#french classicism

[classic-male-nudes]

Oedipus and the Sphinx

by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1808-27, classicism, oil on canvas)

[allegorypaintings]

Allegory of the Earth

Artist: Noël Coypel (French, 1628-1707)

Date: c. 1670

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Museum of Fine Arts Lyon, Lyon, France

[charlesreeza]

The Baroque Chapelle Royale was Louis XIV’s final addition to the Palace of Versailles.  It was also the last project of the architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart who designed most of the palace.

Photos by Charles Reeza, October 2021

[kecobe]

Portrait of a Medalist Circle of Sébastien Bourdon (French; 1616–1671) 1668 Oil on canvas Christie’s, New York

[themuseumwithoutwalls]

MWW Artwork of the Day (6/17/19) Nicolas Poussin (French, 1594–1665) The Abduction of the Sabine Women (c. 1633-34) Oil on canvas, 154 x 206 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Harris Brisbane Dick Fund)

According to legend, Romulus, having settled Rome with his gang of bachelor warriors, attempted to negotiate marriages for them with the neighboring Sabine tribe. When they turned down his offer Romulus, unscrupulous fellow that he was, organized a festival as a ruse and invited the Sabines to attend. That's him here at the left raising the hem on his cloak in a pre-arranged signal to his men, each of whom will carry off one of the Sabine maidens, bringing her back to Rome to provide the city with future generations. You can read all about it in Plutarch, Livy or Virgil.  As you can see, the artist has some of them getting carried away and abducting a mother, her babies and an old woman in the heat of the action. The "yellow guy" at the right is really wearing an armor modeled after a Roman "lorica," which was made of leather and reproduced the anatomy of the male torso.  

Poussin experimented with compositional variations in a number of preliminary drawings, which elaborated the spatial and figural ideas for the painting.  For the key figures of his composition he borrowed motifs from a number of classical and classicizing sculptures, including the Roman statue of a "Gaul Killing Himself and His Wife" [The Ludovisi Gaul], and Giambologna's 1583 sculpture group of the subject ["Rape of a Sabine Woman"], as well as from Pietro da Cortona's 1625 painting, "Rape of the Sabines."  Poussin's knowledge of the architecture of Vitruvius and Serlio is also apparent in the painting.

[noellalovelyweddings]

Grand Salon by Leon Salcedo Via Flickr: Chateau de Vaux le Vicomte

[thorin-is-a-cuddler]

Gaston d‘Orléans watching one of d‘Aubignac‘s theatrical pieces and saying something along the lines of „How good of him to have followed the rules of Aristoteles, but I shall never forgive them for having inspired such a horrendous tragedy to d‘Aubignac.“

[vasopv-blog]

Jean Auguste Dominque Ingres, The Source (1856).