25: the baroque in northern europe & 26: Rococo to Neoclassicism: the 18th century in europe and america

Characteristics of Rococo

- light, airy, diffuse light - pale pastel colors - intimate - sweetly lighthearted - full of wit and intricate artifice - secular, sometimes erotic content

Characteristics of Baroque

- tenebroso - single light source - intense, dramatic and rich colors - - serious subject matter, often - religious action and drama

vanitas paintings

17th C. Dutch paintings that have for their subject emblems of vanity and luxury and representing the transitory nature of life and the attractions of the world.

Naturalism Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan 1787 fig. 26-18

A contrasting blend of "naturalistic" representation and Rococo setting is found in Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan ( FIG. 26-18 ), a characteristic portrait by British painter Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788). Gainsborough presented Mrs. Sheridan as a lovely, informally dressed woman seated in a rustic landscape faintly reminiscent of Watteau ( FIG. 26-7 ) in its soft-hued light and feathery brushwork. Gainsborough's goal was to match the natural, unspoiled beauty of the landscape with that of his sitter. Mrs. Sheridan projects an air of ingenuous sweetness. Her dark brown hair blows freely in the slight wind. Gainsborough planned to give the picture a more pastoral air by adding several sheep, but he did not live long enough to complete the canvas. Even without the sheep, the painting clearly expresses Gainsborough's deep interest in the landscape setting. Although he won greater fame in his time for his portraits, as did his slightly older contemporary, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792; see " Grand Manner Portraiture "), Gainsborough had begun as a landscape painter and always preferred painting scenes of nature to depicting individual likenesses.

Naturalism William Hogarth (1697-1764) Breakfast Scene from Marriage à la Mode c. 1745 fig. 26-17

Across the Channel, a truly English style of painting emerged with William Hogarth (1697-1764), who satirized the lifestyle of the newly prosperous middle class with comic zest. Traditionally, the British imported painters from the Continent—Holbein, Rubens, and Van Dyck among them. Throughout his career, Hogarth waged a lively campaign against the English feeling of dependence on, and inferiority to, these artists. Although Hogarth would have been the last to admit it, his own painting owed much to the work of his contemporaries in France, the Rococo artists. Yet his subject matter, frequently moral in tone, was distinctively English. This was the great age of English satirical writing, and Hogarth—who admired that literary genre and included Henry Fielding (1707-1754), the author of Tom Jones (1749), among his closest friends—clearly saw himself as translating satire into the visual arts.Hogarth's favorite device was to make a series of narrative paintings and prints in a sequence similar to chapters in a book or scenes in a play, following a character or group of characters in their encounters with some social evil. Breakfast Scene ( FIG. 26-17 ), from Marriage à la Mode, is one in a sequence of six paintings satirizing the marital immoralities of the moneyed classes in England. In it, the marriage of a young viscount is just beginning to founder. The husband and wife are tired after a long night spent in separate pursuits. While the wife stayed at home for an evening of cards and music-making, her young husband had been away from the house enjoying the company of another woman. He thrusts his hands deep into the empty money-pockets of his breeches, while his wife's small dog sniffs inquiringly at the other woman's lacy cap protruding from his coat pocket. A steward, his hands full of unpaid bills, rolls his eyes in despair at the actions of his noble master and mistress.The couple's home is luxurious, but Hogarth filled it with witty clues to the dubious taste of its occupants. For example, the row of pious religious paintings on the upper wall of the distant room concludes with a curtained canvas undoubtedly depicting an erotic subject. According to the custom of the day, ladies could not view this discreetly hidden painting, but at the pull of a cord, the master and his male guests could enjoy a tableau of cavorting figures. In Breakfast Scene, as in all his work, Hogarth proceeded as a novelist might, elaborating on his subject with carefully chosen detail, the discovery of which heightens the comedy.Hogarth designed the marriage series to be published as a set of engravings. The prints of this and his other moral narratives were so popular that unscrupulous entrepreneurs produced unauthorized versions almost as fast as the artist created his originals. The popularity of these prints speaks not only to the appeal of their subjects but also to the democratization of knowledge and culture fostered by the Enlightenment and to the exploitation of new printing technologies that opened the way for a more affordable and widely disseminated visual culture.

The Rococo Style François Boucher (1703-1770) Cupid a Captive 1754 fig. 26-8

After Watteau's death brought his brilliant career to a premature end at age 36, François Boucher (1703-1770) rose to the dominant position in French painting, in large part because he was Madame de Pompadour's favorite artist. Although Boucher was an excellent portraitist, his success rested primarily on his canvases depicting shepherds, nymphs, and goddesses gracefully cavorting in shady glens engulfed in pink and sky-blue light. Cupid a Captive ( FIG. 26-8 ) presents a rosy pyramid of infant and female flesh set off against a cool, leafy background, with fluttering draperies both hiding and revealing the nudity of the figures. Boucher used the full range of Italian and French Baroque devices—the dynamic play of crisscrossing diagonals, curvilinear forms, and slanting recessions—to create his masterful composition. But he dissected powerful Baroque curves into a multiplicity of decorative flourishes, dissipating Baroque drama into sensual playfulness. Lively and lighthearted, Boucher's artful Rococo fantasies became mirrors in which his well-to-do French patrons could behold the ornamental reflections of their cherished pastimes.

Baroque Dutch Republic Louis Le Nain (c. 1593-1648) Family of Country People c. 1640 fig. 25-34

Although classicism was an important element of French art during the 17th and early 18th centuries, not all artists embraced the "grand manner." The works of Louis Le Nain (ca. 1593-1648) have more in common with contemporaneous Dutch art than with Renaissance or ancient art. Nevertheless, subjects that in Dutch painting were opportunities for boisterous good humor ( FIG. 25-21 ), Le Nain treated with somber stillness. Family of Country People ( FIG. 25-34 ) reflects the thinking of 17th-century French social theorists who celebrated the natural virtue of peasants who worked the soil. Le Nain's painting expresses the grave dignity of one peasant family made stoic and resigned by hardship. These drab country folk surely had little reason for merriment. The peasant's lot, never easy, was miserable during the Thirty Years' War. The anguish and frustration of the peasantry, suffering from the cruelty of unruly armies living off the countryside, often erupted in violent revolts that the same armies savagely suppressed. This family, however, is pious, docile, and calm. Because Le Nain depicted peasants with dignity and quiet resignation, despite their harsh living conditions, some scholars have suggested that he intended his paintings to please wealthy urban patrons, who preferred to think that the peasants were content with their lot.

Naturalism Antonio Canaletto (1697-1768) Riva degli Schiavoni, Venice c. 1735-1740 fig. 26-22

Although travel throughout Europe was commonplace in the 18th century, Italy became an especially popular destination. This "pilgrimage" of aristocrats, the wealthy, politicians, and diplomats from France, England, Germany, Flanders, Sweden, Russia, Poland, Hungary, and even the British colonies in America came to be known as the Grand Tour. Italy's allure fueled the revival of classicism, and the popularity of Neoclassical art drove the fascination with Italy. One British observer noted, "All our religion, all our arts, almost all that sets us above savages, has come from the shores of the Mediterranean." *The Grand Tour was not simply leisure travel. The education available in Italy to the inquisitive mind made such a tour an indispensable experience for anyone who wished to make a mark in society. The Enlightenment had made knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome imperative for elite members of society, and a steady stream of Europeans and Americans traveled to Italy in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. These tourists aimed to increase their knowledge of literature, the visual arts, architecture, theater, music, history, customs, and folklore. Given this extensive agenda, it is not surprising that a Grand Tour could take a number of years to complete. Most travelers moved from location to location, following an established itinerary, not unlike the pilgrimages to saints' shrines in the late Middle Ages (see " Pilgrimage Roads in France and Spain " ).The British were the most avid travelers, and they conceived the initial "tour code,"including required itineraries to important destinations. Although they designated Rome early on as the primary destination in Italy, visitors traveled as far north as Venice and as far south as Naples. Eventually, Paestum, Sicily, Florence, Siena, Pisa, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, and Parma ( MAP 25-1 ) all appeared in guidebooks and in paintings. Joseph Wright of Derby ( FIGS. 26-10A and 26-11 ) and Joseph Mallord William Turner ( FIG. 27-22 ) were among the many British artists to undertake a Grand Tour.Many visitors to Italy returned home from their Grand Tour with a painting by Antonio Canaletto, the leading painter of scenic views of Venice. It must have been very cheering on a gray winter afternoon in England to look up and see a sunny, panoramic veduta such as that in Canaletto's Riva degli Schiavoni, Venice ( FIG. 26-22 ), with its cloud- studded sky, picturesque water traffic, and well-known Venetian landmarks painted in scrupulous perspective and minute detail. (The Riva degli Schiavoni is the quay on the Grand Canal east of the Doge's Palace [ FIG. 14-23 ], where large ships from Dalmatia [Schiavonia] used to moor. The Doge's Palace is at the left in Canaletto's Riva degli Schiavoni.)Canaletto usually made drawings "on location" to take back to his studio and use as sources for paintings. To help make the on-site drawings true to life, he often used a camera obscura , as Vermeer ( FIG. 25-18B ) did before him. These instruments were darkened chambers (some of them virtually portable closets) with optical lenses fitted into a hole in one wall through which light entered to project an inverted image of the subject onto the chamber's opposite wall. The artist could trace the main details from this image for later reworking and refinement. The camera obscura enabled artists to create convincing representations incorporating the variable focus of objects at different distances. Canaletto's paintings give the impression of capturing every detail, with no "editing." In fact, he presented each site according to Renaissance perspective conventions and exercised great selectivity about which details to include and which to omit to make a coherent and engagingly attractive veduta.end sidebar

Naturalism John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) Paul Revere c. 1768-1770 fig. 26-21

American artist John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) matured as a painter in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Like West, Copley later settled in England, where he absorbed the fashionable English portrait style. But unlike Grand Manner portraits, Copley's Paul Revere ( FIG. 26-21 ), painted before the artist left Boston, conveys a sense of directness and faithfulness to visual fact that marked the taste for honesty and plainness noted by many late-18th- and early-19th-century visitors to America. When Copley painted his likeness, Revere was not yet the familiar hero of the American Revolution. In this picture, he is a working professional silversmith. The setting is plain, the lighting clear and revealing. Revere sits in his shirtsleeves, holding a teapot in progress. He pauses and turns his head to look the observer straight in the eyes. The painter treated the reflections in the polished wood of the tabletop with as much care as he did Revere's figure, his tools, and the teapot resting on its leather graver's pillow. The informality and the sense of the moment link this painting to contemporaneous English and Continental portraits. But the spare style and the emphasis on the sitter's down-to-earth character differentiate this American work from its European counterparts.

