Religious Art and Architecture in 18th-Century Europe

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean DeLouche
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
Religious Art ◽  
Spiritual Power ◽  
Grand Tour ◽  
Gothic Revival ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Art And Architecture

The 18th century was an era of transition for the arts and religion. Monarchs continued to commission religious art and architecture for a variety of reasons, including fulfillment of vows, expressions of faith and piety, and celebrations of dynastic power. The period saw simultaneous trends toward sumptuous decoration and sober display, as well as the rise of new artistic styles, including the Rococo, Neoclassicism, and the Gothic Revival. The Grand Tour brought many northern European Protestants to the seat of Catholicism. Protestant attitudes toward “popish” art softened in the 18th century, due in part to the increasing contact between Catholic and Protestant culture in Rome and to the perception that Catholicism was no longer a plausible threat. As the temporal and spiritual power of Rome declined in the 18th century, the papacy sought to reestablish itself as a cultural authority. The papacy embellished Rome with a number of archaeological and architectural initiatives, linking the popes with classical civilization and casting themselves as the custodians of the shared Western cultural tradition. With a growing art market and the consumer revolution, the populace had expanding access to religious imagery, from fine religious canvases collected by Catholic and Protestant elites, to reproducible prints that were available to nearly every member of society. However, the Enlightenment brought a profound questioning of religion. Religious works of art faced a loss of context in private displays and in the official Salon exhibitions, where they were intermixed with secular and erotic subjects and judged not on the efficacy of their Christian message or function but rather on aesthetic terms in relation to other works. The century ended with the French Revolution and brought violent waves of de-Christianization and iconoclasm. In order to save France’s Christian heritage, religious works of art had to be stripped of their associations with church and crown.

scholarly journals Architecture and organic unity = Arquitectura y unidad orgánica

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
John Hyman
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Decorative Arts ◽  
Organic Unity ◽  
Organic Unities ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
The Arts

Abstract: Buildings and monuments are among the most important works of art. But the conception of the arts that emerged in the 18th century, and remained the orthodoxy in philosophy for about two centuries, either excludes architecture from the fine arts or relegates it to the intermediate or decorative arts. This essay addresses this puzzle, assesses the truth in certain formalist doctrines about architecture, and advances the view that works of art are organic unities, i.e. integrated sets of solutions to various problems, some aesthetic and others technical, mathematical, theological, political, etc.Key words: art, architecture, aesthetics, formalism.Resumen: Los edificios y monumentos se encuentran entre las obras de arte más importantes. Pero la concepción de las artes que surgió en el siglo XVIII y permaneció como la ortodoxia en la filosofía durante aproximadamente dos siglos excluye la arquitectura de las bellas artes, o la relega a las artes intermedias o decorativas. El presente ensayo aborda este enigma, evalúa la verdad en ciertas doctrinas formalistas sobre la arquitectura, y avanza la opinión de que las obras de arte son unidades orgánicas, es decir, conjuntos integrados de soluciones a diversos problemas, algunos estéticos y otros técnicos, matemáticos, teológicos, políticos, etc.Palabras clave: arte, arquitectura, estética, formalismo.

Gothic Revival/Gothick

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie A. Glaser
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Medieval Architecture ◽  
German Empire ◽  
Gothic Revival ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The French Revolution

