Neo-classicism

Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss; by Antonio Canova; 1787; marble; 155 cm × 168 cm; Louvre

Charles Towneley in his sculpture gallery; by Johann Zoffany; 1782; oil on canvas; height: 127 cm,
width: 102 cm; Towneley Hall Art Gallery and Museum (Burnley, UK)

Neoclassicism (also spelled Neo-classicism) was a

Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual
arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew
inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity.
Neoclassicism was born in Rome largely thanks to the writings
of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, at the time of the rediscovery
of Pompeii and Herculaneum, but its popularity spread all over
Europe as a generation of European art students finished
their Grand Tour and returned from Italy to their home countries
with newly rediscovered Greco-Roman ideals. The main
[1][2][3][4]

Neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th-century Age of

Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, laterally
competing with Romanticism. In architecture, the style continued
throughout the 19th, 20th and up to the 21st century.
European Neoclassicism in the visual arts began c. 1760 in
opposition to the then-dominant Rococo style. Rococo
architecture emphasizes grace, ornamentation and asymmetry;
Neoclassical architecture is based on the principles of simplicity
and symmetry, which were seen as virtues of the arts
of Rome and Ancient Greece, and were more immediately drawn
from 16th-century Renaissance Classicism. Each "neo"-
classicism selects some models among the range of possible
classics that are available to it, and ignores others. The
Neoclassical writers and talkers, patrons and collectors, artists
and sculptors of 1765–1830 paid homage to an idea of the
generation of Phidias, but the sculpture examples they actually
embraced were more likely to be Roman copies
of Hellenistic sculptures. They ignored both Archaic Greek art
and the works of Late Antiquity. The "Rococo" art of
ancient Palmyra came as a revelation, through engravings in
Wood's The Ruins of Palmyra. Even Greece was all-but-
unvisited, a rough backwater of the Ottoman Empire, dangerous
to explore, so Neoclassicists' appreciation of Greek architecture
was mediated through drawings and engravings, which subtly
smoothed and regularized, "corrected" and "restored" the
monuments of Greece, not always consciously.
The Empire style, a second phase of Neoclassicism in
architecture and the decorative arts, had its cultural centre
in Paris in the Napoleonic era. Especially in architecture, but also
in other fields, Neoclassicism remained a force long after the
early 19th century, with periodic waves of revivalism into the 20th
and even the 21st centuries, especially in the United States and
Russia.
History[edit]
Neoclassicism is a revival of the many styles and spirit of classic
antiquity inspired directly from the classical period, which [5]

coincided and reflected the developments in philosophy and

other areas of the Age of Enlightenment, and was initially a
reaction against the excesses of the
preceding Rococo style. While the movement is often described
[6]

as the opposed counterpart of Romanticism, this is a great over-

simplification that tends not to be sustainable when specific
artists or works are considered. The case of the supposed main
champion of late Neoclassicism, Ingres, demonstrates this
especially well. The revival can be traced to the establishment of
[7]

formal archaeology. [8][9]

Johann Joachim Winckelmann, often called "the father of archaeology"[10]

The writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann were important in

shaping this movement in both architecture and the visual arts.
His books Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting
and Sculpture (1750) and Geschichte der Kunst des
Alterthums ("History of Ancient Art", 1764) were the first to
distinguish sharply between Ancient Greek and Roman art, and
define periods within Greek art, tracing a trajectory from growth to
maturity and then imitation or decadence that continues to have
influence to the present day. Winckelmann believed that art
should aim at "noble simplicity and calm grandeur", and praised [11]

the idealism of Greek art, in which he said we find "not only

nature at its most beautiful but also something beyond nature,
namely certain ideal forms of its beauty, which, as an ancient
interpreter of Plato teaches us, come from images created by the
mind alone". The theory was very far from new in Western art,
but his emphasis on close copying of Greek models was: "The
only way for us to become great or if this be possible, inimitable,
is to imitate the ancients". [12]

With the advent of the Grand Tour, a fad of

collecting antiquities began that laid the foundations of many
great collections spreading a Neoclassical revival throughout
Europe. "Neoclassicism" in each art implies a particular canon
[13]

of a "classical" model.
In English, the term "Neoclassicism" is used primarily of the
visual arts; the similar movement in English literature, which
began considerably earlier, is called Augustan literature. This,
which had been dominant for several decades, was beginning to
decline by the time Neoclassicism in the visual arts became
fashionable. Though terms differ, the situation in French literature
was similar. In music, the period saw the rise of classical music,
and "Neoclassicism" is used of 20th-century developments.
However, the operas of Christoph Willibald Gluck represented a
specifically Neoclassical approach, spelt out in his preface to the
published score of Alceste (1769), which aimed to reform opera
by removing ornamentation, increasing the role of the chorus in
line with Greek tragedy, and using simpler unadorned melodic
lines. [14]

Anton Raphael Mengs; Judgement of Paris; circa 1757; oil on canvas; height: 226 cm, width: 295
cm, bought by Catherine the Great from the studio; Hermitage Museum (Saint Petersburg, Russia)

The term "Neoclassical" was not invented until the mid-19th

century, and at the time the style was described by such terms as
"the true style", "reformed" and "revival"; what was regarded as
being revived varying considerably. Ancient models were
certainly very much involved, but the style could also be regarded
as a revival of the Renaissance, and especially in France as a
return to the more austere and noble Baroque of the age of Louis
XIV, for which a considerable nostalgia had developed as
France's dominant military and political position started a serious
decline. Ingres's coronation portrait of Napoleon even borrowed
[15]

from Late Antique consular diptychs and their Carolingian revival,

to the disapproval of critics.
Neoclassicism was strongest in architecture, sculpture and
the decorative arts, where classical models in the same medium
were relatively numerous and accessible; examples from ancient
painting that demonstrated the qualities that Winckelmann's
writing found in sculpture were and are lacking. Winckelmann
was involved in the dissemination of knowledge of the first large
Roman paintings to be discovered,
at Pompeii and Herculaneum and, like most contemporaries
except for Gavin Hamilton, was unimpressed by them, citing Pliny
the Younger's comments on the decline of painting in his period. [16]

As for painting, Greek painting was utterly lost: Neoclassicist

painters imaginatively revived it, partly through bas-
relief friezes, mosaics and pottery painting, and partly through the
examples of painting and decoration of the High
Renaissance of Raphael's generation, frescos in Nero's Domus
Aurea, Pompeii and Herculaneum, and through renewed
admiration of Nicolas Poussin. Much "Neoclassical" painting is
more classicizing in subject matter than in anything else. A fierce,
but often very badly informed, dispute raged for decades over the
relative merits of Greek and Roman art, with Winckelmann and
his fellow Hellenists generally being on the winning side.[17]

