Lorentz, Stanisław; Rottermund, Andrzej: Neoclassicism in Poland (Warsaw, 1986)

“enlightened” free-thinking phiłosopher, who verified everything with his reason, supported
social reforms and universal education. Secular architecture now developed to a greater extent
than ecclesiastical as a result of new needs, novel types of buildings arose to serve the needs of
the economy, rapidly developing towns, science and education. The didactic and educational
tasks reąuired of painting and graphic arts caused particular attention to be paid to the themes
and contents of paintings, drawings and engravings. This favoured the development of
allegoric, history and genre painting.
In the second half of the 18th century, Italy began to attract artists and admirers of art as
a centre of studies on ancient culture and art carried oat by archaeologists, and as the scene of
excavations and the country of Palladio. But only the sculptor Antonio Canova achieved
world famę in the arts.
France was then the main centre of European art. The trip to Italy in 1749-1751 madę by the
Marąuis de Marigny, the director of Royal Buildings, accompanied by Cochin and Soufflot,
constituted a turning point towards neoclassicism. In the period of early neoclassicism,
1750-1760, Jacąues Ange Gabriel was the leading architect. Soufflot, the author of St.
Genevieve’s Church in Paris, which was later transformed into the Pantheon, is considered
the most outstanding representative of maturę neoclassicism. In the last years of the 18th
century, the avant-garde style was represented by Claude Nicolas Ledoux. Jacąues Louis
David, whose paintings (e.g. the “Oath of the Horatii” of 1784) exerted a great influence on
the development of artistic culture at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, was the most
outstanding personality in painting. Jean Antoine Houdort was the most famous sculptor.
The impact of France on the development of neoclassical art and the artistic culture of the
Enlightenment was so strong that the name “French Europę” has been adopted for this
period. The French neoclassicism of the second half of the 18th century has been called the
style of Louis XVI, although it also covered the second half of the reign of Louis XV.
In Great Britain, neoclassical art developed in a different manner. The century or so between
1714 and 1820 is treated as one period, called Georgian, from the names of the three kings:
George I, George II and George III, who reigned at that time. In the second part of the 18th
century, there arose a different version of neoclassicism, created by two brothers, architects