Baroque Dutch Republic Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) Return of the Prodigal Son c. 1665 fig. 25-14

Among the hallmarks of the style of Rembrandt van Rijn, the leading painter in the 17th-century Dutch Republic, is his masterful use of light and shade. Rembrandt's pictorial method involved refining light and shade into finer and finer nuances until they blended with one another. Earlier painters' use of abrupt lights and darks gave way, in the work of artists such as Rembrandt and Velázquez ( FIGS. 24-29 , 24-30 , and 24-31 ), to gradation.Although these later artists sacrificed some of the dramatic effects of sharp chiaroscuro, a greater fidelity to appearances more than offsets those sacrifices. In fact, the recording of light in small gradations is closer to reality because the eye perceives light and dark not as static but as always subtly changing.In general, Renaissance artists represented forms and faces in a flat, neutral modeling light (even Leonardo's shading is of a standard kind). They represented the idea of light, rather than showing how humans perceive light.Artists such as Rembrandt discovered gradations of light and dark as well as degrees of differences in pose, in the movements of facial features, and in psychic states. They arrived at these differences optically, not conceptually or in terms of some ideal. Rembrandt found that by manipulating the direction, intensity, and distance of light and shadow, and by varying the surface texture with tactile brushstrokes, he could render subtle nuances of character and mood, in both individuals and whole scenes, as in his touching portrayal of the prodigal son's return ( FIG. 25-14 ). He discovered for the modern world that variations of light and shade, subtly modulated, can be read as emotional differences. In the visible world, light, dark, and the wide spectrum of values between the two are charged with meanings and feelings that sometimes are independent of the shapes and figures they modify. The theater and the photographic arts have used these discoveries to great dramatic effect.end sidebar

Naturalism Elisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun (1755-1842) Self-Portrait 1790 fig. 26-15

Another manifestation of the "naturalistic" impulse in 18th-century French art was the emergence of a new more personal and less pretentious mode of portraiture. Self-Portrait ( FIG. 26-15 ) by É lisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842) is a characteristic example of the genre. The painter looks directly at viewers and pauses in her work to return their gaze. Although her mood is lighthearted and her costume's details echo the serpentine curve that Rococo artists and wealthy patrons loved, nothing about Vigée Le Brun's pose appears contrived. Hers is the self-confident, natural stance of a woman whose art has won her an independent role in society (see " Vigée Le Brun, Labille-Guiard, and the French Royal Academy " ). She portrayed herself in a close-up, intimate view at work on one of the many portraits (for example, FIG. 26-15A ) she painted of her most important patron, Queen Marie Antoinette (1755-1793).

Baroque Dutch Republic Willem Kalf (1619-1693) Still Life with a Late Ming Ginger Jar 1669 fig. 25-22

As Dutch prosperity increased, precious objects and luxury items made their way into still-life paintings in great numbers. Still Life with a Late Ming Ginger Jar ( FIG. 25-22 ) by Willem Kalf (1619-1693) reflects both the wealth that Dutch citizens had accrued and the painter's exquisite skills, both technical and aesthetic. Kalf highlighted the breadth of Dutch maritime trade through his depiction of the Persian floral carpet, the Chinese jar used to store ginger (a luxury item), and the Mediterranean orange and peeled lemon (see " International Trade "). He delighted in recording the lustrous sheen of fabric and the light glinting off reflective surfaces. As is evident in this image, Kalf 's works present an array of ornamental objects, such as the Venetian and Dutch glassware and the silver plate. The inclusion of the watch suggests that this work, like Claesz's Vanitas Still Life ( FIG. 25-1 ), may also be a vanitas painting, if less obviously so.

Baroque Dutch Republic Rachel Ruysch (1663-1750) Flower Still Life after 1700 fig. 25-23

As living objects that soon die, flowers, particularly cut blossoms, appeared frequently in vanitas paintings. However, floral painting as a distinct genre also enjoyed great popularity in the Dutch Republic because the Dutch were the leading growers and exporters of flowers in 17th-century Europe. One of the major practitioners of flower painting was Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), who from 1708 to 1716 served as court painter to the elector Palatine (the ruler of the Palatinate, a former division of Bavaria) in Düsseldorf, Germany. Ruysch's father was a professor of botany and anatomy, which may account for her interest in and knowledge of plants and insects. She acquired an international reputation for her lush paintings, and was able to charge very high prices for her work. Flower Still Life ( FIG. 25-23 ) is one of her finest paintings. In this canvas, the floral arrangement is so full, many of the blossoms seem to be spilling out of the vase. However, Ruysch's floral still lifes are not pictures of real floral arrangements, but idealized groupings of individually studied flowers, often combining perfect specimens of flowers that bloomed at different times of the year and could never be placed on a table at the same time. Her careful composition of the individual elements in the illustrated example is evident in her arrangement of the flowers to create a diagonal running from the lower left to the upper right corner of the canvas, offsetting the opposing diagonal of the table edge.

Neo-Classicism Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) Monticello 1770-1806 fig. 26-33

Because the appeal of Neoclassicism was due in part to the values with which it was associated—morality, idealism, patriotism, and civic virtue—it is not surprising that in the new American republic, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) spearheaded a movement to adopt Neoclassicism as the national architectural style. Jefferson—economist, educational theorist, and gifted amateur architect, as well as statesman (see " Thomas Jefferson, Patron and Practitioner " )—admired Palladio immensely and read carefully the Italian architect's Four Books of Architecture. Later, while minister to France, he studied 18th-century French classical architecture and city planning and visited the Maison Carrée ( FIG. 7-32 ), an ancient Roman temple at Nîmes. After his European sojourn, Jefferson decided to completely remodel Monticello ( FIG. 26-33 ), his home near Charlottesville, Virginia, which he originally had designed in a different style. The final version of Monticello reveals the influence of Palladio's Villa Rotonda ( FIG. 22-54 ) and of Chiswick House ( FIG. 26-29 ), but the materials Jefferson used are traditional Virginia wood and brick. The single-story structure has an octagonal dome set above the central drawing room behind a pediment-capped columnar porch. It sits on a wooded plot of land with mountain vistas all around. (Monticello means "hillock" or "little mountain" in Italian.) The setting fulfilled another of Jefferson's goals: to build for himself a country villa inspired by the ones described by the first-century Roman author Pliny, who died during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 (see " An Eyewitness Account of the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius " ).

Neo-Classicism Richard Boyle (Lord Burlington) (1695-1753) and William Kent (c. 1686-1748) Chiswick House begun 1725 fig. 26-29

Begun only three years after the start of construction of St Martin-in-the-Fields is another major monument of English Neoclassical architecture: Chiswick House ( FIG. 26-29 ) on the outskirts of London, designed by Richard Boyle (1695-1753), earl of Burlington, with the help of William Kent (ca. 1686-1748). An important impetus for the eager embrace of the Neoclassical style by British architects during the early 18th century was the publication in 1715 of Colin Campbell's Vitruvius Britannicus—three volumes of engravings of ancient buildings, prefaced by a denunciation of the Italian Baroque style and high praise for Palladio and Jones. Chiswick House is a free variation on the theme of Palladio's Villa Rotonda ( FIG. 22-54 ). The exterior design provided a clear alternative to the colorful splendor of Versailles ( FIG. 25-26 ). In its simple symmetry, unadorned planes, right angles, and precise proportions, Chiswick House looks very classical and rational. But the Palladian-style villa's setting within informal gardens, where a charming irregularity of layout and freely growing uncropped foliage dominate the scene, balances the classical severity and rationality of the architecture. Just as the owners of English villas cultivated irregularity in the landscaping surrounding their homes ( FIGS. 26-31 and 26-32 ), they sometimes preferred interiors ornamented in a style more closely related to Rococo decoration. At Chiswick House, the interior design creates a luxurious Baroque foil to the stern symmetry of the exterior and the plan.Palladian classicism prevailed in English architecture until about 1760, when it began to evolve into a more archaeologically faithful Neoclassicism. Playing a pivotal role in the shift from a dependence on Renaissance examples to the emulation of ancient models was the publication in 1762 of the first volume of Antiquities of Athens by two British painters and architects, James Stuart (1713-1788) and Nicholas Revett (1720-1804). Indeed, the purest expression of Greek-inspired architecture in 18th-century England was Stuart's design for the Temple of Theseus ( FIG. 26-30 ) at Hagley Park. The setting of the Hagley portico was anything but Neoclassical, however (see " Hagley Park and English Picturesque Gardens " ).