Painting and printmaking[edit]

See also: Capriccio (art)
Oath of the Horatii; by Jacques-Louis David; 1784; oil on canvas; 3.3 x 4.27 m; Louvre[18]

It is hard to recapture the radical and exciting nature of early

Neoclassical painting for contemporary audiences; it now strikes
even those writers favourably inclined to it as "insipid" and
"almost entirely uninteresting to us"—some of Kenneth Clark's
comments on Anton Raphael Mengs' ambitious Parnassus at
the Villa Albani, by the artist whom his friend Winckelmann
[19]

described as "the greatest artist of his own, and perhaps of later

times". The drawings, subsequently turned into prints, of John
[20]

Flaxman used very simple line drawing (thought to be the purest

classical medium ) and figures mostly in profile to depict The
[21]

Odyssey and other subjects, and once "fired the artistic youth of
Europe" but are now "neglected", while the history[22]

paintings of Angelica Kauffman, mainly a portraitist, are described

as having "an unctuous softness and tediousness" by Fritz
Novotny. Rococo frivolity and Baroque movement had been
[23]

stripped away but many artists struggled to put anything in their

place, and in the absence of ancient examples for history
painting, other than the Greek vases used by
Flaxman, Raphael tended to be used as a substitute model, as
Winckelmann recommended.

A 1795 engraving after Flaxman's drawing of Achilles mourning Patrocles

The work of other artists, who could not easily be described as

insipid, combined aspects of Romanticism with a generally
Neoclassical style, and form part of the history of both
movements. The German-Danish painter Asmus Jacob
Carstens finished very few of the large mythological works that he
planned, leaving mostly drawings and colour studies which often
succeed in approaching Winckelmann's prescription of "noble
simplicity and calm grandeur". Unlike Carstens' unrealized
[24]

schemes, the etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi were

numerous and profitable, and taken back by those making
the Grand Tour to all parts of Europe. His main subject matter
was the buildings and ruins of Rome, and he was more
stimulated by the ancient than the modern. The somewhat
disquieting atmosphere of many of his Vedute (views) becomes
dominant in his series of 16 prints of Carceri
d'Invenzione ("Imaginary Prisons") whose "oppressive cyclopean
architecture" conveys "dreams of fear and frustration". The
[25]

Swiss-born Johann Heinrich Füssli spent most of his career in

England, and while his fundamental style was based on
Neoclassical principles, his subjects and treatment more often
reflected the "Gothic" strain of Romanticism, and sought to evoke
drama and excitement.
Neoclassicism in painting gained a new sense of direction with
the sensational success of Jacques-Louis David's Oath of the
Horatii at the Paris Salon of 1785. Despite its evocation of
republican virtues, this was a commission by the royal
government, which David insisted on painting in Rome. David
managed to combine an idealist style with drama and
forcefulness. The central perspective is perpendicular to the
picture plane, made more emphatic by the dim arcade behind,
against which the heroic figures are disposed as in a frieze, with
a hint of the artificial lighting and staging of opera, and the
classical colouring of Nicolas Poussin. David rapidly became the
leader of French art, and after the French Revolution became a
politician with control of much government patronage in art. He
managed to retain his influence in the Napoleonic period, turning
to frankly propagandistic works, but had to leave France for exile
in Brussels at the Bourbon Restoration.[26]
David's many students included Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres,
who saw himself as a classicist throughout his long career,
despite a mature style that has an equivocal relationship with the
main current of Neoclassicism, and many later diversions
into Orientalism and the Troubadour style that are hard to
distinguish from those of his unabashedly Romantic
contemporaries, except by the primacy his works always give to
drawing. He exhibited at the Salon for over 60 years, from 1802
into the beginnings of Impressionism, but his style, once formed,
changed little. [27]

• Fantasy View with the Pantheon and other Monuments of Ancient Rome;
by Giovanni Paolo Panini; 1737; oil on canvas; 98.9 x 137.49 cm; Museum of
Fine Arts (Houston, USA)

• The ancient Capitol ascended by approximately one hundred steps . . .;

by Giovanni Battista Piranesi; c. 1750; etching; size of the entire sheet: 33.5 ×
49.4 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City)

A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery; by Joseph Wright of Derby; c. 1766; oil

on canvas; 1.47 x 2.03 m; Derby Museum and Art Gallery (Derby, England)[28]

The Attributes of the Arts; by Anne Vallayer-Coster; 1769; oil on canvas; 90 x

121 cm; Louvre[29]
 •

Ariadne Abandoned; by Angelica Kauffmann; before 1782; oil on canvas; 88 x

70.5 cm; Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Dresden, Germany)[30]

Self-Portrait with a Harp; by Rose-Adélaïde Ducreux; 1791; oil on canvas; 193

x 128.9 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art

Julie Lebrun as Flora; by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun; c.1799; oil on canvas;

129.5 x 97.8 cm; Museum of Fine Arts (St. Petersburg, Florida, USA)

Portrait of Charlotte du Val d'Ognes; by Marie-Denise Villers; 1801; oil on

canvas; 161.3 x 128.6 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art[31]
 •

Napoleon I on His Imperial Throne; by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres; 1806;

oil on canvas; 2.62 x 1.62 m; Army Museum (Paris)[18]

Sculpture[edit]

The Three Graces; by Antonio Canova; 1813–1816; marble; height: 1.82 m; Hermitage
Museum (Saint Petersburg, Russia)[32]

If Neoclassical painting suffered from a lack of ancient models,

Neoclassical sculpture tended to suffer from an excess of them.
Although examples of actual Greek sculpture of the "Classical
Period" beginning in about 500 BC were then very few; the most
highly regarded works were mostly Roman copies. The leading [33]

Neoclassical sculptors enjoyed huge reputations in their own day,

but are now less regarded, with the exception of Jean-Antoine
Houdon, whose work was mainly portraits, very often as busts,
which do not sacrifice a strong impression of the sitter's
personality to idealism. His style became more classical as his
long career continued, and represents a rather smooth
progression from Rococo charm to classical dignity. Unlike some
Neoclassical sculptors he did not insist on his sitters wearing
Roman dress, or being unclothed. He portrayed most of the
notable figures of the Enlightenment, and travelled to America to
produce a statue of George Washington, as well as busts
of Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and other founders of the new
republic. [34][35]

