Neoclassicism is a movement in architecture, design and the arts which emerged in France in the 1740s and became dominant in France between about 1760 to 1830. It emerged as a reaction to the frivolity and excessive ornament of the baroque and rococo styles. In architecture it featured sobriety, straight lines, and forms, such as the pediment and colonnade, based on Ancient Greek and Roman models. In painting it featured heroism and sacrifice in the time of the ancient Romans and Greeks. It began late in the reign of Louis XV, became dominant under Louis XVI, and continued through the French Revolution, the French Directory, and the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the Bourbon Restoration until 1830, when it was gradually replaced as the dominant style by romanticism and eclecticism.[1]
Neoclassicism in France emerged in the early to mid-18th century, inspired in part by the reports of the archeological excavations at Herculaneum (1738) and especially Pompeii (1748), which brought to light classical designs and paintings. The news of these discoveries, accompanied by engraved illustrations, circulated widely. The French antiquarian, art collector and amateur archeologist Anne Claude de Caylus travelled in Europe and the Mideast, and described what he had seen in Recueil d'antiquités, published with illustrations in 1755.[2]
In the 1740s, the style began to slowly change; decoration became less extravagant and more discreet. In 1754 the brother of Madame de Pompadour, the Marquis de Marigny, accompanied the designer Nicolas Cochin and a delegation of artists and scholars to Italy to see the recent discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum, and made a grand tour of other classical monuments. They returned full of enthusiasm for a new classical style, based on the Roman and Greek monuments. In 1754 they published a manifesto against the Rocaille style, calling for a return to classicism. Marigny, after the death of Louis XV, later became director of buildings for Louis XVI.[3]
The style was given a philosophical appeal by the Philosophes, including Denis Diderot and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who called for a restoration of moral values in society, and by the Abbé Marc-Antoine Laugier, who wrote L'essai sur l'architecture, a call for a return to pure and uncluttered forms of architecture. The archeological sites in Greece and Italy became mandatory stops for aristocratic and scholarly visitors on the Grand Tour of Europe. The best young painters in France competed for scholarships to the French Academy in Rome. Ingres studied there, and later became its director. In 1757 the Belgian architect Jean-François de Neufforge published Recueil élémentaire d'architecture, an illustrated textbook of the style. The new taste was originally called le goût grec (the Greek taste). It called for geometric forms and decoration in "the sober and majestic style of the architects of ancient Greece."[4]
In the last years of the reign of Louis XV and throughout the reign of Louis XVI, the new style appeared in the royal residences, particularly in the salons and furnishings of the Dauphine and then Queen Marie Antoinette, and of the Paris aristocracy. It combined Greek, Roman, and what was loosely called Etruscan styles with arabesques and grotesques borrowed from Raphael and the Renaissance, and with chinoiserie and Turkish themes, Between 1780 and 1792, the style also appeared in architecture, in classically buildings including the Petit Trianon in Versailles and the Château de Bagatelle (1777). It also appeared in other art forms, including in particular the paintings of Jacques-Louis David, especially the Oath of the Horatii (1784).
