Neoclassicism

About Neoclassicism

In mid-18th-century Rome, travellers, antiquarians and artists shared a belief that ancient art offered a standard worth reviving. Digs at Herculaneum and Pompeii, opened in 1738 and 1748, supplied fresh evidence, and Johann Joachim Winckelmann praised Greek sculpture for its “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur”. Painters and sculptors turned from the playful curves of the Rococo towards firm outlines, frieze-like groupings and stories of duty and sacrifice.

Look for crisp drawing, cool light and polished surfaces. Jacques-Louis David's Oath of the Horatii (1784) became a model of civic virtue on the eve of the French Revolution, and Antonio Canova's marbles, such as Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss (1787–93), gave antique forms a new softness. The same taste shaped Thomas Jefferson's Virginia State Capitol, modelled on a Roman temple at Nîmes, Josiah Wedgwood's jasperware and Napoleon's Empire style, while Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres carried its linear discipline into the 19th century.