Antonio Canova and the Dane Bertel Thorvaldsen were both

based in Rome, and as well as portraits produced many
ambitious life-size figures and groups; both represented the
strongly idealizing tendency in Neoclassical sculpture. Canova
has a lightness and grace, where Thorvaldsen is more severe;
the difference is exemplified in their respective groups of
the Three Graces. All these, and Flaxman, were still active in
[36]

the 1820s, and Romanticism was slow to impact sculpture, where

versions of Neoclassicism remained the dominant style for most
of the 19th century.
An early Neoclassicist in sculpture was the Swede Johan Tobias
Sergel. John Flaxman was also, or mainly, a sculptor, mostly
[37]

producing severely classical reliefs that are comparable in style to

his prints; he also designed and modelled Neoclassical ceramics
for Josiah Wedgwood for several years. Johann Gottfried
Schadow and his son Rudolph, one of the few Neoclassical
sculptors to die young, were the leading German
artists, with Franz Anton von Zauner in Austria. The late
[38]

Baroque Austrian sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt turned to

Neoclassicism in mid-career, shortly before he appears to have
suffered some kind of mental crisis, after which he retired to the
country and devoted himself to the highly distinctive "character
heads" of bald figures pulling extreme facial expressions. Like
[39]

Piranesi's Carceri, these enjoyed a great revival of interest during

the age of psychoanalysis in the early 20th century. The Dutch
Neoclassical sculptor Mathieu Kessels studied with Thorvaldsen
and worked almost exclusively in Rome.
Since prior to the 1830s the United States did not have a
sculpture tradition of its own, save in the areas of tombstones,
weathervanes and ship figureheads, the European Neoclassical
[40]

manner was adopted there, and it was to hold sway for decades
and is exemplified in the sculptures of Horatio Greenough, Harriet
Hosmer, Hiram Powers, Randolph Rogers and William Henry
Rinehart.
•

The Hanged Man (no. 25 in a character head series); by Franz Xaver

Messerschmidt; after 1770; alabaster; height: 38 cm; Österreichische Galerie
Belvedere (Vienna, Austria)[41]

Mercury or The Trade; by Augustin Pajou; 1780; marble; height:

196 cm; Louvre

The Winter; by Jean-Antoine Houdon; 1783; marble; height: 145 cm; Musée
Fabre (Montpellier, France)[42]

• Cephalus and Aurora; by John Flaxman; 1789-1790; probably marble;

unknown dimensions; Lady Lever Art Gallery (Merseyside, England)
 •

Venus Victrix; by Antonio Canova; 1804–1808; marble; length:

200 cm; Galleria Borghese (Rome)[43]

Architecture and the decorative arts[edit]

Main articles: Neoclassical architecture, Louis XVI
style, Directoire style, Empire style, Adam style, and Biedermeier

Hôtel Gouthière, Rue Pierre-Bullet no. 6, Paris, possibly by J. Métivier, 1780[44]

"The Etruscan room", from Potsdam (Germany), c.1840, illustration by Friedrich Wilhelm Klose

Neoclassical art was traditional and new, historical and modern,

conservative and progressive all at the same time. [45]

Neoclassicism first gained influence in England and France,

through a generation of French art students trained in Rome and
influenced by the writings of Winckelmann, and it was quickly
adopted by progressive circles in other countries such as
Sweden, Poland and Russia. At first, classicizing decor was
grafted onto familiar European forms, as in the interiors
for Catherine II's lover, Count Orlov, designed by an Italian
architect with a team of Italian stuccadori: only the isolated oval
medallions like cameos and the bas-relief overdoors hint of
Neoclassicism; the furnishings are fully Italian Rococo.
A second Neoclassic wave, more severe, more studied (through
the medium of engravings) and more consciously archaeological,
is associated with the height of the Napoleonic Empire. In France,
the first phase of Neoclassicism was expressed in the "Louis XVI
style", and the second in the styles called "Directoire" or Empire.
The Rococo style remained popular in Italy until the Napoleonic
regimes brought the new archaeological classicism, which was
embraced as a political statement by young, progressive, urban
Italians with republican leanings.
[according to whom?]

In the decorative arts, Neoclassicism is exemplified in Empire

furniture made in Paris, London, New York, Berlin;
in Biedermeier furniture made in Austria; in Karl Friedrich
Schinkel's museums in Berlin, Sir John Soane's Bank of England
in London and the newly built "capitol" in Washington, D.C.; and
in Wedgwood's bas reliefs and "black basaltes" vases. The style
was international; Scots architect Charles Cameron created
palatial Italianate interiors for the German-born Catherine II the
Great, in Russian St. Petersburg.
Indoors, Neoclassicism made a discovery of the genuine classic
interior, inspired by the rediscoveries
at Pompeii and Herculaneum. These had begun in the late
1740s, but only achieved a wide audience in the 1760s, with the
[46]

first luxurious volumes of tightly controlled distribution of Le

Antichità di Ercolano (The Antiquities of Herculaneum). The
antiquities of Herculaneum showed that even the most
classicizing interiors of the Baroque, or the most "Roman" rooms
of William Kent were based on basilica and temple exterior
architecture turned outside in, hence their often bombastic
appearance to modern eyes: pedimented window frames turned
into gilded mirrors, fireplaces topped with temple fronts. The new
interiors sought to recreate an authentically Roman and
genuinely interior vocabulary.
Techniques employed in the style included flatter, lighter motifs,
sculpted in low frieze-like relief or painted in monotones en
camaïeu ("like cameos"), isolated medallions or vases or busts
or bucrania or other motifs, suspended on swags of laurel or
ribbon, with slender arabesques against backgrounds, perhaps,
of "Pompeiian red" or pale tints, or stone colors. The style in
France was initially a Parisian style, the Goût grec ("Greek
style"), not a court style; when Louis XVI acceded to the throne in
1774, Marie Antoinette, his fashion-loving Queen, brought the
"Louis XVI" style to court. However, there was no real attempt to
employ the basic forms of Roman furniture until around the turn
of the century, and furniture-makers were more likely to borrow
from ancient architecture, just as silversmiths were more likely to
take from ancient pottery and stone-carving than metalwork:
"Designers and craftsmen ... seem to have taken an almost
perverse pleasure in transferring motifs from one medium to
another". [47]

Château de Malmaison, 1800, room for the Empress Joséphine, on the cusp between Directoire
style and Empire style