Under Louis XIV, the Roman dome and façade of monumental columns became the dominant features of important new churches, beginning with the chapel of Val-de-Grâce (1645–1710), by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, Jacques Lemercier and Pierre Le Muet, followed by the church of Les Invalides (1680–1706). While the basic features of the architecture of these churches were classical, the interiors were lavishly decorated in the baroque style.[7]
In the latter part of the reign of Louis XV, the neoclassical became the dominant style in both civil and religious architecture. The chief architect of the king was Jacques Gabriel from 1734 until 1742, and then his more famous son, Ange-Jacques Gabriel until the end of the reign. His major works included the École Militaire, the ensemble of buildings overlooking the Place Louis XV (now Place de la Concorde (1761–1770)) and the Petit Trianon at Versailles (1764). Over the course of the reign of Louis XV, while interiors were lavishly decorated, the façades gradually became simpler, less ornamented and more classical. The façades Gabriel designed were carefully rhymed and balanced by rows of windows and columns, and, on large buildings like those the Place de la Concorde, often featured grand arcades on the street level, and classical pediments or balustrades on the roofline. Ornamental features sometimes included curving wrought-iron balconies with undulating rocaille designs, similar to the rocaille decoration of the interiors.[8]
The religious architecture of the period was also sober and monumental and tended, at the end of the reign, toward neo-classical; major examples include the Church of Sainte-Genevieve (now the Panthéon), built from 1758 to 1790 to a design by Jacques-Germain Soufflot, and Church of Saint-Philippe-du-Roule (1765–1777) by Jean Chalgrin, which featured an enormous barrel-vaulted nave.[8]
During the reign of Louis XVI, neoclassical was the dominant architectural style in Paris and in the provinces. Notable examples include the Hôtel des Monnaies, Paris (1771–76) by Jacques Denis Antoine, as well as the Palais de Justice, Paris by the same architect; and the theater of Besançon (1775) and the Château de Bénouville in the Calvados, both by [Claude-Nicolas Ledoux]]. The École de Chirurgie, or School of Surgery in Paris by Jacques Gondoin (1769) adapted the forms of the neoclassical town house, with a court of honor placed between a pavilion with a colonnade on the street and the main building. He also added a peristyle and another floor above the columns, and transformed the entrance to the courtyard into a miniature triumphal arch.[9]
One of the best-known neoclassical buildings of the period is the Château de Bagatelle (1777), designed and built by François-Joseph Bélanger for the Comte d'Artois, Louis XVI's brother. The small château was designed and completed in just sixty-three days, to win a bet with Marie Antoinette that he could build a château in less than three months. Marie-Antoinette had a similar small neoclassical belvedere created by architect Richard Mique, who had also designed her picturesque rustic village in the gardens of Versailles. It was completed in 1789, the year of the French Revolution.
Another notable example of the neoclassical style in Paris is the Hôtel de Salm (now the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur), built by Pierre Rousseau in 1751–83. The façade is distinguished by its simplicity and purity, and its harmony and balance. A colonnade of Corinthian columns supports the entablature of the rotunda, which is surmounted by statues. The façade is also animated by busts of Roman emperors in niches, and sculptures in relief above the windows of the semicircular central avant-corps.[11]
A few architects adapted the neoclassical style to more functional purposes. Claude-Nicolas Ledoux designed the Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans with exaggerated neoclassical buildings arranged in circles around a central "temple", where the director's home and office was placed. He also designed several rotundas for the new customs barriers installed around Paris between 1785–89. These barriers became highly unpopular (due to the taxes, not the architecture) and most were destroyed during the Revolution, though those at Parc de la Villette and Parc Monceau still stand.[12]
The most visionary French neoclassical architect was certainly Étienne-Louis Boullée. His designs for an immense spherical monument to Isaac Newton (1784) and a vast new royal library in Paris in the form of a giant barrel vault (1785) were never seriously considered, but foreshadowed the architecture of the 20th century.[13]
Revolution, Directorate and Empire
During the French Revolution construction virtually stopped in Paris. The aristocrats fled, churches were closed and sacked. The one large project carried out between 1795 and 1797 was the building of a large new chamber within the Palais Bourbon, which eventually became the home of the French National Assembly. The École des Beaux-Arts was re-organized and reconstituted, with the architecture department under Quatremère de Quincy (1755–1849). De Quincy was an amateur archeologist and a classical scholar, as well as an architect. He was sentenced to death by a revolutionary court in 1793, but was spared by the fall of Maximilien Robespierre. He was charged with the conversion of the Church of Sainte-Genevieve into the modern Panthéon, and assured that architectural studies taught the classical traditions.[14]
Other Napoleonic neoclassical projects included the grand stairway of the Luxembourg Palace (1801) by Jean Chalgrin (1801), and the Arc de Triomphe (begun by Chalgrin in 1808, but not finished until 1836). Pierre-Alexandre Vignon (1763–1828), a student of Ledoux, was charged with remaking the Church of the Madeleine, begun in 1761 but abandoned during the Revolution, into a "Temple of Glory" dedicated to Napoleon's army. This project was abandoned in 1813 after a series of defeats; it became a church again, but was not completed until 1843. Napoleon also added a neoclassical façade with twelve Corinthian columns to the facade of the Palais Bourbon. It was in an entirely different style than the palace behind it, and was not aligned with it; it was aligned instead with the new Temple of Glory which he was building, facing it, on the far side of the Place de la Concorde.
