Classical Influences in the Birth of Neoclassical Art

What was the influence of Classical monuments, sculpture and ruins in the birth of Neoclassical art? Neoclassicism is a Western style of art and architecture in which artists seek to model their works on the ideals of the Classical era—order, harmony, and reason. The movement arose partly as a reaction to the excessive frivolity of the Rococo style of art and architecture which had dominated the first half of the 18th century, observes Professor Cybele Gontar of Montclair State University in her essay, “Neoclassicism” (par. 1). Neoclassicism started in Italy in the middle of the 18th century, not only coinciding with but also being born out of the Age of Enlightenment, when European thinkers sought to use reason and secularism to better the lot of mankind. This style is still in use today in contemporary architecture. A major impetus for the birth of this new style of art was the discovery and appreciation of Greek and Roman ruins, especially those found in Italy in the mid-18th century.

Neoclassicism was thus a child of the Age of Reason (the Enlightenment), when many Enlightenment philosophers believed that we would be able to control our destinies by learning from and following the laws of nature. Scientific inquiry and the scientic method attracted much more public attention at that time. Therefore, Neoclassicism continued the connection to the Classical tradition because it signified moderation, secularism and rational thinking but it did so in a new and far more politically-charged spirit.

In the 1700s, archeology was a fairly new science (Gontar, par. 1). Among the most prominent of the newly discovered Classical ruins were those found at Pompeii, Herculaneum and other sites in southern Italy—in addition to older discoveries like the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, and also other ruins from antiquity discovered as far afield as Baalbek in Lebanon and Palmyra in Syria. Travelers wrote illustration-filled books of their tours of all these and other Classical sites, making them instantly famous throughout Europe (Gontar, par. 2). But by far the most popular spot among 18th-century European cultural and artistic pilgrims was the city of Rome. Filled with more ancient ruins than any other single place in Europe—what comes immediately to mind are the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Pantheon, etc.—tourists and artists from throughout the continent flocked to the Eternal City to see its many newly famous Classical antiquities and then wrote about them in books and articles or painted what they saw onto canvas.

Rome, Venice and Naples in Italy, as well as Paris in France, soon became known as the “Grand Tour”—a series of destinations which were a must for all Europeans of taste and artistic sensibility to visit. The antiquities of Italy in particular influenced the better educated Europeans in their new appreciation for the Classical sense of “harmony, simplicity, and proportion” (Gontar, par. 1). As for the city of Florence, Professor David Irwin of the University of Aberdeen (UK) points out in his book, Neoclassicism, that it was only in 1770, when the Duke of Tuscany moved “his antique sculptures from the Villa Medici in Rome to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence,” that Florence rose to a prominence equal to that of Rome and Naples in the Grand Tour (15).

Many artists of the second half of the 18th century were directly inspired by these new archaeological discoveries. Italian painter Giovanni Paolo Panini (1691-1765), for one, became well-known for paintings such as Ancient Rome and Modern Rome (both 1757), which were among the first to awaken Europeans to the towering monuments from Europe's ancient past which had been sitting right in front of them, overlooked and ignored. Other artists chose to depict Classical myths in the new Neoclassical style, such as Parnassus (1760) by German artist Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779), which portrays the Olympean god Apollo surrounded by the Muses (Irwin 138-140). Another example is Italian sculptor Antonio Canova (1757-1822) and his white marble masterpiece, Theseus Fighting the Centaur (1819). Quite similarly, Italian painter Pompeo Batoni painted many portraits in the Neoclassical style. In fact, most of his subjects were European royalty and nobility on their circuit of the Grand Tour (Irwin 53).

The Neoclassical style, born in the mid-18th century, grew out of several influences, including those of earlier Neoclassical painters such as Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665) and Claude Lorrain (1604–1682), but also partly as a reaction to the extravagance of the preceding Rococo style. Nevertheless, it seems that the discovery of the monuments, sculptures and ruins of ancient Greece and Rome played a more significant role in the development of the Neoclassical movement than any other source, and the Neoclassical style may have evolved in quite a different direction had it not been for their collective influence.

Works Cited

Gontar, Cybele. “Neoclassicism.” Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Oct. 2003. Web (accessed 22 Mar. 2016).

Irwin, David. Neoclassicism. London: Phaidon, 1997. Print.

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