From about 1800 a fresh influx of Greek architectural examples,

seen through the medium of etchings and engravings, gave a
new impetus to Neoclassicism, the Greek Revival. At the same
time the Empire style was a more grandiose wave of
Neoclassicism in architecture and the decorative arts. Mainly
based on Imperial Roman styles, it originated in, and took its
name from, the rule of Napoleon in the First French Empire,
where it was intended to idealize Napoleon's leadership and the
French state. The style corresponds to the more
bourgeois Biedermeier style in the German-speaking
lands, Federal style in the United States, the Regency style in
[46]

Britain, and the Napoleon style in Sweden. According to the art

historian Hugh Honour "so far from being, as is sometimes
supposed, the culmination of the Neoclassical movement, the
Empire marks its rapid decline and transformation back once
more into a mere antique revival, drained of all the high-minded
ideas and force of conviction that had inspired its
masterpieces". An earlier phase of the style was called
[48]

the Adam style in Great Britain and "Louis Seize", or Louis XVI, in
France.
Neoclassicism continued to be a major force in academic
art through the 19th century and beyond—a constant antithesis
to Romanticism or Gothic revivals —, although from the late 19th
century on it had often been considered anti-modern, or even
reactionary, in influential critical circles. The centres of several
[who?]

European cities, notably St. Petersburg and Munich, came to look

much like museums of Neoclassical architecture.
Gothic revival architecture (often linked with the Romantic cultural
movement), a style originating in the 18th century which grew in
popularity throughout the 19th century, contrasted Neoclassicism.
Whilst Neoclassicism was characterized by Greek and Roman-
influenced styles, geometric lines and order, Gothic revival
architecture placed an emphasis on medieval-looking buildings,
often made to have a rustic, "romantic" appearance.
France[edit]
Louis XVI style (1760-1789)[edit]
Main article: Louis XVI style
The Petit Trianon (Versailles, France), 1764, by Ange-Jacques Gabriel[49]

It marks the transition from Rococo to Classicism. Unlike

the Classicism of Louis XIV, which transformed ornaments into
symbols, Louis XVI style represents them as realistic and natural
as possible, ie laurel branches really are laurel branches, roses
the same, and so on. One of the main decorative principles is
symmetry. In interiors, the colours used are very bright, including
white, light grey, bright blue, pink, yellow, very light lilac, and
gold. Excesses of ornamentation are avoided. The return to [50]

antiquity is synonymous with above all with a return to the straight

lines: strict verticals and horizontals were the order of the day.
Serpentine ones were no longer tolerated, save for the
occasional half circle or oval. Interior decor also honored this
taste for rigor, with the result that flat surfaces and right angles
returned to fashion. Ornament was used to mediate this severity,
but it never interfered with basic lines and always was disposed
symmetrically around a central axis. Even so, ébénistes often
canted fore-angles to avoid excessive rigidity. [51]

The decorative motifs of Louis XVI style were inspired

by antiquity, the Louis XIV style, and nature. Characteristic
elements of the style: a torch crossed with a sheath with arrows,
imbricated disks, guilloché, double bow-knots, smoking braziers,
linear repetitions of small motifs (rosettes, beads, oves), trophy or
floral medallions hanging from a knotted ribbon, acanthus leaves,
gadrooning, interlace, meanders, cornucopias, mascarons,
Ancient urns, tripods, perfume burners, dolphins, ram and lion
heads, chimeras, and gryphons. Greco-Roman architectural
motifs are also very used: flutings, pilasters (fluted and unfluted),
fluted balusters (twisted and straight), columns (engaged and
unengaged, sometimes replaced
by caryathids), volute corbels, triglyphs with guttae (in relief and tr
ompe-l'œil). [52]

Central pavilion of the École Militaire (Paris), 1752, by Ange-Jacques

Gabriel[53]

Panthéon (Paris), 1758–1790, by Jacques-Germain Soufflot (1713-1780)

and Jean-Baptiste Rondelet (1743-1829)[54]

Hôtel de la Marine (Paris), 1761-1770, by Ange-Jacques Gabriel[55]

Commode of Madame du Barry; by Martin Carlin (attribution); 1772; oak base

veneered with pearwood, rosewood and amaranth, soft-paste Sèvres
porcelain, bronze gilt, white marble; 87 x 119 cm; Louvre[56]
 •

Hôtel du Châtelet (Paris), 1776[57]

Stairway of the Grand Theater of Bordeaux (Bordeaux, France), 1777-1780,

by Victor Louis[58]

Parisian corner cabinet; by Jean Henri Riesener; 1780–1790; oak, mahogany,

marble, and ormolu mounts; 94.3 × 81.3 × 55.9 cm; Art Institute of
Chicago (US)[59]

Large vase; 1783; hard porcelain and gilt bronze; height: 2 m, diameter: 0.90
m; Louvre
 •

The Cabinet Doré of Marie-Antoinette at the Palace of Versailles (Versailles,

France), 1783, by the Rousseau brothers[60]

Roll-top desk of Marie-Antoinette; by Jean-Henri Riesener; 1784; oak and

pine frame, sycamore, amaranth and rosewood veneer, bronze gilt; 103.6 x
113.4 cm; Louvre[61]

Writing table of Marie-Antoinette; by Adam Weisweiler; 1784; oak, ebony and

sycamore veneer, Japanese lacquer, steel, bronze gilt; 73.7 x 81. 2 cm;
Louvre[61]

Ewer; 1784–1785; silver; height: 32.9 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art

 •

Folding stool (pliant); 1786; carved and painted beechwood, covered in pink
silk; 46.4 × 68.6 × 51.4 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art

Pair of vases; 1789; hard-paste porcelain, gilt bronze, marble; height (each):
23 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art

Armchair (fauteuil) from Louis XVI's Salon des Jeux at Saint Cloud; 1788;
carved and gilded walnut, gold brocaded silk (not original); overall: 100 × 74.9
× 65.1 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art
Directoire style (1789-1804)[edit]
Main article: Directoire style
•

Panel win an arabesque in the Hôtel Gouthière, Paris, unknown architect,

unknown date
 •

Rue Jacob no. 46, Paris, unknown architect, unknown date

Astronomical clock; by Philippe-Jacques Corniquet; c.1794; gilt bronze and

enamel face; unknown dimensions; Musée des Arts Décoratifs (Paris)[62]

Fan; by Charles Percier, Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine and Antoine Denis

Chaudet; c.1797-1799; paper, wood, and bone; 23.5 x 43.8 cm; Metropolitan
Museum of Art (New York City)