A change of style began to appear early in the 19th century, particularly after the publication in 1802 of le Génie du christianisme by one of the leading figures of French romanticism, François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848). He appealed for a return to the Gothic style, which, as the style of the great cathedrals, he considered was the only truly great French style. The movement toward romanticism and gothic was accelerated by the publication of the hugely successful novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo in 1821, and then the program of restoration of French Gothic monuments led by Prosper Mérimée and conducted by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879). This, along with the July Revolution of 1830, brought to a close the era of French neoclassicism.[15]
The dominant figure in French neoclassical painting, even before the Revolution, was Jacques Louis David (1748–1825). He began as a classical and religious painter, an admirer of Jean-Baptiste Greuze, the history and genre painter. He was recommended to the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture by a family friend, François Boucher, master of the rococo style. He won the prestigious Prix de Rome and went to study there in 1775. He discovered the treasures excavated from Pompeii and other ancient sites, and entirely changed his style. Beginning in 1784 he painted works based on stories from classical literature, including Oath of the Horatii (1781), a celebration of duty and sacrifice in Roman times. When the French Revolution began in 1789, David became an active participant in the most extreme wing, the Jacobins, He supported the dissolution of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, and designed sets for revolutionary pageants and ceremonies. His most famous picture of the period, The Death of Marat (1793), adapted the facial expression and the limp arm of Christ in Michaelangelo's Pietà to depict the assassinated Jacobin leader, Jean Paul Marat. When the Jacobins fell in 1794, he was imprisoned twice for several months, but then resumed an active career as a portraitist and then as court painter for Napoleon Bonaparte. When Napoleon fell and the monarchy was restored, he went into exile in Belgium.[16]
The most prominent French sculptor in the early neoclassical period was Étienne Maurice Falconet (1716–1791). whose work included the Bronze Horseman of Peter the Great in Saint Petersburg, Russia (model made in 1770, but not cast until 1782). He was named professor at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in Paris in 1766, and from 1757 onward he directed the modeling of small sculptures in porcelain at the Sèvres Porcelain manufactory. His work remained closer to the statues in full movement of the French baroque than the new, more serene style. In his later years he designed small ornamental sculptures of cast bronze such as the Seated Girl (1788), now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[18]
The first more clearly neoclassical major figure was Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741–1828). He studied at the French Academy in Rome, where he made detailed studies of the anatomy of the ancient Roman and Greek statues on display there. He became famous for his busts and portrait sculptures, most notably his seated statue of Voltaire (1779–81), now on display at the Comédie-Française, and his busts of Benjamin Franklin and other political figures of the day. He also created several allegorical works illustrating winter and summer in a style entirely more expressive than traditional classicism, such as his La Frileuse (woman in winter), in the Musée Fabre in Montpellier.[19]
The sculptor Claude Michel (1738–1814), also known as Clodion, also studied at the Academy in Rome between 1762 and 1771. His works varied widely from neoclassical to rococo; he conceived a terra-cotta model for an extraordinary monumental sculpture, covered with statuary of angels and cupids, to celebrate the first balloon flight in Paris by the Montgolfier brothers (1784).
