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The Cathedral of Vilnius

Neoclassical architectureFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Neoclassical architecture is an architectural styleproduced by the neoclassical movement that began in themid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reactionagainst the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in itsarchitectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizingfeatures of Late Baroque. In its purest form it is a styleprincipally derived from the architecture of Classical Greeceand Rome and the architecture of the Italian architectAndrea Palladio. In form, Neoclassical architectureemphasizes the wall rather than chiaroscuro and maintainsseparate identities to each of its parts.

Contents

1 History

1.1 Palladianism1.2 Neoclassicism

1.3 Interior design

1.4 Greek revival

2 Characteristics

3 Regional trends3.1 Britain

3.2 France

3.3 Spain

3.4 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

3.5 United States

3.6 USSR

3.7 The Third Reich

4 Neoclassicism today5 See also

6 References

7 Further reading

8 External links

History

Intellectually, Neoclassicism was symptomatic of a desire to return to the perceived "purity" of the arts of Rome, tothe more vague perception ("ideal") of Ancient Greek arts and, to a lesser extent, 16th-century RenaissanceClassicism, which was also a source for academic Late Baroque architecture.

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Palladian revival: Stourhead House,

designed by Colen Campbell and completed

in 1720. The design is based on Palladio's

Villa Emo.

Woburn Abbey, an excellent example

of English Palladianism, designed by

Burlington's student Henry Flitcroft in

1746.

Many early 19th-century neoclassical architects were influenced by the drawings and projects of Étienne-LouisBoullée and Claude Nicolas Ledoux. The many graphite drawings of Boullée and his students depict sparegeometrical architecture that emulates the eternality of the universe. There are links between Boullée's ideas andEdmund Burke's conception of the sublime. Ledoux addressed the concept of architectural character, maintainingthat a building should immediately communicate its function to the viewer: taken literally such ideas give rise to"architecture parlante".

Palladianism

Main article: Palladian architecture

A return to more classical architectural forms as a reaction to theRococo style can be detected in some European architecture of theearlier 18th century, most vividly represented in the Palladianarchitecture of Georgian Britain and Ireland.

The baroque style had never truly been to the English taste. Fourinfluential books were published in the first quarter of the 18thcentury which highlighted the simplicity and purity of classicalarchitecture: Vitruvius Britannicus (Colen Campbell 1715),Palladio's Four Books of Architecture (1715), De ReAedificatoria (1726) and The Designs of Inigo Jones... withSome Additional Designs (1727). The most popular was the four-volume Vitruvius Britannicus by Colen Campbell. The bookcontained architectural prints of famous British buildings that had been inspired by the great architects fromVitruvius to Palladio. At first the book mainly featured the work of Inigo Jones, but the later tomes containeddrawings and plans by Campbell and other 18th-century architects. Palladian architecture became well establishedin 18th-century Britain.

At the forefront of the new school of design was the aristocratic"architect earl", Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington; in 1729, he andWilliam Kent, designed Chiswick House. This House was areinterpretation of Palladio's Villa Capra, but purified of 16th centuryelements and ornament. This severe lack of ornamentation was to be afeature of the Palladianism. In 1734 William Kent and Lord Burlingtondesigned one of England's finest examples of Palladian architecture withHolkham Hall in Norfolk. The main block of this house followedPalladio's dictates quite closely, but Palladio's low, often detached,wings of farm buildings were elevated in significance.

This classicizing vein was also detectable, to a lesser degree, in the LateBaroque architecture in Paris, such as in Perrault's east range of theLouvre. This shift was even visible in Rome at the redesigned facade for

S. Giovanni in Laterano.

Neoclassicism

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Altes Museum, built by Karl Friedrich

Schinkel in Berlin.

Château de Malmaison, 1800, room

for the Empress Joséphine, on the

cusp between Directoire style and

Empire style

By the mid 18th century, the movement broadened to incorporate a greater range of Classical influences, includingthose from Ancient Greece. The shift to neoclassical architecture isconventionally dated to the 1750s. It first gained influence inEngland and France; in England, Sir William Hamilton's excavationsat Pompeii and other sites, the influence of the Grand Tour and thework of William Chambers and Robert Adam, was pivotal in thisregard. In France, the movement was propelled by a generation ofFrench art students trained in Rome, and was influenced by thewritings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann. The style was alsoadopted by progressive circles in other countries such as Swedenand Russia.

