Nudity a la Grecque and the Female Gaze

Jacques-Louis David, The Intervention of the Sabine Women, 1799
(Musee du Louvre)

Museums are full of works of art trying to tell us something vital about a particular period of time if we only stop to listen. Unfortunately a lot can be lost in translation since most discourse depends on the perspective of a particular scholar or a school of thought.  Also, changing sentiments can turn the iconography of a significant masterpiece into disconnected arguments.   I feel Jacques-Louis David's The Intervention of the Sabine Women hanging at the Louvre museum, is one of those paintings that merits further investigation.

Nicolas Poussin,  The Abduction of the Sabine Women,1633-34
(Metropolitan Museum of Art) 

David painted this monumental work while he was imprisoned after the death of Robespierre and the end of the reign of terror.  It  is always described as a reconciliation painting where love prevails over conflict,  David's call to find a way to rebuild after the destruction of the revolution and its aftermath.  Influenced by Nicolas Poussin's Rape of the Sabine Women, David depicts the end of the legendary  story from Roman history. Romans who have no women abduct the females from Sabine and make them their wives; years later the Sabine men come back to claim their female kin but in the midst of battle they are stopped by the intervention of the Sabine women who have become the wives and mothers of Romans, refusing to let their fathers and husbands kill each other.

David exhibited this painting in his studio where a mirror was placed on the opposite wall, giving the viewer the full effect of being in the midst of the battle. David provided a brochure for his audience that explained and defended his motivations and reasoning for the controversial tableau.  He also did something that was unprecedented til this time in France, he charged an admission fee.  It was deemed a box office success and became one of the most talked about paintings of his career.  The reason for the drama was caused mostly because of the state of dress or undress of the protagonists.  Some critics opposed the depiction of Roman soldiers fighting in the nude on the grounds of historical inaccuracy, others were outraged at the idea of the male nude displayed for all the world to see.   David proclaimed his choice as artistic license.


I recently discovered a fascinating article in the Art Bulletin by Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Nudity a la Grecque in 1799, that sheds an intriguing light on this controversial painting.1 Grisby explains: 


"Scholarship  has for the most  part treated  the novel conjunction of  naked  male  bodies  and  newly central  female  protagonists as separate issues.

While  the  nudes  have been  described in  terms of  David's stylistic  development toward  a greater classical Greek  purism, the  Sabine  women's  prominence  has been 

interpreted as affording a familial  basis for the reconciliation  of  a  divided  and  warring  post-Revolutionary  France.  Aesthetic  priorities  (male  nudity) and  narrative saliency (female  intervention)  have often  been  held  asunder."

As it turns out, the critics redefined David's protagonists in specifically contemporary French terms. For David's severe critics the male nudes were contemplated in terms of the modern man stripped bare humiliated before their valets or his body deformed, bent, branded from his vulgar cultural practices, particularly fashion.   Herosilia, on the other hand, in her Grecian white gown was likened to the real women of post-Revolutionary France parading around in diaphanous gowns.  According to Grisby, David  himself  was responsible for  such  a collapse of high art and ephemeral fashion. The fashionable French woman had been modeling herself on the female protagonists of David's  major  pre-Revolutionary paintings; by 1790's the classical white gown had become everyday attire. 

Louis-Leopold Boilly, No Agreement, 1797

On September 7, 1789, women had donned simple white gowns and donated their ornaments to the state in an attempt to distance themselves from compromising associations of femininity with aristocratic ostentation. 2 However, it is stated that the renunciation of excessive ornamentation turned into excess of exposed flesh.  Wise men of 18th century France tried to dissuade women from this immodest way of displaying themselves by trying to convince them of the hazards to their health as well as severely reprimanding them for not being a model for the impure female.  Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby explains: 



"Ultimately, however, the greatest threat posed by women's new exhibitionism was not their impact on other women but the power they inappropriately wielded over men. Roederer, for one, understood fashion to be the means by which women exercised their"empire."This was not merely a matter of women's seduction of men  but of their substitution of tyranny for republicanism. Ephemeral fashion is by definition antithetical to timeless law. The stakes were self-evident:  as long as women-immoral, fashionable, fickle, and tyrannical-are prominent, there  could  be  no (fraternal)  Republic."