Augustin Pajou (1730–1809) also studied at the French Academy in Rome from 1752 and 1756. He returned to Paris to teach at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, and became rector in 1792. He made a series of highly expressive statues on mythological subjects, including Psyche and Amour.
Bust of Madame Vigée Le Brun by Augustin Pajou (1785), Louvre
Music
The effects on Neoclassicism in art are very spotted through artworks and sculptures, but when it comes to music, it is at times overlooked. With the emergence of new ideals, and the shift towards independence from the crown, French society began to see a change in architecture and design, as well as in the arts. Their shift in music commenced the beginning of the romantic era in musical history. The revolts in France at the time, created an environment of hostility and uneasiness, forcing many opera writers to look to France's past in order to portray a sense of unification for the French commoners.[20] In many senses, these operas, and musical settings played political roles in being able to pass on political beliefs on topics, in order to evoke a greater sense of unity in the viewers, believing that many others saw the causes as they personally did.
In the era of the French Revolution, particularly under the rule of Napoleon, the famous composer Étienne Méhul was known for composing many patriotic pieces for the people and nation of France. Most famous of which is Le Chant du départ, later becoming the official anthem of the French Empire in 1794. Often compared to the current national anthem of France, La Marseillaise, Le Chant du depart holds ties to the unity of the French people, as well as the diversity of French society. The points of view of those who sing range from a deputy to their soldiers, mother, wives, husbands, and fathers, depicting the roles they must take and live through during this era of revolution.[21] The grammatical composition itself from the piece generalizes the characters, for them to see each other as equals under the premise of victory and success. Banned by both Napoleon and Louis XVIII for its revolutionary ties, La Marseillaise, achieves the similar goal of uniting the people of France by evoking from them a sense of patriotism, as it was nicknamed “Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin” (War song for the Army of the Rhine).[22] Written by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, it displayed the primary aspects of neoclassical music of this era, La Marseillaise tells the story of the strength of the people and army, in this scenario of their strength against the Austrian and Prussian troops.[23] Uniting them through a renewal of both baroque and classical music,[24] it is not of the glorious history of France, but of the resilience of its people who fought, and still fight to create the nation in which they dreamed to build. Eventually being brought back as the song of the people, it was restored to its position as national anthem, as it remains to this day.
The goût Grec or "Greek taste" in design was introduced in France in 1757 by Jean-François de Neufforge in his book Recueil élémentaire d'architecture, which praised "the majestic and sober style of the architects of ancient Greece." He offered engravings of classical vaults, garlands of laurel leaves, palmettos and guilloches (braided interlaced ribbons) and other motifs which soon appeared in Paris salons.[25]
Beginning in the 1770s, the style pompéien or Pompeii style came into fashion in Paris, based on reproductions of designs found in Pompeii, augmented with arabesques, griffons, sphinxes, horns-of-plenty and vases on tripods, interlaced with vines and medallions and painted on tall rectangular panels on the walls painted white and bordered with gilded stucco. The new style also took inspiration from the decorative grotesques of Raphael painted at the Vatican's Apostolic Palace in 1510. The boudoir of Marie Antoinette at the Palace of Fontainebleau, designed by Rousseau de la Routière in 1790, just after the Revolution began, is a notable example.[26]
During the French Revolution, the aristocracy fled Paris, and most of the palaces and town houses were stripped of furnishings and decoration. A new version of neoclassicism appeared briefly during the French Directory (1795–99), which mingled elements the Pompeiian style with the Adam style from England. When Napoleon Bonaparte seized power from the Directory, the neoclassical style began to take on a new form, called Empire style (1799–1815).