International neoclassical architecture was exemplified in KarlFriedrich Schinkel's buildings, especially the Old Museum in Berlin, Sir John Soane's Bank of England in Londonand the newly built White House and Capitol in Washington, DC of the nascent American Republic. The Scottisharchitect Charles Cameron created palatial Italianate interiors for the German-born Catherine II the Great in St.Petersburg.

A second neoclassic wave, more severe, more studied and more consciously archaeological, is associated with theheight of the Napoleonic Empire. In France, the first phase of neoclassicism was expressed in the "Louis XVIstyle", and the second in the styles called "Directoire" or Empire. The Rococo style remained popular in Italy untilthe Napoleonic regimes brought the new archaeological classicism, which was embraced as a political statement byyoung, progressive, urban Italians with republican leanings.

In the decorative arts, neoclassicism is exemplified in French furniture of the Empire style; the English furniture ofChippendale, George Hepplewhite and Robert Adam, Wedgwood's bas reliefs and "black basaltes" vases, and theBiedermeier furniture of Austria. The style was international; Scots architect Charles Cameron created palatialItalianate interiors for the German-born Catherine II the Great, in Russian St. Petersburg.

Interior design

Indoors, neoclassicism made a discovery of the genuine classic interior,inspired by the rediscoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum. These hadbegun in the late 1740s, but only achieved a wide audience in the

1760s,[1] with the first luxurious volumes of tightly controlled distributionof Le Antichità di Ercolano (The Antiquities of Herculaneum). Theantiquities of Herculaneum showed that even the most classicizinginteriors of the Baroque, or the most "Roman" rooms of William Kentwere based on basilica and temple exterior architecture turned outside in,hence their often bombastic appeatrance to modern eyes: pedimentedwindow frames turned into gilded mirrors, fireplaces topped with templefronts.

The new interiors sought to recreate an authentically Roman andgenuinely interior vocabulary. Techniques employed in the style includedflatter, lighter motifs, sculpted in low frieze-like relief or painted in monotones en camaïeu ("like cameos"), isolatedmedallions or vases or busts or bucrania or other motifs, suspended on swags of laurel or ribbon, with slenderarabesques against backgrounds, perhaps, of "Pompeiian red" or pale tints, or stone colors. The style in France

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Interior of Home House in

London, designed by Robert

Adam in 1777 in the Adam style.

Thomas Hamilton's design for the

Royal High School, Edinburgh, 1831.

was initially a Parisian style, the Goût grec ("Greek style"), not a court style; when Louis XVI acceded to thethrone 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 Romanfurniture until around the turn of the century, and furniture-makers were morelikely to borrow from ancient architecture, just as silversmiths were morelikely 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".[2]

A new phase in neoclassical design was inaugurated by Robert and JamesAdam, who travelled in Italy and Dalmatia in the 1750s, observing the ruinsof the classical world. On their return to Britain, they published a bookentitled The Works in Architecture in instalments between 1773 and 1779.This book of engraved designs made the Adam repertory availablethroughout Europe. The Adam brothers aimed to simplify the rococo and

baroque styles which had been fashionable in the preceding decades, to bring what they felt to be a lighter andmore elegant feel to Georgian houses. The Works in Architecture illustrated the main buildings the Adam brothershad worked on and crucially documented the interiors, furniture and fittings, designed by the Adams.

Greek revival

From about 1800 a fresh influx of Greek architectural examples, seen through the medium of etchings andengravings, gave a new impetus to neoclassicism, the Greek Revival. There was little to no direct knowledge ofGreek civilization before the middle of the 18th century in Western Europe, when an expedition funded by theSociety of Dilettanti in 1751 and led by James Stuart and Nicholas Revett began serious archaeological enquiry.Stuart was commissioned after his return from Greece by George Lyttelton to produce the first Greek building in

England, the garden temple at Hagley Hall (1758-9).[3] A number of British architects in the second half of thecentury took up the expressive challenge of the Doric from their aristocratic patrons, including Joseph Bonomi andJohn Soane, but it was to remain the private enthusiasm of connoisseurs up to the first decade of the 19th century.

Seen in its wider social context, Greek Revival architecture sounded anew note of sobriety and restraint in public buildings in Britain around1800 as an assertion of nationalism attendant on the Act of Union, theNapoleonic Wars, and the clamour for political reform. It was to beWilliam Wilkins's winning design for the public competition for DowningCollege, Cambridge that announced the Greek style was to be thedominant idiom in architecture. Wilkins and Robert Smirke went on tobuild some of the most important buildings of the era, including theTheatre Royal, Covent Garden (1808–09), the General Post Office(1824–29) and the British Museum (1823–48), Wilkins UniversityCollege London (1826–30) and the National Gallery (1832–38).

