Differences of Morality - A Classical Art Exhbit
The moral values expressed by artists working during the Classica era were sharply divided between two movements. Rococo art was almost universally lighthearted and irreverent, featuring playful depictions of aristocratic subjects enjoying lives of luxury and leisure. The Neoclassicists, influenced by the Age of Enlightenment and a renewed interest in the art and politics of ancient Greece and Rome, espoused values of moderation and rationality.
In this exhibit I will be comparing a series of paintings from the Rococo and Neoclassical movements. I've selected six paintings, three belonging to each movement, in order to analyze their differing styles, influences, and moral attributes.
Angelica Kauffman, Cornelia Pointing to Her Children as Her Treasures (1785)
Image courtesy of The Art Daily With Lydia.
Kauffman, notably the first female artist to be featured on this blog, possessed the seemingly miraculous ability to paint beautiful women without emphasizing their sexuality.
Here, Cornelia receives a visitor who boastfully presents her jewelry in a game of show-and-tell. In response, Cornelia points to her children as what she finds valuable. The two sons she is pointing to, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, would go on to become influential politicians who fought for social reforms benefitting the average citizens of Rome.
In an analysis of this painting for Smart History, Dana Martin writes, "To the artists of eighteenth-century Europe, it was not enough to simply paint a beautiful painting. Yes one could marvel at your use of colors, proportions, and how masterfully you draped the fabric on your figures, but this was just not enough. The story that is represented must also improve the viewer and impart a moralizing message."
The influence of classical antiquity on the Enlightenment is well-illustrated here: a scene set in ancient Rome, paying tribute to their politics of democracy. The relative simplicity of this painting also recalls the artwork of that place and time. Unlike a typical Rococo painting, the background is not lavishly decorated with proliferous greenery. The lines are clean and straight rather than sensuously curving, the colors bold instead of pastel. There is an overall symmetry to the composition that would be uncharacteristic of a Rococo painting. The technique, like the subject matter, instills me with a wholesome sense of virtuosity.
Kauffman was born in Switzerland and studied in Italy, where she became acquainted with the Neoclassical style. She then moved to England, where she became a founding member of the Royal Academy of Arts. Later in her life, Kauffman retired to Rome, where she painted Cornelia Pointing to Her Children as Her Treasures.
François Boucher, Diana Bathing (1742)
Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
In stark contrast to Kauffman, Boucher seems to have been almost entirely uninterested in painting women without emphasizing their sexuality. Diana was the Roman goddess of the hunt, famous for her unshakeable virginity. If ever anyone in the Roman pantheon was deserving of a non-sexualized portrayal, it is Diana. Yet Boucher chose to show her disrobed with a nymph at her side. There is evidence of her hunting prowess, but her bow has been set aside for a moment of leisure.
This depiction of Diana is emblematic of the Rococo style, which idealized erotic sensuality, luxury, and the spirit of exuberance. The eroticism here is emphasized by Boucher's use of soft pastel colors, curving lines, and graceful composition.
Boucher's preferred subjects included erotic portraits of odalisques, Turkish chambermaid slaves who served a sultan's harem of concubines. In all his paintings of odalisques I can perceive no conscientious sympathy for the treatment of these women. They are shown luxuriating, objects of lust. Boucher, along with the greater Rococo movement, weren't particularly concerned with the struggles of the oppressed and lower class.
If my feelings about this painting weren't already clear, I don't love it, although I respect Boucher's technique for achieving exactly what it intends to. Rococo artists were so focused on celebrating life's pleasures that they didn't concern themselves with drama or virtue even when depicting mythological subjects. For this moment, Diana's bow has been set aside, and that's the whole point. In that sense, this painting serves as a deconstruction appropriate to its genre, and I can put aside my instinctual apprehension to appreciate how well it achieves its desired effect.
The rounded lines, soft textures, and patterning of the foliage contribute to a sense of calm. Serene blues, rosy pinks, and gentle yellows bloom softly from the center of the composition, producing warmth. Boucher's gentle tones suggest peace of mind.
Diana Bathing was probably painted in Paris, where Boucher spent most of his life—a city emblematic of the wealth disparity and class warfare that led to the French Revolution.
