The document discusses the Enlightenment period and the rise of Neoclassicism in art and architecture between 1700-1780. During this period, there was a greater emphasis on reason and empiricism that questioned established powers like the monarchy and church. Artists like Jacques-Louis David painted in a classical style depicting moral stories from antiquity that represented Enlightenment ideals of liberty and reason. Neoclassical architecture was also simpler and based on Greek and Roman designs. This style was then influential during the American and French Revolutions to depict leaders like George Washington.

1. Art 1100
Joan Jonas
“They Come to Us without a Word”
U.S. Pavilion,Venice Biennale, 2015

2. The Enlightenment
(1700-1780)

3. During the “Enlightenment” society gained a
greater confidence in the use of reason to
perfect government, art and life.
Fed up with the abuses of the Baroque “Age of
Kings” this period set the stage for the American
and French revolutions.
Rococo: Frivolity and riches.
Neoclassicism: Reason re-applied.
Bourgeois Style: The common people.
The Enlightenment (1700-1780)

4. Jean Siméon Chardin
The Attentive Nurse, 1747
This style was exemplified
by Jean Baptiste-Simeon
Chardin (1699-1779)
Chardin’s paintings reveal
the dignity and beauty in
everyday life
"one uses color, but one
paints with sentiment."
The Bourgeois
“Middleclass” Style

5. Soap Bubbles, ca. 1734
Jean Siméon Chardin
(French, 1699–1779)
The Bourgeois
“Middleclass” Style

6. Jean Baptiste Siméon
Chardin
French, 1699–1779
TheWhiteTablecloth,
1731/32
The Bourgeois
“Middleclass” Style

7. Jean-Baptiste-Simeon
Chardin,The Kitchen
Maid, 1738. Oil on
canvas,
Revolution
The discontent of the
lower classes is also
visible in Chardin’s
paintings. Here a maid
stares off into space
blankly while the
cleaver implies a kind
of violence.

8. Empiricism
John Locke: his major work, Essay Concerning Human
Understanding (1690). Argues that no ideas are born in
us, that all knowledge comes from experience.
“Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say,
white paper, devoid of all characters, without any
ideas; how comes it to be furnished?
To this I answer, from experience.”
Hence the Divine Right of Kings, is not an eternal truth
but a learned habit...
The Enlightenment

9. The “Philosophes”
French intellectuals who popularized science and used
reason to rethink society. They were vehemently
Empiricist to the point where Christianity itself
became questioned.
IncludesVoltaire, Diderot and Rousseau.
For them...
More knowledge More justice & good
Hence projects like the first Encyclopedia (1751-1772)
an attempt to fit the entirety of human knowledge into
one book.
The Enlightenment

10. Neoclassicism
Ushered in by renewed interest in Classical art.
Via archaeology and the “Grand Tour” vacations.
•Harmony, Simplicity and Proportion
•Classical (Greek and Roman) themes
•“History painting”
•Intended as moral examples.
The Enlightenment

11. Ancient Rome, 1757, Giovanni Paolo Panini (Italian, Roman, 1691–1765)
Neo-Classicism

12. Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825)
French Neoclassical painter.
Paintings intended as moral examples.
Shifting political ties.
•Royalty
•Revolutionary
•Emperor Napoleon.
The Enlightenment

13. Jacques-Louis David, Lictors Returning to Brutus the
Bodies of His Sons1789.
Neo-Classicism

14. Neo-Classicism
The Death of Socrates, 1787
Jacques-Louis David (French, 1748–1825)

15. Accused by the Athenian government of denying the gods and
corrupting the young through his teachings, Socrates (469–399
B.C.) was offered the choice of renouncing his beliefs or being
sentenced to death by drinking hemlock. David shows him calmly
discoursing on the immortality of the soul with his grief-stricken
disciples. Painted in 1787, the picture, with its stoic theme, is
perhaps David's most perfect Neoclassical statement.
The Death of Socrates, 1787
Jacques-Louis David
(French, 1748–1825)
Neo-Classicism

16. Jacques-Louis David. Oath of the Horatii, 1784-1785. Oil on canvas,
Neo-Classicism

17. Jacques-Louis David. Oath
of the Horatii, 1784-1785.
Oil on canvas,
Neo-Classicism
Here with David we are in the period of the wars between Rome and Alba, in 669
B.C. It has been decided that the dispute between the two cities must be settled by
an unusual form of combat to be fought by two groups of three champions each.The
two groups are the three Horatii brothers and the three Curiatii brothers.The
drama lay in the fact that one of the sisters of the Curiatii, Sabina, is married to one
of the Horatii, while one of the sisters of the Horatii, Camilla, is betrothed to one of
the Curiatii. Despite the ties between the two families, the Horatii's father exhorts
his sons to fight the Curiatii and they obey, despite the lamentations of the women.

