Horatii, Marat, and Odalisque: Oh My!
Neo-Classical art was a Western cultural movement and was a reaction to the French Rococo style, as the Rococo style was deemed sensuous and frivolous, while the Neo-Classical style had many paintings dealing with antiquity, moral virtue, and heroes, particularly those in ancient Rome and Greece.
The Oath of the Horatii
During his political career, he was a leader of the Montagnard faction during the French Revolution. He was assassinated by Charlotte Corday, a young Girondin conservative.
"Marat was a physician and publisher who, with the start of the French Revolution in 1789, used his newspaper, L’Ami du Peuple (“The Friend of the People”), to voice his support for the most radical and democratic measures. In 1792, he joined the National Convention, the assembly that governed France after the overthrow of the monarchy on August 10, 1792."
To me, this piece is filled with raw emotion. The limp arm signals the listlessness in his body, with his head hung in dismay from the attack that ended his life. Some could argue that this painting shares similarities to today’s politics.
"When exhibited at the Salon, such canvases only fueled the attacks of critics, who continued to portray Ingres as a kind of savage intent on taking art back to its infancy. A hostile response likewise greeted what would become one of the artist’s most celebrated canvases, La Grande Odalisque (1814). Exhibited in the 1819 Salon, this painting elicited outrage from critics, who ridiculed its radically attenuated modeling as well as Ingres’s habitual anatomical distortions of the female nude. Indeed, Ingres’s odalisque is a creature totally unknown in nature. The outrageous elongation of her back and one critic famously quipped that she had three vertebrae too many—together with her wildly expanded buttocks and rubbery, boneless right arm, constitutes a being that could exist only in the erotic imagination of the artist."
"Despite the controversy surrounding his nudes, Ingres finally began to turn the critical tide in his favor when he gained recognition as a religious painter."
This piece has been praised for its curvilinear forms, flowing lines, and color, and I absolutely see it. I particularly love the use of blue and gold.
"Antonio Canova dominated European sculpture around the turn of the century and was of primary importance in the development of the Neoclassical style in sculpture."
"The love affair between Cupid and Psyche is one of the best-known classical myths, recounted in the Latin novel The Golden Ass by Apuleius. Many Neoclassical paintings and sculptures derived inspiration from the story. Cupid, the lover of the mortal Psyche, forbids her to cast her eyes upon him and visits her only at night. Disobeying him, Psyche holds a light over his sleeping body, for which she is punished by Aphrodite. The scene conveyed by this modello is of Psyche being rescued in Cupid's embrace."
This piece was made out of polished marble and is absolutely gorgeous; the story is captivating. The fluidity of the figures makes the piece a treat to look at, and the drama portrayed could move anyone without previous knowledge of its history. Canova has great attention to detail, and it's apparent in the way he sculpted the layers of fabric and Psyche's desperate reach toward Cupid
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