The Intervention of the Sabine Women, brought forth a concept which was completely antithetical to anything that had been seen in art so far -  the female gaze.  We read and write about the male gaze on the female body quite extensively in regards to feminist theory but this is the first time I experienced the exact opposite.  I should mention here that Tatius, Herosilia's father, standing to her left, was posed full frontal, without the modesty of the scabbard he wears in the painting today ( David modified the painting in1808).  The two male protagonists Tatius and Romulus were standing fully nude to an audience of females as well as males.  Girgsby mentions fashionable women standing before the painting in David's studio imagining themselves in place of Herosilia and her cohorts, another annoyance the critics could lay at David's door.  Along with the female viewer observing Tatius in puris naturalibus there are also Herosilia and the old woman in the middle who is about to rip open her gown, both getting a full view of Romulus that is not afforded to anyone else. 

"Here  are  women  in  states  of  undress regarding a displayed  male  nude; indeed, they are the only figures gazing at Romulus's exposed body.  It is difficult, however, to assess precisely where they look and what they see there. They alone enjoy access to Romulus's other  side, that presence or absence lurking behind (or  eclipsed  by?) shield and sheath, buttocks. As viewers by proxy, they heighten the sense of suspense attending Romulus's withheld body. Their oddly uninformative but directed gazes, coupled with Tatius's frontality, compel the question:  Should the viewer project Tatius's anatomy onto the halfgod's front, assembling his body part by part (shoulder, arm, chest, hardened stomach, genitals) in an attempt to reconstruct the man as seen by the women?"



Finally, the painter was blamed for sacrificing the health of women,  promoting 'nudity' for the sake of garnering a greater purity of forms in his painting. Darcy Grigsby states, women were ultimately the malleable materials of the dictatorial artist.  I guess anything was preferable to women having a mind of their own and acting independently.  


These are the elements that places David's painting on a plane which is more than just another neoclassical work to be memorized and recognized for me.  An intriguing peek into the lives, and thoughts of people from 200 years ago, observed through a careful study of a canvas hanging on a museum wall, ours to be had for the price of an admission ticket... this is why I love Art History.

1  Grigsby, Darcy Grimaldo, Nudity a la Grecque in 1799, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 80, No. 2(Jun., 1998), pp 311-335

2  Ibid., 321

Jacques- Louis David - The Lictors Returning to Brutus the Bodies of his Sons

Jacques-Louis David, The Lictors Returning to Brutus the Bodies of his Sons, 1789
(Musee du Louvre)

David, Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, 1789 from Smarthistory Videos on Vimeo.

Jacques- Louis David - The Death of Socrates

Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Socrates, 1787
(Metropolitan Museum of Art)

From the Metropolitan Museum Catalog Entry: 

The great history painter and portraitist Jacques Louis David was the pupil of Joseph Marie Vien (1716–1809) and then in 1766 entered the school of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. Having won the Prix de Rome in 1774, he traveled to Italy with Vien, an early exponent of neoclassicism and the newly appointed director of the French Academy there. In the Italian capital, David followed a traditional course, drawing from the antique, from models, and from nature, and studying contemporary and earlier painting. He made innumerable studies that attest to his passionate interest in antiquity and in the sculptural style of painting espoused in the seventeenth century by the Romanist Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), whose successor he became.

David returned to Paris in 1780 and the next year was received as a candidate member of the Académie, presenting Belisarius Begging Alms (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille), a history painting praised for its nobility of spirit. His reception piece, submitted in 1783, was the starkly heroic Grieving Andromache (École Nationale Supérieur des Beaux-Arts, Paris). Moralizing themes were immensely popular in the tumultuous years preceding the French revolution and many painters essayed The Death of Socrates, but none with the success of David. From its first exhibition at the Salon of 1787, the canvas has been admired for the clarity and force of its composition and the purity of its sentiment.

In 399 B.C., having been accused by the Athenian government of impiety and of corrupting young people with his teachings, the philosopher Socrates was tried, found guilty, and offered the choice of renouncing his beliefs or drinking the cup of hemlock. He died willingly for the principles he held dear. Here he gestures toward the cup, points toward the heavens, and discourses on the immortality of the soul. The picture, with its stoic theme, has been described as David’s most perfect neoclassical statement.