Armchair of the salon of Madame Récamier; attributed to Jacob

Frères; c.1798; various types of wood; 84.5 x 62.2 x 62 cm; Musée des Arts
Décoratifs[63]
Empire style (1804-1815)[edit]
Main article: Empire style
It representative for the new French society that has exited from
the revolution which set the tone in all life fields, including art.
The Jacquard machine is invented during this period (which
revolutionises the entire sewing system, manual until then). One
of the dominant colours is red, decorated with gilt bronze. Bright
colours are also used, including white, cream, violet, brown, bleu,
dark red, with little ornaments of gilt bronze. Interior architecture
includes wood panels decorated with gilt reliefs (on a white
background or a coloured one). Motifs are placed geometrically.
The walls are covered in stuccos, wallpaper pr fabrics. Fireplace
mantels are made of white marble, having caryatids at their
corners, or other elements: obelisks, sphinxes, winged lions, and
so on. Bronze objects were placed on their tops, including mantel
clocks. The doors consist of simple rectangular panels, decorated
with a Pompeian-inspired central figure. Empire fabrics are
damasks with a bleu or brown background, satins with a green,
pink or purple background, velvets of the same colors, brooches
broached with gold or silver, and cotton fabrics. All of these were
used in interiors for curtains, for covering certain furniture, for
cushions or upholstery (leather is also used for upholstery). [64]

All Empire ornament is governed by a rigorous spirit of symmetry

reminiscent of the Louis XIV style. Generally, the motifs on a
piece's right and left sides correspond to one another in every
detail; when they don't, the individual motifs themselves are
entirely symmetrical in composition: antique heads with identical
tresses falling onto each shoulder, frontal figures of Victory with
symmetrically arrayed tunics, identical rosettes or swans flanking
a lock plate, etc. Like Louis XIV, Napoleon had a set of emblems
unmistakably associated with his rule, most notably the eagle, the
bee, stars, and the initials I (for Imperator) and N (for Napoleon),
which were usually inscribed within an imperial laurel crown.
Motifs used include: figures of Victory bearing palm branches,
Greek dancers, nude and draped women, figures of antique
chariots, winged putti, mascarons of Apollo, Hermes and
the Gorgon, swans, lions, the heads of oxen, horses and wild
beasts, butterflies, claws, winged chimeras, sphinxes, bucrania,
sea horses, oak wreaths knotted by thin trailing ribbons, climbing
grape vines, poppy rinceaux, rosettes, palm branches, and laurel.
There's a lot of Greco-Roman ones: stiff and
flat acanthus leaves, palmettes, cornucopias, beads, amphoras,
tripods, imbricated disks, caduceuses of Mercury, vases,
helmets, burning torches, winged trumpet players, and ancient
musical instruments (tubas, rattles and especially lyres). Despite
their antique derivation, the fluting and triglyphs so prevalent
under Louis XVI are abandoned. Egyptian Revival motifs are
especially common at the beginning of the period: scarabs,
lotus capitals, winged disks, obelisks, pyramids, figures
wearing nemeses, caryatids en gaine supported by bare feet and
with women Egyptian headdresses. [65]

Coffeepot; 1797–1809; silver gilt; height: 33.3 cm; Metropolitan Museum of

Art (New York City)

Empress Joséphine's Bedroom in Château de Malmaison (Rueil-Malmaison,

France), 1800-1802, by Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard
Fontaine[66]

•
 Washstand (athénienne or lavabo); 1800–1814; legs, base and shelf of yew
wood, gilt-bronze mounts, iron plate beneath shelf; height: 92.4 cm, width:
49.5 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art

Portico of the Palais Bourbon (Paris), 1806-1808, by Bernard Poyet[67]

La Madeleine (Paris), 1807-1842, by Pierre-Alexandre Vignon[67]

• Vase; 1809; hard-paste porcelain and gilded bronze handles; height: 74.9 cm,
diameter: 35.6 cm; Wadsworth Atheneum (Hartford, Connecticut, US)[68]

Egyptian Revival coin cabinet; by François-Honoré-Georges Jacob-

Desmalter; 1809–1819; mahogany (probably Swietenia mahagoni), with
applied and inlaid silver; 90.2 x 50.2 x 37.5 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art

•
 Clock with Mars and Venus; circa 1810; gilded bronze and patina; height:
90 cm; Louvre

King of Rome's Cradle; by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, Henri Victor Roguier, Jean-

Baptiste-Claude Odiot and Pierre-Philippe Thomire; 1811; wood, silver
gilt, mother-of-pearl, sheets of copper covered with velvet, silk and tulle,
decorated with silver and gold thread; height: 216 cm; Kunsthistorisches
Museum (Vienna, Austria)[69]

Carpet; 1814–1830; 309.9 × 246.4 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art

Italy[edit]
From the second half of the 18th century through the 19th
century, Italy went through a great deal of socio-economic
changes, several foreign invasions and the turbulent
Risorgimento, which resulted in the Italian unification in 1861.
Thus, Italian art went through a series of minor and major
changes in style.
The Italian Neoclassicism was the earliest manifestation of the
general period known as Neoclassicism and lasted more than the
other national variants of neoclassicism. It developed in
opposition to the Baroque style around c.1750 and lasted until
c.1850. Neoclassicism began around the period of the
rediscovery of Pompeii and spread all over Europe as a
generation of art students returned to their countries from the
Grand Tour in Italy with rediscovered Greco-Roman ideals. It first
centred in Rome where artists such as Antonio Canova and
Jacques-Louis David were active in the second half of the 18th
century, before moving to Paris. Painters of Vedute, like
Canaletto and Giovanni Paolo Panini, also enjoyed a huge
success during the Grand Tour. Neoclassical architecture was
inspired by the Renaissance works of Palladio and saw in Luigi
Vanvitelli and Filippo Juvarra the main interpreters of the style.
Classicist literature had a great impact on the Risorgimento
movement: the main figures of the period include Vittorio Alfieri,
Giuseppe Parini, Vincenzo Monti and Ugo Foscolo, Giacomo
Leopardi and Alessandro Manzoni (nephew of Cesare Beccaria),
who were also influenced by the French Enlightenment and
German Romanticism. The virtuoso violinist Paganini and the
operas of Rossini, Donnizetti, Bellini and, later, Verdi dominated
the scene in Italian classical and romantic music.
The art of Francesco Hayez and especially that of the Macchiaioli
represented a break with the classical school, which came to an
end as Italy unified (see Italian modern and contemporary art).
Neoclassicism was the last Italian-born style, after the
Renaissance and Baroque, to spread to all Western Art.
•