The Empire style had extraordinary coherence and audacious simplicity, thanks to Napoleon's two energetic chief designers, Charles Percier (1764–1838) and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine (1762–1853). The motifs were usually symbols of empire, including crowns and laurel wreaths, medals, lyres, horns of plenty, and classical heads seen in profile. Rooms sometimes had the walls draped in fabric, representing the tents of an army on campaign. Interiors and furniture often featured classical columns carved of wood. Egyptian motifs and mythical beasts from antiquity, such as the sphinx, griffon and the chimera, were popular. Imperial emblems, including the eagle, the bee, and the letter N with a crown, were also common.[27]
Furniture
The first "Greek taste" furniture in France, made in 1756 and 1757 to designs by Jean-François de Neufforge (1714–1791) and Jean-Charles Delafosse (1734–1791), was massive, rectangular and heavily decorated, with gilded columns, friezes and hanging garlands. However, soon afterwards the royal cabinet maker Jean-Francois Oeben produced much lighter and more graceful works for Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour. These were a hybrid of the curves of rococo with the right angles of neoclassicism. The chairs had curving à cabriolet legs and cartouche-shaped backs, combined with neoclassic garlands and friezes. Oeben refurnished Versailles and other royal palaces with innovative new kinds of furniture; the cylinder, or roll-top desk; the table with a mechanical writing surface that could be raised; and the drop-front desk.[28]
After the death of Oeben, his place was taken by two of his disciples, Jean-Henri Riesener (1734–1806) (who married Oeben's widow); and Jean-François Leleu. Riesener and Leleu produced furniture with superb wood-inlay, or marquetry, often in floral designs; and cabinets of mahogany decorated with glided bronze floral decor and column legs.[28]
In Louis XVI furniture, particularly in the 1780s, the furniture styles became lighter, more geometric, and more simply ornamented, following the tastes of Marie Antoinette. The leading French designers during this period were Jean-Baptiste-Claude Sené (1748–1803) and Georges Jacob (1739–1814). At the very end of the reign of Louis XVI, Sené and Jacob were producing highly original and imaginative forms, including chairs with lyre-shaped carved wooden backs and the "Etruscan chair", a type conceived by the painter Hubert Robert for the fantasy "rural hamlet" of Marie-Antoinette at Versailles. The ornament on the chair, which remained popular long after the period ended, was borrowed from ancient Grecian vases.[29]
The furniture craft was upended by the French Revolution; the aristocratic clients fled, and the furniture of the royal palaces was sold in enormous auctions; a large part went abroad. One positive development for furniture-makers was the abolition of the old guild rules; after 1791 the makers of furniture frames could collaborate with those who did the marquetry inlay. The Etruscan taste disappeared, but the neoclassic style flourished under the French Directory (1793–99), the French Consulate (1799–1804), and the Empire of Napoleon Bonaparte.
The last leading furniture designer for Louis XVI, Georges Jacob, formed a new firm with his two brothers, and, between 1796 and 1803, became the most prominent designer of the later neoclassical period. He made an effort to find classical forms that were more authentic. The type of Greek chair called the klismos became especially popular; Jacob produced a variety of neoclassical divans and stools, as well as the Lit de Repos, or day bed, which appeared in Jacques-Louis David's Portrait of Madame Récamier. Another popular form was the folding stool, modeled after those that were used in Roman army encampments. After Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, Egyptian designs, in stylized geometric form, appeared on furniture. Gilded bronze ornaments of extremely fine craftsmanship were made in Paris workshops and exported to the royal houses of Europe. The continual European wars and blockades made it difficult to import exotic woods, and sometimes local woods such as lemon trees were used; mahogany remained the choice for prestige furniture. The master furniture craftsmen of the late Empire style included Bernard Molitor, who made the furniture for the Château de Saint Cloud, and the architects Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine, who made furniture as authentic as possible to Greek and Roman models for the residences of Napoleon and for clients of the new Napoleonic aristocracy.[30]
The Palace of Versailles is a former royal residence commissioned by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about 19 kilometers (12 mi) west of Paris, France.