The artist consulted Plato’s "Phaedo" and a variety of sources including Diderot’s treatise on dramatic poetry and works by the poet André Chenier. The pose of Plato, the figure seated in profile at the foot of the bed (who was not actually present at the scene), was reportedly inspired by the English novelist Richardson. The printmaker and publisher John Boydell, writing to Sir Joshua Reynolds, called The Death of Socrates "the greatest effort of art since the Sistine Chapel and the stanze of Raphael," further observing that the painting "would have done honour to Athens at the time of Pericles." 

Jean-Germain Drouais - David's Favorite Student

Jean-Germain Drouais, Dying Athlete (Wounded Soldier)1785
(Musee du Louvre)

Jacques- Louis David - The Oath of the Horatii

Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Horatii, 1784
(Musee du Louvre)

Information from the Louvre Website

The Oath of the Horatii

In the 7th century BC, the three Horatii brothers, chosen by the Romans to defy the Curiatii, the champions of the town of Alba, are swearing to defeat their enemies or die. As they receive their weapons from their father, the women of the family are prostrate with suffering. This painting, a royal commission, was the manifesto for a new style, neoclassicism. Both the architecture of the room and the poses of the warriors are rigorously geometrical.

The Horatii and the Curiatii

In the 7th century BC, to put an end to the bloody war between Rome and Alba, both cities designated champions: the former chose the Horatii, the latter the Curiatii. The two families were linked by marriage. Jacques-Louis David depicts the Horatii swearing to defeat their enemies or die for their country. On the right, the grief-stricken women of the family already fear the worst: Sabina, the sister of the Curiatii and wife of the eldest of the Horatii, and Camilla, the sister of the Horatii and betrothed to one of the Curiatii, hang their heads in sorrow, while behind them, the mother of the Horatii hugs her grandchildren. 

A new moral painting

David chose this episode in Roman history for his first royal commission in 1784. A Prix de Rome laureate in 1776 and a member of the Académie, he wanted to launch his public career by creating a stir with a radically innovative picture. He forsook the amorous and mythological subject matter of his first teacher, Boucher, for the Roman historians and Corneille's classical play Horace (1640). David presents this episode as an example of patriotism and stoicism. In this respect, he is close to philosophers of the Enlightenment such as Diderot, who advocated the painting of moral subjects. David also wanted to give his painting an orginal form. He sought to emulate the grand style of his 17th-century forebears Poussin and Le Brun. David returned to Rome, where he could draw inspiration from ancient art for this painting. He presented the finished canvas in his studio in Rome in 1785, then at the Paris Salon later that year, on both occasions to acclaim. 

The manifesto of neoclassicism

The Oath of the Horatii is the first masterpiece of a new style breaking with the rococo style. The composition is broad and simple, with the life-size figures arranged in a frieze in the foreground, as on Roman sarcophagi and Greek vases. The figures are separated by large empty spaces in a stage-like area shown head-on. David emphasizes the room's geometry. The harsh, slanting light gives the figures their relief, and their contrasting characters are conveyed using different forms. He gives the men energetic bodies constructed out of straight lines and dresses them in vivid colors, while the women are all sinous curves and muted colors. The painting became the model throughout Europe for the new style of painting later known as neoclassicism.

 

Jacques- Louis David - The Master of Neoclassicim

Jacques-Louis David, Self Portrait, 1794
(Musee du Louvre)

Jacques-Louis David was born into an upper class family with connections in the Academie  royale d'architecture (Royal Academy of Architecture) and was supposed to study to be either a lawyer or an architect.  But he was adamant about becoming an artist.  His father had died when he was nine years old leaving his education in the care of his uncles who themselves were architects.

He started his studies at the Academie de peinture et de sculpture but was soon disillusioned with the constraints of the strict academy education which he believed was designed to suppress artistic genius and originality, particularly his own.  This is thought to be the reason for his rebellion against the despotic institutions of the ancien regime during the Revolution, including the Royal Academy which he helped to abolish in 1793.1  After three consecutive tries, David finally won the prestigious Prix de Rome and could go and study there.  At first he said he was only interested in the works of the Renaissance masters but after he got to Rome, Classical sculpture became his main obsession and he captured the purity and power of contour from Winckelmann's teachings.