In his biography on Boucher for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Perrin Stein says, "More than any other artist, François Boucher (1703–1770) is associated with the formulation of the mature Rococo style and its dissemination throughout Europe."
Anton Raphael Mengs, Diana as Personification of the Night (1765)
Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Now that's more like it! Elegant, beautiful, modestly attired, and ready to plug an arrow into any man prepared to disrespect her asexuality.
Beyond just being appropriately depicted according to her nature, Diana here is presented as a symbol of virtue. Goddess of the moon, she is haloed by its celestial light as she glides through the night sky high above the Earth. She carries her bow and arrow, a symbol of forward progress. I see Diana as a sort of torch-bearer in this painting, someone reflecting the light of heavenly virtuosity and carrying it through the dark of night. A heroic figure of enlightenment, if you will. Perhaps Mengs saw something of himself and the greater Neoclassical movement in this painting.
Mengs, along with his close friend Johann Joachim Winckelmann, were early pioneers of the Neoclassical movement. Winckelmann was an archeologist and art historian whose studies of ancient Greece influenced Mengs interest in the subject matter and values of Classical antiquity. According to Thomas Pelzel in an article for Studies in Romanticism, "In most literature on the period, Winckelmann and Mengs are cited as the primary apostles of the neoclassical credo."
Taking a variety of influences from Raphael to Correggio to Titian, Mengs' interest in older techniques and subject matter is apparent here. He revives the use of chiaroscuro to make Diana appear especially vivid and luminous against the night sky. The vibrant colors and angular flow of Diana's garments create an explosive sense of movement—she looks the part of a prototypical superhero.
Diana as Personification of the Night was one of a series of four such "personification" paintings Mengs made for Maria Luisa of Parma while living in Madrid.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Swing (1767)
Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The Swing, likely created in Fragonard's home city of Paris, is a piece that exemplifies the values of the Rococo genre if there ever was one. It is playful, erotically charged, depicts wealthy subjects, and shows irreverence toward Greco-Roman subject matter.
The painting was reportedly commissioned by a wealthy patron who asked Fragonard to portray him admiring his mistress from below while she swung overhead. Playfully erotic commissions such as this were typically displayed in small private rooms where they could be shown off to friends in secrecy. They were very much the "dad's secret Playboy stash" of their place and time.
The Swing is rich with symbolism, and while it may not be saying anything of moral virtue, it inadvertently says a lot about the moral delinquency of the upper class. The man pulling the swing, figuratively and literally in the dark, is presumably the woman's husband. The ropes he holds represent the bond of their marriage, one that is getting further away from him with each pull. Cupid's shushing gesture (which I can't help but chuckle over) is a nod to the secrecy of the implicit affair.
I can't condone The Swing, but I thoroughly enjoy it. I find my eyes carried from the swinger up through sinuous lines of the trees, where the playful, back-and-forth swinging sensation continues uninterrupted. The impossible profusion of foliage that patterns the air overhead and underfoot fills the scene with life. This painting has so much movement it almost seems to breathe: the soft pastel colors drift hazily and then flourish and blossom with the leaves. This piece makes me a bit giddy.
Alina Cohen puts it well in her article for Artsy: "The decadent composition all but shouts: “Let them eat cake!” The Swing isn’t particularly relatable to the 21st-century viewer or anyone unaffiliated with the court at Paris or Versailles, nor does it offer serious truths about human nature. While there’s plenty of intrigue in the story of its making, The Swing ultimately revels in fun, fantasy, and the idealized haut monde. Its hedonistic subject and obsessive detail make it an icon of Rococo style and a continual source of creative inspiration and visual enjoyment."
Jacques-Louis David, The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons (1789)
Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
This is the most politically charged piece in this exhibit, made and displayed in Paris around the time of the French Revolution. David labored over this 146 square foot painting in the years leading up the revolution, and displayed it in the Paris Salon shortly after the revolution began.
Brutus made for a compelling subject for David because his story resonated with the values of the revolutionary movement in France. After overthrowing the monarchy and installing the Roman Republic, Brutus came to find his sons Titus and Tiberius involved in a conspiracy to retake the throne. For this transgression against the republic, Brutus oversaw the executions of his own sons.