Palazzo Grassi (on the Grand canal in Venice), 1748-1772, Giorgio Massari

La Scala Opera House (Milan), completed in 1778, by Giuseppe Piermarini

 • Palazzo Belgioioso (Milan), 1781, by Giuseppe Piermarini

Villa Belgiojoso Bonaparte (Milan), 1790-1796, by Leopoldo Pollack

Piazza del Plebiscito (Naples), 1809-1846

Piazza del Popolo (Rome), redesigned between 1811 and 1822, by Giuseppe
Valadier

Education of the Infant Bacchus; by Niccolò Amastini; first half 19th century;
onyx with gold frame; overall (in setting): 6.5 x 4.8 cm; Metropolitan Museum
of Art (New York City).
The UK[edit]
Main articles: Adam style and Wedgwood
The Adam style was created by two brothers, Adam and James,
who published in 1777 a volume of etchings with interior
ornamentation. In the interior decoration made after Robert
Adam's drawings, the walls, ceilings, doors, and any other
surface, are divided into big panels: rectangular, round, square,
with stuccos and Greco-Roman motifs at the edges. Ornaments
used include festoons, pearls, egg-and-dart bands, medallions,
and any other motifs used during the Classical
antiquity (especially the Etruscan ones). Decorative fittings such
as urn-shaped stone vases, gilded silverware, lamps, and
stauettes all have the same source of inspiration, classical
antiquity. The Adam style emphasizes refined rectangular
mirrors, framed like paintings (in frames with stylised leafs), or
with a pediment above them, supporting an urn or a medallion.
Another design of Adam mirrors is shaped like a Venetian
window, with a big central mirror between two other thinner and
longer ones. Another type of mirrors are the oval ones, usually
decorated with festoons. The furniture in this style has a similar
structure to Louis XVI furniture. [70]

Besides the Adam style, when it comes to decorative arts,

England is also known for the ceramic manufacturer Josiah
Wedgwood (1730-1795), who established a pottery called Etruria.
Wedgwood ware is made of a material called jasperware, a hard
and fine-grained type of stoneware. Wedgwood vases are usually
decorated with reliefs in two colours, in most cases the figures
being white and the background blue.
•

Kedleston Hall (Kedleston, Derbyshire, England), 1760-1770, by Robert

Adam[71]
 •

Eating Room (Osterley Park, London), 1761, by Robert Adam[72]

Syon House (Middlesex, England), 1762, by Robert Adam[71]

The Hall (Osterley Park), 1767, by Robert Adam[73]

Carpet; by Robert Adam; 1770–1780; knotted wool; 505.5 x

473.1 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City)

•
Apotheosis of Virgil; by John Flaxman; c.1776; jasperware; diameter:
41 cm; Harris Museum (Preston, Lancashire, UK)[74]

Somerset House (London), 1776-1801, by William Chambers[75]

Urn on pedestal; circa 1780 with latter additions; by Robert Adam; inlaid
mahogany; height: 49.8 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art

Side table with many acanthus leafs and two bucrania; by Robert
Adam; c.1780 with later addition; mahogany; overall: 88.6 × 141.3 × 57.1 cm;
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Covered Wedgwood urn; c.1800; jasper ware with relief decoration; overall:
19.7 cm; Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland, Ohio, USA)[76]
The United States[edit]
Main article: Federal style
On the American continent, architecture and interior decoration
have been highly influenced by the styles developed in Europe.
The French taste has highly marked its presence in the southern
states (after the French Revolution some emigrants have moved
here, and in Canada a big part of the population has French
origins). The practical spirit and the material situation of the
Americans at that time gave the interiors a typic atmosphere. All
the American furniture, carpets, tableware, ceramic, and
silverware, with all the European influences, and
sometimes Islamic, Turkish or Asian, were made in conformity
with the American norms, taste, and functional requirements.
There have existed in the US a period of the Queen Anne style,
and an Chippendale one. A style of its own, the Federal style,
has developed completely in the 18th and early 19th centuries,
which has flourished being influenced by Britannic taste. Under
the impulse of Neoclassicism, architecture, interiors, and furniture
have been created. The style, although it has numerous
characteristics which differ from state to state, is unitary. The
structures of architecture, interiors, and furniture are Classicist,
and incorporate Baroque and Rococo influences. The shapes
used include rectangles, ovals, and crescents. Stucco or wooden
panels on walls and ceilings reproduce Classicist motifs.
Furniture tend to be decorated with floral marquetry and bronze
or brass inlays (sometimes gilded). [77]

Maple secretary; circa 1790; maple and brass; height: 242.57 cm; Los
Angeles County Museum of Art (US)
 •

Candlestand; 1790-1800; mahogany, birch, and various inlays; 107 x 49.21 x

48.9 cm; Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Writing desk; 1790-1810; satinwood, mahogany, tulip poplar, and pine; 153.67
x 90.17 x 51.44 cm; Los Angeles County Museum of Art

White House (Washington, D.C.), 1792-1829, by James Hoban[78]

Capitol Building (Washington, D.C.), 1793-1863, by William

Thornton and Thomas Ustick Walter[78]
 •

Federal Hill Mansion (My Old Kentucky Home State Park, Bardstown,
Kentucky), 1795

Armchair; possibly by Ephraim Haines; 1805-1815; mahogany and cane;

height: 84.77 cm, width: 52.07 cm; Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Four-column pedestal card table with pineapple finial; 1815-1820; mahogany,

tulip poplar, and pine woods; 74.93 x 92.71 x 46.67 cm; Los Angeles County
Museum of Art

The Rotunda (University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia), by Thomas

Jefferson, 1822-1826[79]
 •

South Carolina State House (Columbia, South Carolina), 1855, by John

Rudolph Niernsee

Gardens[edit]
In England, Augustan literature had a direct parallel with the
Augustan style of landscape design. The links are clearly seen in
the work of Alexander Pope. The best surviving examples of
Neoclassical English gardens are Chiswick House, Stowe
House and Stourhead. [80]

Neoclassicism and fashion[edit]