Jaques-Louis David, Belisarius Begging for Alms, 1781
(Palais des Beaux Arts de Lille)

Before David started painting Belisarius Begging for Alms in late 1780 as a preliminary entry submission for acceptance into the Academie, he asked the academy what subject he should paint, showing his compliancy. But some scholars argue that this painting actually signifies David's "prerevolutionary radicalism"  and his involvement in the Revolution was the logical conclusion of being a radical,  intellectual, enlightened artist.2


Belisarius was a very successful and loyal general in Byzantine Emperor Justinain's army but he fell from grace, his property was seized and he was blinded. Belisarius was reduced to begging in the streets.  This story was popular during the Enlightenment in mid 18th century France both in art and literature.  In the painting David depicts the moment when a blind old man accompanied by a child, holding out his helmet for a woman to put coins in it is recognized as Belisarius by one of the soldier's who served under him.  The soldier is horrified at seeing his old commander begging in the streets.  The underlying message  being 'this could happen to anyone who is a traitor to the crown" would be understood by the young artists who were in awe of David.

David has depicted the scene taking place in front of very rigid, solid, doric columns and a distant Roman city in the background.  The composition is perpendicular to the viewer's line of vision.  David's strong outlines delineates all the figures from one another and the background.  Although this painting is cited as the first manifesto to Neoclassical painting, there are some lapses in David's work.  The position of the soldier, behind and higher than the woman would necessitate him to be taller. While he has used proper perspective in depicting the tiles on the right side of the painting, the tiles on the left side do not have the illusion of going back in space.  David does not seem to be too concerned with such details and in the future would have his students work on the little details.

It is still a little obscure how David would produce such a subject that could very well be construed as a criticism of the monarchy but the concepts of Enlightenment and the sovereigns perspective on the arts seems to be intersecting during the reigns of Louis XV and XVI.  On the one hand the Enlightened artists, philosophers, and literary figures finding patronage and an intellectually fertile ground in the Salons of aristocratic ladies, the most interesting example being Louis XV's mistress, Madame de Pompadour being the protector of the Encyclopedia, and  on the  other some of those figures being arrested for the works discussed at those Salons. The more I learn, the more confounding I find 'the Age of Reason.'

1  Kohle, Hubertus. "The Road from Rome to Paris:  The Birth of a Modern Neoclassicim." Jacques-Louis David:  New Perspectives. Newark [Del.: University of Delaware, 2006. 71. Print
2 Ibid., 74

Sir Joshua Reynolds - Portrait of Mrs Siddon as the Tragic Muse

Sir Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Mrs Siddons as the Tragic Muse,1784
(The Huntington Library, Pasadena, California)

In France, the Director-General of Buildings under Louis XVI, Count Charles-Claude d'Angiviller, as soon as he took office in 1774, issued a letter to the director of the Academy declaring that from the governments perspective, art's highest aim should be to promote virtue and to combat vice.  In order to achieve this he proposed to commission historical paintings with a strong moral impact.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, across the channel in England was preaching the same thing and calling for a return to a great style of painting that was simple, natural and beautiful in the style of the classical works of art.  Reynolds, one of the founders and the first president of the Royal Academy was a great portraitist and the leading figure in trying to elevate the art of portraiture to a grand style similar to history paintings.  In England, unlike France, the majority of works commissioned were from private patrons instead of the government, making the production of large-scale history paintings difficult.  Artists usually would attempt these to stand out at the academy exhibitions but otherwise concentrated on painting portraits which was always in demand.   His Portrait of Mrs Siddons as a Tragic Muse is a wonderful incorporation of the ideas for a grand style in portraiture.1

Mrs Siddons was at the height of her career when Reynolds painted this portrait.  In Greek Mythology every art had a corresponding muse or a goddess that inspired the artist and Reynolds must have found representing Mrs Siddons as the tragic muse, most appropriate.  There is a story that when she came into his studio Reynolds took her hand and led her to the chair uttering the words "Ascend your undisputed throne; bestow on me some idea of the tragic muse."  At which time she immediately sat and assumed the attitude in which she was painted.2  The pose is reminiscent of Michelangelo's depiction of one of the prophets on the Sistine Chapel.