Gothic Revival designates a key moment in architectural history. It also refers to the use of Gothic forms and motifs in furniture, design, and the decorative arts. It is inextricably connected to the reawakened interest in medieval architecture that began in the 18th century and that provided both its scholarly basis and intellectual context. Thus, Gothic Revival comprises neo-Gothic artifacts as well as the antiquarian, scholarly, and literary texts that fueled it. Scholars distinguish between Gothic Revival and Survival. “Survival” refers to the continued use of the Gothic style in post-medieval building, whereas “Revival” describes the reuse of Gothic details. As an aesthetic term, in 16th-century Italy “Gothic” was associated with the “barbaric” medieval style and by the 18th-century it was equated with bad taste. “Gothick” was used for 18th-century garden architecture, design, and buildings, such as Walpole’s villa at Strawberry Hill or the Gothic House at Wörlitz, both playful amalgamations of Gothic motifs. Lenoir followed a similar aesthetic when he created monuments from the rubble of the French Revolution. With the rise of antiquarian studies and a growing number of architects schooled in the Gothic style, the Revival grew in impetus and importance through the 19th century. Frivolous Gothick gave way to an archeologically informed style that characterized the work of Pugin and Viollet-le-Duc. Neo-Gothic was adopted by Catholics and Protestants alike and promoted by local and national governments. Monumental restoration and completion of edifices such as Notre-Dame de Paris and Cologne Cathedral also played an important role. Significantly, Gothic Revival reflected each nation’s understanding of its history: in England it was nostalgic, looking back to a lost golden age; in France, Gothic forged a continuity with a past irreparably severed by the French Revolution; in the German-speaking lands Gothic was considered to symbolize the lost unity of the medieval German Empire, which meant that the German Revival was forward looking toward future political and religious unity. Creativity and eclecticism characterized the later Gothic Revival, with Romanesque, Byzantine, and Rundbogen styles becoming viable alternatives to Gothic. Scholarship on Gothic Revival dates to the late 19th century, when Eastlake set the pattern for the scholarly discourse. In the early 20th century, Clark and Abraham negatively appraised the Revival, a stance that English architectural historians began to revise in the 1940s. By the 1970s, England, France, and Germany were considered the center of Gothic Revival. In the 1990s Gothic Revival was recognized to be a pan-European phenomenon, and in the 21st century scholars have assiduously explored Gothic’s worldwide spread. This article reflects these scholarly developments.

Censorship of art books in the Soviet Union and its effect on the arts and on art libraries

1999 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Sinitsyna
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
General Circulation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Foreign Literature ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Original Works ◽  
State Library ◽  
Art And Architecture

Although official censorship in the Soviet Union ceased over ten years ago, the effects in art and art libraries are still felt. Censored books were marked with a hexagon and relegated to closed stacks, which for many years were off limits to the public and library staff alike. Some of the banned material in the All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature is analysed here in an attempt to establish the reason why certain items were seen by the authorities as too harmful to be acceptable for general circulation. The fate of the second “enemy” perceived by the Soviet censors, the original works of art and architecture, is also described.

Travel, Art and Changing Goals of the Grand Tour: The British in Eighteenth Century Venice

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica B Manire
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Art History ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Grand Tour ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Art And Politics ◽  
Northern European ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Art And Architecture

Northern European tourists, mostly British, began traveling to Venice in large numbers during the 18th century as a stop on the Grand Tour. The Grand Tour, a tour through Europe’s main continental cities, was meant to complete the education of a gentleman through exposure to ancient culture, art and politics. Through a close, chronological analysis of travel guides and diaries spanning from the late 17th century to the early 19th century by British travelers who visited Venice, it becomes clear that what constituted a completed education changed. Earlier texts focus mainly on attractions in Venice that have associations with the classics. Throughout the eighteenth century, the focus of the Grand Tourists’ education became more on the modern and was increasingly on the subject of art and architecture. The places and works of art visited and seen do not change so much as the way in which the authors analyze them. The Grand Tour had sparked the commoditization of art, an interest in art history and rise of connoisseurship earlier in the century, and by the later half of the 18th century a heightened interest and familiarity with art and architecture is evident.