At the same time the Empire style in France was a more grandiose wave of neoclassicism in architecture and thedecorative arts. Mainly based on Imperial Roman styles, it originated in, and took its name from, the rule ofNapoleon I in the First French Empire, where it was intended to idealize Napoleon's leadership and the Frenchstate. The style corresponds to the more bourgeois Biedermeier style in the German-speaking lands, Federal style

in the United States,[4] the Regency style in Britain, and the Napoleonstil in Sweden. According to the art historian

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A. Rinaldi. The White hall of the

Gatchina palace. 1760s. An early

example of the Italianate neoclassical

interior design in Russian

architecture.

The L'Enfant Plan for

Washington, D.C., as revised by

Andrew Ellicott in 1792.

Hugh Honour "so far from being, as is sometimes supposed, the culmination of the Neo-classical movement, theEmpire 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".[5]

Neoclassicism continued to be a major force in academic art through the 19th century and beyond—a constantantithesis to Romanticism or Gothic revivals— although from the late 19th century on it had often been consideredanti-modern, or even reactionary, in influential critical circles. The centres of several European cities, notably StPetersburg and Munich, came to look much like museums of Neoclassical architecture.

Characteristics

High neoclassicism was an international movement. Though neoclassicalarchitecture employed the same classical vocabulary as Late Baroquearchitecture, it tended to emphasize its planar qualities, rather thansculptural volumes. Projections and recessions and their effects of lightand shade were more flat; sculptural bas-reliefs were flatter and tendedto be enframed in friezes, tablets or panels. Its clearly articulatedindividual features were isolated rather than interpenetrating, autonomousand complete in themselves.

Neoclassicism also influenced cityplanning; the ancient Romans hadused a consolidated scheme forcity planning for both defense andcivil convenience, however, theroots of this scheme go back toeven older civilizations. At its mostbasic, the grid system of streets, a central forum with city services, two mainslightly wider boulevards, and the occasional diagonal street werecharacteristic of the very logical and orderly Roman design. Ancient facadesand building layouts were oriented to these city design patterns and theytended to work in proportion with the importance of public buildings.

Many of these urban planning patterns found their way into the first modernplanned cities of the 18th century. Exceptional examples include Karlsruhe and Washington DC. Not all plannedcities and planned neighborhoods are designed on neoclassical principles, however. Opposing models may befound in Modernist designs exemplified by Brasilia, the Garden city movement, levittowns, and new urbanism.

Regional trends

Britain

From the middle of the 18th century, exploration and publication changed the course of British architecture towardsa purer vision of the Ancient Greco-Roman ideal. James 'Athenian' Stuart's work The Antiquities of Athens andOther Monuments of Greece was very influential in this regard, as were Robert Wood's Palmyra and Baalbec. Acombination of simple forms and high levels of enrichment was adopted by the majority of contemporary Britisharchitects and designers. The revolution begun by Stuart was soon to be eclipsed by the work of the Adam

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The central courtyard of Sir William

Chambers' Somerset House in London.

Château de Montmusard (1765), by

Charles de Wailly.

Brothers, James Wyatt, Sir William Chambers, George Dance, James Gandon and provincially based architectssuch as John Carr and Thomas Harrison of Chester.

In the early 20th century, the writings of Albert Richardson were responsible for a re-awakening of interest in pureneoclassical design. Vincent Harris (compare Harris's colonnaded and domed interior of Manchester CentralReference Library to the colonnaded and domed interior by JohnCarr and R R Duke), Bradshaw Gass & Hope and Percy Thomaswere among those who designed public buildings in the neoclassicalstyle in the interwar period. In the British Raj in India, Sir EdwinLutyens' monumental city planning for New Delhi marked the sunsetof neoclassicism. In Scotland and the north of England, where theGothic Revival was less strong, architects continued to develop theneoclassical style of William Henry Playfair. The works of CuthbertBrodrick and Alexander Thomson show that by the end of the 19thcentury the results could be powerful and eccentric.