Reynolds has depicted a fair Mrs Siddons, as a luminescent muse, amongst the dark shadows where the allegorical figures of Terror and Pity hover behind her. He has elevated her station by placing her on such a large scale painting, sitting on a throne with a little stool underneath her feet. The way one arm rests and the other is held with no effort adds to the sense of nobility. The scale of the painting and the  subject matter of  an allegory has made this painting almost on par with history painting.

Thomas Gainsborough, Portrait of Mrs Sarah Siddons, 1785
(The National Gallery, London)

Reynolds' innovations becomes even more pronounced when comparing this painting with Thomas Gainsborough Portrait of Mrs. Sarah Siddons painted in 1785.  In the Gainsborough portrait the influence of rococo is very apparent in the soft brush strokes and the finely worked textures and fabrics of her clothing. This is the perfect likeness of a well-bred woman with an averted gaze sitting with her powdered hair, in silks and furs placed at the very front of the canvas.    While Gainsborough displays his sensuous brushwork in this painting in the rococo style, Reynolds, by concentrating on what he calls a "nobleness of conception"  and "dignifying his figure with intellectual grandeur," has created a portrait akin to the grand history paintings that were beginning to be produced in France.  


1 Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Nineteenth-Century European Art, second edition, Pearson Education 2006
2  Estelle May Hurll, Sir Joshua Reynolds, A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the Painter with Introduction and Interpretation, Project Gutenberg E-Book, 31

Angelica Kauffman - Neoclassicism's Female Hero

Angelica Kauffman, Zeuxis Selecting Models for his Painting of Helen of Troy, 1778
(Brown University Library, Providence, Rhode Island)

"By the ideal, I mean that which one sees only with the imagination, and not with the eyes; thus an ideal in painting depends upon selection of the most beautiful things in nature purified of every imperfection."

- Anton Raphael Mengs

Meng's words ring true of the accepted notion in 18th century that the idealism of Classical art was due to the Greek's search for perfection in nature. Since the Creator's true ideal was dispersed into nature and did not exist as a perfect whole in any one thing, it had to be compiled together by the artist.  It is possible to interpret Angelica Kauffman's painting Zeuxis Selecting Models for his Painting of Helen of Troy as a depiction of this notion.  According to the Roman author Pliny, the ancient Greek painter Zeuxis could not find a woman beautiful enough to portray as Helen of Troy, the archetype of the feminine beauty, so he picked the best features of five virgins to compose the most ideal image of beauty.  In this painting, the male artist is in the process of selecting the most perfect feature of the models; we even see an instrument on the floor by his foot that would be used to measure.  The one feature that sets this interpretation apart is the fifth model to the right of the artist who seems to be standing before the canvas with a brush in her hand.  She has taken the position of the artist/creator and instead of being one of the passive models who are being objectified, she is actively creating art.  Given the gender of the artist, this could be read as Kauffman's commentary on her identity as an artist.  

The Swiss artist Angelica Kauffman was a child prodigy; she was very gifted in art, music and could speak a number of languages.  She was trained by her father, brought to Rome and encouraged to study Classical sculptures and the work of the Renaissance masters.  When she moved to London she befriended Reynolds and impressed her contemporaries so much that she was invited as a founding member to the Royal Academy.  She aspired to be a history painter since this was the top echelon of all the genre's of painting.  Figures were an inherent part of history paintings but female artists had no knowledge of the human anatomy, since they were not allowed to work from a live model.  Kauffman had to rely on her studies from sculptures for her figures.  There were a lot of rumors circulating about Kauffman and she was maligned in the writings of some satirists.  But she still seems to have taken control of her life and career and become a favorite of the aristocracy.   She had moved from the position of objectified female to  the creator/artist. 

The English were not so enthusiastic about history painting as their French counterparts, portraiture was what they demanded.  Along with painting the portraits of "who was who" of her day, Kauffman also painted mythological scenes.  Although the subject of this painting was Neoclassical, the style was still more Rococo.  Instead of the rigid outlines and stoics figures of Neoclassicism, Kauffman used sfumato, her figures blending with the background.  Her diversity as an artist can be better understood when comparing this painting with Cornelia Pointing to Her Children as her Treasures from 1785.