The Rococo Style Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) The Swing 1766 fig. 26-9

Boucher's greatest student, Jean - Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), was a first-rate colorist whose decorative skill almost surpassed his master's. An example of his manner can stand as characteristic not only of his work but also of the later Rococo in general. In The Swing ( FIG. 26-9 ), a young gentleman has convinced an unsuspecting older man (thought by some art historians to be a bishop) to swing the young man's pretty sweetheart higher and higher, while her lover (and the work's patron), in the lower left corner, stretches out to admire her from a strategic position on the ground. The young lady flirtatiously kicks off her shoe toward the little statue of Cupid. The infant love god holds his finger to his lips. The landscape emulates Watteau's—a luxuriant perfumed bower in a park that very much resembles a stage scene for comic opera. The glowing pastel colors and soft light convey, almost by themselves, the theme's sensuality.

Baroque Dutch Republic Claude Lorrain (1600-1682)Landscape with Cattle and Peasants 1629 fig. 25-33

Claude Gellée, called Claude Lorrain (1600-1682) after his birthplace in the duchy of Lorraine, which was technically independent from the French monarchy during this period, rivaled Poussin in fame. Claude modulated in a softer style Poussin's disciplined rational art, with its sophisticated revelation of the geometry of landscape. Unlike the figures in Poussin's pictures, those in Claude's landscapes tell no dramatic story, point out no moral, praise no hero, and celebrate no saint. Indeed, the figures in Claude's paintings often appear to be added as mere excuses for the radiant landscape itself. For the French artist, painting involved essentially one theme—the beauty of a broad sky suffused with the golden light of dawn or sunset glowing through a hazy atmosphere and reflecting brilliantly off rippling water.In Landscape with Cattle and Peasants ( FIG. 25-33 ), the figures in the right foreground chat in animated fashion. In the left foreground, cattle relax contentedly. In the middle ground, cattle amble slowly away. The well-defined foreground, distinct middle ground, and dim background recede in serene orderliness, until all form dissolves in a luminous mist. Atmospheric and linear perspective reinforce each other to turn a vista into a typical Claudian vision, an ideal classical world bathed in sunlight in infinite space (compare FIG. I-12 ).Claude's formalizing of nature with balanced groups of architectural masses, screens of trees, and sheets of water followed the great tradition of classical landscape. It began with the backgrounds of Venetian paintings ( FIGS. 22-30 , 22-31 , and 22-32 ) and continued in the art of Annibale Carracci ( FIG. 24-15 ) and Poussin ( FIGS. 25-32 and 25-32A ). Yet Claude, like the Dutch painters, studied the light and the atmospheric nuances of nature, making an important contribution. He recorded carefully in hundreds of sketches the look of the Roman countryside, its gentle terrain accented by stone-pines, cypresses, and poplars and by the ever-present ruins of ancient aqueducts, tombs, and towers. He made these the fundamental elements of his compositions. Claude's landscapes owe their timeless appeal to the distinctive combination of the natural beauty of the outskirts of Rome and the mystique of the past.Claude achieved his marvelous effects of light by painstakingly placing on his canvas tiny brushstrokes representing small value gradations, which imitated, though on a very small scale, the range of values of outdoor light and shade. Avoiding the problem of high-noon sunlight overhead, Claude preferred, and convincingly rendered, the sun's rays as they gradually illuminated the morning sky or, with their dying glow, set the pensive mood of evening. Thus he matched the moods of nature with those of human subjects. Claude's infusion of nature with human feeling and his recomposition of nature in a calm equilibrium greatly appealed to many landscape painters of the 18th and early 19th centuries.

The Rococo Style Clodion (1738-1814) Nymph and Satyr Carousing 1780-1790- fig. 26-9A

Claude Michel, better known as Clodion, was the leading French sculptor specializing in small, lively sculptures representing sensuous Rococo fantasies. Clodion lived and worked in Rome for several years after winning a cherished Prix de Rome (Rome Prize) from the French Royal Academy to study art and paint or sculpt in the Eternal City, and his work incorporates echoes of Italian Mannerist sculpture. One of the small groups (less than 2 feet tall) he sculpted during the 1780s is Nymph and Satyr Carousing ( FIG. 26-9A ), which depicts two followers of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine. The sensuous nymph who rushes to pour wine from a cup into the open mouth of a semihuman goat-legged satyr recalls the nude female figures of Benvenuto Cellini ( FIGS. 22-45 and 22-45A ), who worked at Fontainebleau ( FIG. 23-21A ) for Francis I, and of Giambologna ( FIG. 22-46 ), a French Mannerist sculptor who moved to Italy.Clodion's terracotta tabletop sculptures are the perfect complement to the erotic playfulness of the paintings of Boucher ( FIG. 26-8 ) and Fragonard ( FIG. 26-9 ).end sidebar

Neo-Classicism Angelica Kauffmann (1741-1807) Mother of the Gracchi c. 1785 fig. 26-1

Cornelia Presenting Her Children as Her Treasures, or Mother of the Gracchi ( FIG. 26-1 ), is perhaps Kauffman's best-known work. The theme of the painting is the virtue of Cornelia, mother of the future political leaders Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, who, in the second century bce, attempted to reform the Roman Republic. Cornelia reveals her character in this scene, which takes place after a visitor has shown off her fine jewelry and then insists that Cornelia show hers. Instead of taking out her own precious adornments, Cornelia brings her sons forward, presenting them as her jewels. Mother of the Gracchi is a characteristic example of the Enlightenment embrace of the values of the classical world, an exemplum virtutis ("example of virtue") drawn from Greek and Roman history and literature.To give her retelling of the story an authentic air, Kauffman studied ancient statuary and then clothed her actors in ancient Roman garb and posed them in statuesque attitudes within a Roman interior. The architectural setting is severe, and the composition and drawing have the simplicity and firmness of low-relief carving, qualities that became hallmarks of the Neoclassical style.end sidebar

Neo-Classicism Jacques Louis David (1748-1825) (works found in chapters 26 and 27) Oath of the Horatii 1784 fig. 26-25

David embraced the Enlightenment belief that the subject of an artwork should have a moral. Paintings representing noble deeds in the past could inspire virtue in the present. A milestone painting in the Neoclassical master's career, Oath of the Horatii ( FIG. 26-25 ), depicts a story from pre-Republican Rome, the heroic phase of Roman history. The topic was not too obscure for David's audience. Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) had retold this story of conflict between love and patriotism, recounted by the ancient Roman historian Livy, in a play performed in Paris several years earlier. According to the story, the leaders of the warring cities of Rome and Alba decided to resolve their conflicts in a series of encounters waged by three representatives from each side. The Romans chose as their champions the three Horatius brothers, who had to face the three sons of the Curatius family from Alba. A sister of the Horatii, Camilla, was the bride-to-be of one of the Curatius sons, and the wife of the youngest Horatius was the sister of the Curatii. David's painting shows the Horatii as they swear on their swords, held high by their father, to win or die for Rome, oblivious to the anguish and sorrow of the Horatius women.Oath of the Horatii exemplifies the Neoclassical style. Not only was the subject a narrative of patriotism and sacrifice excerpted from Roman history, but the painter depicted the story according to the principles of classical art. The action unfolds in a shallow space much like a stage setting, defined by a severely simple architectural framework (compare FIG. 26-1 ). David deployed his statuesque and carefully modeled figures across the space, close to the foreground, in a manner recalling Greco-Roman relief sculpture. The rigid, angular, and virile forms of the men on the left effectively contrast with the soft curvilinear shapes of the distraught women on the right. This juxtaposition visually pits the virtues that Enlightenment leaders ascribed to men, such as courage, patriotism, and unwavering loyalty to a cause, against the emotions of love, sorrow, and despair expressed by the women in the painting. The French viewing audience perceived such emotionalism as characteristic of the female nature. The message was clear and of a type readily identifiable to the prerevolutionary French public.The picture created a sensation at its first exhibition in Paris in 1785. Although David had painted it under royal patronage and did not intend the painting as a revolutionary statement, Oath of the Horatii aroused his audience to patriotic zeal. Neoclassicism soon became the semiofficial artistic style of the French Revolution.

Naturalism Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin (1699-1779) Grace 1740 fig. 26-13

Denis Diderot was a pioneer in the field of art criticism as well as in the encyclopedic compilation of human knowledge. Between 1759 and 1781, he contributed reviews of the biennial Salon of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture to the Parisian journal Correspondance littéraire. In his review of the 1763 Salon, Diderot had the following praise for Chardin's still lifes and for naturalism in painting.There are many small pictures by Chardin at the Salon, almost all of them depicting fruit with the accoutrements for a meal. This is nature itself. The objects stand out from the canvas and they are so real that my eyes are fooled by them. . . . In order to look at other people's paintings, I feel as though I need different eyes; but to look at Chardin's, I need only keep the ones nature gave me and use them properly. If I had painting in mind as a career for my child, I'd buy this one [and have him copy it]. . . . Yet nature itself may be no more difficult to copy. . . . O Chardin, it's not white, red or black pigment that you grind on your palette but rather the very substance of objects; it's real air and light that you take onto the tip of your brush and transfer onto the canvas. . . . It's magic, one can't understand how it's done: thick layers of color, applied one on top of the other, each one filtering through from underneath to create the effect. . . . Close up, everything blurs, goes flat and disappears. From a distance, everything comes back to life and reappears. *While Diderot lavished praise on some of the leading artists of his day, he wrote scathing reviews of others. He admired Chardin ( FIG. 26-13 ) because his work was the antithesis of the Rococo manner in painting, which Diderot deplored. Here, for example, is what Diderot had to say about François Boucher ( FIG. 26-8 ), who also exhibited in the Salon of 1763, and his younger protégés emulating his Rococo style:What a misuse of talent! How much time gone to waste! You could have had twice the effect for half the effort. . . . When one writes, does one have to write everything? And when one paints, does one have to paint everything? . . . This man is the ruination of all young apprentice painters. Barely able to handle a brush and hold a palette, they torture themselves stringing together infantile garlands, painting chubby crimson bottoms, and hurl themselves headlong into all kinds of follies which cannot be redeemed by originality, fire, tenderness nor by any magic in their models. For they lack all of these. *end sidebar