France

The first phase of neoclassicism in France is expressed in the "Louis XVI style" of architects like Ange-JacquesGabriel (Petit Trianon, 1762–68); the second phase, in the styles called Directoire and "Empire", might becharacterized by Jean Chalgrin's severe astylar Arc de Triomphe (designed in 1806). In England the two phasesmight be characterized first by the structures of Robert Adam, the second by those of Sir John Soane. The interiorstyle in France was initially a Parisian style, the "Goût grec" ("Greek style") not a court style. Only when the youngking acceded to the throne in 1771 did Marie Antoinette, his fashion-loving Queen, bring the "Louis XVI" style tocourt.

From about 1800 a fresh influx of Greek architectural examples, seenthrough the medium of etchings and engravings, gave a new impetus toneoclassicism that is called the Greek Revival. Although severalEuropean cities - notably St Petersburg, Athens, Berlin and Munich -were transformed into veritable museums of Greek revival architecture,the Greek revival in France was never popular with either the State or thepublic.

What little there was, started with Charles de Wailly's crypt in the churchof St Leu-St Gilles (1773–80), and Claude Nicolas Ledoux's Barrieredes Bonshommes (1785-9). First-hand evidence of Greek architecturewas of very little importance to the French, due to the influence of Marc-Antoine Laugier's doctrines that sought to discern the principles of the

Greeks instead of their mere practices. It would take until Laboustre's Neo-Grec of the second Empire for theGreek revival to flower briefly in France.

Spain

Spanish Neoclassicism was exemplified by the work of Juan de Villanueva, who adapted Burke's theories ofbeauty and the sublime to the requirements of Spanish climate and history. He built the Prado Museum, thatcombined three functions - an academy, an auditorium and a museum - in one building with three separateentrances.

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Prado Museum in Madrid, by Juan de

Villanueva

The Lincoln Memorial, an early 20th

century example of American

Renaissance neoclassical architecture.

This was part of the ambitious program of Charles III, who intended to make Madrid the Capital of the Arts andSciences. Very close to the museum, Villanueva built the Astronomical Observatory. He also designed severalsummer houses for the kings in El Escorial and Aranjuez and reconstructed the Major Square of Madrid, amongother important works. Villanueva´s pupils expanded the Neoclassicalstyle in Spain.

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Main article: Neoclassical architecture in Poland

The center of Polish Neoclassicism was Warsaw under the rule of thelast Polish king Stanislaw August Poniatowski. Vilnius University wasanother important center of the Neoclassical architecture in Europe, ledby notable professors of architecture Marcin Knackfus, LaurynasGucevicius and Karol Podczaszynski. The style was expressed in theshape of main public buildings, such as the University's Observatory,Vilnius Cathedral and the town hall.

The best-known architects and artists, who worked in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were Dominik Merlini, JanChrystian Kamsetzer, Szymon Bogumil Zug, Jakub Kubicki, Antonio Corazzi, Efraim Szreger, Christian PiotrAigner and Bertel Thorvaldsen.

United States

In the new republic, Robert Adam's neoclassical manner was adapted for the local late 18th and early 19th-centurystyle, called "Federal architecture". One of the pioneers of this style was English-born Benjamin Henry Latrobe,who is often noted as America's first professional architect and the father of American architecture. The BaltimoreBasilica, the first Roman Catholic Cathedral in the United States, is considered by many experts to be Latrobe'smasterpiece.

The widespread use of neoclassicism in American architecture, as well asby French revolutionary regimes, and the general tenor of rationalismassociated with the movement, all created a link between neoclassicismand republicanism and radicalism in much of Europe. The Gothic Revivalcan be seen as an attempt to present a monarchist and conservativealternative to neoclassicism.

In later 19th-century American architecture, neoclassicism was oneexpression of the American Renaissance movement, ca 1880-1917. Itslast manifestation was in Beaux-Arts architecture (1885–1920), and itsvery last, large public projects in the United States were the LincolnMemorial (1922), the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. (1937), andthe American Museum of Natural History's Roosevelt Memorial (1936).

Today, there is a small revival of Classical Architecture as evidenced by the groups such as The Institute of

Classical Architecture and Classical America.[6] The School of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame,

currently teaches a fully Classical curriculum.[7]

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The Red Army Theatre in Moscow,

Russia

The Keating Millennium Centre at St.

Francis Xavier University, Canada,

completed in 2001

USSR

Main article: Stalinist architecture

In the Soviet Union (1917–1991), neoclassical architecture was verypopular among the political elite, as it effectively expressed state power,and a vast array of neoclassical building was erected all over the country.Soviet architects sometimes tended to over-use the elements of classicalarchitecture, resulting in gaudy-looking buildings, which rendered Sovietneoclassical architecture the derogatory epithet "wedding cake-architecture."

