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The Renaissance (14th-16th centuries) and the Enlightenment (1650-1800) name two distinctly different periods of European history. They both heralded major changes in culture, art, philosophy, science, and mathematics. The Renaissance is associated with advances in literature, architecture, humanism, and a world economy, while the Enlightenment is associated with the scientific method, industrialization, rationality, astronomy, and calculus.
drawing from dissection of a woman who died in the ninth month of pregnancy
William Hunter
Child in Womb from Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus
1774
The wonders of the universe: Joseph Wright of Derby's realistic painting shows a demonstration of an orrery, the mechanism of which is scrupulously and accurately rendered.
Joseph Wright of Derby's realistic painting shows a demonstration of an orrery, the mechanism of which is scrupulously and accurately rendered.
Bridging the ages with iron: Abraham Darby III and Thomas F. Pritchard designed and built the first cast-iron bridge. The bridge's exposed cast-iron structure prefigures the skeletal use of iron and steel in the nineteenth century.
VOLTAIRE VERSUS ROUSSEAU: SCIENCE VERSUS THE TASTE FOR THE "NATURAL"
While Voltaire thought the salvation of humanity was in science's advancement and in society's rational improvement, Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that the arts, sciences, society, and civilization in general had corrupted "natural man" and that humanity's only salvation was to return to its original condition. The "Natural" Landscape The eighteenth century developed a taste for depictions by artists of "natural" landscapes. Growing travel opportunities, including the "Grand Tour," also increased interest in the depiction of particular places and geographic settings. The taste for the "natural" in France: Rousseau placed feelings above reason as the most "natural" of human expressions and called for the cultivation of sincere, sympathetic, and tender emotions. Because of this belief, he exalted as a model for imitation the unsullied emotions and the simple, honest, uncorrupt "natural" life of the peasant.
The Sentimentality of Rural Romance: The expression of sentiment is apparent in Jean-Baptiste Greuze's muchadmired painting of The Village Bride, which shows a peasant family in a rustic interior.
The charm of the ordinary: Jean-Baptiste-Simon Chardin's Grace at Table, which shows an unpretentious urban, middle-class mother and two daughters at table giving thanks to God before a meal, satisfied a taste for paintings that taught moral lessons and upheld middle-class values.
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Portrait of a woman artist: lisabeth Louise Vige-Lebrun's naturalistic Self-Portrait shows the self-confident artist in a lighthearted mood.
The charm of the ordinary: Jean-Baptiste-Simon Chardin's Grace at Table, which shows an unpretentious urban, middle-class mother and two daughters at table giving thanks to God before a meal, satisfied a taste for paintings that taught moral lessons and upheld middle-class values.
Adlaide Labille-Guiard
Self-Portrait with Two Pupils
1785 oil on canvas 6 ft. 11 in. x 4 ft. 11 1/2 in.
The taste for the "natural" in England: Visualizing Morality through Satire: William Hogarth expresses the taste of the newly prosperous and confident middle class in England in his moralizing satires of contemporary life. In his carefully detailed painting of the Breakfast Scene from Marriage la Mode, Hogarth comments on the social evil of the arranged marriage.
Thomas Gainsborough's portrait, painted in a soft-hued light and with feathery brushwork, shows Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan dressed informally and seated in a rustic natural landscape of unspoiled beauty. Gainsborough's painting is also an example of "Grand Manner portraiture," in which the sitter is elevated and the refinement and elegance of her class is communicated through the large scale of the figure relative to the canvas, the controlled pose, the "arcadian" landscape setting, and the low horizon line.
Thomas Gainsborough Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan
1787 oil on canvas 7 ft. 2 5/8 in. x 5 ft. 5/8 in.
Great people and noble deeds: Honor, valor, courage, resolution, self-sacrifice, and patriotism were included among the "natural" virtues that produced great people and great deeds. Defending Gibraltar: Sir Joshua Reynolds's painting shows an honest English officer who was honored for his heroic defense of Gibraltar with the title Baron Heathfield of Gibraltar. Sir Joshua Reynolds Lord Heathfield
1787 oil on canvas 4 ft. 8 in. x 3 ft. 9 in.
General Wolfe's heroic death: Benjamin West's The Death of General Wolfe shows a contemporary historical subject with realistic figures in modern costume, but in a composition arranged in the complex and theatrically ordered manner of the grand tradition of history painting, which West uses to transform the heroic battlefield death into a martyrdom charged with religious emotions.
Paul Revere, Silversmith: A sense of directness and faithfulness to visual fact is conveyed in John Singleton Copley's Portrait of Paul Revere, which shows the figure informally posed in a plain setting with clear lighting.