18. Neo-Classicism
•Simplicity: Characters
divided into three groups
with arches. Horizontal
layout.
•Proportion: Repetition of
threes.
•Classical (Greek and Roman) story. Of the three brothers
going of to war.
•Intended as moral examples: About the need for sacrifice
for ones beliefs.

19. Jean-Honoré
Fragonard,The
Swing, 1766. Oil
on canvas
Rococo
The power of
Neoclassical art is in
its emphatic rejection
of the aristocratic art
of the rich, Rococo.

20. Petit Trianon,Versailles (front facade),Versailles, France, 18th century (ca. 1762–68).
Architect:Ange-Jacques Gabriel.
Neo-Classicism in Architecture

21. Neoclassical architecture
Neoclassical architecture is characterized by grandeur of
scale, simplicity of geometric forms, Greek—especially Doric
—or Roman detail, dramatic use of columns, and a preference
for blank walls.The new taste for antique simplicity
represented a general reaction to the excesses of the Rococo
style. Neoclassicism thrived in the United States and Europe,
with examples occurring in almost every major city.

22. Temple of Love, gardens of Petit Trianon,Versailles,Versailles, France, 18th century
(1777–78).Architect: Richard Mique.
Neo-Classicism in Architecture

23. Revolution
John Singleton
Copley, Paul
Revere, 1768-70.
Neo-Classical
In America, Neo-classical
art pictured the fathers
of the American
Revolution of 1776.
These artists looked back
to the logical, ordered
compositions, fine
brushwork, and “window
on the world” techniques
of Classical art.

24. Monticello,Albemarle County,Virginia, 18th century (1771–76).Architect:Thomas Jefferson.
Neo-Classicism in American Architecture

25. Neo-Classicism in Architecture
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW,Washington, DC 20500
Construction started: 1792 Opened: 1800
Architects: James Hoban, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Nathan C.Wyeth, Charles Follen McKim

26. Neo-Classicism in Architecture
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW,Washington, DC 20500
Construction started: 1792 Opened: 1800
Architects: James Hoban, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Nathan C.Wyeth, Charles Follen McKim
Greek Pediment
without a frieze
(story yet to be told)
Doric columns.

27. Neo-Classicism in Architecture
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW,Washington, DC 20500
Construction started: 1792 Opened: 1800
Architects: James Hoban, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Nathan C.Wyeth, Charles Follen McKim

28. In 1776, the American revolution begins to
throw off the British constitutional monarchy, in
which they weren’t allowed to vote.
The new American government modeled itself
after the early Roman Republic, because of it’s
liberation from the brutal Etruscan kings.
“Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
E Plurbis Unum = “Out of Many, One”
Neo-Classicism and Revolution

29. Neo-Classicism and Revolution
Horatio Greenough, George Washington. 1841
Marble. Smithsonian American Art Museum
Some attempts to depict
George Washington in
sculpture met with popular
disapproval.
What is the proper way to
portray our first president?
Here Greenough shows him
as a colossal statue as the
Greek god Zeus.

30. Antonio Canova, George
Washington, 1821
North Carolina History
Museum (plaster model)
Neo-Classicism and Revolution
Here the Italian sculptor
Canova depicted Washington
as a Roman general, dressed in
a tunic, body armor, and a
short cape.
Anyone ever seen this before?

31. Neo-Classicism and Revolution
Statue of George Washington,
Rotunda,Virginia State Capitol
Jean-Antoine Houdon , 1785-1788
marble, life-size
But the statue by the
French sculptor Houdon
was different and quickly
became the signature
likeness of Washington.

32. Neo-Classicism and Revolution
Sculpted between 1785 and 1791 on a commission fromVirginia’s
legislature. Houdon presented Washington as a modern Cincinnatus, the
Roman farmer and general who left his land to fight for his state and,
after victory, returned to his farm as man of peace and simplicity.
Washington wears his uniform but holds a civilian walking cane with his
right hand.
To the left of and behind the general is a farmer’s plowshare, yet he
rests his left hand on a bundle of rods called a fasces, the Roman
symbol of civil authority. Houdon translated the symbol to an American
usage by forming the bundle from thirteen rods, to stand for the
unification of the thirteen original colonies, and adding arrows in
between that likely refer to Native Americans or the idea of America as
wild frontier. Washington is portrayed as a man, not as a god.

