Pictorial Sources of the Neo-classical Style: London or Rome?

Pictorial Sources ofutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA the Neo-classical Style: London or Rome?MLKJIHGFEDCBA D A V ID G O O D R E A U It is my hope that this essay will b eginto answer the question posed b yits title. The title itself is at b estno more than a d eviceto d rawattention to one area of a much larger prob lem, namely, what are the sources of the neo­ classical style and its subject matter, which appear in late eighteenth-century history painting? Because this is a question which favors open-ended answers, a few words about the state of the relevant scholarship may be in order. Until only a few years ago, most scholars agreed that the Parnassus (Fig. 1), painted at Rome early in 1761 by Anton Raphael Mengs, was the first work executed in the neo-classical style. Because of the influence of Mengs and his Parnassus, the neo-classical style in history painting was believed to have developed at Rome. Foreign artists, it was thought, went to Rome to study, were attracted to Mengs’s new style, and in effect brought about a “School of Mengs” in the painting of historical subject matter.1 This account of the expansion of the neo-classical style in history painting was exploded in 1954 by Professor Ellis K. Waterhouse.2 Professor Waterhouse pointed out that within three months after completing the Parnassus, Mengs left Rome to become Court Painter in Madrid, where he stayed until the end of 1769. Because of his absence from Rome during most of theGFEDCBA 247 Figure 1: Anto n Raphael Mengs, vutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Parnassus. Villa Albani, Rome. (Pho to: Ander son) GFEDCBA 248 Pictorial Sources of the Neo-classical Style / GFEDCBA 249utsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXW critical d ecad eof the 1760’s, Mengs’s influence on those young artists who are associated with early developments in the neo-classical style of history painting was, of course, necessarily limited. Furthermore, the style and the allegorical subject matter of Mengs’s Parnassus are very different from the neo-classical ideal as it appears in Jacques-Louis David’s Oath of the Horatii (Fig. 2). David’s Horatii^ the most famous neo-classical history painting, was completed in 1784, less than twenty-five years after Mengs’s work. Professor Waterhouse proposed that the work of Gavin Hamilton was more important than that of Mengs in the development of the neo-classical style and its subject matter. Figure 3 reproduces an engraving after Hamilton’s Andromache Weeping over the Body of Hector. Hamilton’s painting—like Mengs’s fresco—was completed in 1761. Hamilton was a Scottish history and portrait painter who established permanent residence at Rome about 1755. Unlike Mengs, Hamilton was at Rome at the moment when many young artists began to arrive there to study, and, therefore, he could have influenced them to adopt the neo-classical style. After completing their studies at Rome, most students returned to their native countries, committed to some version of the neo-classical style in history painting. Moreover, there is another way in which Hamilton could have put the neo-classical style on the map. He had his paintings engraved, and prints after his works flooded Europe. Since the publication of Professor Waterhouse’s article in 1954, British priority in the development of the neo-classical style and its iconography in history painting at Rome has rightly been well-accepted by scholars. But because modem scholarship classically begins its examination of the neo­ classical phenomenon with the study of British artists, most notably Gavin Hamilton, already living at Rome, there has been little recognition of the possibility that some elements which were important to the beginning of the neo-classical activity at Rome may have been brought to Italy from England. It is my purpose here to investigate and, I hope, to discredit the assumption that the young British artist forgot or abandoned the training acquired in his native country when he came into contact with the artistic scene at Rome. To do so, I shall discuss the Death of Virginia, a work executed at Rome by a young English artist, Nathaniel Dance, and in the process try to show that...