Neoclassicism

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c. 1750 – 1830 · Europe · architecture, painting, sculpture, decorative arts · origin: Rome

A return to Greece and Rome after the excavations: strict orders, clear contour, civic virtue

How to recognise it

• portico under a triangular pediment
• drum-raised dome, plain wall surfaces
• firm drawing over colour
• figures in profile, like a relief
• white unpainted marble

Why it emerged

The digs at Herculaneum and Pompeii and Winckelmann's writings revealed an 'authentic' antiquity. Enlightenment thinkers and revolutionaries took Rome as a model of reason and republic against rococo luxury.

Examples

Oath of the Horatii1784–1785 · Jacques-Louis DavidNeoclassical manifesto: duty to the state above family, hard lines instead of rocaillePsyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss1787–1793 · Antonio CanovaMarble polished to living skin; it made Canova the leading sculptor in EuropeBrandenburg Gate1788–1791 · Carl Gotthard LanghansAthens' Propylaea transplanted to Berlin; later the symbol of German division and reunificationMonticello1768–1809 · Thomas JeffersonPalladian home of the Declaration's author, a model for the young republic's architectureKazan Cathedral1801–1811 · Andrey VoronikhinA curved colonnade modelled on St Peter's in Rome; Kutuzov is buried inside

More in this style

• 1758–1790 Panthéon — Jacques-Germain Soufflot

How it spread

• 1750 Rome
• 1757 Paris
• 1760 London
• 1780 Saint Petersburg
• 1788 Berlin
• 1793 Washington

Meanwhile elsewhere

• Ife and Benin bronzes Africa
• Ming and Qing Porcelain Asia
• Baroque Europe
• Latin American Baroque Americas
• Ukiyo-e Asia
• Rococo Europe
• Elizabethan Baroque Eastern Europe & Russia
• Romanticism Europe

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