Enfilade

Full Circle: French Neoclassicism in Greece

Posted in exhibitions by Editor on November 14, 2009

From the website of the National Gallery in Athens:

Le goût à la grecque – The Birth of Neoclassicism in France: Masterpieces from the Louvre
National Gallery, Athens, 28 September 2009 — 11 January 2010

The exhibition includes paintings, sculptures, tapestries, drawings and prints, as well as furniture and miscellaneous objects, such as candlesticks, silverware and porcelain, vases, snuff boxes, watches (by Joseph-Marie Vien, Hubert Robert, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Louis Jean-François Lagrenée, Louis-Claude Vassé, Jean-Jacques Caffieri, Auguste Pajou, Jean-Charles Delafosse, René Dubois etc.). The exhibition spans the period of the reign of Louis XV, which marked the transition from the highly ornamental Rococo style to a classicizing artistic trend, inspired by the Greek antiquity. Excavations in southern Italy, the subsequent interest in a more systematic approach and classification of the excavation material and of the art of antiquity, as reflected in numerous relevant publications, along with the intellectual atmosphere of the Enlightenment, are some of the factors that contributed to the shaping of this new artistic style. The material on display is organised in sections which correspond to the artistic predilections of eminent society members of the period, in which a new taste emerged: le goût à la grecque.

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