33. Statue of George Washington, Rotunda,Virginia State Capitol
Jean-Antoine Houdon , 1785-1788 marble, life-size

34. George Washington, ca. 1838–44; this
carving, after 1844
Hiram Powers (American, 1805–1873)
Marble
Neo-Classicism and Revolution
Houdon portrayed
Washington as a Roman
farmer turned general and
in clothes of the time,
instead of a God (Zeus)
or an emperor in Roman
garb.

35. French Revolution
In 1789 a mob stormed the royal prison, the Bastille, a
symbol of royal authority and law.
The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen,
took from Enlightenment sources especially Rousseau’s
belief in the equality of individuals.
Motto:“Liberty, Equality and Fraternity”
1793: King Louis XVI and Marie Antionette were publicly
beheaded.

36. Jacques-Louis
David, The Death of
Marat, 1793.
David painted the
French Revolutionary
writer Marat, after he
was stabbed to death
in his bathtub by a
royal supporter.
Neo-Classicism and Revolution

37. Neo-Classicism and Revolution
One of the ideological leaders of the movement to bring down King
Louis XVI was a man named Marat, a friend of David. He was
plagued by a terrible skin disease which forced him to spend most of
his time in a bathtub filled with minerals and medicines.That is
where he wrote most of his political essays, which were later
published and distributed to the population of Paris and beyond.
One day in 1793, Marat was sitting in his tub writing, when suddenly
a woman named Charlotte Corday barged into his home, and
confronted him as he lay there in a compromising position. She
shoved a petition in his face, demanding that he stop writing his
inflammatory pamphlets, then pulled a knife from her cloak and
stabbed him. He bled to death in his bathtub soon after.When the
authorities arrived a short time later, they urgently requested David
to come and to produce a painting of the scene as soon as possible.

38. Jacques-Louis David (Paris, 1748-Brussels, 1825)
The Intervention of the SabineWomen, 1799
Neo-Classicism and Revolution

39. French Revolution
The French Revolution eventually degenerated
into mob rule in 1793–1794 as various political
parties ruthlessly executed thousands of their
opponents by guillotine in what became known as
the “Reign of Terror.”
Into this political void steps the general Napoleon
Bonaparte. He sets up an authoritarian government,
devoted to some of the principles of the Revolution,
and seeks to spread it around the continent.

40. Jean Louis André Théodore Géricault
French, 1791-1824
Head of a Guillotined Man, 1818/19
French Revolution

41. Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon
Crossing the Great Saint
Bernard Pass, 1800. Oil on
canvas,
Napoleon envisions
himself like the
emperors of Rome.
Jacque Louis David
became the emperor’s
chief court painter.
Revolution

42. The Emperor Napoleon in His
Study at the Tuileries, by
Jacques-Louis David, 1812
As Napoleon I, He Was
Emperor of the French from
1804 up to 1815. Napoleon
dominated European affairs
for over a decade while
leading France. He rapidly
gained control of continental
Europe. Began an ambitious
building program in France.

43. Jacques-Louis David- (1748 -1825)
The Coronation of the Emperor Napoleon I and the Crowning of the Empress
Joséphine in Notre-Dame Cathedral on December 2, 1804 1806 - 1807

45. Vendome Column, 1810,
Paris
Modeled after Trajan’s Column
and theVendome Column was
topped with an image of
Charlemagne, the Medieval
French ruler. It was cast from
the bronze cannons of defeated
armies.
French Revolution

46. La Madeline, commisioned 1806- completed 1829-30. Paris

47. French Revolution
Arc deTriomphe de l’Étoile, Construction started: 15 August 1806, Inaugurated 29 July 1836
50 m (164 ft) : 45 m (148 ft),Architect: Jean Chalgrin, Louis-Étienne Héricart de Thury

48. Neoclassicism
Ushered in by renewed interest in Classical art.
Via archaeology and the “Grand Tour” vacations.
•Harmony, Simplicity and Proportion
•Classical (Greek and Roman) themes
•“History painting”
•Intended as moral examples.
The Enlightenment