The Enlightenment

Neoclassical Art

Enlightenment

The Age of Reason

Enciclopedists / Philosophes

Diderot

Reason -- a perfect society built on common sense and tolerance

Truth dispersing the shadows of ignorance

Chiswick House, London

St. Martin in the Fields, London

Prado Museum, Madrid

Royal Palace, Madrid

Royal Naval College, Greenwich

Scottish architect Colen Campbell, Mereworth Castle, Kent, 1722-25

The gardens of Château Villandry

Garden, Alcázar, Sevilla

In groups, think back on the baroque and work out a definition of the term

What does the term Neoclassical evoke for you?

CharacteristicsOrder and Harmony

Simplicity of shape and exactness of proportion Light

GardensSociety and Utopianism

Ordering creationIntellectual rather than emotional or spiritual

ClassicismRestraint, good sense, decorum, good taste,

correctness

Rococo to Neoclasical

As symmetry was gradually introduced into the lavish ornamental motifs of the Rococo style, so the Neoclassicist ideas slowly began to spread. The new aesthetic revealed a reaction against the excesses of Rococo ornamentation in favour of what was seen as the noble simplicity of antiquity. Many Neoclassical ideas were founded in the scientific ideals of the French Encyclopaedists, who believed in the enhancement and promotion of public morality through art.  

Pilgrimage to Cythera by Antoine Watteau 1717

PaintingInitially not stylistically distinct from the French Rococo and other styles that had preceded it. A more rigorously Neoclassical painting style arose in France in the 1780s Just before and during the French Revolution, these and other painters adopted stirring moral subject matter from Roman history and celebrated the values of simplicity, austerity, heroism, and stoic virtue that were traditionally associated with the Roman Republic, thus drawing parallels between that time and the contemporary struggle for liberty in France.

http://www.all-art.org/history356.html

Joseph-Marie VienYoung Greek

Maidens Decking the Sleeping Cupid

with Flowers 1773

 

Classical history and mythology provided a large part of the subject matter of Neoclassical works.

Jean-Baptiste RegnaultLiberty or Death

 

Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825)

Most prominent and influential painter of the Neo-classical movement in France. In the 1780s he created a style of austere and ethical painting that captured the moral climate of the last years of the ancien régime. As an active revolutionary, he put his art at the service of the new French Republic and for a time was virtual dictator of the arts. He was imprisoned after the fall from power of Maximilien de Robespierre but on release became captivated by the personality of Napoleon I

Portrait of the Artist1794

The Death of Seneca 1773

"The artist must be a philosopher and have no other guide except the torch of reason." — J.-L. David

Montesquieu

Charles Louis de Secondat

1689-1755

Noble background

Educated in science and history

Became a lawyer

Considered, along with John Locke, as the ideological co-founder of the American Constitution

Works

Masterpiece: The Spirit of the Laws (1748), considers:

Monarchy

Despotism

Republic

Felt Republic was best

Montesquieu’s Thought

"Montesquieu advocated constitutionalism, the preservation of civil liberties, the abolition of slavery, gradualism, moderation, peace, internationalism, social and economic justice with due respect to national and local tradition. He believed in justice and the rule of law; detested all forms of extremism and fanaticism; put his faith in the balance of power and the division of authority as a weapon against despotic rule by individuals or groups or majorities; and approved of social equality, but not to the point which it threatened individual liberty; and out of liberty, but not to the point where it threatened to disrupt orderly government."Sir Isaiah BerlinAgainst the Current

Persian Letters (1721)

First work to gain him fame

Epistolary form

correspondence between Usbek (Persian aristocrat) traveling in France

and his friends, his wives, or eunuchs

When reading, think about:

What Montesquieu criticizes and why?

Why does he use the epistolary form?

Why does he use Persian travelers in Europe?

How are the Persians characterized?

Oliver GoldsmithBorn in the Irish village of Pallas, near Glasson on Nov. 10, 1730. Father was an Anglican clergymanStudied theology, law, and medicine in turn `The Citizen of the World', published in 1762, won the attention of Samuel Johnson Died after a short illness in the spring of 1774His epitaph, by Johnson, includes the famous line: Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit (He touched nothing that he did not adorn).

Major Works

The Citizen of the World ( 1760-61 ). Goldsmith puts criticism of English society into the letters written by a fictional Chinese gentleman, Lien Chi Altangi. The Traveler ( 1764 ). The traveler-narrator fails to find happiness abroad and concludes that it is to be found in one's own mind: " Our own felicity we make or find. " The Vicar of Wakefield ( 1766 ). The Deserted Village ( 1770 ). Nostalgic poem about the passing of a simpler, happier, rural past. The Life of Richard Nash ( 1762 ). Beau Nash, Master of Ceremonies at Bath, was an institution in Eighteenth Century England. She Stoops to Conquer ( 1773 ).