Revolutionary socialite Thérésa Tallien

Portrait of Madame Récamier, by Jacques-Louis David, 1800

In fashion, Neoclassicism influenced the much greater simplicity

of women's dresses, and the long-lasting fashion for white, from
well before the French Revolution, but it was not until after it that
thorough-going attempts to imitate ancient styles became
fashionable in France, at least for women. Classical costumes
had long been worn by fashionable ladies posing as some figure
from Greek or Roman myth in a portrait (in particular there was a
rash of such portraits of the young model Emma, Lady
Hamilton from the 1780s), but such costumes were only worn for
the portrait sitting and masquerade balls until the Revolutionary
period, and perhaps, like other exotic styles, as undress at home.
But the styles worn in portraits by Juliette Récamier, Joséphine
de Beauharnais, Thérésa Tallien and other Parisian trend-setters
were for going-out in public as well. Seeing Mme Tallien at the
opera, Talleyrand quipped that: "Il n'est pas possible de
s'exposer plus somptueusement!" ("One could not be more
sumptuously undressed"). In 1788, just before the Revolution, the
court portraitist Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun had held a Greek
supper where the ladies wore plain white Grecian
tunics. Shorter classical hairstyles, where possible with curls,
[81]

were less controversial and very widely adopted, and hair was
now uncovered even outdoors; except for evening
dress, bonnets or other coverings had typically been worn even
indoors before. Thin Greek-style ribbons or fillets were used to tie
or decorate the hair instead.
Very light and loose dresses, usually white and often with
shockingly bare arms, rose sheer from the ankle to just below the
bodice, where there was a strongly emphasized thin hem or tie
round the body, often in a different colour. The shape is now
often known as the Empire silhouette although it predates
the First French Empire of Napoleon, but his first Empress
Joséphine de Beauharnais was influential in spreading it around
Europe. A long rectangular shawl or wrap, very often plain red but
with a decorated border in portraits, helped in colder weather,
and was apparently laid around the midriff when seated—for
which sprawling semi-recumbent postures were favoured. By [82]

the start of the 19th century, such styles had spread widely
across Europe.
Portrait of Antoine Valedau from 1809

Neoclassical fashion for men was far more problematic, and

never really took off other than for hair, where it played an
important role in the shorter styles that finally despatched the use
of wigs, and then white hair-powder, for younger men. The
trouser had been the symbol of the barbarian to the Greeks and
Romans, but outside the painter's or, especially, the sculptor's
studio, few men were prepared to abandon it. Indeed, the period
saw the triumph of the pure trouser, or pantaloon, over
the culotte or knee-breeches of the Ancien Régime. Even when
David designed a new French "national costume" at the request
of the government during the height of the Revolutionary
enthusiasm for changing everything in 1792, it included fairly tight
leggings under a coat that stopped above the knee. A high
proportion of well-to-do young men spent much of the key period
in military service because of the French Revolutionary Wars,
and military uniform, which began to emphasize jackets that were
short at the front, giving a full view of tight-fitting trousers, was
often worn when not on duty, and influenced civilian male styles.
The trouser-problem had been recognised by artists as a barrier
to creating contemporary history paintings; like other elements of
contemporary dress they were seen as irredeemably ugly and
unheroic by many artists and critics. Various stratagems were
used to avoid depicting them in modern scenes. In James
Dawkins and Robert Wood Discovering the Ruins
of Palmyra (1758) by Gavin Hamilton, the two gentleman
antiquaries are shown in toga-like Arab robes. In Watson and the
Shark (1778) by John Singleton Copley, the main figure could
plausibly be shown nude, and the composition is such that of the
eight other men shown, only one shows a single breeched leg
prominently. However the Americans Copley and Benjamin
West led the artists who successfully showed that trousers could
be used in heroic scenes, with works like West's The Death of
General Wolfe (1770) and Copley's The Death of Major Peirson,
6 January 1781 (1783), although the trouser was still being
carefully avoided in The Raft of the Medusa, completed in 1819.

Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford in a Bedford Crop

Classically inspired male hairstyles included the Bedford Crop,

arguably the precursor of most plain modern male styles, which
was invented by the radical politician Francis Russell, 5th Duke of
Bedford as a protest against a tax on hair powder; he
encouraged his friends to adopt it by betting them they would not.
Another influential style (or group of styles) was named by the
French "à la Titus" after Titus Junius Brutus (not in fact the
Roman Emperor Titus as often assumed), with hair short and
layered but somewhat piled up on the crown, often with
restrained quiffs or locks hanging down; variants are familiar from
the hair of both Napoleon and George IV of the United Kingdom.
The style was supposed to have been introduced by the
actor François-Joseph Talma, who upstaged his wigged co-
actors when appearing in productions of works such
as Voltaire's Brutus (about Lucius Junius Brutus, who orders the
execution of his son Titus). In 1799 a Parisian fashion magazine
reported that even bald men were adopting Titus wigs, and the [83]

style was also worn by women, the Journal de Paris reporting in

1802 that "more than half of elegant women were wearing their
hair or wig à la Titus. [84]

James Dawkins and Robert Wood Discovering the Ruins of Palmyra,

by Gavin Hamilton (1758)

Madame Raymond de Verninac by Jacques-Louis David, with clothes and

chair in Directoire style. "Year 7": that is, 1798–1799

Elizabeth Alexeievna, Empress of Russia, in 1802

Later Neoclassicism[edit]
The West building (1941) of the National Gallery of Art in Washington

Part of a series on

Classicism
Classical antiquity
 • Greco-Roman world
• Language

Age of Enlightenment
• Neoclassicism
• Weimar Classicism
• Economics
• Music
• Physics

20th-century neoclassicism
• Between World War I and II
• Ballet
• Economics
• Music
• Philosophy