Baroque Dutch Republic Jacob van Ruisdael (c. 1628-1682) View of Haarlem from the Dunes of Overveen c. 1670 fig. 25-18

Depicting the Dutch landscape with precision and sensitivity was also a specialty of Jacob van Ruisdael (ca. 1628-1682). In View of Haarlem from the Dunes at Overveen ( FIG. 25-18 ), Ruisdael provided an overarching view of this major Dutch city. The specificity of the artist's image—the Saint Bavo church in the background, the numerous windmills that refer to the land reclamation efforts, and the figures in the foreground stretching linen to be bleached (a major industry in Haarlem)—reflects the pride that Dutch painters took in recording their homeland and the activities of their fellow citizens. Nonetheless, in this painting the inhabitants and dwellings are so small that they blend into the land itself, unlike the figures in Cuyp's view of Dordrecht. Moreover, the horizon line is low, so the sky fills almost three-quarters of the canvas surface, and the sun illuminates the landscape only in patches, where it has broken through the clouds above. In View of Haarlem, Ruisdael not only captured the appearance of a specific locale but also succeeded in imbuing the work with a quiet serenity that is almost spiritual. Less typical of his work, but also one of the great landscape paintings of the 17th century, is Ruisdael's allegorical Jewish Cemetery ( FIG. 25-18A ).

Baroque Dutch Republic Georges de la Tour (1593-1652) Adoration of the Shepherds 1645-1650 fig. 25-36

France, unlike the Dutch Republic, was a Catholic country, and religious themes, although not as common as in Italian and Spanish Baroque art, occupied some 17th-century French painters. Among the French artists who painted biblical subjects was Georges de La Tour (1593-1652). His work, particularly his use of light, suggests a familiarity with Caravaggio's art, which he may have learned about from painters in Utrecht, such as ter Brugghen and van Honthorst ( FIGS. 25-7 and 25-8 ). Although La Tour used the devices of Caravaggio's Dutch followers, his effects are strikingly different from theirs. His Adoration of the Shepherds ( FIG. 25-36 ) makes use of the night setting favored by the Utrecht "Caravaggisti," as they are often called, much as van Honthorst portrayed it. But here, the light, its source shaded by an old man's hand, falls upon a very different company in a very different mood. A group of humble men and women, coarsely clad, gather in prayerful vigil around a luminous baby Jesus. Without the aid of the title, this work might be construed as a genre piece, a narrative of some event from peasant life. Nothing in the environment, placement, poses, dress, or attributes of the figures distinguishes them as the Virgin Mary, Joseph, Christ Child, or shepherds. The artist did not even give the religious personages halos. The light is not spiritual but material: it comes from a candle.La Tour's scientific scrutiny of the effects of light as it throws precise shadows on surfaces intercepting it nevertheless had religious intention and consequence. The light illuminates a group of ordinary people held in a mystic trance induced by their witnessing the miracle of the Incarnation. In this timeless tableau of simple people, La Tour eliminated the dogmatic significance and traditional iconography of the birth of the Savior. Still, these people reverently contemplate something they regard as holy. The devout of any religious persuasion can read this painting, regardless of their familiarity with the biblical account.The supernatural calm pervading Adoration of the Shepherds is characteristic of the mood of Georges de La Tour's art. He achieved this by eliminating motion and emotive gesture (only the light is dramatic), by suppressing surface detail, and by simplifying body volumes. These stylistic traits are among those associated with classical and Renaissance art. Thus several apparently contradictory elements meet in the work of La Tour: classical composure, fervent spirituality, and genre realism.

rocaille

French for "pebble", refers to the motif of pebbles and rocks often worked into the design of early to late 18th C. art and architecture.

Baroque Dutch Republic Jan Vermeer (1632-1675) Allegory of the Art of Painting 1670-1675 fig. 25-20

In Allegory of the Art of Painting ( FIG. 25-20 ), the work that Vermeer considered his most important (it is one of his largest and he never sold it, retaining it as a display piece in his studio), the artist himself appears with his back to the viewer. Dressed in clothing reminiscent of historical Burgundian attire, he is hard at work on a painting of the model standing before him. She wears a laurel wreath and holds a trumpet and book, traditional attributes of Clio, the muse of history. The map of the provinces (an increasingly common feature of Dutch homes) on the back wall serves as yet another reference to history.As in many of Vermeer's domestic scenes, the viewer is outside the space of the action, looking in through the drawn curtain, which also separates the artist in his studio from the rest of the house. Some art historians have suggested that the light radiating from an unseen window on the left, illuminating both the model and the canvas being painted, alludes to the light of artistic inspiration. Accordingly, many scholars have interpreted this painting as an allegory—a reference to painting inspired by history. More likely, especially given the character of Vermeer's known paintings, which do not have historical subjects, the intended message is that art (and artists) transcend history and time. That the painting is certainly an allegorical work and not a simple genre scene is confirmed by a legal claim to the painting filed by Vermeer's mother-in-law in 1677. When, after Vermeer's death, 26 of his works were scheduled for sale to pay his widow's debts, his mother-in-law argued that she had the right to withhold from auction "the piece . . . wherein the Art of Painting is portrayed." *end sidebar

exemplum virtutis

Latin for model or example of virtue.

Baroque England Christopher Wren (1632-1723) West Façade of St. Paul's Cathedral 1675-1710 fig. 25-38

London's majestic Saint Paul's Cathedral ( FIG. 25-38 ) is the work of England's most renowned architect, Christopher Wren (1632-1723). A mathematical genius and skilled engineer whose work won Isaac Newton's praise, Wren became professor of astronomy at Gresham College in London at age 25. Mathematics led to architecture, and Charles II (r. 1649-1685) asked Wren to prepare a plan for restoring the old Gothic church dedicated to Saint Paul. Wren proposed remodeling the building based on Roman structures. Within a few months, the Great Fire of London, which destroyed the old structure and many other churches in the city in 1666, gave Wren his opportunity. Although Jones's work strongly influenced him, Wren also traveled in France, where the splendid palaces and state buildings being created in and around Paris at the time of the expansion of the Louvre palace ( FIG. 25-25 ) must have impressed him. Wren also closely studied prints illustrating Baroque architecture in Italy. In Saint Paul's, he harmonized Palladian, French, and Italian Baroque features.In view of its size, Saint Paul's Cathedral was built with remarkable speed—in little more than 30 years—and Wren lived to see it completed. The building's form underwent constant refinement during construction, and Wren did not determine the final appearance of the towers until after 1700. In the splendid skyline composition, two foreground towers act effectively as foils to the great dome. Wren must have been aware of similar schemes that Italian architects had devised for Saint Peter's ( FIG. 24-4 ) in Rome to solve the problem of the relationship between the facade and dome. Certainly, the influence of Borromini ( FIGS. 24-7 , top, rear, and 24-11 ) is evident in the upper levels and lanterns of the towers. The lower levels owe a debt to Palladio ( FIG. 22-56 ), and the superposed paired columnar porticos recall the Louvre's east facade ( FIG. 25-25 ). Wren's skillful eclecticism brought all these foreign features into a grand and unified design.Wren received commissions for many other London churches after the Great Fire. Even today, Wren's towers and domes punctuate the skyline of London. Saint Paul's dome is the tallest of all. Wren's legacy was significant and long lasting, both in England and in colonial America, as examined in the next chapter.

Baroque France Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659-1743) Louis XIV 1701 fig. 25-24

Louis XIV maintained a workshop of painters, each with a specialization—for example, faces, fabric, architecture, landscapes, armor, or fur. Thus many of the king's portraits were a group effort. Louis XIV ( FIG. 25-24 ) by Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659-1743) is probably largely the work of his assistants, but he designed the composition and painted the king's face himself—on paper, affixed to the canvas after the rest of the painting was complete. Rigaud's portrait successfully conveys the image of an absolute monarch. The king, age 63 when he commissioned this portrait, stands with his left hand on his hip and gazes directly at the viewer. His elegant ermine-lined fleur-de-lis coronation robes (compare FIG. 25-4 ) hang loosely from his left shoulder, suggesting an air of haughtiness. Louis also draws his garment back to expose his legs. (The king was a ballet dancer in his youth and was proud of his well-toned legs.) The portrait's majesty derives in large part from the composition. The Sun King is the unmistakable focal point of the image, and Rigaud placed him so that he seems to look down on the viewer. (Louis XIV was only 5 feet, 4 inches tall—a fact that drove him to design the red high-heeled shoes he wears in this painting.) The carefully detailed environment in which the king stands also contributes to the portrait's stateliness and grandiosity, as does the painting's sheer size (more than 9 feet tall).Rigaud's portrait was originally intended as a gift to Louis's grandson, Philip V of Spain, but the Sun King was so pleased with it that he kept it for his own collection. Only three years later did Louis commission Rigaud to produce a copy for Philip. The image soon became iconic, and Rigaud's studio produced more copies for various European aristocrats.