Angelica Kauffman, Cornelia Pointing to her Children as her Treasures, 1785
(Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia)

This painting depicting exemplum virtutis (example of virtue) from Roman history is much closer to Neoclassicism.  Cornelia was a matron known for her virtue, modesty and honor. Here she is being visited by another female who is displaying all her worldly goods, looking askance at Cornelia to see her treasures.  Cornelia points to her sons who have come back from school as her treasures, displaying maternal virtue.  She also holds her daughter's hand but there is a bit of ambiguity when it comes to interpreting this figure.   For one thing, Cornelia does not include her in her treasures causing some to speculate boys were more important than girls.  The little girl seems to be quite taken with the jewelry of the other matron, confirming the stereotypical gender role.   

Stylistically, the Neoclassical elements are present in the figures standing on a shallow, horizontal plane as if on a procession, the wall and the column in the back forming a stark background, the clean outlines  and perspective as well as the subject of female virtue from Roman history.

All the ideals of the scholars and artists of mid 18th century can be seen in Angelica Kauffman's Cornelia.  Her elevated style of painting is in the grand manner as Reynolds was calling for, the morally exemplary subject matter is from ancient Rome, her figures idealized and outlined  as prescribed by Winckelmann and Mengs, thus the artist has seen with her imagination and selected all that is beautiful in nature.  This extraordinary artist who lived in and abided by the norms of a male dominated society that would deny her the right to learn something vital to her profession, still found a way to depict scenes from her unique perspective and is counted as one of the precursors of her time.

Benjamin West - Agrippina Landing at Brundisium with the Ashes of Germanicus

Benjamin West, Agrippina Landing at Brundisium with the Ashes of Germanicus, 1768
(Yale University Art Gallery)

Benjamin West was an American artist who went to study in Rome in 1760 and returned to England in 1763, to remain there for the rest of his life.   Upon his return, the Archbishop of York commissioned West to paint a story from Roman history, Agrippina returning from Syria with the ashes of her assassinated husband Germanicus. She was considered to be very noble and brave since it was believed that Emperor Tiberius who was Germanicus' uncle and adopted father was responsible for the brilliant General's demise. In West's painting we see her as she lands in Brundisium carrying an urn with her two children Caligula and Agrippina junior, all dressed in white (the color of mourning) and is greeted by a large crowd of sympathizers who loved her husband and admired her courage and virtue.  She stands composed, not showing her pain on the face of this tragedy which points to the stability of her character.

Agrippina Landing at Brundisium with the Ashes of Germanicus, conforms perfectly with the demands of the art scholars of the time who were appealing for a morally edifying art.  Agrippina's actions represented exemplum virtutis (example of virtue) meant to inspire paralel virtues in it's viewers.  West has highlighted Agrippina and her retinue in the middle of the painting in a freeze-like setting which is reminiscent of the friezes he must have seen in Rome.  The ancient Roman city in the back forming a stage-like setting, Agrippina's stoic stance and the dramatic lighting effects are all typical elements of neoclassical painting but some elements of the rococo style are also present.  The crying women in the left forefront and the agitated boatmen on the right are worked out with sinuous lines and  more vivid colors.

Benjamin West was one of the founders and the second president of the Royal academy in London, which was quite a way to go for a man from Pennsylvania, in such a class conscious society. Thanks to him, a lot of other American artists got established in England as students and professionals.   According to the Yale University Art Gallery label, this painting would help him become a favorite of the King, George III, who was his life-long patron.   

