Stephanie has taught studio art and art history classes to audiences of all ages. She holds a master's degree in Art History.
Many things influence artists in their work, including past art styles.
Neoclassical art is a style that began in Europe around the mid-1700s, partially in reaction to archaeological excavations in places like Athens and Pompeii that sparked renewed interest in the art and culture of ancient Greece and Rome. This interest was also due to influential scholar and archaeologist Johann Winckelmann, who wrote several studies on Greek art extolling the virtue of its perfect human forms. In France, the art style popular before the 1750s, called Rococo, was very fancy and fussy, and Winckelmann urged a return to the idealized noble virtues he found in Greek art.
When you look at a piece of neoclassical art, including sculpture, it looks stiff and formal. Even if the scene portrayed is related to action, it seems frozen in time. Figures are calm and idealized and don't usually bear the flaws of real people (you'll rarely see wrinkles or less than perfect bodies). Faces are expressionless and lack any trace of emotion. Artists were urged to emphasize the stoic, calm, and rational over wild emotion and elaborate decorative flourishes.
Here's an excellent example by Italian sculptor Antonio Canova. The subject, Napoleon Bonaparte, was then a leader in France. But look at how he's portrayed. You can bet that he never walked around France in this outfit. His body, naked save for the judiciously placed leaf, is idealized to a point of perfection. He stands motionless and his face betrays no emotion. The props he holds tie directly to classical Greek and Roman elements. The statue looks like it could have come right off the Parthenon. Canova, by the way, was one of the European artists who best used neoclassic elements in their work.
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Neoclassicism swept through Europe and can be found in painting, architecture, and sculpture. Many artists traveled to Italy to study and to be active in a community of other artists. Resources, like marble, were readily available.
But unlike French painters, who were known as some of the foremost neoclassical artists in Europe, French sculptors never seemed to fully embrace neoclassical style. Several who worked in the earlier Rococo style continued to use it in their works, and their art maintains decorative elements that go against neoclassical ideals. Other artists depict figures with a bit too much realism. In general, the French sculptors tended to use style influences interchangeably. Let's look at several examples.
One of the first French sculptors to incorporate elements of neoclassical style was Jean-Baptiste Pigalle (1714 - 1785). Pigalle, who came from humble beginnings, worked his way up to become a successful artist. He studied in Rome for five years and after 1750 did much of his work as commissions, often portraits.
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One of Pigalle's early works from around 1740, Mercury Attaching his Talaria, reflects neoclassical elements in Mercury's calm face and in the perfect, almost-naked human body with idealized anatomy. Later in his career, Pigalle sculpted a life-size statue of Voltaire that showed the aged philosopher as an old man, with an emaciated body and less-than-ideal features. Pigalle posed Voltaire based on an ancient classical statue and draped him in a garment like a toga, but the realism contradicted any neoclassical elements. It was not well received by audiences.
Sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741 - 1828) was known for his portrait busts and statues of historical figures. This son of a teacher, and interested in the arts at a young age, worked in a style reminiscent of Rococo for part of his career. Then he won the Prix de Rome in 1761, which allowed him to travel to Rome to study classical sculpture. In the years that followed, he created works with neoclassical elements.
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This Bust of Dorothea Schlözer reflects neoclassical elements in the simple drapery the figure wears, which recalls ancient dress rather than the clothing of the time. Her face also is expressionless and the whole sculpture is simple without any excess ornamentation. Although he never fully embraced it, Houdon was probably one of the French sculptors who best exemplified neoclassicism in his later works.
French sculptor Claude Michel, known as Clodion (1738 - 1814), also studied in Rome and was regarded as one of the most successful practitioners of Rococo. He tended to work in terra cotta or earthen clay to create small highly decorative figural groups, but he also carved larger works in marble. Clodion's style tended to be decorative and, although he used neoclassical elements, he reshaped them into lighter and less serious elements that reflected his previous focus. In the sculpture Vestal, Clodion starts with a classical Roman subject: a Vestal priestess. Like the example of Canova's Napoleon, the figure of the woman is caught in a moment of calm, frozen in time.
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She holds a classical urn and her face is expressionless, but she wears a wreath of flowers in her hair, the stand that holds the basin is decorated, and her drapery is very flowing. She has elements of neoclassical style, but it's mixed with Clodion's more decorative urges. He's representative of many sculptors of his generation, who used style elements interchangeably where it suited them.
Neoclassical art was a style influenced by ancient Greek and Roman art. In the mid-eighteenth century, archaeological excavations in places like Athens and the writings of scholar Johann Winckelmann urged a return to elements like idealized human forms with serious, expressionless faces. Wincklemann's comments were in response to an earlier, very decorative style called Rococo. In France, neoclassical elements existed with other artistic urges like a focus on realism or decorative qualities. Sculptors from this era included Jean-Baptise Pigalle, Jean-Antoine Houdon, and Clodion, who often worked in terra cotta. Throughout this period, French sculptors tended to use neoclassical elements in combination with other style influences. Artists today continue to use different styles in their work. Look around and see if you can find artwork that hints at past styles, maybe even more than one.
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Art, Music, and Architecture Around the World17 chapters | 231 lessons
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