Baroque Flanders Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) Charles I at the Hunt c. 1635 fig. 25-5

Most of the leading painters of the next generation in Flanders were at one time trained or employed in Rubens's studio. The master's most famous pupil was Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641). Early on, the younger man, unwilling to be overshadowed by Rubens's undisputed stature, left his native Antwerp for Genoa and then London, where he became court portraitist to Charles I and was awarded a knighthood. Although van Dyck created dramatic compositions of high quality, his specialty became the portrait. He developed a courtly manner of great elegance that influenced many artists throughout Europe and resounded in English portrait painting well into the 19th century.In one of his finest works, Charles I at the Hunt ( FIG. 25-5 ), the ill-fated English king stands on a hillock with the Thames River in the background. An equerry and a page attend him. The portrait is a stylish image of relaxed authority, as if the king is out for a casual ride in his park, but no one can mistake the regal poise and the air of absolute authority that Charles's Parliament resented and was soon to rise against. Here, the king turns his back on his attendants as he surveys his domain. Van Dyck's placement of the monarch is exceedingly artful. He stands off center, but as the sole figure seen against the sky and with the branches of the trees pointing to him, he is the immediate focus of the viewer's attention, whose gaze the king returns. In this masterful composition, van Dyck also managed to make Charles I, who was of short stature, seem taller than his attendants and even his horse. The painter also portrayed the king looking down on the observer, befitting his exalted position.

Baroque Dutch Republic Hendrick Ter Brugghen (1588-1629) Calling of St. Matthew 1621 fig. 25-7

One artist in the Dutch Republic who did produce a large number of religious paintings was Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588-1629) of Utrecht. He painted Calling of Saint Matthew ( FIG. 25-7 ) in 1621 after returning from a trip to Italy, selecting as his subject a theme Caravaggio had painted ( FIG. 24-17 ) for the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome. The moment of the narrative that ter Brugghen chose and his naturalistic depiction of the figures echo Caravaggio's work. But although ter Brugghen was an admirer of the Italian master, he dispensed with Caravaggio's stark contrasts of dark and light and instead presented the viewer with a more colorful palette of soft tints. Further, the Dutch painter compressed the figures into a small but well-lit space, creating an intimate effect compared with Caravaggio's more spacious setting, as was appropriate for a work displayed in a home instead of the grandiose chapel of a Catholic church.

Baroque Dutch Republic Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) Christ with the Sick around Him, Receiving the Children (Hundred Guilder Print) c. 1649 fig. 25-16

One of Rembrandt's most celebrated graphic works is Christ with the Sick around Him ( FIG. 25-16 ). Indeed, the title by which this print has been known since the early 18th century—the Hundred-Guilder Print—refers to the high price it brought during the artist's lifetime. (As noted, a comfortable house could be purchased for 1,000 guilders.) Rembrandt worked on the print throughout the 1640s, and prints exist of each of the major stages of its evolution. The version illustrated here is the final stage, probably completed in 1649.C hrist with the Sick demonstrates Rembrandt's mastery of all aspects of the printmaker's craft, for he used both engraving and etching to depict the figures and the setting. As in his other religious works, Rembrandt suffused this print with a deep and abiding piety, presenting the viewer not the celestial triumph of the Catholic Church but the humanity and humility of Jesus.Rembrandt's composition expertly weaves together several episodes in Matthew's account of Christ's ministry (see " The Life of Jesus "), which is why it is known by various titles in addition to the one given here—for example, Christ Preaching and Christ Receiving the Children. Christ appears in the center preaching compassionately to, and simultaneously blessing, the blind, the lame, and the young, who are spread throughout the print in a dazzling array of standing, kneeling, and lying positions. Also present is a young man in elegant garments with his head in his hand, lamenting Christ's insistence that the wealthy need to give their possessions to the poor in order to gain entrance to Heaven. The tonal range of the print is remarkable. At the right, the figures near the city gate are in deep shadow. At the left, the figures, some rendered almost exclusively in outline, are in bright light—not the light of day but the illumination radiating from Christ himself. A second, unseen source of light comes from the right and casts the shadow of the praying man's arms and head onto Christ's tunic. Technically, compositionally, and in terms of its humanity, Rembrandt's Hundred-Guilder Print is his supreme achievement as a printmaker.

Baroque Dutch Republic Frans Hals (c. 1581-1666) Archers of St. Hadrian c. 1633 fig. 25-9

Portrait artists traditionally relied heavily on convention—for example, specific poses, settings, attire, and furnishings—to convey a sense of the sitter. Because the subject was usually someone of status or note, such as a pope, king, duchess, condottiere, or wealthy banker, the artist's goal was to produce an image appropriate to the subject's station in life. With the increasing number of Dutch middle-class patrons, portrait painting became more challenging. The Calvinists shunned ostentation, instead wearing subdued and dark clothing with little variation or decoration ( FIG. 25-10 ), and the traditional conventions became inappropriate and thus unusable. Despite these difficulties, or perhaps because of them, Frans Hals produced lively portraits that seem far more relaxed than traditional formulaic portraiture. He injected an engaging spontaneity into his images and conveyed the individuality of his sitters as well. His manner of execution, using light and rapid brushstrokes, intensified the casualness, immediacy, and intimacy in his paintings. The poses of his figures, the highlights on their clothing, and their facial expressions all seem instantaneously created.Hals's most ambitious portraits reflect the widespread popularity in the Dutch Republic of very large canvases commemorating the participation of Dutch citizens in civic organizations. These commissions presented greater difficulties to the painter than requests to depict a single sitter. Hals rose to the challenge and achieved great success with this new portrait genre. His Archers of Saint Hadrian ( FIG. 25-9 ) is typical in that the subject is one of the many Dutch civic militia groups that claimed credit for liberating the Dutch Republic from Spain. As did other companies, each year the Archers met in dress uniform for a grand banquet on their saint's feast day. The celebrations sometimes lasted an entire week, prompting an ordinance limiting them to three or four days. These events often included sitting for a group portrait.In Archers of Saint Hadrian, Hals attacked the problem of how to represent each militia member satisfactorily yet retain action and variety in the composition. Whereas earlier group portraits in the Netherlands were rather ordered and regimented images, Hals sought to enliven the depictions. In his portrait of the Saint Hadrian militiamen, each member is both part of the troop and an individual with unique features. The sitters' movements and moods vary markedly. Some engage the viewer directly. Others look away or at a companion. Some are stern, others animated. Each archer is equally visible and clearly recognizable. The uniformity of attire—black military dress, white ruffs, and sashes—did not deter Hals from injecting spontaneity into the work. Indeed, he used those elements to create a lively rhythm extending throughout the composition and energizing the portrait. The impromptu effect—the preservation of every detail and fleeting facial expression—is, of course, the result of careful planning. Yet Hals's energetic brush appears to have moved instinctively, directed by a plan in his mind but not traceable in any preparatory scheme on the canvas. The result is a portrait that is less a record of "sitters posing for the painter" than it is a snapshot of a social gathering.end sidebar

Baroque Dutch Republic Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) Et in Arcadia Ego or, (Even in Arcadia, I [am present] c. 1655 fig. 25-31

Poussin's Et in Arcadia Ego (Even in Arcadia, I [am present]; FIG. 25-31 ) exemplifies the "grand manner" of painting that the artist advocated. It features a lofty subject rooted in the classical world and figures based on antique statuary. Rather than depicting dynamic movement and intense emotions, as his Italian contemporaries in Rome did, Poussin emulated the rational order and stability of Raphael's paintings. Dominating the foreground are three shepherds living in the idyllic land of Arcadia. They study an inscription on a tomb as a statuesque female figure quietly places her hand on the shoulder of one of them. She may be the spirit of death, reminding these mortals, as does the inscription, that death is found even in Arcadia, supposedly a spot of paradisiacal bliss. The countless draped female statues surviving in Italy from Roman times supplied the models for this figure, and the posture of the youth with one foot resting on a boulder derives from Greco-Roman statues of Neptune, the sea god, leaning on his trident. The classically compact and balanced grouping of the figures, the even light, and the thoughtful and reserved mood complement Poussin's classical figure types.

Baroque Dutch Republic Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) The Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq (The Night Watch) 1642 fig. 25-13

Rembrandt amplified the complexity and energy of the group portrait in The Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq ( FIG. 25-13 ), better known as Night Watch. This more commonly used title is a misnomer, however. The painting is not a nocturnal scene, nor are the figures portrayed posted on a watch in defense of their city. It features dramatic lighting, but the painting's darkness (which explains in part the commonly used title) is the result of the varnish the artist used, which darkened considerably over time. It was not the painter's intention to portray his subjects moving about at night.N ight Watch was one of six paintings by different artists commissioned by various groups around 1640 for the assembly and banquet room of Amsterdam's new Musketeers Hall, the largest and most prestigious interior space in the city. From the limited information available about the commission, it appears that two officers, Captain Frans Banning Cocq and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch, along with 16 members of their militia, contributed to Rembrandt's fee. The canvas also includes 16 additional figures, among them a girl just to the left of center, whom scholars have never been able to identify, despite her prominence in the composition.Unfortunately, in 1715, when city officials moved Rembrandt's painting to Amsterdam's town hall, they trimmed it on all sides (by as much as 2 feet). Even in its truncated form, The Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq is still a huge canvas (nearly 15 feet wide), but it is an incomplete record of the artist's resolution of the challenge of portraying 18 patrons at once. Rembrandt's apparent goal was to capture the excitement and frenetic activity of men preparing for a parade, and he succeeded brilliantly.Comparing this militia group portrait to Hals's Archers of Saint Hadrian ( FIG. 25-9 ) reveals Rembrandt's inventiveness in enlivening what was, by then, becoming a conventional format for Dutch group portraits. Rather than present assembled men posed in orderly fashion, the younger artist chose to portray the company members rushing about in the act of organizing themselves, thereby animating the image considerably. At the same time, he managed to record the three most important stages of using a musket—loading, firing, and readying the weapon for reloading—details that must have pleased his 18 patrons.