Jean-Baptiste Greuze - Septimius Severus and Caracalla

Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Septimius Severus and Caracalla, 1769
(Musee du Louvre, Paris)

Jean-Baptiste Greuze came from Tournus, the son of a roof master who tried to thwart his son's artistic tendencies at an early age.  He received his early training in Lyons, then traveled onto Paris and enrolled at the Academie to continue his studies.   He is noted as having made a great fuss when he was given an unsatisfactory seat in life class.  Greuze then traveled onto Italy in the company of abbe Gaugenot which according to art historian Anita Brookner was wasted on him since he was too much under the influence of Flemish and Dutch models.1  

When Greuze first entered the Academie, he wanted to be a Genre painter, showing domestic scenes with popular connotations which was in the middle of the hierarchy of acceptable styles.  The hierarchy of Genres were as follows:  History painting; Portrait painting; Genre painting; Landscape; Still Life.  Although he wasn't an fully accepted academician yet, Greuze was sending his paintings to the Salon, the official exhibition of the Academie that informed the public of the quality of works produced by the academicians. The artists who were permitted into the Academie were supposed to submit a reception piece that was judged and accepted into the different levels of the academy.  Greuze who had been protected by influential people had not submitted his reception piece till 1769. 

The artist usually would have a sponsor to help, critique and guide him on his reception piece but Greuze arrogantly decided to do it by himself without any assistance artistically or financially.  Since he was financing the painting himself, it ended up being smaller than the usual size of the pieces admitted to the jury.  In his attempt to impress the jury Greuze picked an obscure story from antiquity that was based on speech and had no decipherable meaning without the words.  The story Greuze was trying to depict was the Roman emperor Septimius Severus reproaching his son Caracalla who had tried to kill him and telling him that all he would have to do if wanted to accomplish this would be to tell his guards.  As odd as the story was Greuze's unacceptable depiction of the protagonists provided the academicians with further ammunition to completely destroy it.  The limp arm of the Emperor pointing at his son was so out of character for a man in his position as well as Caracalla's strange expression of a boy who is being scolded that even though Greuze had done his studies of the anatomy in the nude as was the correct way for the academy, it still ended up being a failure.  He was still admitted into the academy but at the lower level of genre painter which he took as the biggest insult.  When he showed this painting at the Salon it was not appreciated by anyone there either.  Taking offense, Greuze decided not to exhibit at the Salon anymore and eventually died unnoticed and in poverty.  

1  Brookner, Anita. "Jean-Baptiste Greuze-I" The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd. Vol 98, No 638, May 1956 

Joseph-Marie Vien - The Seller of Cupids

Joseph-Marie Vien, The Seller of Cupids, 1763
(Musee National de Chateau de Fontainebleau)

Joseph-Marie Vien, had won the Prix de Rome and studied in Rome between 1744 to 1750.  This was a time of great excitement in Italy since ancient Roman cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii had been unearthed in 1738 and 1748 bringing into light some very well preserved wall paintings which was an immense source of knowledge and inspiration for scholars and artists.

Carlo Nolli, The Seller of Cupids,1762
illustration from Le Antichita di Ercolano.

Vien's The Seller of Cupids draws its subject directly from an image from Le Antichita di Ercolano (The antiques of Herculaneum) which was a collection of images of archaeological finds from the ancient Roman city.  Carlo Nolli's engraving of The Seller of Cupids is the mirror image of Vien's painting.

Some of the elements of the original engraving has been changed by Vien; by placing his stoic figures in a shallow setting at the very edge of the picture plane and closing off the back completely using vertical components, he has created a stage-like presence.  Vien has also added some period interior furnishings that are not present in the original engraving plus he has changed the Classical cage to an 18th century basket.

Most critics recognized the innovation in this painting and applauded Vien's sobre style but some criticized its immoral subject matter.  The obsecene gesture of the cupid in the air alluding to the promised pleasure did not sit well with Diderot who was trying to elevate the French and rich Roman ladies buying love was considered more erotic and indecent than even Boucher's sensual paintings.  Finally, even though Vien had achieved Neoclassicism stylistically, he still remained in the Rococo style with his content.  It would be up to his student Jacques Louis David to bring about the complete revolution.  

Anton Raphael Mengs - Apollo and the Muses on Parnassus

Anton Raphael Mengs, Apollo and the Muses on Parnassus, 1760-61
(Villa Albani, Rome)

Johann Joachim Winckelmann, a German literary scholar, who was working in Rome during mid 18th century, was one of the  biggest advocates of an art in the noble simplicity and quiet grandeur of the ancient Greeks.  According to Winckelmann, Greeks lived an exemplary life of a healthy diet and regular exercise which led to a healthy mind and high moral standards.  He saw an intense study of  Classical art as the only way to improve the decadence of 18th century society and the arts.  A trip to Rome and the study of the Renaissance masters, especially Michelangelo and Raphael was an essential part of for many young artist's training.   By 1760's those artist working in Rome were also exposed to Winceklmann's teachings  and were beginning to incorporate these elements in to their work. Since the 1880's, the art of this period is referred to as Neoclassical.

