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WRITTEN BY

David Irwin

Professor and Chairman, Department of History of Art, University of Aberdeen, Scotland.

Author of English Neoclassical Art and others.

See Article History

Alternative Title: Neoclassicism

Neoclassical art, also called Neoclassicism and Classicism, a

widespread and influential movement in painting and the other visual
arts that began in the 1760s, reached its height in the 1780s and ’90s, and
lasted until the 1840s and ’50s. In painting it generally took the form of an
emphasis on austere linear design in the depiction of Classical themes and
subject matter, using archaeologically correct settings and clothing.
Neoclassicism in the arts is an aesthetic attitude based on the art
of Greece and Rome in antiquity, which invokes harmony, clarity, restraint,
universality, and idealism. In the context of the tradition, Classicism refers
either to the art produced in antiquity or to later art inspired by that of
antiquity, while Neoclassicism always refers to the art produced later but
inspired by antiquity. Classicizing artists tend to prefer somewhat more
specific qualities, which include line over colour, straight lines over curves,
frontality and closed compositions over diagonal compositions into deep
space, and the general over the particular.
 READ MORE ON THIS TOPIC

Western painting: Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism was a widespread and influential movement in painting and the other visual arts that

began...

Neoclassicism arose partly as a reaction against the sensuous and frivolously

decorative Rococo style that had dominated European art from the 1720s on.
But an even more profound stimulus was the new and more scientific interest
in Classical antiquity that arose in the 18th century. Neoclassicism was given
great impetus by new archaeological discoveries, particularly the exploration
and excavation of the buried Roman cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii (the
excavations of which began in 1738 and 1748, respectively). And, from the
second decade of the 18th century on, a number of influential publications
by Bernard de Montfaucon, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the comte de Caylus,
and antiquarian Robert Wood provided engraved views of Roman monuments
and other antiquities and further quickened interest in the Classical past. The
new understanding distilled from these discoveries and publications in turn
enabled European scholars for the first time to discern separate and distinct
chronological periods in Greco-Roman art, and this new sense of a plurality of
ancient styles replaced the older, unqualified veneration of Roman art and
encouraged a dawning interest in purely Greek antiquities. The German
scholar Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s writings and sophisticated
theorizings were especially influential in this regard. Winckelmann saw in
Greek sculpture “a noble simplicity and quiet grandeur” and called for artists
to imitate Greek art. He claimed that in doing so such artists would obtain
idealized depictions of natural forms that had been stripped of all transitory
and individualistic aspects, and their images would thus attain a universal and
archetypal significance.

Painting
Neoclassicism as manifested in painting was initially not stylistically distinct
from the French Rococo and other styles that had preceded it. This was partly
because, whereas it was possible for architecture and sculpture to be modeled
on prototypes in these media that had actually survived from Classical
antiquity, those few Classical paintings that had survived were minor or
merely ornamental works—until, that is, the discoveries made at Herculaneum
and Pompeii. The earliest Neoclassical painters were Joseph-Marie
Vien, Anton Raphael Mengs, Pompeo Batoni, Angelica Kauffmann, and Gavin
Hamilton, Those artists were active during the 1750s, ’60s, and ’70s. Each of
those painters, though they may have used poses and figural arrangements
from ancient sculptures and vase paintings, was strongly influenced by
preceding stylistic trends. An important early Neoclassical work such as
Mengs’s Parnassus (1761) owes much of its inspiration to 17th-century
Classicism and to Raphael for both the poses of its figures and its
general composition. Many of the early paintings of the Neoclassical
artist Benjamin West derive their compositions from works by Nicolas
Poussin, and Kauffmann’s sentimental subjects dressed in antique garb are
basically Rococo in their softened, decorative prettiness. Mengs’s close
association with Winckelmann led to his being influenced by the ideal beauty
that the latter so ardently expounded, but the church and palace ceilings
decorated by Mengs owe more to existing Italian Baroque traditions than to
anything Greek or Roman.