Baroque Flanders Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) Arrival of Marie de' Medici at Marseilles 1622-1625 fig. 25-4

Rubens's interaction with royalty and aristocracy provided the Flemish master with an understanding of the ostentation and spectacle of Baroque (particularly Italian) art that appealed to the wealthy and privileged. Rubens, the born courtier, reveled in the pomp and majesty of royalty. Likewise, those in power embraced the lavish spectacle that served the Catholic Church so well in Italy. The magnificence and splendor of Baroque imagery reinforced the authority and right to rule of the highborn. Among Rubens's royal patrons was Marie de' Medici, a member of the famous Florentine banking family and widow of Henry IV (r. 1589-1610), the first Bourbon king of France. She commissioned Rubens to paint a series of huge canvases memorializing and glorifying her career. Between 1622 and 1626, Rubens, working with amazing creative energy, produced with the aid of his many assistants 21 historical-allegorical pictures and three portraits designed to hang in the queen's new palace, the Luxembourg, in Paris. (Today, they are on display in a huge exhibition hall in the Louvre, the former palace of the kings of France.) Remarkably, each of the paintings, although conceived as an instrument of royal propaganda to flatter the queen and impress her subjects and foreign envoys, is also a great work of art—a supreme testimony to Rubens's skill and the talents of his small army of assistants.In Arrival of Marie de' Medici at Marseilles ( FIG. 25-4 ), a 13-foot-tall tableau that may be the best of the series, Marie disembarks at that southern French port after her sea voyage from Italy. An allegorical personification of France, draped in a cloak decorated with the fleur-de-lis (the floral symbol of French royalty; compare FIG. 25-24 ), welcomes her. The sea and sky rejoice at the queen's safe arrival. Neptune and the Nereids (daughters of the sea god Nereus) salute her, and the winged and trumpeting personified Fame swoops overhead. Conspicuous in the galley's opulently carved stern-castle, under the Medici coat of arms, stands the commander of the vessel, the only immobile figure in the composition. In black and silver, this figure makes a sharp accent amid the swirling ivory, gold, and red brushstrokes. Rubens enriched the surfaces with a decorative splendor that pulls the whole composition together. The vigorous motion that customarily enlivens the painter's typically robust figures, beginning with the muscle-bound twisting sea creatures, vibrates through the entire design.As noted, the success Rubens enjoyed made him a wealthy man, and that in turn afforded him the opportunity late in life to choose his own subjects instead of only painting those specified by his patrons. Perhaps the best example is Rubens's Garden of Love ( FIG. 25-4A ), which also highlights the artist's much subtler coloristic late style.

Baroque Flanders Clara Peeters (1594-c. 1657) Still Life with Flowers, Goblet, Dried Fruit, and Pretzels 1611 fig. 25-6

Some 17th-century Flemish artists specialized in still-life painting, as did Sánchez Cotán ( FIG. 24-25 ) in Spain. A pioneer of this genre was Clara Peeters (1594-ca. 1657), a native of Antwerp who spent time in Holland and laid the groundwork for Pieter Claesz ( FIG. 25-1 ), Willem Kalf ( FIG. 25-22 ), Rachel Ruysch ( FIG. 25-23 ), and other Dutch masters of still-life painting. Peeters won renown for her depictions of food and flowers together, and for still lifes featuring bread and fruit, known as breakfast piece . In Still Life with Flowers, Goblet, Dried Fruit, and Pretzels ( FIG. 25-6 ), Peeters's considerable skills are evident. One of a series of four paintings, each of which depicts a typical early-17th-century meal, this breakfast piece reveals Peeters's virtuosity in depicting a wide variety of objects convincingly, from the smooth, reflective surfaces of the glass and silver goblets to the soft petals of the blooms in the vase. Peeters often painted the objects in her still lifes against a dark background, thereby negating any sense of deep space (compare FIG. 24-25 ). In this breakfast piece, she enhanced the sense of depth in the foreground by placing the leaves of the flower on the stone ledge as though they were encroaching into the viewer's space.

Naturalism Benjamin West (1738-1820) Death of General Wolfe 1771 fig. 26-20

Some American artists also became well known in England. Benjamin West (1738-1820), born in Pennsylvania on what was then the colonial frontier, traveled on the Continent early in life to study art and then went to England, where he met with almost immediate success. One of the 36 founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts, West succeeded Reynolds as its president. He became official painter to George III (r. 1760-1801) and retained that position even during the strained period of the American Revolution.In Death of General Wolfe ( FIG. 26-20 ), West depicted the mortally wounded young English commander just after his defeat of the French in the decisive battle of Quebec in 1759, which gave Canada to Great Britain. Because his subject was a recent event, West clothed his characters in contemporary costumes and included a rare glimpse for his English audience of a Native American warrior, depicted as an exemplary "noble savage." However, West blended this realism of detail with the grand tradition of history painting by arranging his figures in a complex and theatrically ordered composition. His modern hero dies among grieving officers on the field of victorious battle in a way that suggests the death of a saint. (The composition, in fact, derives from paintings of the lamentation over the dead Christ; compare FIG. 20-13 .) West wanted to present this hero's death in the service of the state as a martyrdom charged with religious emotions. His innovative and highly effective combination of the conventions of traditional heroic painting with a look of modern realism influenced history painting well into the 19th century.

Baroque Dutch Republic Judith Leyster (1609-1660) Self-Portrait c. 1630 fig. 25-11

Some of Hals's followers developed thriving careers of their own as portraitists. One was Judith Leyster (1609-1660), who may not have been Hals's pupil, but was a close associate who fully absorbed the master's innovations in technique and composition. In fact, Leyster's Self-Portrait ( FIG. 25-11 ) was once thought to have been painted by Hals himself. The canvas is detailed, precise, and accurate, but also exhibits the spontaneity found in Hals's works. In her self-portrait, Leyster succeeded at communicating a great deal about herself. She depicted herself as an artist, seated in front of a painting on an easel. The palette in her left hand and brush in her right announce the painting as her creation. She thus invites the viewer to evaluate her skill, which both the fiddler on the canvas and the image of herself demonstrate as considerable. Although she produced a wide range of paintings, including still lifes and floral pieces, her specialty was genre scenes such as the comic image seen on the easel. Leyster's quick smile and relaxed pose as she stops her work to meet the viewer's gaze reveal her self-assurance. Although presenting herself as an artist, Leyster did not paint herself wearing the traditional artist's smock, as her more famous contemporary Rembrandt did in his 1659-1660 self-portrait ( FIG. 25-15 ). Her elegant attire distinguishes her socially as a member of a well-to-do family, another important aspect of Leyster's identity.

The Rococo Style Balthasar Neumann (1687-1753) Interior of the Pilgrimage Church of Vierzehnheiligen (Fourteen Saints) interior 1743-1772 fig. 26-6

Standing alone in a large field in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps near Füssen and Oberammergau, the Wieskirche, or Church of the Meadow, is a pilgrimage church that houses an image of Christ said to weep real tears. Designed by Dominikus Zimmermann with frescoes and stuccoes by his older brother, Johann Baptist Zimmermann (1680-1758), the church has a plain white and yellow exterior that gives no hint of the majestic and ornate interior ( FIG. 26-6A ). The contrast takes all visitors by surprise and is, of course, intentional. The effect on pilgrims is overwhelming and spiritually uplifting.In plan, the Wieskirche consists of an oval nave, inspired by the pioneering Baroque designs of Francesco Borromini ( FIG. 24-9 ), with a narrow chancel. Eight widely spaced double piers support the ceiling of the nave and form a narrow ambulatory, enabling pilgrims to move around the nave and into the chancel aisles. Above, the ceiling dissolves and the clouds part to reveal Christ in his role as Last Judge, with angels hovering over the pilgrims' heads. As in other German Rococo interiors, both ecclesiastical ( FIG. 26-6 ) and secular ( FIG. 26-4A ), the color scheme is white, gold, and pink, and large windows flood the interior with light, illuminating the ornate gilded stuccowork and frescoes. Light, color, and swirling lines dazzle the senses.end sidebar

The Rococo Style François de Cuvilliés (1695-1768) Hall of Mirrors, the Amalienburg Nymphenburg Palace Park, Munich early 18th C. fig. 26-3

The French Rococo style quickly spread beyond Paris. The Amalienburg, a small lodge that the French architect François de Cuvilliés (1695-1768) built in the park of the Nymphenburg Palace in Munich, is a prime example of Germany's adoption of the Parisian style. The most spectacular room in the lodge is the circular Hall of Mirrors ( FIG. 26-3 ), a silver-and-blue ensemble of architecture, stucco relief, silvered bronze mirrors, and crystal. The hall dazzles the eye and showcases the full ornamental repertoire of the Rococo style at the height of its popularity. Silvery light, reflected and amplified by windows and mirrors, bathes the room and creates shapes and contours that weave rhythmically around the upper walls and the ceiling coves. Everything seems organic, growing, and in motion, an ultimate refinement of illusion with virtuoso flourishes created by the team of architects, artists, and artisans.

