I.

Introduction

Neo-Classical Style, a style in art, architecture, and the decorative arts that flourished in Europe and North America from about 1750 to the early 1800s, marked by the emulation of Graeco-Roman forms. More than just an antique revival, Neo-Classicism was linked to contemporary political events. Neo-Classical artists at first sought to replace the sensuality and what they viewed as the triviality of the Rococo style with a style that was logical, solemn in tone, and moralizing in character. When revolutionary movements established republics in France and America, the new republican governments adopted Neo-Classicism as the style for their official art, by virtue of its association with the democracy of ancient Greece and republican Rome. Later, as Napoleon I rose to power in France, the style was modified to serve his propagandistic needs. With the rise of the Romantic movement (see Romanticism), a preference for personal expression replaced an art based upon fixed, ideal values.

II.

Genesis of Neo-Classical Art

The Neo-Classical style developed following the excavation in Italy of the ruins of the Roman cities of Herculaneum in 1738 and Pompeii in 1748, the publication of such books as Antiquities of Athens (1762) by the English archaeologists James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, and the arrival of the Elgin Marbles in London in 1806. Extolling the “noble simplicity and calm grandeur” of Graeco-Roman art, the German art historian Johann Winckelmann urged artists to study and “imitate” its timeless, ideal forms. His ideas found enthusiastic reception within the international circle of artists gathered about him in the 1760s in Rome.

III.

Architecture

Before the discoveries at Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Athens, had been made, the only classical architecture generally known was that of Rome, largely through architectural etchings of Classical Roman buildings by the Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The new archaeological finds extended classical architecture's formal vocabulary, and architects began advocating a style based on Graeco-Roman models.

The work of the Scottish architect and designer Robert Adam, who in the 1750s and 1760s redesigned a number of English country houses (among which were, Sion House, 1762-1769, and Osterley Park, 1761-1780), introduced the Neo-Classical style to Great Britain. The Adam style, as it became known, remained somewhat Rococo in its emphasis on surface ornamentation and refinement of scale, even as it adopted the motifs of antiquity.

In France, Claude Nicholas Ledoux designed a pavilion (1771) for the Comtesse du Barry at Louveciennes and a series of city gates (1785-1789) for Paris. Both exemplify the earlier phase of Neo-Classical architecture; his later works, however, consisted of projects (never executed) for an ideal city in which the designs for buildings are frequently reduced to unadorned geometric shapes. After Napoleon became emperor in 1804, his official architects Charles Percier and Pierre François Fontaine worked to realize his wish to transform Paris into the foremost capital of Europe by adopting the intimidating opulence of Roman imperial architecture. The Empire style in architecture is epitomized by such imposing public works as the triumphal arches at the Carrousel du Louvre, designed by Percier and Fontaine and the Champs-Élysées, designed by Fontaine and begun the same year. These works, begun in 1806, were far different in spirit from the visionary work of Ledoux.

Greek-inspired architecture in England is exemplified by such constructions, in London, as the Bank of England rotunda (1796) by Sir John Soane and the British Museum portico (1823-1847) by Sir Robert Smirke. The Greek Revival was modified by the Regency style, notable architectural examples of which are the façades for Regent Street, in London designed by John Nash and begun in 1812 and his Royal Pavilion in Brighton (1815-1823). The Neo-Classical architecture of Edinburgh, Scotland, remained pristine, however, and earned that city the name the Athens of the North. Elsewhere, Neo-Classical architecture is exemplified in such work by the German Karl Friedrich Schinkel, as the Royal Theatre (1819-1821) in Berlin.

In the United States, one aspect of Neo-Classicism, the Federal style, flourished between 1780 and 1820. Based on the work of Robert Adam, it is exemplified in the work of Charles Bulfinch (Massachusetts State House, Boston, completed 1798). The model for Thomas Jefferson's State Capitol Building in Richmond, Virginia (1785-1789) was the Maison-Carrée, a 1st-century Roman temple in Nîmes, France. Through his readings and travels, Jefferson developed a profound understanding of Roman architecture and applied his knowledge to the designs for his own home, Monticello; for the University of Virginia campus; and for preliminary contributions to plans for the new national capital of Washington, D.C. Jefferson's work exemplifies Neo-Classical style in the United States.

The Greek revival style, based on 5th-century bc Greek temples and inspired by the Elgin Marbles, flourished during the first half of the 19th century in the United States. Both the Federal and Greek revival styles helped a young United States define its own architectural ethos.

IV.