Whether or not you personally agree with this filial betrayal, it is consistent with the political and moral virtues of the Neoclassicists, who aligned themselves with the ideals of Republicanism and Democracy.
David's work here shares a lot in common with Kauffman's, both in terms of the way Roman history is used to make a relevant moral point, and in its style. Clean, straight lines and figures in side profile are used to create something resembling a Greco-Roman relief. The hard stone textures emphasize the austere nature of the scene. Dark tones cast Brutus in shadow, while his surviving family are brought to the fore with brighter tones, making light of his personal sacrifice.
David studied in Italy, where he took influence from Caravaggio's dramatic tenebrism. He took further inspiration from a visit to Rome, the ruins of Herculaneum, and artifacts from Pompeii which he viewed in Naples. David acted as the art director for the French Revolution in its early years (or "dictator" as art historian Roy Donald McMullen describes him for Britannica), and later went on to become Napoleon's portraitist. Much like Brutus, his life was full of surprising twists and turns.
Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Marie Antoinette and Her Children (1787)
Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Le Brun made for an intriguing choice for this exhibit for a number of reasons. Her work does not neatly fall into either the Rococo or Neoclassical genres, but exhibits some elements of both. Like Kauffman, she was a renowned female artist at a time when that was still a rarity, yet the two of them could not have differed more in their expression of moral values.
While Le Brun's style was influenced by Neoclassicism, her subject matter was decisively Rococo, as was her lifestyle. Le Brun was Marie Antoinette's official portraitist,
Just a few years prior to the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette's reputation with the public was in the gutter. Le Brun traveled to Versailles to make this portrait of the queen wearing minimal jewelry, with her children at her side. The empty cradle was for Antoinette's daughter who died at less than a year old. The idea behind the portrait was to garner sympathy and show the public that her children were her only treasures. Sound familiar?
"Jewelry? Why I've never heard of it! Look at my poor daughter's expression. Don't you just feel terrible for us? No? How about some cake?"
I find the whole affair laughably bizarre, especially in contrast to Kauffman's heartfelt moral expression in Cornelia Pointing to Her Children as Her Treasures. While Rococo artists were typically content to revel in excess, on the verge of the French Revolution we have one that borrowed ideas from her Neoclassical contemporaries. But the message comes across as patently insincere. Certain royal excesses just refused to be hidden. The curvy lines of the Rococo style creep out from under the queen's feet across the opulent foot cushion and carpet. Her hat has considerably sumptuous plumage, and her poor children are richly attired.
That's not to say Le Brun wasn't a remarkable artist and person in her own right. The skill of her artistry is undeniable, and as much as she was an ally to royalty, she was also an influentially rebellious figure in the art world.
As a woman, she faced an uphill battle finding acceptance in the mid-18th century. The authenticity of her talent was called into question by the artistic establishment, who spread rumors that her paintings were finished by a man, and attributed her success to her ability to attract men. In an article for Hyperallergic, Tiernan Morgan points out that: "Her exceptional achievement cannot be overstated given that she lived during an age in which women were denied fundamental academic training."
Her 1786 self-portrait caused an uproar because she depicted herself smiling with teeth visible. Perhaps Le Brun deserves some credit for working within the aristocracy to disrupt its archaic taboos? Today, she holds a record for the highest-selling painting by a woman working in the pre-modern era.
Works Cited
I loved all the comparisons between the Rococo and Neoclassical styles. The Swing is probably one of the best examples of the lack of morals that the middle class were against, and showcases how many of the Rococo paintings were erotically charged. Despite it being about an affair, it sure is a very pretty painting, I love the composition and how the trees and sky of the background and how the mistress is the star of the piece.
ReplyDeleteAlex,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate that you included "Marie Antoinette and Her Children." It is an interesting piece for this blog, as, like you said, it has traits from both Rococo and Neoclassical styles. Like you said, this painting is kind of an odd one. The fact that her child on the right is gesturing toward the empty cradle is just unsettling. It's as if the child is saying; "Hey look, my sibling died, don't I resonate with you common folk?"