The Rococo Style Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770) The Apotheosis of the Pisani Family at the Villa Pisani 1761-1762 fig. 26-10

The Swing is less than 3 feet in height, and Watteau's L'Indifférent ( FIG. 26-7A ) is barely 10 inches tall. Even the figure-packed landscape Pilgrimage to Cythera ( FIG. 26-7 ) is only a little more than 4 feet high. Indeed, Rococo was a style best suited for small-scale works projecting a mood of sensual intimacy, and Rococo salons often featured tabletop sculptures, such as Nymph and Satyr Carousing ( FIG. 26-9A ) by Claude Michel, called Clodion (1738-1814). But the intimate Rococo style could also be adapted for paintings of huge size, as the work of Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770) demonstrates. A Venetian, Tiepolo worked for patrons in Austria, Germany ( FIG. 26-4A ), and Spain, as well as in Italy. He was a master of illusionistic ceiling decoration in the Baroque tradition, but favored the bright, cheerful colors and relaxed compositions of Rococo easel paintings. In Apotheosis of the Pisani Family ( FIG. 26-10 ), a ceiling fresco in the Villa Pisani at Stra in northern Italy ( MAP 25-1 ), Tiepolo depicted seemingly weightless figures fluttering through vast sunlit skies and fleecy clouds, their forms casting dark accents against the brilliant light of high noon. The painter elevated Pisani family members to the rank of gods in a heavenly scene recalling the ceiling paintings of Pozzo ( FIG. 24-24 ). But while retaining 17th-century illusionism in his works, Tiepolo softened the rhetoric and created pictorial schemes of great elegance and grace, unsurpassed for their sheer effectiveness as decor.

The Rococo Style Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) Pilgrimage to Cythera 1717 fig. 26-7

The painter whom scholars most closely associate with French Rococo is Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). Watteau was largely responsible for creating a specific type of Rococo painting genre called a fête galante ("gallant [outdoor] party"). Fête galante paintings depicted the outdoor entertainment or amusements of French high society. The premier example is Watteau's masterpiece (painted in two versions), Pilgrimage to Cythera ( FIG. 26-7 ), the painting that was Watteau's entry for admission to the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. In 1717, the fête galante was not an acceptable category for submission, but rather than reject Watteau's candidacy, the Academy created a new category to accommodate his entry.At the turn of the 18th century, two competing doctrines sharply divided the membership of the French Royal Academy. Many members followed Nicolas Poussin ( FIGS. 25-31 , 25-32 , and 25-32A ) in teaching that form was the most important element in painting, whereas "colors in painting are as allurements for persuading the eyes." * Colors, argued Poussin's admirers, were additions for effect and not really essential. The other group took Rubens ( FIGS. I-14 , 25-2 , 25-3 , 25-4 , and 25-4A ) as its model and proclaimed the natural supremacy of color and the coloristic style as the artist's proper guide. Depending on which doctrine they supported, members of the French Academy were classified either as Poussinistes or Rubénistes . Watteau was Flemish, and Rubens's coloristic style heavily influenced his work. With Watteau in their ranks, the Rubénistes carried the day, establishing Rococo painting as the preferred style in early-18th-century France.In Pilgrimage to Cythera ( FIG. 26-7 ), luxuriously costumed lovers make a "pilgrimage" to Cythera, the island of eternal youth and love, sacred to Aphrodite. (Some art historians think that the lovers are returning from Cythera rather than having just arrived. Watteau provided few clues to settle the question definitively.) The elegant figures move gracefully from the protective shade of a woodland park filled with playful cupids and voluptuous statuary. The poses of the figures, which blend elegance and sweetness, are hallmarks of Watteau's style, both in ambitious multifigure compositions such as Pilgrimage to Cythera and in single-figure studies such as L'Indifférent ( FIG. 26-7A ).Watteau prepared his paintings using albums of drawings in which he sought to capture slow movement from difficult and unusual angles, searching for the smoothest, most poised, and most refined attitudes. As he experimented with nuances of posture and movement, Watteau also strove for the most exquisite shades of color difference, defining in a single stroke the shimmer of silk at a bent knee or the shine appearing on a glossy surface as it emerges from shadow. The haze of color, the subtly modeled shapes, the gliding motion, and the air of suave gentility tinged with nostalgia appealed greatly to Watteau's wealthy patrons, whom, even as he was dying from tuberculosis, he still depicted as carefree and at leisure in his most unusual painting, Signboard of Gersaint ( FIG. 26-7B ).

Enlightenment Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797) A Philosopher Giving a Lecture at the Orrery c. 1763-1765 fig. 26-11

The scientific advances of the Enlightenment era affected the lives of everyone, and most people responded enthusiastically to the wonders of the Industrial Revolution, such as the steam engine, which gave birth to the modern manufacturing economy and the prospect of a seemingly limitless supply of goods and services.The fascination that science held for ordinary people as well as for the learned was a favorite subject of the English painter Joseph Wright of Derby. Wright studied painting near Birmingham ( MAP 27-2 ), the center of the Industrial Revolution, and specialized in dramatically lit scenes showcasing modern scientific instruments and experiments. Characteristic examples of Wright's work are An Experiment on a Bird in the Air-Pump ( FIG. 26-10A ) and A Philosopher Giving a Lecture on an Orrery ( FIG. 26-11 ). In the latter painting, a scholar demonstrates a mechanical model of the solar system called an orrery , in which each planet (represented by a metal orb) revolves around the sun (a lamp) at the correct relative velocity. Light from the lamp pours forth from in front of the boy silhouetted in the foreground to create shadows that heighten the drama of the scene. Curious children crowd close to the tiny orbs representing the planets within the curving bands indicating their orbits. An earnest listener makes notes, while the lone woman seated at the left and the two gentlemen at the right pay rapt attention. Scientific knowledge mesmerizes everyone in Wright's painting. The artist visually reinforced the fascination with the orrery by composing his image in a circular fashion, echoing the device's orbital design. The postures and gazes of all the participants and observers focus attention on the cosmic model. Wright scrupulously and accurately rendered every detail of the figures, the mechanisms of the orrery, and even the books and curtain in the shadowy background.Wright's choice of subjects and realism in depicting them appealed to the great industrialists of his day, including Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795), who pioneered many techniques of mass-produced pottery, and Sir Richard Arkwright (1732-1792), whose spinning frame revolutionized the textile industry. Both men often purchased paintings by Wright featuring scientific advances. To them, the Derby artist's elevation of the theories and inventions of the Industrial Revolution to the plane of history painting was exciting and appropriately in tune with the new era of Enlightenment.end sidebar

Naturalism Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) Village Bride 1761 fig. 26-14

The sentimental narrative in art became the specialty of French painter Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805), whose most popular work, Village Bride ( FIG. 26-14 ), sums up the characteristics of the genre. The setting is an unadorned room in a rustic dwelling. In a notary's presence, the elderly father has passed his daughter's dowry to her youthful husband-to-be and blesses the pair, who gently take each other's arms. The old mother tearfully gives her daughter's arm a farewell caress, while the youngest sister melts in tears on the shoulder of the demure bride. An envious older sister broods behind her father's chair. Rosy-faced, healthy children play around the scene. The picture's story is simple—the happy climax of a rural romance. The picture's moral is just as clear—happiness is the reward of "natural" virtue.Greuze produced this work at a time when the audience for art was expanding. The strict social hierarchy that provided the foundation for Rococo art and patronage gave way to a bourgeois economic and social system. The newly important middle class embraced art, and paintings such as Village Bride particularly appealed to ordinary hard-working people. They carefully analyzed each gesture and each nuance of sentiment and reacted with tumultuous enthusiasm. At the 1761 Salon of the Royal Academy, Greuze's picture received enormous attention. Diderot, who reviewed the exhibition for Correspondance littéraire, reported that it was difficult to get near the canvas because of the throngs of admirers.

The Rococo Style Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) L'Indifférent c. 1716 fig. 26-7A

The sharp differences between Rococo and Baroque art in France quickly become evident by contrasting Antoine Watteau's L'Indifférent (The Indifferent One) ( FIG. 26-7A ) with Hyacinthe Rigaud's portrait of Louis XIV ( FIG. 25-24 ). Rigaud portrayed pompous majesty in supreme glory, as if the French monarch were reviewing throngs of bowing courtiers at Versailles. Watteau's painting is more delicate and lighter in both color and tone. The artist presented a languid, gliding dancer whose stilted minuet might constitute a parody of the monarch's solemnity if the paintings were hung together. (The contrast in scale would be equally stark: The portrait of Louis XIV is almost 10 feet tall. Watteau's dancer is, characteristically for Rococo artworks, only 10 inches tall.) In Rigaud's portrait, the king wears flowing ermine and fleur-de-lis robes and stands upright against a backdrop of bannerlike curtains and regal architecture. In Watteau's painting, the dancer moves in a rainbow shimmer of color, emerging onto the stage of the intimate comic opera to the silken sounds of strings. As in architecture (see " Salon de la Princesse " ), this contrast of paintings also highlights the shift in artistic patronage from one era to the next. Whereas royal patronage, particularly on the part of Louis XIV, dominated the French Baroque period, Rococo was the culture of a wider aristocracy in which private patrons dictated taste.