Painting

Neo-Classical painting was centred in Rome, where many expatriate painters gathered around the German art historian Johann Winckelmann. Winckelmann's circle included the expatriate German Anton Raphael Mengs, the Scot Gavin Hamilton, and the American Benjamin West. Mengs's Parnassus (1761), a ceiling fresco for the Villa Albani in Rome, was designed expressly with Winckelmann's advice. Unlike the composition of typical Baroque or Rococo painted ceilings, its composition is simple: only a few figures, in calm, static poses mainly derived from antique statues. Between 1760 and 1765, Hamilton, who was also an archaeologist and art dealer, completed five pictures inspired by Homer's Iliad and incorporating figures derived from ancient sculpture. West worked in Rome from 1760 to 1763. Paintings such as Agrippina Landing at Brundisium with the Ashes of Germanicus (1768, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut) were inspired by his Roman experience. Solemn and austere in theme and treatment, they are also archaeologically correct in detailing.

The same tendencies are evident in the earlier work of the French painter Jacques-Louis David, one of the most prominent exponents of Neo-Classical painting. His Oath of the Horatii (1784-1785, Louvre, Paris) celebrates the theme of stoic patriotism. The picture's boxlike architectural space and frieze-like arrangement of figures reflect Neo-Classical concern for compositional logic and clarity. The firm contours and harsh light lend these figures a statuesque quality. Later works by David, commissioned by Napoleon—such as Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine (1805-1807, Louvre)—are very different, however, in their celebration of worldly splendour and power. The emperor's approval of such ostentatious displays was even extended to an American painter, John Vanderlyn, to whom he awarded a medal in 1808 for his Marius Among the Ruins of Carthage (1807, M. H. de Young Museum, San Francisco).

By the early 1790s painters began to emulate the flat, silhouetted figures of Greek vase painting. The foremost exponent of this style was the English painter John Flaxman, whose simple line engravings for editions (1793) of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey completely replaced traditional perspective, lighting, and modelling with flat linear design. The style was immensely successful and widely imitated. One of David's most successful pupils, and the inheritor of his role as leading interpreter of the classical tradition, was Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. He adopted Flaxman's two-dimensional approach, as seen in his popular early work The Envoys of Agamemnon (1801, École des Beaux-Arts, Paris).

V.

Sculpture

Because sculpture in Europe had been profoundly influenced by Classical forms since the Renaissance, Neo-Classical principles had a less revolutionary impact on it than on the other arts. In general, Neo-Classical sculptors tended to avoid the dramatic twisting poses and the coloured marble characteristic of late Baroque or Rococo sculpture, preferring crisp contours, a noble stillness, and idealized forms carved from white marble.

The earliest Neo-Classical sculpture was produced by artists in direct contact with Winckelmann's circle in Rome. Among them were sculptors such as John Tobias Sergel, who on his return to his native Sweden carried the new style to northern Europe, and the Englishmen Thomas Banks and Joseph Nollekens, who introduced the style to their homeland. The dominant figure in the history of Neo-Classical sculpture, however, was the Italian Antonio Canova, who became a member of the Rome circle in 1780. Abandoning his earlier Baroque manner, he sought to capture in the Neo-Classical style the severity and ideal purity of ancient art. Theseus and the Dead Minotaur (1781-1782) portrays the calm of victory rather than active conflict; this was Canova's first work in the new style, and it brought him immediate fame.

After Canova's death, the Danish artist Bertel Thorvaldsen inherited his position as Europe's leading sculptor. His many international commissions help sustain strict Neo-Classicism as the dominant mode in sculpture until the mid-19th century. The style was carried to the United States by one of his friends, Horatio Greenough, and was continued by Hiram Powers, an American long resident in Italy, sculptor of the celebrated Greek Slave (1843), of which many replicas were made.

VI.

Decorative Arts

The Neo-Classical style pervaded almost every aspect of the decorative arts. By the early 1760s furniture with Graeco-Roman motifs was being made by Robert Adam. Introduced into France, his simple, classical style became known as the style étrusque (Etruscan style), and was favoured by the court of Louis XV. With further adaptations of Classical design, based on later archaeological finds, it evolved into the elegant style known as Louis XVI, favoured by the royal family during the 1780s. In ceramics the Neo-Classical style was seen in Wedgwood jasperware (for which Flaxman executed many designs) in England and in Sèvres porcelain in France.

Under Napoleon I, former royal residences were redecorated for official use according to plans devised by Percier and Fontaine and filled with furniture, porcelain, and tapestries all incorporating Graeco-Roman design and motifs. Taken as a whole, such interiors defined the Neo-Classical style in the decorative arts, and it was soon emulated throughout Europe.