Neoclassicism and Religious Art in 18th-Century Europe

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison Palmer
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Religious Art ◽  
Louis Xiv ◽  
French Academy ◽  
Nicolas Poussin ◽  
Virtuous Behavior

The term “Neoclassicism” refers to an era when a large number of artists and scholars across Europe in the 18th century took inspiration from the history and material remains of classical antiquity, which was defined as ancient Greece and Rome. While Neoclassicism is often considered a stylistic trend, artists worked across stylistic categories, yet they were all part of a broad milieu that responded to profound societal changes by seeking out classical precedents for questions posed by Enlightenment thinkers. These questions included the purpose of religion in society, where philosophers including John Locke (1632–1704) and François-Marie Arouet Voltaire (1694–1778) theorized new spiritual modes to examine human existence. Many religious painters of the 18th century studied at the French Academy of Painting and Sculpture established in Paris in 1648 under royal sponsorship that dictated taste, and these artists were championed for their ability to depict grand expressions of human emotion learned from antiquity and from classicizing Renaissance and Baroque artists, including French painter Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), who popularized the Roman concept of exempla virtutis. Jean- Baptiste Colbert, the First Minister to King Louis XIV and Vice-Protector of the Academy, promoted this grand classicizing Baroque style as the elevated style of the aristocracy, which laid the foundation for Neoclassicism. For French philosopher Denis Diderot (1713–1784), art could provide pleasure, but a superior artwork provided a visual beauty that inspired virtuous behavior; thus, while not all art served a religious function, artworks often showed examples of virtue. For example, Diderot, who reported on the biennial exhibitions sponsored by the Academy in Paris, praised Jacques-Louis David’s (1748–1825) Oath of the Horatii (1784, Louvre Museum, Paris), a depiction of a 7th-century bce Roman legend, for its demonstration of patriotic sacrifice. Many of these moralizing narratives drew upon stories from classical antiquity, learned by artists trained at the French Academy in Rome (established in 1666) during a period of study sometimes called the Grand Tour. Neoclassical art was also shaped by the intense cultural questioning that arose with the French Revolution, and it found fertile ground during the Industrial Revolution. Religious art had a complicated historical development in the 18th century given the dramatic changes that disrupted religious institutions and church patronage in favor of secular patrons and new subjects. Nonetheless, the moralizing tendencies of Neoclassicism and the academic favoring of historical painting continued to provide a place for religious art and architecture throughout the 18th century, much of which deserves further study.

Radikale Reflexion–Phänomenologie der Kunst bei Merleau-Ponty

2010 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-125
Author(s):  
Frank Ruda
Keyword(s):  
Works Of Art ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Phenomenology Of Perception

Der Beitrag untersucht Merleau-Pontys Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung als eine Phänomenologie der Kunst. Die dominante Rolle, die Beispiele aus den Künsten in dem Text einnehmen, läßt sich zunächst daraus erklären, daß Kunstwerke eben diejenige Dynamik und Verfaßtheit eines Reflexionsgeschehens zeigen, die das phänomenologische Projekt als solches zu entfalten sucht. Darüber hinaus wird es durch die Konfrontation mit künstlerischen Werken über sich selbst hinaus – oder besser: zu einer Reflexion seiner selbst getrieben. Dieser von der Kunst ausgehend entwickelte »neue Stil« der Reflexivität wird als »ästhetische Inkorporation« diskutiert.<br><br>The paper discusses Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception as a phenomenology of art. The prevalence of examples from the arts in his text indicates that works of art possess the very same dynamic of reflexivity that the phenomenological project as a whole seeks to develop. Furthermore, by way of confrontation with works of art, the project is driven to transcend itself – or more precisely: to reflect itself. This »new style« of reflexivity may be discussed as »aesthetic incorporation.«

The Biblioteca Marucelliana and its database of prints and drawings: a work in progress

2010 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 8-12
Author(s):  
Monica Maria Angeli ◽  
Rossella Todros
Keyword(s):  
General Public ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Digital Images ◽  
Large Collection ◽  
Work In Progress ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
The Arts

The Biblioteca Marucelliana in Florence is a library specialising in the arts and humanities that has been open to the general public since the middle of the 18th century. Its founder, Francesco Marucelli, willed his large collection of books to the library. In 1783, the last member of the Marucelli family, Francesco di Roberto Marucelli, left the library around 2500 drawings and 30,000 engravings, and these are now being re-catalogued. The first volume of the engravings can already be consulted on a CD called PRISMA, and the records for the drawings, accompanied by digital images, will be put on a database which it is hoped will be available to scholars worldwide in 2010.