A more rigorously Neoclassical painting style arose in France in the 1780s

under the leadership of Jacques-Louis David. He and his contemporary Jean-
François-Pierre Peyron were interested in narrative painting rather than the
ideal grace that fascinated Mengs. Just before and during the French
Revolution, these and other painters adopted stirring moral subject matter
from Roman history and celebrated the values of simplicity, austerity,
heroism, and stoic virtue that were traditionally associated with the Roman
Republic, thus drawing parallels between that time and the contemporary
struggle for liberty in France. David’s history paintings Oath of the
Horatii (1784) and Lictors Bringing to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons (1789)
display a gravity and decorum deriving from Classical tragedy, a
certain rhetorical quality of gesture, and patterns of drapery influenced by
ancient sculpture. To some extent these elements were anticipated by British
and American artists such as Hamilton and West, but in David’s works the
dramatic confrontations of the figures are starker and in clearer profile on the
same plane, the setting is more monumental, and the diagonal compositional
movements, large groupings of figures, and turbulent draperies of the Baroque
have been almost entirely repudiated. This style was ruthlessly austere and
uncompromising, and it is not surprising that it came to be associated with the
French Revolution (in which David actively participated).


 Jacques-Louis David: Oath of the Horatii
Oath of the Horatii, oil on canvas by Jacques-Louis David, 1784; in the Louvre, Paris.
Giraudon/Art Resource, New York
Jacques-Louis David: The Death of Marat
The Death of Marat, oil on canvas by Jacques-Louis David, 1793; in the Royal Museums of Fine
Arts of Belgium, Brussels.
World History Archive/age fotostock

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Neoclassicism as generally manifested in European painting by the 1790s

emphasized the qualities of outline and linear design over those of colour,
atmosphere, and effects of light. Widely disseminated engravings of Classical
sculptures and Greek vase paintings helped determine that bias, which is
clearly seen in the outline illustrations made by British sculptor John
Flaxman in the 1790s for editions of the works of Homer, Aeschylus,
and Dante. Those illustrations are notable for their drastic and powerful
simplification of the human body, their denial of pictorial space, and their
minimal stage setting. That austere linearity when depicting the human form
was adopted by many other British figural artists, including the Swiss-
born Henry Fuseli and William Blake.

Neoclassical painters attached great importance to depicting the costumes,

settings, and details of their Classical subject matter with as much historical
accuracy as possible. This worked well enough when illustrating an incident
found in the pages of Homer, but it raised the question of whether a modern
hero or famous person should be portrayed in Classical or contemporary
dress. This issue was never satisfactorily resolved, except perhaps in David’s
brilliantly evocative portraits of sitters wearing the then-fashionable antique
garb, as in his Portrait of Madame Récamier (1800).
 David, Jacques-Louis: Portrait of Madame Récamier

Portrait of Madame Récamier, oil on canvas by Jacques-Louis David, 1800; in the Louvre, Paris.

Giraudon/Art Resource, New York

Classical history and mythology provided a large part of the subject matter of

Neoclassical works. The poetry of Homer, Virgil, and Ovid, the plays
of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and history recorded
by Pliny, Plutarch, Tacitus, and Livy provided the bulk of Classical sources, but
the most important single source was Homer. To this general literary
emphasis was added a growing interest in medieval sources, such as the
pseudo-Celtic poetry of Ossian, as well as incidents from medieval history, the
works of Dante, and an admiration for medieval art itself in the persons
of Giotto, Fra Angelico, and others. Indeed, the Neoclassicists differed
strikingly from their academic predecessors in their admiration of Gothic and
Quattrocento art in general, and they contributed notably to the positive
reevaluation of such art.

Finally, it should be noted that Neoclassicism coexisted throughout much of

its later development with the seemingly obverse and opposite tendency
of Romanticism. But, far from being distinct and separate, these two styles
intermingled with each other in complex ways; many ostensibly Neoclassical
paintings show Romantic tendencies, and vice versa. This contradictory
situation is strikingly evident in the works of the last great Neoclassical
painter, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, who painted sensuous Romantic
female nudes while also turning out precisely linear and rather lifeless
historical paintings in the approved Neoclassical mode.
Britain

Gavin Hamilton—Scottish painter, archaeologist, and dealer—spent most of

his working life in Rome, and his paintings include two series of large and
influential canvases of Homeric subjects. West and the Swiss-born Kauffmann
were the most consistent exhibitors of history pieces in London during the
1760s. James Barry and Fuseli also were important. Blake, poet and painter,
was a Neoclassicist to some extent.

Barry, James: The Education of Achilles

The Education of Achilles, oil on canvas by James Barry, c. 1772; in the Yale Center for British Art, New
Haven, Connecticut.