Soviet neoclassical architecture was exported to other socialist countriesof the Eastern Bloc, as a gift from the Soviet Union. Examples of thisinclude the Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw, Poland and theShanghai International Convention Centre in Shanghai, China.

The Third Reich

Main article: Nazi architecture

Neoclassical architecture was the preferred style by the leaders of the National Socialist movement in the ThirdReich, especially admired by Adolf Hitler himself. Hitler commissioned his favourite architect, Albert Speer, to plana re-design of Berlin as a city comprising imposing neoclassical structures, which would be renamed asWelthauptstadt Germania, the centrepiece of Hitler's Thousand Year Reich.

These plans never came to fruition due to the eventual downfall of Nazi Germany and the suicide of its leader.[8]

Neoclassicism today

See also: New Classical Architecture

After a lull during the period of modern architectural dominance (roughlypost-World War II until the mid-1980s), neoclassicism has seensomewhat of a resurgence. This rebirth can be traced to postmodernarchitecture's embrace of classical elements as ironic, especially in light ofthe dominance of Modernism. While some continued to work withclassicism as ironic, some architects such as Thomas Gordon Smith,began to consider classicism seriously. While some schools had interestin classical architecture, such as the University of Virginia, no school wasdedicated to classical architecture. In the early 1990s a program inclassical architecture was started by Smith and Duncan Stroik at theUniversity of Notre Dame. Programs at the University of Miami,Andrews University, and Judson University have trained a number ofnew classical architects during this resurgence. Today one can findnumerous buildings such as the Schermerhorn Symphony Center again built in the neoclassical style today.

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In Britain a number of architects are active in the neoclassical style. Two new university Libraries, Quinlan Terry'sMaitland Robinson Library at Downing College and ADAM Architecture's Sackler Library illustrate that theapproach taken can range from the traditional, in the former case, to the unconventional, in the latter case.

Recently, Prince Charles came under controversy for promoting a classically designed development on the land ofthe former Chelsea Barracks in London. Writing to the Qatari Royal family (who were funding the developmentthrough the property development company Qatari Diar) he condemned the accepted modernist plans, insteadadvocating a classical approach. His appeal was met with success and the plans were withdrawn. A new design by

architecture house Dixon Jones is currently being drafted.[9]

See also

Neo-Historism

New Urbanism

Federal Period

Nordic Classicism

Neoclassical architecture in MilanJohn Carr

Robert Adam

Sir William Chambers

References

1. ^ Gontar

2. ^ Honour, 110-11, 110 quoted

3. ^ Though Giles Worsley detects the first Grecian influenced architectural element in the windows of NunehamPark from 1756, see Giles Worsley, "The First Greek Revival Architecture", The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 127,No. 985 (April 1985), pp. 226-229.

4. ^ Gontar

5. ^ Honour, 171-184, 171 quoted

6. ^ "The Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America" (http://www.classicist.org/). Classicist.org.Retrieved 2011-06-11.

7. ^ "University of Notre Dame School of Architecture at the" (http://architecture.nd.edu/arch_home.aspx).Architecture.nd.edu. Retrieved 2011-06-11.

8. ^ "Welthauptstadt Germania – Hitler's vision of a new Berlin" (http://akin.blog-city.com/welthauptstadt_germania.htm). Akin.blog-city.com. Retrieved 2011-03-28.

9. ^ Booth, Robert (25 June 2010). "Prince Charles's role in Chelsea barrack planning row 'unwelcome'"(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/25/prince-charles-chelsea-barracks-planning). London: Guardian.Retrieved 15 January 2011.

Further reading

Elizabeth Meredith Dowling, "New Classicism", Rizzoli, 2004

Jean-Francois Gabriel, "Classical Architecture for the Twenty-first Century", Norton, 2004Hakan Groth. Neoclassicism in the North

Hugh Honour, Neoclassicism

David Irwin, Neoclassicism (in series Art and Ideas) (Phaidon, paperback 1997)

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Stanislaw Lorentz. Neoclassicism in Poland (Series History of art in Poland)

Thomas McCormick, 1991. Charles-Louis Clérisseau and the Genesis of Neoclassicism (Architectural

History Foundation)

Mario Praz. On Neoclassicism

External links

Institute of Classical Architecture and Art (http://www.classicist.org)

Traditional Architecture Group (http://www.traditionalarchitecture.co.uk/index.html)

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