Karl Friedrich Schinkel

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
English Language ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Urban Planner ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Personal Archives ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Second World

Karl Friedrich Schinkel (b. Neuruppin, 1781–d. Berlin, 1841) was a celebrated Prussian architect, theatre set designer, artist, furniture and object designer, urban planner, and civil servant. Born into modest yet respectable circumstances as the son of a deacon, Schinkel, by virtue of his talent and work ethic, rose in his own lifetime to become one of Prussia’s most celebrated cultural figures and its chief royal architect. He worked mostly in Berlin and its surrounding territories, including in some areas that are now part of Poland. His built works suffered heavy destruction during the Second World War, but important examples still survive or have been reconstructed, including the Altes Museum, the Friedrich-Werder Church, the Theatre (Schauspielhaus), and the New Guardhouse in Berlin, as well as the Charlottenhof and Glienicke Palaces in nearby Potsdam. His paintings, drawings, and personal archives can be found mostly in collections in and around Berlin, including at various departments of the Berlin State Museums. Recent debates have surrounded the potential reconstruction of Schinkel’s celebrated masterpiece, the Berlin Bauakademie (which was demolished in 1962), bringing a consciousness of Schinkel’s legacy to the fore in German public life once again. Despite his fame in Germany and his noted status as a reference-point for German avant-garde modernism, Schinkel’s work has remained under-explored in the English language (with some notable exceptions) due to difficulties accessing both his buildings and his archives in the years between the Second World War and German reunification. Since the 1990s, however, Schinkel’s international reputation has been steadily restored due to the efforts of a number of scholars and curators who have sought to disseminate his work more widely than ever before. Schinkel’s oeuvre is as eclectic as the tools and media he employed to realize it are versatile. They reveal traces of neoclassicism and the neogothic, French Enlightenment formalism, German Romanticism and Idealism, and 19th-century historicism. But at the same time, his work resists absolute categorization, by virtue of the fact that he lived and worked suspended between two epochs: he was born too late to be immersed in the worldview of the 18th-century Enlightenment and French Revolution, but nor did he live to see Germany’s development as a fully industrialized and unified nation. Occupying this ambiguous historical moment has given Schinkel’s work a versatility, a freedom, and an inquiring rigor that has assured its originality and enduring value.

Joanna I of Anjou (1343–1382)

Encyclopedia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 1303-1311
Author(s):  
Paola Vitolo
Keyword(s):  
Illuminated Manuscripts ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
The Public ◽  
South Italy ◽  
Symbolic Representations ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Explicit Reference ◽  
Symbolic Image ◽  
Art And Architecture ◽  
The Church

Joanna I of Anjou (1325–1382), countess of Provence and the fourth sovereign of the Angevin dynasty in south Italy (since 1343), became the heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Sicily, succeeding her grandfather King Robert “the Wise” (1277–1343). The public and official images of the queen and the “symbolic” representations of her power, commissioned by her or by her entourage, contributed to create a new standard in the cultural references of the Angevin iconographic tradition aiming to assimilate models shared by the European ruling class. In particular, the following works of art and architecture will be analyzed: the queen’s portraits carved on the front slabs of royal sepulchers (namely those of her mother Mary of Valois and of Robert of Anjou) and on the liturgical furnishings in the church of Santa Chiara in Naples; the images painted in numerous illuminated manuscripts, in the chapter house of the friars in the Franciscan convent of Santa Chiara in Naples, in the lunette of the church in the Charterhouse of Capri. The church of the Incoronata in Naples does not show, at the present time, any portrait of the queen or explicit reference to Joanna as a patron. However, it is considered the highest symbolic image of her queenship.

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