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1978.6

France

As well as being a painter, Joseph-Marie Vien was a friend of the

archaeologist Caylus and a director of the French Academy in Rome. That
generation also included Jean-Baptiste Greuze, who painted a few Classical
history subjects as well as the scenes from contemporary life for which he is
best known; Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée the Elder, like Vien a director of
the French Academy in Rome; and Nicolas-Guy Brenet.

Vien, Joseph-Marie: The Toilette of a Bride in Ancient Dress

The Toilette of a Bride in Ancient Dress, oil on canvas by Joseph-Marie Vien, 1777; in a private collection.

In a private collection

The outstanding and most influential of all French Neoclassicists and one of
the major artists in Europe was Vien’s pupil Jacques-Louis David. David’s
early works are essentially Rococo, and his late works also revert to early 18th-
century types. His fame as a Neoclassicist rests on paintings of the 1780s and
’90s. After winning the Prix de Rome of the French Academy in 1774
(important in the history of French painting because it awarded a stay in
Rome, where winners studied Italian paintings firsthand), he was in that city
in 1775–81, and he returned there in 1784 to paint Oath of the Horatii. David’s
contemporaries and near-contemporaries included Jean-Germain Drouais,
whose history paintings almost equaled David’s own in severity and intensity.

The slightly younger generation of painters included Jean-Baptiste

Regnault, Louis-Léopold Boilly, and Louis Gauffier. They were followed by a
more important group that included Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, who blended in his
paintings a mild Classicism and the lyrical mood and soft lights of Correggio.
Prud’hon was patronized by the empresses Josephine and Marie-
Louise. Baron Pierre-Narcisse Guérin painted in a style close to the
Neoclassicism of David, although he was not one of David’s pupils.

Of David’s pupils, three became well known and one became very
famous. Baron François-Pascal-Simon Gérard had a high reputation as a
portraitist under both Napoleon and Louis XVIII. Antoine-Jean Gros executed
many large Napoleonic canvases and after David’s death was the leading
Neoclassicist in France. Anne-Louis Girodet won a Prix de Rome but stopped
painting after 1812 when he inherited a fortune and turned to writing. The
famous pupil was Ingres, who was important as a Neoclassicist in his subject
paintings but not in his portraits.

Girodet, Anne-Louis: Psyche Asleep

Psyche Asleep, oil on canvas by Anne-Louis Girodet, 1799; in a private collection.

In a private collection

Germany and Austria

Anton Raphael Mengs was born in Aussig in Bohemia (modern Ústí nad

Labem, Czech Republic) in 1728, the son of the court painter there. He was
himself appointed Dresden court painter in 1745. In 1755 he
met Winckelmann, and subsequently he became a prominent figure in Roman
Neoclassical circles. Mengs is important both as a painter and as a theorist.
Apart from him, Germany’s and Austria’s main contribution to Neoclassicism
was theoretical, not practical, however. The early Neoclassicists included
Cristoph Unterberger; Anton von Maron, who married Mengs’s sister; and
Friedrich Heinrich Füger. After Unterberger, the most interesting painter
was Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, who executed both portraits and
subject pieces. He was a director of the art academy in Naples and supervised
the publication of engravings of the Greek vases in the collection of Sir
William Hamilton, the British ambassador to Naples, who was a
notable connoisseur.

Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein: Goethe in the Roman Campagna

Goethe in the Roman Campagna, oil on canvas by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, 1787; in the
Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

The German painter Asmus Jacob Carstens worked in Berlin and was a

professor at the Berlin Academy. Members of his artistic circle included the
painters Karl Ludwig Fernow, Eberhard Wächter, Joseph Anton Koch (who
was the most outstanding of this German group), and Gottlieb Schick.

Italy

One of the earliest Neoclassicists, and one of the foremost painters of his
generation in Italy, was Pompeo Batoni. His style blends Rococo with
Neoclassical elements, and his work includes Classical subject pieces as well as
portraits in contemporary dress, the sitter posing with antique statues and
urns and sometimes amid ruins. The painter Domenico Corvi was influenced
by both Batoni and Mengs and was important as the teacher of three of the
leading Neoclassicists of the next generation: Giuseppe Cades, Gaspare Landi,
and Vincenzo Camuccini. These artists worked mostly in Rome, the first two
making reputations as portraitists, Landi especially being noted for good
contemporary groups.

