Classic Beauties: Artists, Italy and the Aesthetic Ideals of the 18th Century

Neo-Classicism revived the ideals of Antiquity – Classical traditions and Classical forms in art – to a large extent thanks to the sensational finds being made in Italy. The archaeological excavations carried out from the mid-1700s at Pompeii, Herculaneum and Tivoli attracted great attention among European artists and sculptors, as well as travellers generally. A sort of boom in the market for ancient art began, including items from Italian collections whose origins went back as far as the Renaissance.

Interest in the excavation sites and also in the Eternal City grew apace. Italy as a whole, and Rome in particular, became the destination of a sort of pilgrimage, primarily for artists, sculptors and architects, who started to travel to the peninsula in great numbers and to establish their own studios there. The opportunity to study Classical ancient originals that displayed a perfect knowledge of human anatomy and extolled the beauty of the human body became their chief source of inspiration. Neo-Classicism succeeded the Baroque and after its birth in Italy rapidly spread across the whole of Europe.

Numerous travellers made the journey to Italy for the impressions that came from a personal encounter with ancient history. Such fashionable “grand tours” could last anything up to two years. They took back not only impressions, but also collections of pieces of art dating from the era of Antiquity, as well, of course, as works by their own contemporaries. For example, among the souvenirs most in demand were architectural landscapes incorporating Roman ruins by Hubert Robert, Giovanni Paolo Panini or Jakob Philipp Hackert, and also the engravings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi.

Blown-up photographs of works by that Italian engraver and architect have been placed on the walls of the central hall of the exhibition, which has been turned into an oval space. Within it monumental works by the Roman sculptors Carlo Albacini and Vincenzo Pacetti that copied ancient prototypes rub shoulders with world-famous masterpieces by the great Italian master Antonio Canova. The Hermitage can boast the finest collection of Canova’s works anywhere on the planet. On display in Amsterdam are two sculptural groups, The Three Graces and Cupid and Psyche, and statues of Cupid and Hebe.

Clarity, compositional integrity and balance were the aims that Anton Raphael Mengs pursued in his art. The president of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome and a member of many other European academies, he was for many years an incontestable exemplar of the “grand style”. Perseus and Andromeda, The Judgement of Paris and The Annunciation give an idea of the oeuvre of that celebrated painter.

Mengs had a considerable influence on Angelica Kauffman, who enjoyed exceptional popularity throughout her career. The famous female painter’s Hector Summoning Paris to Battle and Virgil reading the Aeneid to Augustus and Octavia demonstrate a devotion to the Classical ideals, while the romantic image she created of herself in the Self-Portrait recalls the fact that she was the prototype for the heroine of Madame de Staël’s novel Corinne, ou l’Italie.

The exhibition includes four paintings by the most famous history painter in the period when Neo-Classicism was emerging – Pompeo Batoni. They include striking monumental pictures of Hercules at the Crossroads and The Holy Family.

A number of the paintings in the exhibition are connected with the subject of the journey that became known as the “grand tour: and illustrate the famous visit to Europe made by the Comte et Comtesse du Nord (the names assumed by Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich, the future Tsar Paul I, and his wife, Maria Feodorovna). The display includes portraits of the couple and depictions of their travelling companions, the Saltykov family and Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov. It was during that trip that the paintings by Batoni and Hackert now on show in Amsterdam were bought or commissioned.

The display is supplemented by a video giving information about the Neo-Classical style and its exponents.

The exhibition curator is Sergei Olegovich Androsov, Doctor of Art Studies, head of the State Hermitage’s Department of Western European Fine Art.