Antonio Canaletto Basin of San Marco from San Giorgio Maggiore Venice, Italy
c.a. 1740 Oil on Canvas
The charm of the ordinary: Jean-Baptiste-Simon Chardin's Grace at Table, which shows an unpretentious urban, middle-class mother and two daughters at table giving thanks to God before a meal, satisfied a taste for paintings that taught moral lessons and upheld middle-class values. Jean-Antoine Houdon
Voltaire
1778 marble 18 7/8 in. high
Setting the Stage for Neoclassicism in Art A Roman example of virtue: Angelica Kauffmann contributed to the replacement of "natural" pictures with simple figure types, homely situations, and contemporary settings with subject matter of an exemplary nature drawn from Greek and Roman history and literature. Her Cornelia Presenting Her Children as Her Treasures treats the theme of virtue with the example of Cornelia presenting her own sons as her jewels. Angelica Kauffmann Mother of the Gracchi
ca. 1785 oil on canvas 3 ft. 4 in. x 4 ft. 2 in.
Neoclassicism in France Planting the seeds of glory: Jacques-Louis David, the Neoclassical painter-ideologist of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic empire, favored the classical and academic traditions. His painting of the Oath of the Horatii depicts a heroic story of courageous and patriotic selfsacrifice set in pre-Republican Rome, in which carefully modeled rigidly statuesque male figures enact a virile drama in a shallow space defined by a severely simple architectural framework. The rectilinear forms and noble virtues displayed by the men are contrasted with the curvilinear collapsing forms of the women, whose weak female nature is shown overcome by emotion and sorrow. Jacques-Louis David Oath of the Horatii
1784 oil on canvas approximately 11 x 14 ft.
A martyred revolutionary: In a spare Neoclassical composition, David painted the assassinated revolutionary JeanPaul Marat as a tragic martyr who died in the service of the state.
Jacques-Louis David
Napolean's ascendance:
In the large The Coronation of Napoleon, David documented the pomp and pageantry of Napoleon's coronation in December of 1804. The action is presented as if on a theater stage, and makes a complex statement about the changing politics in Napoleonic France. Jacques-Louis David The Coronation of Napoleon
1805-1808 oil on canvas 20 ft. 4 1/2 in. x 32 ft. 1 3/4 in.
tienne-Louis Boule
Roman Grandeur in France: Jacques-Germain Soufflot's grand design for the Neoclassical portico of Sainte-Genevive, now the Panthon, in Paris, was inspired by the Roman ruins at Baalbek in Syria.
Jacques-Germain Soufflot
La Madeleine was intended to serve as a "temple of glory" for Napoleon's armies and a monument to the newly won glories of France. Pierre Vignon's grandiose design includes a high podium and broad flight of stairs leading to a deep porch in the front, which recall Roman imperial temples.
The emperor's sister as goddess: Napoleon's favorite sculptor, Antonio Canova, carved a sharply detailed marble portrait of Napoleon's sister, Pauline Borghese, as Venus shown reclining in a sensuous pose on a divan. Antonio Canova Paulene Borghese as Venus
1808 | marble | life-size
Invoking Palladio: Lord Burlington's Chiswick House is a free variation on the theme of Palladio's Villa Rotonda. Its simple symmetry, unadorned planes, right angles, and stiffly wrought proportions give it very classical and "rational" appearance. In contrast, the interior is ornamented in a Late Baroque style, while the informal gardens are irregularly laid out. Richard Boyle and William Kent Chiswick House near London, England
begun 1725
Palladian splendor: John Wood the Younger's plan for the Royal Crescent in Bath links thirty houses into rows behind a single, continuous, majestic Palladian faade in a great semiellipse.
Adapting Pompeian decor: Robert Adam's delicate Pompeian design of the Etruscan Room at Osterley Park House is symmetrical and rectilinear. Decorative motifs, such as medallions, urns, vine scrolls, sphinxes, and tripods derived from Roman art are sparsely arranged within broad, neutral spaces and slender margins.
Jeffersonian idealism: Thomas Jefferson wanted to adopt a symbolic Neoclassicism as the national architecture of the United States. He re-designed his own home of Monticello to emulate Palladio's architecture, with a faade inspired by the work of Robert Adam. Pierre L'Enfant's plan for the city of Washington, D.C., is logically ordered. In his design for the Capitol, Benjamin H. Latrobe said he wanted to re-create "the glories of the Greece of Pericles in the woods of America."
Washington, DC
1809
Free at last: The Neoclassical style Jefferson championed so successfully for the architecture of the new democracy was invoked by American sculptors as well. The following sculpture depicts freed African American slaves.
Hiram Powers
Hiram Powers
Summarizing Neoclassical principles: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres adopted what he believed to be a truer and purer Greek style than that employed by David. His conservative Neoclassical taste and strict adherence to the doctrine of ideal form is seen in the Apotheosis of Homer, which is a catalogue of painters, sculptors, poets, philosophers, writers, and playwrights who since ancient times had remained loyal to classicism. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Apotheosis of Homer
1827 oil on canvas 12 ft. 8 in. x 16 ft. 10 3/4 in.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Paganini
1819 pencil drawing 1 ft. x 8 1/2 in.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Grande Odalisque
1814 oil on canvas 2 ft. 11 in. x 5 ft. 4 in.
Sources http://websites.swlearning.com/cgiwadsworth/course_products_wp.pl?fid=M20b&product_isbn_issn=0155 050907&discipline_number=436 Art Through the Ages, 12th/11th ed., Gardner