Batoni, Pompeo Girolamo: Susannah and the Elders

Susannah and the Elders, oil on canvas by Pompeo Girolamo Batoni, 1751; in a private collection.

In a private collection

Rome was indeed the city where the principal Italian painters of the
Neoclassical period were most active. One such was Felice Giani, whose many
decorations include Napoleonic palaces there and elsewhere in Italy
(especially Faenza) and in France.

Important painters outside Rome include Andrea Appiani the Elder in Milan,

who became Napoleon’s official painter and executed some of the
best frescoes in northern Italy. He was also a fine portraitist. One of his pupils
was Giuseppe Bossi. Another leading Lombard painter was Giovanni Battista
dell’Era, whose encaustic paintings were bought by Catherine the Great and
others. Other good examples of Neoclassical decorative schemes outside Rome
are in Florence at the Pitti Palace by the Florentine Luigi Sabatelli and by
Pietro Benvenuti, who was born at Arezzo, and in Venice at San Marco
Basilica by Giuseppe Borsato, who was born in that city and was both painter
and architect. The principal Neoclassicists in the south were the Sicilians
Giuseppe Velasco, who did important frescoes in palaces in Palermo, and
Giuseppe Errante.

Other countries

The main Danish painter who produced original Neoclassical works

was Nicolai Abraham Abildgaard. Other Danish painters included
Abildgaard’s and David’s pupil Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg. David was
very influential in Brussels, where he retired late in life. The paintings of his
Belgian pupil François-Joseph Navez, for example, are pure French
Neoclassicism. The two main Neoclassical artists in the Netherlands were
Humbert de Superville and Jan Willem Pieneman. The principal Neoclassicist
in Spain was José de Madrazo y Agudo.

Abildgaard, Nicolai: The Wounded Philoctetes

The Wounded Philoctetes, oil on canvas by Nicolai Abildgaard, 1775; in the National Gallery of Denmark,
Copenhagen.

Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark); www.smk.dk (Public domain)
Sculpture
Archaeological investigations of the Classical Mediterranean world offered to
the 18th-century cognoscenti compelling witness to the order and serenity of
Classical art and provided a fitting backdrop to the Enlightenment and the Age
of Reason. Newly discovered antique forms and themes were quick to find new
expression.

The successful excavations contributed to the rapid growth of collections of

antique sculptures. Foreign visitors to Italy exported countless marbles to all
parts of Europe or employed agents to build up their collections. The
accessibility of the sculpture of antiquity, in museums and private houses and
also through engravings and plaster casts, had a far-reaching formative
influence on 18th-century painting and sculpture. The great majority of
ancient sculptures collected were Roman, although many of them were copied
from Greek originals and were believed to be Greek.

In the writing of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Greek art was considered

immeasurably superior to Roman. It is curious, however, how little positive
influence the marbles that Lord Elgin took to England from the Parthenon in
Athens had on sculpture in western Europe, although they had a great
influence on scholars. The ideals of Neoclassical sculpture—its emphasis on
clarity of contour, on the plain ground, on not rivaling painting either in the
imitation of aerial or linear perspective in relief or of flying hair and
fluttering drapery in freestanding figures—were chiefly inspired by theory and
by Roman neo-Attic works, or indeed by Roman pseudo-Archaic art. The latter
class of art exerted an influence on John Flaxman, who was enormously
admired for the severe style of his engravings and relief carvings.

“Decorum” and idealization

Academic theorists, especially those of France and Italy during the 17th
century, argued that expression, costume, details, and setting of a work should
be as appropriate to their subject as possible. The 18th-century Neoclassicists
inherited this theory of “decorum” but, giving preference to a universal ideal,
instead implemented it in restricted form—subdividing all action and
expression into Classical repose, idealizing faces and bodies into Classical
heroes, and transforming all costume, if any, into tight-fitting attire to avoid
reference to ephemeral time.
A series of monuments to 18th- and early 19th-century generals and admirals
of the Napoleonic Wars in St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster
Abbey demonstrate an important resulting dilemma: whether a hero or a
famous person should be portrayed in Classical or contemporary costume.
Many sculptors varied between showing the figures in uniform and showing
them completely naked. The concept of the modern hero in antique dress
belongs to the tradition of academic theory, exemplified by the English
painter Sir Joshua Reynolds in one of his Royal Academy Discourses:

The desire for transmitting to posterity the shape of modern dress must be acknowledged to
be purchased at a prodigious price, even the price of everything that is valuable in art.