Palace of Fontainebleau, located 55 kilometers southeast of the center of Paris, in the commune of Fontainebleau, is one of the largest French royal châteaux. It served as a hunting lodge and summer residence for many of the French monarchs, beginning with Louis VII. Francis I, Henry II, Louis-Philippe, Napoleon Bonaparte and Napoleon III. Though the monarchs only resided there for a few months of the year, they gradually transformed it into a genuine palace, filled with art and decoration. It became a national museum in 1927 and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981 for its unique architecture and historical importance.
Louis Le Vau was a French Baroque architect, who worked for Louis XIV of France. He was an architect that helped develop the French Classical style in the 17th century.
The Tuileries Palace was a royal and imperial palace in Paris which stood on the right bank of the Seine, directly in front of the Louvre. It was the Parisian residence of most French monarchs, from Henry IV to Napoleon III, until it was burned by the Paris Commune in 1871.
Ange-Jacques Gabriel was the principal architect of King Louis XV of France. His major works included the Place de la Concorde, the École Militaire, and the Petit Trianon and opera theater at the Palace of Versailles. His style was a careful balance between French Baroque architecture and French neoclassicism.
Neoclassical architecture, sometimes referred to as Classical Revival architecture, is an architectural style produced by the Neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century in Italy, France and Germany. It became one of the most prominent architectural styles in the Western world. The prevailing styles of architecture in most of Europe for the previous two centuries, Renaissance architecture and Baroque architecture, already represented partial revivals of the Classical architecture of ancient Rome and ancient Greek architecture, but the Neoclassical movement aimed to strip away the excesses of Late Baroque and return to a purer, more complete, and more authentic classical style, adapted to modern purposes.
The Petit Trianon is a Neoclassical style château located on the grounds of the Palace of Versailles in Versailles, France. It was built between 1762 and 1768 during the reign of King Louis XV of France. The Petit Trianon was constructed within the park of a larger royal retreat known as the Grand Trianon.
The Louis XV style or Louis Quinze is a style of architecture and decorative arts which appeared during the reign of Louis XV. From 1710 until about 1730, a period known as the Régence, it was largely an extension of the Louis XIV style of his great-grandfather and predecessor, Louis XIV. From about 1730 until about 1750, it became more original, decorative and exuberant, in what was known as the Rocaille style, under the influence of the King's mistress, Madame de Pompadour. It marked the beginning of the European Rococo movement. From 1750 until the King's death in 1774, it became more sober, ordered, and began to show the influences of Neoclassicism.
French Baroque architecture, usually called French classicism, was a style of architecture during the reigns of Louis XIII (1610–1643), Louis XIV (1643–1715) and Louis XV (1715–1774). It was preceded by French Renaissance architecture and Mannerism and was followed in the second half of the 18th century by French Neoclassical architecture. The style was originally inspired by the Italian Baroque architecture style, but, particularly under Louis XIV, it gave greater emphasis to regularity, the colossal order of façades, and the use of colonnades and cupolas, to symbolize the power and grandeur of the King. Notable examples of the style include the Grand Trianon of the Palace of Versailles, and the dome of Les Invalides in Paris. In the final years of Louis XIV and the reign of Louis XV, the colossal orders gradually disappeared, the style became lighter and saw the introduction of wrought iron decoration in rocaille designs. The period also saw the introduction of monumental urban squares in Paris and other cities, notably Place Vendôme and the Place de la Concorde. The style profoundly influenced 18th-century secular architecture throughout Europe; the Palace of Versailles and the French formal garden were copied by other courts all over Europe.
Jean-François-Thérèse Chalgrin was a French architect, best known for his design for the Arc de Triomphe, Paris.
The Château de Madame du Barry in Louveciennes, in the Yvelines département of France, is a château constructed at the end of the 17th century. It was then expanded and redecorated in the middle of the 18th century by Ange-Jacques Gabriel for Madame du Barry. The estate's most famous building is the Pavillon de Musique, a music and reception pavilion constructed by Claude Nicolas Ledoux (1770–71). The pavilion sits in the middle of a park that was designed in the 19th century.
