Rococo & Neoclassicism

Rococo (1700-1750) meaning "shell" or "pebble"

HISTORY & KEY FACTS

• Shift of power from royal court to aristocracy (Baroque to Rococo)
• French Royal Academy sets tone for artistic taste in Paris
• Fete Galante - Aristocrats leisurely pursuits!
• Satire

Rococo Architecture

• No straight lines - height of refinement, feminine
• Building as sculpture, as if growing and moving 
• No empty spaces, small relief sculptures of cupids and clouds
• MAJOR WORKS
• Hall of Mirrors, the Amalienburg, Munich, Germany, early 18th c.

Rococo Painting

• No straight lines (even in frames), delicate curves
• Sensual, frivolity, extravagant and fluffy
• Scenes of love and romance 
• Dainty figures
• Airy, shimmering pastel colors
• MAJOR WORKS
• Jean-Antoine Watteau, The Return from Cythera, 1717-1719
• Jean-Honore Fragonard, The Swing, 1766

Rousseau and the 'Natural'

• Elisabeth Louise Vigee-Lebrun, Self Portrait, 1790
• Hogarth, Breakfast Scene from Marriage a la Mode, 1745
• Benjamin West, Death of General Wolfe, 1771

THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND NEOCLASSICISM
KEY FACTS & HISTORY

• The Age of Reason - Voltaire 
• Strong linear quality, dramatically lit figures 
• More democratic, rejected the authority of the aristocracy and monarchy
• Inspired by the excavation of Pompeii and Herculaneum
• Industrial Revolution: Population BOOM
• The French Revolution! 

Neoclassical Archiecture 

• Cast iron
• Revision of classical principles on a modern framework
• Inspiration: Palladio and Inigo Jones
• Symmetry, balance, composition and order
• Special rooms (green or Etruscan room, for example)
• MAJOR WORKS: 
• Boyle and Kent, Chiswick House, 1725 (Jefferson's Monticello)
• Darby and Pritchard, Coalbrookdale Bridge, 1776-1779 **IRON

Neoclassical Painting

• Modern sitters in ancient garb
• Exemplum virtutis (moral lesson)
• Rationality, symmetry, linear perspective
• clarity of details, LINES
• MAJOR WORKS
• David, Oath of the Horatii, 1784
• David, Death of Marat, 1793 

  Resources:

• Crash Course History: The French Revolution! 
• The Metropolitan Museum's Heilbrunn Timeline puts Romanticism in perspective
•  SmartHistory's "The Swing" by Fragonard
• SmartHistory's explanation of the "Death of Marat" by David