Even the living hero could be idealized completely naked, as in two colossal
standing figures of Napoleon (1808–11) by the Italian sculptor Antonio
Canova. One of the most famous of Neoclassical sculptures is
Canova’s Paolina Borghese Bonaparte as Venus Victrix (1805–08). She is
shown naked, lightly draped, and reclining sensuously on a couch—both a
charming contemporary portrait and an idealized antique Venus.

Antonio Canova: Paolina Borghese Bonaparte as Venus Victrix

Paolina Borghese Bonaparte as Venus Victrix, marble sculpture by Antonio Canova, 1805–08; in the
Borghese Gallery, Rome.

© Luxerendering/Shutterstock.com
Relation to the Baroque and the Rococo

Classical academic theories circulating in the Renaissance, especially in the

17th century, favoured the antique and those artists who followed in that
tradition. The artists praised included Raphael, Michelangelo, Giulio Romano,
and Annibale Carracci. A slightly later generation of writers added the name of
the French painter Nicolas Poussin to the list. The exuberance and “fury” of
the Baroque must be avoided, it was argued, because they led to “barbarous”
and “wicked” works. Continuing in this tradition, Winckelmann, for example,
argued that the Italian Baroque sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo
Bernini had been “misled” by following nature.

Such hostility to Baroque works, however, did not immediately eradicate their

influence on 18th-century artists, as can be seen in an early work by
Canova, Daedalus and Icarus (1779), executed before he had been to Rome. In
Canova’s tomb of Pope Clement XIV (1784–87; Santi XII Apostoli basilica,
Rome), the pope, seated on a throne above a sarcophagus, is treated in a
dramatically realistic style with hand raised in a forceful gesture reminiscent
of papal tombs of the 17th century.

Although the Neoclassical artists and writers expressed contempt for what

they regarded as the frivolous aspect of the Rococo, there is a strong influence
of French Rococo on the early style of some of the Neoclassical
sculptors. Étienne-Maurice Falconet, Flaxman, and Canova all started to carve
and model with Rococo tendencies, which were then gradually transformed
into more Classical elements.

Hostile critics of Neoclassical sculpture have tended to compare such works to

“a valley of dry bones.” Some artists and theorists misunderstood
the advocacy of Winckelmann and his school to imitate ancient art.
Winckelmann meant—as did 17th-century theorists before him, and writers
such as Shaftesbury and Jonathan Richardson, who influenced him
considerably—imitation to be a means of discovering ideal beauty and
conveying the spirit of the original. He did not advocate servile copying of the
antique or eliminating the persuasive eloquence of action and intense
expression. Unfortunately, spiritless copies were made, and these led to
classification of idealist works as “frigid.” In sculpture some of the important
commissions regrettably resulted in this lifeless concept of Neoclassicism.
Among the examples are large marbles of Christ and the Apostles (1821–42)
and a bronze of St. John the Baptist (1822) by the Danish sculptor Bertel
Thorvaldsen at the Church of Our Lady, Copenhagen. Thorvaldsen’s marbles,
unlike Canova’s, are as neutral as the plaster models; indeed, the surface of the
sculpture was deliberately left neutral.

Bertel Thorvaldsen: Christ

Christ, marble statue by Bertel Thorvaldsen, 1821; in the Church of Our Lady, Copenhagen.

Courtesy of the Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen

Gestures and emotions in Neoclassical works are usually restrained to give

priority to calm grandeur, spiritual nobility, and beauty. In bacchanalian
scenes, the gaiety is held in check, never bursting into exuberance. In a tragic
scene, Andromache does not shed a tear as she mourns the death of Hector.
When Flaxman did attempt terror, as in the marble The Fury of
Athamas (1790–94), the violence seems forced and unconvincing. Indeed,
there exist in Neoclassical sculpture hardly any convincing images of rage. The
concept of antique calmness permeated European art. Canova, with
his Hercules and Lichas (1796), produced a large marble of exaggerated
expression beyond his normal range and, to some extent, beyond his abilities.
Like Flaxman, he was far more successful when carving images of delicate
expression, which even champions of Romantic passion applauded as an aim
for sculpture, an art for which they advocated expressive subtlety that
triggered imagination. The sensitive viewer, they argued, would find strong
expression and forceful activity in monumental freestanding sculpture illogical
(i.e., marble should not writhe or fly) and gratingly theatrical.
 Flaxman, John: The Fury of Athamas

The Fury of Athamas, marble sculpture by John Flaxman, 1790–94; in the collection of the National
Trust, Ickworth, Suffolk, England.

