One man, dressed in rags, sits stoically in his throne as a laurel wreath is gently placed atop his head by an otherworldly angel. Surrounding him is his audience; men and women varying in facial expressions, dress, and appearance. All these personalities are so dissimilar to one another, yet so familiar to us. There is Shakespeare! There is Virgil! There is Raphael Sanzio! The man in the centre turns out to be Homer, the ancient Greek epic poet. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ depiction of historical and mythological figures in his painting, Apotheosis of Homer embodies the neoclassical movement that hit popular painting like a tidal wave from the mid-18th century to the early 19th century. Neoclassical art enjoyed popularity as a result of a backlash against the popular styles of the day which were viewed to represent the degeneracy of art. Ingres’ painting perfectly reflects the spirit of neoclassical painting: elements of the new meeting the glories of the past.
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“The most important aspects of classical art,” observed German historian and archaeologist Johann J. Winckelmann, “is its noble simplicity and calm grandeur.” As an archaeologist, Winckelmann became inspired by the ancient artifacts being recovered at the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum. In the late 1700s, the popular stylization in European art was baroque and rococo styles. To critics, these styles were vain and overly ostentatious to be truly considered art. Rococo art, for example, symbolized European aristocracy with its attention on great scale and themes of worldly pleasures. Likewise, baroque art became an institutionalized art because it often portrayed the grandeur and power of the Catholic Church, which supported the style. The new age of painters became disenchanted with this status quo. Occurring concurrent with societal and political shifts in Europe, neoclassical style was born. “The only way for us to become great”, observed Johann Joachim Winckelmann “lies in the imitation of the Greeks”. With this idea, the German-born art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann encapsulated the movement of neoclassicism. Seeking to recapture the essence of classical Greek and Roman art, neoclassicism became the widespread movement in visual art in the mid-18th century. It gained popularity partly as a backlash against the baroque and rococo styles that concerned themselves with aristocracy, excess, institutionalism, and vanity. This sentimentalism towards civilizations past was not limited to art. It was rooted in the societal and political happenings of the time, especially in Europe. Neoclassicism became more than an art style to many countries: it became intertwined with the moral revolutions of the century. To Winckelmann, art needed to move its audience and teach virtue. Much like in the civilizations of Greece and Rome, art represents and serves humanity. In our society, an obsession with the human body is commonly interpreted to signify a perversion. To neoclassical painters, such a cynical view is understandable. Not because the person himself (let us be honest about the popularly accused gender) is perverted per se, but because etiquette and morality has trumped understanding and reason. This signifies a different sort of societal perversion; a different sort of decadence. Neoclassical painters explicitly created their works to reverse this decadence, to return to the days when proper virtue and culture reigned supreme. The classical Greek and Roman civilizations, for example, affirmed their existence and embodied all that was good and possible for humanity. Society has often gone astray from this ideal, but painting was capable of helping restore and immortalize perfection. Neoclassical painters built neoclassicism on this possibility to restore perfection. Among the most prominent figures in this neoclassical movement was Jean-August Dominique Ingres. Imitation is sincerest form of flattery…In architecture, there is no such thing as an original design. Elements of the new are sourced to the old. Sometimes this credit to the past is given explicitly, such as was the case during the neoclassical movement which patterned itself after the past by recapturing the classic Greek and Roman architecture. However, even as the popularity of neoclassical architecture began in the mid-18th century and peaked by the late 19th century as the popular style, elements of this classical style still exists, even though categorized as a different genre. Indeed, neoclassical architecture has become so conventional that architects popularly label neoclassicism as “traditional architecture.” As a result, the influence of neoclassicism can be seen in modern architecture, and remains anything but extinct. Though understanding the difficulties in assigning chronological orders of popular architectural movements, the first variants of the modern architecture developed in the early 20th century with the rise of profound technological and engineering developments. Modern architecture sought to reflect the engineering feats of humankind, as exemplified by The architects that helped construct neoclassicismOn the Pincio in the Villa Medici in Italy lies a building that has both suffered the effects of time and enjoyed its fruits. The French Academy of Rome, founded in 1666, has required numerous renovations in the past 343 years. However, its legacy lives on in the Pantheon in Paris, the Pavlovsk Palace in Russia, the United States Capitol Building, among many others. Though neoclassical architecture had its exponents previously in France, such as Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, it was the French Academy in Rome that was the setting for the conception of neoclassicism as a movement, and its subsequent expansion globally. Charles-Louis ClÈrisseau, in particular, became a pioneer in directly assisting in the export of the neoclassical movement abroad. Himself a neoclassical architect and painter, he mentored students in the ways of ancient Rome architecture with focus on its ruins and designs, both real and imagined. Among his proteges was Robert Adams, |
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