Apollo Belvedere, Roman 120- 130
(Copy of Bronze Original Greek 325-350BC)
(Vatican Museum, Rome) 

The German painter Anton Raphael Mengs was one of the artists who was working in Rome in the 1760's and he was commissioned by Winckelmann's patron, Cardinal Albani, to paint his new villa's reception room ceiling.  The ceiling fresco Mengs painted, Apollo and the Muses on Parnassus, is considered to be the first example of  Neoclassical painting, a revolutionary declaration of a new art. Mengs' stoic figures are standing, in a shallow picture plane in front of trees that are forming a backdrop with the mythological source of artistic inspiration, the Castillian spring in the front.

Instead of concealing the ceiling with illusionism as was the custom since the Renaissance, Mengs emphasized it as a flat surface.  Apollo is standing in the middle wearing laurels and holding a lyre, surrounded by muses in a symmetrical composition.  Mengs' idealized figures recall sculptures from antiquity, his composition, paintings from the Renaissance.  As a matter of fact, his Apollo is a rendition of the Apollo Belvedere in reverse which was believed at the time to be the most magnificent sculpture from ancient Greece (it has been proved to be a Roman copy since.)  In this ceiling fresco he seems to have captured the essence of what his friend Winckelman was calling for at the time to cleanse the arts from French Rococo and bring a subdued gravity in its stead.

Raphael, The School of Athens, 1509 -1510
(Apostolic Palace, Vatican City, Rome)

The Salon - Different Artistic Styles from 18th and 19th Centuries

The official art exhibition of the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1748- 1890 was the Salon.  Artwork selected for exhibition at the Salon typically fit the characteristics of Academic Art. 

If you wanted to make it as an artist, you had to be exhibited in the official Salon which was controlling the art world.  The latest and the greatest of the time were determined there.

In order to be seen in one of these exhibitions, your work had to be huge or hope you won't be skied (placed high above)  All the walls were packed from  the floor to the ceiling with paintings.

The catalog of the exhibit would have little snippets of  literature or poetry listed with the paintings.  

There was a hierarchy of genres that was acceptable when selecting paintings for the official Salon:

     1.  History Painting

     2.  Portraiture

     3.  Genre (everyday life scenes)

     4.  Landscape

     5.  Still Life

Jacques-Louis David, The Oath of the Horatii,1784, approx 10 1/2 x 14'
(NEOCLASSICAL STYLE HISTORY PAINTING)

Neoclassicism (1750-1820), the art of the ideal, drew upon Western classical art and culture.  

Jacques-Louis David is painting not his own time but an image of the Romans from ancient history, in order to make a comment on his own society. He believed that 'Art should be morally instructive.' At this time society was degenerating, so he was painting an ideal for his time to reinforce the morals of  family, patriotism and society.

Theodore Gericault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1819, 16 X 23 1/2'
(ROMANTICISM)

Romanticism (1800-1850) was an artistic movement that grew out of the Enlightenment based on ideas of reason, democracy and order. It emphasized very passionate emotions, very exotic settings that appeal to the imagination, extremes of human experience - events that wouldn't happen to the average person in everyday life, and the notion of the sublime. All of the ideals of Neoclassicism was under fire at this period and there was a strong reaction to the French Revolution.

Theodore Gericault didn't actually experience this scene but he talked to the survivors of this atrocity.  There is drama and an immensity to this canvas, later-on scale becomes important for the Impressionists.  

There is still a triangle in the composition but it's skewed so there is much more emphasis on the dynamism of this particular event.  

Gustave Courbet, A Burial at Ornans, 1849-1850, approx. 10 1/2 x 22'

(REALISM)

Realism is an artistic style, it does not necessarily mean a replica of a real experience, it is interpretive and naturalistic not realistic.  This monumental painting has no association with the past. Courbet could have experienced this scene of the burial from the French countryside.