, Jacques-Louis David during the course of his life made a journey called at the time the Grand Tour, among whose destinations was Italy, where he came into contact with the culture and art of both Rome and the recently rediscovered Herculaneum and Pompeii. He later actively participated in the French Revolution and was influenced by it, so much so that he also showed it in his works.
The Death of Marat
This is a work belonging to Neoclassicism , a movement aimed at the rediscovery of classical art, created by Jacques-Louis David on commission. The painting depicts Marat , a republican doctor, lifeless in a tub following the murder of a follower of Girondin ideas, whose face is condemned to oblivion. The surrounding environment is stripped of elements that would have made his death resemble that of an ordinary man and the furnishings are sober and essential to demonstrate Marat’s virtuous poverty. David portrays him similar to Caravaggio ‘s Christ and Michelangelo ‘s Pietà to underline his martyr’s death and to elevate him above other men, exalting his virtues. The moment in which the lifeless man is portrayed is important, that is, in the moment after the murder, according to the neoclassical canon.
The Sabine Women
According to the legend of the Rape of the Sabine Women , the painting depicts the leaders of the respective peoples who clash, Romulus for the Romans and Tatius for the Sabines, who together with one of the women who stop the fight, embody one of the novelties of the painting, namely heroic nudity, underlining the neoclassical aspect. Pacification occurs precisely with the arrival of the women, thanks to whom conjugal love avoids further bloodshed. According to a further interpretation of the painting, David’s aim was to invite his compatriots to renounce revenge and revenge, by virtue of a national pacification.
Antonio Canova
Antonio Canova : exponent of the neoclassical movement, both in sculpture and in drawing he embodies Winckelmann’s principles more than anyone else. He pays particular attention to the academic nude of both sexes, then also developing a casuistry as wide as possible of attitudes, positions and expressions.
Theseus on the Minotaur
It is a marble sculpture , a large complex that represents – according to the canons of the movement to which it belongs – the moment immediately following the action, when all passion is extinguished and anger and fury have now passed, while the great soul of the hero is once again in tune with the body. Theseus is represented sitting on the Minotaur , the defeated beast, like a hunter on his prey. Canova ‘s aim is to achieve an ideal beauty, which the artist tries to reproduce in the sculptural complex after having ascertained the impossibility of finding it in nature.
Funeral monument to Maria Cristina of Austria
This is a work created by Antonio Canova to commemorate Maria Cristina of Habsburg-Lorraine . The work, of pyramidal shape, presents in the upper part a medallion inside which the deceased is depicted, honored by the personification of Fortitude with a crouching lion at the bottom right, of Pietà with a young woman leading an old man on the left and by the Tenderness of her husband with the representation of a winged genius abandoned on the lion, also on the left. Canova’s aim is to encourage meditation on the fatality of death, on regret and on the correspondence of amorous feelings, thus taking up the Italian poet Ugo Foscolo .
Neoclassical architecture
Neoclassical architecture looks to the classical past with the aim of recalling and emulating the structures and canons of Greek and Roman architecture . The beauty of a building was in fact in the correspondence between structures, in the planimetric distribution of the rooms and in their function. It looked both to Greek architecture, of which the simple and grand style was admired, and to Roman architecture, as can be deduced from the Kedleston Hall residence built by the architect Robert Adam , within which characteristic elements of Roman architecture return , such as the Corinthian columns and semi-columns, the niches and the bas-reliefs. Furthermore, the structure of the arch is reapplied.
Kedleston Hall
This is a Derbyshire residence built according to classical canons. While the North front has a Palladian style, the South front features the Roman scheme of the triumphal arch. Adam takes up Roman architecture both for the bas-reliefs inserted in the niches on the South facade, and for the mighty free-standing columns and the large attic. In the atrium, the Great Hall, Roman architecture is proposed again, both in the Corinthian columns and semi-columns, and in the openings in the vault, which allowed the entry of light like in Roman domus.
Newton’s Cenotaph
It was designed by Etienne-Louis Boullée and structurally features an immense hollow sphere supported by a terrace and – like Roman mausoleums – has three concentric rings of cypress trees around the complex.
Inside, where a sarcophagus is located, two phenomena could have been observed: the daytime one, in which the sun’s rays filter through the openings on the dome and a starry sky would have been created, and the nighttime one, during which the sarcophagus would have been illuminated by means of a globe in the shape of an armillary sphere placed at the center of the sphere. The ultimate goal of this structure was to recreate a model of the universe governed by Newton ‘s theories .