A.F. Kersting

Britain

Prominent early British Neoclassical sculptors included John Wilton, Joseph

Nollekens, John Bacon the Elder, John Deare, and Christopher Hewetson—
the last two working mostly in Rome. The leading artist of the younger
generation was John Flaxman, professor of sculpture at the Royal Academy
and one of the few British artists of the period with an international
reputation. The last generation of Neoclassicists included the sculptors Sir
Richard Westmacott, John Bacon the Younger, Sir Francis Chantrey, Edward
Hodges Baily, John Gibson, and William Behnes.

France

While Neoclassicism in France was dominated by painting and architecture,

the movement did find a number of notable exponents in sculpture. These
included Claude Michel, called Clodion, creator of many small vividly
expressive Classical figures, especially nymphs; Augustin Pajou; and Pierre
Julien. Pigalle’s pupil Jean-Antoine Houdon was the most famous 18th-
century French sculptor, producing many Classical figures and contemporary
portraits in the manner of antique busts. Other contemporary sculptors
included Louis-Simon Boizot and Étienne-Maurice Falconet, who was director
of sculpture at the Sèvres factory. The slightly younger generation included the
sculptors Joseph Chinard, Joseph-Charles Marin, Antoine-Denis Chaudet,
and Baron François-Joseph Bosio. The early sculpture of Ingres’s well-known
contemporary François Rude was Neoclassical.

François Rude: Departure of the Volunteers of 1792 (La Marseillaise)

Departure of the Volunteers of 1792 (La Marseillaise), stone sculpture by François Rude, 1833–36; on the
Arc de Triomphe, Paris. Approx. 12.8 × 7.9 m.

Giraudon/Art Resource, New York

Central Europe

Important among central European sculptors early in the period was Johann

Heinrich von Dannecker. Subsequent Neoclassicists included Gottfried
Schadow, who was also a painter but is better known as a sculptor; his pupil,
the sculptor Christian Friedrich Tieck; the painter and sculptor Martin von
Wagner; and the sculptor Christian Daniel Rauch.

Italy

The most important Italian Neoclassicist was Antonio Canova, the leading

sculptor—indeed, by far the most famous artist of any sort—in Europe by the
end of the 18th century. Canova’s position in the following 20 years may be
compared only to that enjoyed by Bernini in the 17th century. The differences
between their careers, however, are of great importance. Only at the
commencement of his career did Bernini carve gallery sculpture for princely
collectors, but the majority of Canova’s works belong to this category. Both
artists remained resident in Rome for most of their life, but, whereas Bernini
was controlled by the popes and only rarely permitted to work for foreign
potentates, Canova’s principal patrons were foreigners, and he supplied
sculpture to all the courts of Europe. A fine sculptor of varying styles,
including austere, sentimental, and horrific, Canova produced an extensive
body of work that includes Classical groups and friezes, tombs, and portraits,
many in antique dress. His pupil and collaborator Antonio d’Este is one of the
more interesting of the lesser Italian Neoclassical sculptors. Other
Neoclassical sculptors in Rome included Giuseppe Angelini, best known for
the tomb of the etcher and architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi in the church
of Santa Maria del Priorato, Rome.

Canova, Antonio: Paolina Borghese Bonaparte as Venus Victrix

Paolina Borghese Bonaparte as Venus Victrix, marble sculpture by Antonio Canova, 1805–08; in the
Borghese Gallery, Rome.

Alinari—Art Resource/Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

In Milan, Camillo Pacetti directed the sculptural decoration of the Arco della
Pace. The work of Gaetano Monti, born in Ravenna, can be seen in many
northern Italian churches. The Tuscan sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini executed
some important Napoleonic commissions. The marble Charity is one of the
more famous examples of his later Neoclassicism. It should be noted, however,
that he did not see himself as a Neoclassical artist and that he challenged the
idealism that was favoured by Canova and his followers.