• v
• t
• e

In American architecture, Neoclassicism was one expression of

the American Renaissance movement, ca. 1890–1917; its last
manifestation was in Beaux-Arts architecture, and its final large
public projects were the Lincoln Memorial (highly criticized at the
time), the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (also
heavily criticized by the architectural community as being
backward thinking and old fashioned in its design), and
the American Museum of Natural History's Roosevelt Memorial.
These were considered stylistic anachronisms when they were
finished. In the British Raj, Sir Edwin Lutyens' monumental city
planning for New Delhi marks the sunset of Neoclassicism. World
War II was to shatter most longing for (and imitation of) a mythical
time.
Conservative modernist architects such as Auguste Perret in
France kept the rhythms and spacing of columnar architecture
even in factory buildings. Where a colonnade would have been
decried as "reactionary", a building's pilaster-like fluted panels
under a repeating frieze looked "progressive". Pablo
Picasso experimented with classicizing motifs in the years
immediately following World War I, and the Art Deco style that
came to the fore following the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts
Décoratifs, often drew on Neoclassical motifs without expressing
them overtly: severe, blocky commodes by É.-J.
Ruhlmann or Süe & Mare; crisp, extremely low-relief friezes of
damsels and gazelles in every medium; fashionable dresses that
were draped or cut on the bias to recreate Grecian lines; the art
dance of Isadora Duncan; the Streamline Moderne styling of U.S.
post offices and county court buildings built as late as 1950; and
the Roosevelt dime.
There was an entire 20th-century movement in the Arts which
was also called Neoclassicism. It encompassed at least music,
philosophy and literature. It was between the end of World War I
and the end of World War II. (For information on the musical
aspects, see 20th-century classical music and Neoclassicism in
music. For information on the philosophical aspects, see Great
Books.)
This literary Neoclassical movement rejected the extreme
romanticism of (for example) Dada, in favour of restraint, religion
(specifically Christianity) and a reactionary political program.
Although the foundations for this movement in English
literature were laid by T. E. Hulme, the most famous
Neoclassicists were T. S. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis. In Russia,
the movement crystallized as early as 1910 under the name
of Acmeism, with Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelshtam as the
leading representatives.
In music[edit]
Neoclassicism in music is a 20th-century movement; in this case
it is the Classical and Baroque musical styles of the 17th and
18th centuries, with their fondness for Greek and Roman themes,
that were being revived, not the music of the ancient world itself.
(The early 20th century had not yet distinguished the Baroque
period in music, on which Neoclassical composers mainly drew,
from what we now call the Classical period.) The movement was
a reaction in the first part of the 20th century to the disintegrating
chromaticism of late-Romanticism and Impressionism, emerging
in parallel with musical Modernism, which sought to abandon key
tonality altogether. It manifested a desire for cleanness and
simplicity of style, which allowed for quite dissonant paraphrasing
of classical procedures, but sought to blow away the cobwebs of
Romanticism and the twilit glimmerings of Impressionism in
favour of bold rhythms, assertive harmony and clean-cut
sectional forms, coinciding with the vogue for reconstructed
"classical" dancing and costume in ballet and physical education.
The 17th-18th century dance suite had had a minor revival
before World War I but the Neoclassicists were not altogether
happy with unmodified diatonicism, and tended to emphasise the
bright dissonance of suspensions and ornaments, the angular
qualities of 17th-century modal harmony and the energetic lines
of countrapuntal part-writing. Respighi's Ancient Airs and
Dances (1917) led the way for the sort of sound to which the
Neoclassicists aspired. Although the practice of borrowing
musical styles from the past has not been uncommon throughout
musical history, art musics have gone through periods where
musicians used modern techniques coupled with older forms or
harmonies to create new kinds of works. Notable compositional
characteristics are: referencing diatonic tonality, conventional
forms (dance suites, concerti grossi, sonata forms, etc.), the idea
of absolute music untramelled by descriptive or emotive
associations, the use of light musical textures, and a conciseness
of musical expression. In classical music, this was most notably
perceived between the 1920s and the 1950s. Igor Stravinsky is
the best-known composer using this style; he effectively began
the musical revolution with his Bach-like Octet for Wind
Instruments (1923). A particular individual work that represents
this style well is Prokofiev's Classical Symphony No. 1 in D,
which is reminiscent of the symphonic style
of Haydn or Mozart. Neoclassical ballet as innovated by George
Balanchine de-cluttered the Russian Imperial style in terms of
costume, steps and narrative, while also introducing technical
innovations.
Architecture in Russia and the Soviet Union[edit]
Ostankino Palace, designed by Francesco Camporesi and completed in 1798, in Moscow, Russia

In 1905–1914 Russian architecture passed through a brief but

influential period of Neoclassical revival; the trend began with
recreation of Empire style of alexandrine period and quickly
expanded into a variety of neo-Renaissance, Palladian and
modernized, yet recognizably classical schools. They were led by
architects born in the 1870s, who reached creative peak before
World War I, like Ivan Fomin, Vladimir Shchuko and Ivan
Zholtovsky. When economy recovered in the 1920s, these
architects and their followers continued working in
primarily modernist environment; some (Zholtovsky) strictly
followed the classical canon, others (Fomin, Schuko, Ilya
Golosov) developed their own modernized styles. [85]

Arkhangelskoye Estate

With the crackdown on architects independence and official

denial of modernism (1932), demonstrated by the international
contest for the Palace of Soviets, Neoclassicism was instantly
promoted as one of the choices in Stalinist architecture, although
not the only choice. It coexisted with moderately modernist
architecture of Boris Iofan, bordering with contemporary Art
Deco (Schuko); again, the purest examples of the style were
produced by Zholtovsky school that remained an isolated
phenomena. The political intervention was a disaster
for constructivist leaders yet was sincerely welcomed by
architects of the classical schools.
Neoclassicism was an easy choice for the USSR since it did not
rely on modern construction technologies (steel
frame or reinforced concrete) and could be reproduced in
traditional masonry. Thus the designs of Zholtovsky, Fomin and
other old masters were easily replicated in remote towns under
strict material rationing. Improvement of construction technology
after World War II permitted Stalinist architects to venture into
skyscraper construction, although stylistically these skyscrapers
(including "exported" architecture of Palace of Culture and
Science, Warsaw and the Shanghai International Convention
Centre) share little with the classical models. Neoclassicism and
neo-Renaissance persisted in less demanding residential and
office projects until 1955, when Nikita Khrushchev put an end to
expensive Stalinist architecture.
Architecture in the 21st century[edit]
Main article: New Classical Architecture

Schermerhorn Symphony Center, 2006

After a lull during the period of modern architectural dominance

(roughly post-World War II until the mid-1980s), Neoclassicism
has seen something of a resurgence.
As of the first decade of the 21st century, contemporary
Neoclassical architecture is usually classed under the umbrella
term of New Classical Architecture. Sometimes it is also referred
to as Neo-Historicism or Traditionalism. Also, a number of
[86]

pieces of postmodern architecture draw inspiration from and

include explicit references to Neoclassicism, Antigone District and
the National Theatre of Catalonia in Barcelona among
them. Postmodern architecture occasionally includes historical
elements, like columns, capitals or the tympanum.
For sincere traditional-style architecture that sticks to regional
architecture, materials and craftsmanship, the term Traditional
Architecture (or vernacular) is mostly used. The Driehaus
Architecture Prize is awarded to major contributors in the field of
21st century traditional or classical architecture, and comes with
a prize money twice as high as that of the modernist Pritzker
Prize.
[87]

In the United States, various contemporary public buildings are

built in Neoclassical style, with the 2006 Schermerhorn
Symphony Center in Nashville being an example.
In Britain, a number of architects are active in the Neoclassical
style. Examples of their work include two university
libraries: Quinlan Terry's Maitland Robinson Library at Downing
College and Robert Adam Architects' Sackler Library