Baroque Dutch Republic Frans Hals (c. 1581-1666) The Women Regents of the Old Men's Home at Haarlem 1664 fig. 25-10

Those patrons included not only individuals of means, as in the past. Groups of Dutch citizens also often asked Hals to paint portraits of them. Representing the members of a group, such as the Saint Hadrian militia ( FIG. 25-9 ) or the regents of a Haarlem old men's house ( FIG. 25-10 ), rather than separate individuals, presented a special problem for the painter, but Hals quickly became a master of the new genre of group portraiture (see " Frans Hals's Group Portraits ").Hals's The Women Regents of the Old Men's Home at Haarlem ( FIG. 25-10 ) is the finest of his group portraits of Calvinist women engaged in charitable work. Although Dutch women had primary responsibility for the welfare of the family and the orderly operation of the home, they also populated the labor force in the cities. Among the more prominent roles that educated Dutch women played in public life were as regents of orphanages, hospitals, old age homes, and prisons. In Hals's portrait, the Haarlem regents sit quietly in a manner becoming devout Calvinists. Unlike the more relaxed, seemingly informal character of his other group portraits, a stern, puritanical, and composed sensibility suffuses Hals's portrayal of these regents. The women—all carefully distinguished as individuals—gaze out from the painting with expressions ranging from dour disinterest to kindly concern. The somber and virtually monochromatic (one-color) palette, punctuated only by the white accents of the clothing, contributes to the painting's restraint. Both the coloration and the mood of Hals's portrait are appropriate for this commission. Recording the likenesses of the Haarlem regents called for a very different kind of portrait than those Hals made of men at festive militia banquets ( FIG. 25-9 ).

Baroque Dutch Republic Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1546-1708) and Charles Le Brun (1619-1690) Hall of Mirrors (Galerie des Glaces) at Versailles c. 1680 fig. 25-27

To realize his vision of a grandiose palace worthy of a "Sun King," Louis XIV assembled a veritable army of architects, decorators, sculptors, painters, and landscape designers under the general management of Charles Le Brun to design and construct his new royal residence at Versailles ( FIG. 25-26 ). At the king's direction, Le Brun and his team converted the remodeling of a simple hunting lodge into the greatest architectural project of the age—a defining statement of French Baroque style and a grandiose symbol of Louis XIV's power and ambition.Planned on a gigantic scale, the project called not only for a large palace flanking a vast park but also for the construction of a satellite city to house court and government officials, military and guard detachments, courtiers, and servants (thereby keeping them all under the king's close supervision). Le Brun laid out this town to the east of the palace along three radial avenues that converge on the palace. Their axes, in a symbolic assertion of the ruler's absolute power over his domains, intersected in the king's spacious bedroom, which served as an official audience chamber. The palace itself, more than a quarter-mile long, is perpendicular to the dominant east-west axis running through the associated city and park.Every detail of the extremely rich decoration of the palace's interior received careful attention. The architects and decorators designed everything from wall paintings to doorknobs in order to reinforce the splendor of Versailles and to exhibit the very finest sense of artisanship. Of the literally hundreds of rooms within the palace, the most famous is the Galerie des Glaces, or Hall of Mirrors ( FIG. 25-27 ), designed by Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1646-1708) and Le Brun. This hall overlooks Le Nôtre's park ( FIG. 25-26 ) from the second floor and extends along most of the width of the central block. Although deprived of its original furniture, which included gold and silver chairs and bejeweled trees, the 240-foot-long Galerie des Glaces retains much of its splendor today. Hundreds of mirrors, set into the wall opposite the windows, alleviate the hall's tunnel-like quality and illusionistically extend the width of the room. The mirror, that ultimate source of illusion, was a favorite element of Baroque interior design. Here, it also enhanced the dazzling extravagance of the great festivals that Louis XIV was so fond of hosting. From the Galerie des Glaces, the king and his guests could enjoy a sweeping vista down the tree-lined central axis of the Versailles park and across terraces, lawns, pools, and lakes toward the horizon.As a symbol of absolute power, Versailles has no equal. It also expresses, in the grandiose terms of its age, the rationalistic creed— based on scientific advances, such as the physics of Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) and the mathematical philosophy of René Descartes (1596-1650)—that all knowledge must be systematic and all science must be the consequence of the intellect imposed on matter. The majestic and rational design of Versailles proudly proclaims the mastery of human intelligence (and the mastery of Louis XIV) over the disorderliness of nature.end sidebar

Baroque Flanders Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) Elevation of the Cross 1610 fig. 25-2

When he was 23 years old, Rubens departed Flanders for Italy and remained there from 1600 until 1608. During these years, he studied the works of Italian Renaissance and Baroque masters and laid the foundations of his mature style. Shortly after returning home, he painted Elevation of the Cross ( FIG. 25-2 ) for the church of Saint Walburga in Antwerp. Later moved to the city's cathedral, the altarpiece in the form of a triptych is one of numerous commissions for religious works that Rubens received at this time. By investing in sacred art, Flemish churches sought to affirm their allegiance to Catholicism and Spanish Habsburg rule after a period of Protestant iconoclastic fervor in the region.Rubens's interest in Italian art, especially the works of Michelangelo and Caravaggio, is evident in the Saint Walburga triptych. The choice of this episode from the passion cycle provided Rubens with the opportunity to depict heavily muscled men in unusual poses straining to lift the heavy cross with Christ's body nailed to it. Here, as in his Lion Hunt ( FIG. I-14 ), Rubens, deeply impressed by Michelangelo's heroic twisting sculpted and painted nude male figures, showed his prowess in representing foreshortened anatomy and the contortions of violent action. Rubens placed the body of Christ on the cross as a diagonal that cuts dynamically across the picture while inclining back into it. The whole composition seethes with a power that comes from strenuous exertion, from powerful muscles taut with effort. The tension is emotional as well as physical, as reflected not only in Christ's face but also in the features of his followers. Bright highlights and areas of deep shadow inspired by Caravaggio's tenebrism ( FIGS. 24-17 , 24-17A , 24-17B , and 24-18 ), hallmarks of Rubens's work at this stage of his career, enhance the drama.The human body in action, draped or undraped, male or female, would remain the focus of Rubens's art throughout his long career. This interest, combined with his voracious intellect, led Rubens to copy the works of classical antiquity and of the Italian masters. During his last two years in Rome, Rubens made many black-chalk drawings of great artworks, including figures in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes ( FIG. 22-17 ) and the ancient marble group ( FIG. 5-89 ) of Laocoön and his two sons. In De imitatione statuarum (On the Imitation of Statues), a treatise Rubens wrote in Latin, the artist stated: "I am convinced that in order to achieve the highest perfection one needs a full understanding of the [ancient] statues, indeed a complete absorption in them; but one must make judicious use of them and before all avoid the effect of stone." *

Neo-Classicism Jacques Louis David (1748-1825) (works found in chapters 26 and 27) Death of Marat 1793 fig. 26-26

When the revolution broke out in 1789, David threw in his lot with the Jacobins, the radical and militant revolutionary faction. He accepted the role of de facto minister of propaganda, organizing political pageants and ceremonies requiring rolling scenery, costumes, and sculptural props. David believed that art could play an important role in educating the public and that dramatic paintings emphasizing patriotism and civic virtue would prove effective as rallying calls. However, rather than continuing to create artworks focused on scenes from antiquity, David began to portray events from the French Revolution itself.In 1793, David painted Death of Marat ( FIG. 26-26 ), which he wanted not only to serve as a record of an important episode in the struggle to overthrow the monarchy but also to provide inspiration and encouragement to the revolutionary forces. The painting commemorates the assassination that year of Jean-Paul Marat (1743-1793), an influential writer who was David's friend. The artist depicted the martyred revolutionary still holding a quill pen in his right hand after Charlotte Corday (1768-1793), a member of a rival political faction, stabbed him to death while Marat was immersed in a bathtub as he worked. (Marat suffered from a painful skin disease and required frequent medicinal baths.) His "desk" was a board placed across the tub with a wood stand next to it for his writing materials. David presented the scene with directness and clarity. The cold neutral space above Marat's figure slumped in the tub produces a chilling oppressiveness. The painter vividly placed all narrative details in the foreground—the knife, the wound, the blood, the letter with which Corday gained entrance—to sharpen the sense of pain and outrage. David masterfully composed the painting to present Marat as a tragic martyr who died in the service of the revolution. Indeed, the writing stand, which bears the words "To Marat, David,"resembles a tombstone, and David based Marat's figure on the dead Christ in Michelangelo's Pietà ( FIG. 22-12 ) in Saint Peter's in Rome. The reference to Christ's martyrdom made the painting a kind of "altarpiece" for the new civic "religion," inspiring the French people with the saintly dedication of their slain leader.

la maniera magnifica (the grand manner) promoted by Nicholas Poussin called for:

a. unambiguous subject matter comes first (details shouldn't distract from it) b. the artist must consider the theme in an impressive fashionc. without belaboring the composition, its structure must flow effortlessly d. the last consideration is the artist's style

philosophe

any of the French intellectuals or social philosophers of the 18th C. (Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, et al.).

Rubénistes

cadre of French Royal Academy members who cherished the colorist style of Peter Paul Rubens and regarded color as the naturally supreme attribute of painting and therefore promoted a painterly approach.

Poussinistes

cadre of French Royal Academy members who favored the linear style of Nicolas Poussin, emphasizing line and form as the chief merit of the work.

Neo-classicism

inspired by a return to the ideal of the classical age; strove for simplicity, clarity, directness, nobility, and the expression of the ideal; concerned with essence, being, showing something as it is; restive or settledness; clean, clear outlines and emphasis on line; compositions tend to be structured on stable vertical and horizontal lines; goal of absolute clarity, clear representation, definitive boundaries. Neo-classicists were a subsidiary style of Romanticism because they dreamt of the Classical past- one could compare them to the Classical or Renaissance artists.

vedutisti

painters of vedute paintings in 18th C. Italy

veduta (pl. vedute)

souvenir paintings of popular views of 18th C. Italy, especially Venice that were avidly collected by the British who had undertaken The Grand Tour.

fête galante

type of painting that depicts the out of doors amusements of the aristocracy and upper- class French society of the 18th C.