The term Neoclassicism refers to the classical revival in

European art, architecture, and interior design that lasted from

the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century.

This period gave rebirth to the art of ancient Rome and

Greece and the Renaissance as an opposition to the
ostentatious Baroque and Rococo art that preceded the
movement. Although the movement spread throughout
Western Europe, France and England were the countries
that used the style most frequently in their arts and
architecture, using the classical elements to express ideas
of nationalism, courage, and sacrifice.
The most prominent exponent of
18th-century Neoclassicism Anton
Mengs constantly referred to the
heritage of Antiquity in search for
perfect forms in art. The subject of
this painting was inspired by an
antique cameo belonging to Mengs's
wife (now also in the Hermitage). The
figure of Perseus is based on the
statue of the Apollo Belvedere, and
the mosaic The Rescue of Hesione by
Heracles and Telamon from the Villa
Albani in Rome. The artist's attention
to the modelling of forms reveals his
interest in the Italian Renaissance.

Perseus and Andromeda

Anton Raffael Mengs, 1728-1779
1777
Neoclassicism emphasized rationality and the resurgence of tradition.
Neoclassical artists incorporated classical styles and subjects, including
columns, pediments, friezes, and other ornamental schemes in their
work. They were inspired by the work of Homer and Plutarch and John
Flaxmann’s illustrations for the Illiad and Odyssey. Other classic models
included Virgil, Raphael, and Poussin among others. Neoclassical
painters took extra care to depict the costumes, settings, and details of
classical subject matter with as much accuracy as possible. Much of the
subject matter was derived from classical history and mythology. The
movement emphasized line quality over color, light, and atmosphere. The
height of Neoclassicism was displayed in the paintings of Jacques-Louis
David and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres.
Jacques-Louis David (French, 1748–1825)
The Death of Socrates 1787
Jacques-Louis David Art Reproductions
The Death of Marat, 1793
royal museums of Fine Arts, Brussels, Belgium
Francois-Hubert Drouais Art Reproductions
The Comte and Chevalier de Choiseul as
Savoyards, 1758
Frick Collection, New York, USA
Comtesse d’ Haussonville_ By
Jean- Auguste-Dominique Ingres.
The high tide of neoclassicism
in painting is exemplified in
early paintings by Jacques-
Louis David and Jean Auguste
Dominique Ingres' entire
career. David's Oath of the
Horatii was painted in Rome
and made a splash at the Paris
Salon of 1785. Its central
perspective is perpendicular to
the picture plane, made more
emphatic by the dim arcade
behind, against which the
heroic figures are disposed as
in a frieze.
The new interiors sought to recreate
an authentically Roman and
genuinely interior vocabulary,
employing flatter, lighter motifs,
sculpted in low frieze-like relief or
painted in monotones ("like
cameos"), isolated medallions or
vases or busts or bucrania or other
motifs, suspended on swags of
laurel or ribbon, with slender
arabesques against backgrounds,
perhaps, of "Pompeiian red" or pale
tints, or stone colors.
The Neoclassical movement lasted from the mid-18th until the end of the
19th century, and was a distinct movement that drew on the Western
classical art of Ancient Greece and Rome. Beginning in earnest in 1760’s, it
was a reactionary movement against the sensuousness and frivolousness
of the Rococo and Baroque styles and a return to the ‘ideal’ of Ancient
Greece and the ‘purity’ of Roman art

Unlike Baroque or Rococo, Neoclassical paintings are sharp in colour

and employ chiaroscuro, which is the (usually bold) contrast between
light and dark.
Neoclassicism as generally manifested in European painting by the
1790s
emphasized the qualities of outline and linear design over those of
colour,
atmosphere, and effects of light. Widely disseminated engravings of
classical sculptures and Greek vase paintings helped determine this
bias,
which is clearly seen in the outline illustrations made by the British
sculptor John Flaxman in the 1790s for editions of the works of
Homer,
Aeschylus, and Dante. These illustrations are notable for their drastic
and
powerful simplification of the human body, their denial of pictorial
space,
and their minimal stage setting. This austere linearity when depicting
the
human form was adopted by many other British figural artists,
including
the Swiss-born Henry Fuseli and William Blake, among others.
John William Godward

SUNFLOWER
Cupid and
Psyche 1817
Jacques Louis
David
The Execution of the Xeres revolutionaries in Spain by the garotte from
Le Petit Journal 1890s
Henri Meyer
The Oath of the Horatii (detail 3) 1784
Jacques Louis David
Nude Standing c. 1920
Erzsebet Korb
Tamino plays the magic flute to ward off the wild beasts, Act I scene xv, from The
Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756-91, c.1793
Joseph & Peter Schaffer

Tamino plays the magic flute to ward off the wild

beasts, Act I scene xv, from The Magic Flute by
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756-91, c.1793
Joseph & Peter Schaffer
Antoinette At Her Dressing Table
Mary Cassatt
Neoclassicism arose partly as a reaction against the sensuous and
frivolously decorative Rococo style that had dominated European art
from the 1720s on. But an even more profound stimulus was the new and
more scientific interest in classical antiquity that arose in the 18th century.

Neoclassicism was given great impetus by new archaeological

discoveries, particularly the exploration and excavation of the buried
Roman cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii (the excavations of which
began in 1738 and 1748, respectively). And from the second decade of
the 18th century on, a number of influential publications by Bernard de
Montfaucon, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the Comte de Caylus, and
Robert Wood provided engraved views of Roman monuments and
other
antiquities and further quickened interest in the classical past.
Neoclassical painting style arose in France in the
1780s under the leadership of Jacques-Louis David. He and his
contemporary Jean-François-Pierre Peyron were interested in
narrative
painting rather than the ideal grace that fascinated Mengs. 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.
Joseph-Marie Vien
Young Greek Maidens Decking the Sleeping
Cupid with Flowers
1773
Jean-Baptiste Regnault
Liberty or Death
Neoclassicism as manifested in painting was initially not stylistically
distinct from the French Rococo and other styles that had preceded it.
This was partly because, whereas it was possible for architecture and
sculpture to be modeled on prototypes in these media that had actually
survived from classical antiquity, those few classical paintings that had
survived were minor or merely ornamental works—until, that is, the
discoveries made at Herculaneum and Pompeii.

The earliest Neoclassical painters were Joseph-Marie Vien, Anton Raphael

Mengs, Pompeo Batoni, Angelica Kauffmann, and Gavin Hamilton; these
artists were active during the 1750s, '60s, and '70s. Each of these painters,
though they may have used poses and figural arrangements from ancient
sculptures and vase paintings, was strongly influenced by preceding
stylistic trends. An important early Neoclassical work such as Mengs's
“Parnassus” (1761; Villa Albani, Rome) owes much of its inspiration to
17th-century classicism and to Raphael for both the poses of its figures
and its general composition.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French, 1780-1867), Oedipus Solves
the Riddle of the Sphinx, oil on canvas, 1808. See sphinx.
Jacques-Louis David, Cupid and Psyche, 1817, oil on canvas,
Cleveland Museum of Art.