Denmark and Sweden

The Swede Johan Tobias Sergel, court sculptor to the Swedish king Gustav III,
and the Dane Bertel Thorvaldsen, who lived most of his life in Rome, were
among the best-known Neoclassical sculptors in Europe. Thorvaldsen was the
chief rival to Canova and eventually replaced him in critical favour. His work
was more severe, sometimes even archaizing, in character, and his religious
sculpture, most notably his great figure of Christ in the Church of Our Lady in
Copenhagen, exhibits a deliberately chilling sublime style that still awaits
sympathetic reassessment. Among his more notable pupils was the Swedish
sculptor Johan Byström.

Russia

Both leading Russian Neoclassicists were sculptors. Ivan Petrovich Martos

studied under Mengs, Thorvaldsen, and Batoni in Rome and became a
director of the St. Petersburg Academy. His best works are tombs. Mikhail
Kozlovsky contributed to the decoration of the throne room at Pavlovsk.

United States of America

Apart from the painter Benjamin West, who worked almost entirely

in London, the leading Neoclassicists among American artists were
sculptors. William Rush produced standing Classical figures, including those
formerly decorating a waterworks in Philadelphia. In the middle years of the
19th century, there came into prominence four sculptors: Horatio Greenough,
who executed several government commissions in Washington, D.C.; Hiram
Powers, known particularly for his portrait busts; Thomas Crawford, who did
monumental sculpture; and William Wetmore Story, who lived and worked in
Rome, where he was associated with several other prominent 19th-century
Americans. A circle of American women sculptors working in the Neoclassical
style arose in Rome in the 19th century as well—among them Harriet
Hosmer, Anne Whitney, and Edmonia Lewis.

Powers, Hiram: President Andrew Jackson

 President Andrew Jackson, plaster bust by Hiram Powers, modeled 1835; in the Smithsonian
American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Photograph by pohick2. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., Museum
purchase in memory of Ralph Cross Johnson, 1968.155.58

Whitney, Anne: Charles Sumner

Charles Sumner, sculpture by Anne Whitney, 1900; in Harvard Square, Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
Daderot

David IrwinThe Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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HomeVisual ArtsArchitecture

József Hild
Hungarian architect

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Last Updated: Dec 4, 2020 See Article History

Alternative Title: Hild József

József Hild, Hungarian form Hild József, (born Dec. 8, 1789, Pest [now in

Budapest], Hung.—died March 6, 1867, Pest), Hungarian architect, one of the
leading exponents of Neoclassical architecture in Hungary.

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József Hild
QUICK FACTS

BORN

December 8, 1789
Budapest, Hungary
DIED

March 6, 1867 (aged 77)

Budapest, Hungary

MOVEMENT / STYLE

 Neoclassical art
Hild was first an apprentice to his father, a construction engineer; later, he
continued his training at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. In 1816 Hild
traveled to Italy, where he studied Italian and Roman architecture. He
returned to Pest in 1820 and started his own business. His Neoclassical style
contributed greatly to the architectural development of Pest in the reform
period, and many hundreds of his designs survive. Among the most important
of these were the buildings on Roosevelt (formerly Kirakodó) Square (no
longer standing), the Diana baths (1822), the Libaschinszky-Koburg Palace
(1825), the Lloyd Palace (1827; destroyed in World War II), the Nákó Palace
(1833), the Ullmann Palace, and the Wieser House (1833). It was in
accordance with his designs that construction began on St. Stephen’s
Basilica in Pest in 1848 (it was completed by Miklós Ybl in 1905), and he also
designed the Eger Basilica (1831–36) and Szatmárnémeti (now Satu Mare,
Rom.). One of the most notable of his large-scale ecclesiastical works was the
reconstruction of the new Esztergom Cathedral (1840–56). Other prominent
designs include the Cziráky Palace (later the National Casino), the
Marczibányi Palace, the Károlyi-Trattner House (former home of the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences and still on Petőfi Sándor street in Budapest),
the Maria Theresa barracks, the Hild villa, the Esztergom library, the imperial
baths, and the castles of Bajna, Gyömrő, and Tápiószentmárton.

This article was most recently revised and updated by  Maren Goldberg, Assistant Editor.

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