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux was one of the earliest exponents of French Neoclassical architecture. He used his knowledge of architectural theory to design not only domestic architecture but also town planning; as a consequence of his visionary plan for the Ideal City of Chaux, he became known as a utopian. His greatest works were funded by the French monarchy and came to be perceived as symbols of the Ancien Régime rather than Utopia. The French Revolution hampered his career; much of his work was destroyed in the nineteenth century. In 1804, he published a collection of his designs under the title L'Architecture considérée sous le rapport de l'art, des mœurs et de la législation. In this book he took the opportunity of revising his earlier designs, making them more rigorously neoclassical and up to date. This revision has distorted an accurate assessment of his role in the evolution of Neoclassical architecture. His most ambitious work was the uncompleted Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans, an idealistic and visionary town showing many examples of architecture parlante. Conversely his works and commissions also included the more mundane and everyday architecture such as approximately sixty elaborate tollgates around Paris in the Wall of the General Tax Farm.
French architecture consists of architectural styles that either originated in France or elsewhere and were developed within the territories of France.
Jean-Michel Chevotet was a French architect. He and Pierre Contant d'Ivry were among the most eminent Parisian architects of the day and designed in both the restrained French Rococo manner, known as the "Louis XV style" and in the "Goût grec" phase of early Neoclassicism. His grandson was Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Chaussard.
Louis XVI style, also called Louis Seize, is a style of architecture, furniture, decoration and art which developed in France during the 19-year reign of Louis XVI (1774–1793), just before the French Revolution. It saw the final phase of the Baroque style as well as the birth of French Neoclassicism. The style was a reaction against the elaborate ornament of the preceding Baroque period. It was inspired in part by the discoveries of Ancient Roman paintings, sculpture and architecture in Herculaneum and Pompeii. Its features included the straight column, the simplicity of the post-and-lintel, the architrave of the Greek temple. It also expressed the Rousseau-inspired values of returning to nature and the view of nature as an idealized and wild but still orderly and inherently worthy model for the arts to follow.
The city of Paris has notable examples of architecture of every period, from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. It was the birthplace of the Gothic style, and has important monuments of the French Renaissance, Classical revival, the Flamboyant style of the reign of Napoleon III, the Belle Époque, and the Art Nouveau style. The great Exposition Universelle (1889) and 1900 added Paris landmarks, including the Eiffel Tower and Grand Palais. In the 20th century, the Art Deco style of architecture first appeared in Paris, and Paris architects also influenced the postmodern architecture of the second half of the century.
The Louis XIV style or Louis Quatorze, also called French classicism, was the style of architecture and decorative arts intended to glorify King Louis XIV and his reign. It featured majesty, harmony and regularity. It became the official style during the reign of Louis XIV (1643–1715), imposed upon artists by the newly established Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture and the Académie royale d'architecture. It had an important influence upon the architecture of other European monarchs, from Frederick the Great of Prussia to Peter the Great of Russia. Major architects of the period included François Mansart, Jules Hardouin-Mansart, Robert de Cotte, Pierre Le Muet, Claude Perrault, and Louis Le Vau. Major monuments included the Palace of Versailles, the Grand Trianon at Versailles, and the Church of Les Invalides (1675–1691).
The furniture of the Louis XV period (1715–1774) is characterized by curved forms, lightness, comfort and asymmetry; it replaced the more formal, boxlike and massive furniture of the Louis XIV style. It employed marquetry, using inlays of exotic woods of different colors, as well as ivory and mother of pearl.
Romanticism was a literary and artistic movement that appeared in France in the late 18th century, largely in reaction against the formality and strict rules of the official style of neo-classicism. It reached its peak in the first part of the 19th century, in the writing of François-René de Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo, the poetry of Alfred de Vigny; the painting of Eugène Delacroix; the music of Hector Berlioz; and later in the architecture of Charles Garnier. It was gradually replaced beginning in the late 19th century by the movements of Art Nouveau, realism and modernism.
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