Neoclassical architecture

Neoclassical architecture, sometimes referred to as Classical Revival architecture, is an architectural style produced by the Neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century in Italy, France and Germany. It became one of the most prominent architectural styles in the Western world. The prevailing styles of architecture in most of Europe for the previous two centuries, Renaissance architecture and Baroque architecture, already represented partial revivals of the Classical architecture of ancient Rome and ancient Greek architecture, but the Neoclassical movement aimed to strip away the excesses of Late Baroque and return to a purer, more complete, and more authentic classical style, adapted to modern purposes.
The development of archaeology and published accurate records of surviving classical buildings was crucial in the emergence of Neoclassical architecture. In many countries, there was an initial wave essentially drawing on Roman architecture, followed, from about the start of the 19th century, by a second wave of Greek Revival architecture. This followed increased understanding of Greek survivals. As the 19th century continued, the style tended to lose its original rather austere purity in variants like the French Empire style. The term "neoclassical" is often used very loosely for any building using some of the classical architectural vocabulary.
In form, Neoclassical architecture emphasizes the wall rather than chiaroscuro and maintains separate identities to each of its parts. The style is manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulae as an outgrowth of some classicizing features of the Late Baroque architectural tradition. Therefore, the style is defined by symmetry, simple geometry, and social demands instead of ornament. In the 21st century, a version of the style continues, sometimes called New Classical architecture or New Classicism.

History

Neoclassical architecture is a specific style and moment in the late 18th and early 19th centuries that was specifically associated with the Enlightenment, empiricism, and the study of sites by early archaeologists. Classical architecture after about 1840 must be classified as one of a series of "revival" styles, such as Greek, Renaissance, or Italianate. Various historians of the 19th century have made this clear since the 1970s. Classical architecture during the 20th century is classified less as a revival, and more a return to a style that was decelerated with the advent of Modernism. Yet still Neoclassical architecture is beginning to be practiced again in the 21st century more in the form of New Classical architecture and even in Gentrification and Historicism Architecture, the Neoclassical architecture or its important elements are still being used, even when Postmodern architecture is dominant throughout the world.

Palladianism

A return to more classical architectural forms as a reaction to the Rococo style can be detected in some European architecture of the earlier 18th century, most vividly represented in the Palladian architecture of Georgian Britain and Ireland. The name refers to the designs of the 16th-century Venetian architect Andrea Palladio.
The Baroque style had never truly been to the English taste. Four influential books were published in the first quarter of the 18th century which highlighted the simplicity and purity of classical architecture: Vitruvius Britannicus by Colen Campbell, Palladio's I quattro libri dell'architettura, De re aedificatoria by Leon Battista Alberti and The Designs of Inigo Jones... with Some Additional Designs. The most popular was the four-volume Vitruvius Britannicus by Colen Campbell. The book contained architectural prints of famous British buildings that had been inspired by the great architects from Vitruvius to Palladio. At first the book mainly featured the work of Inigo Jones, but the later tomes contained drawings and plans by Campbell and other 18th-century architects. Palladian architecture became well established in 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 and William Kent designed Chiswick House. This house was a reinterpretation of Palladio's Villa Capra "La Rotonda", but purified of 16th-century elements and ornament. This severe lack of ornamentation was to be a feature of Palladianism. In 1734, William Kent and Lord Burlington designed one of England's finest examples of Palladian architecture, Holkham Hall in Norfolk. The main block of this house followed Palladio'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 Late Baroque architecture in Paris, such as in the Louvre Colonnade. This shift was even visible in Rome at the redesigned façade for Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran.

Neoclassicism

By the mid-18th century, the movement broadened to incorporate a greater range of classical influences, including those from Ancient Greece. An early centre of neoclassicism was Italy, especially Naples, where by the 1730s court architects such as Luigi Vanvitelli and Ferdinando Fuga were recovering classical, Palladian and Mannerist forms in their Baroque architecture. Following their lead, Giovanni Antonio Medrano began to build the first truly neoclassical structures in Italy in the 1730s. In the same period, Alessandro Pompei introduced neoclassicism to the Venetian Republic, building one of the first lapidariums in Europe in Verona, in the Doric style. During the same period, neoclassical elements were introduced to Tuscany by architect Jean Nicolas Jadot de Ville-Issey, the court architect of Francis Stephen of Lorraine. On Jadot's lead, an original neoclassical style was developed by Gaspare Maria Paoletti, transforming Florence into the most important centre of neoclassicism in the peninsula. In the second half of the century, Neoclassicism flourished also in Turin, Milan and Trieste. In the latter two cities, just as in Tuscany, the sober neoclassical style was linked to the reformism of the ruling Habsburg enlightened monarchs.
The shift to neoclassical architecture is conventionally dated to the 1750s. It first gained influence in England and France; in England, Sir William Hamilton's excavations at Pompeii and other sites, the influence of the Grand Tour, and the work of William Chambers and Robert Adam, were pivotal in this regard. In France, the movement was propelled by a generation of French art students trained in Rome, and was influenced by the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann. The style was also adopted by progressive circles in other countries such as Sweden and Russia.
International neoclassical architecture was exemplified in Karl Friedrich Schinkel's buildings, especially the Altes Museum in Berlin, Sir John Soane's Bank of England in London and the newly built White House and Capitol in Washington, D.C. of the nascent American Republic. The style was international. The Baltimore Basilica, which was designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe in 1806, is considered one of the finest examples of neoclassical architecture in the world.
A second neoclassic wave, more severe, more studied and more consciously archaeological, is associated with the height of the First French Empire. In France, the first phase of neoclassicism was expressed in the Louis XVI style, and the second in the styles called Directoire and Empire. Its major proponents were Percier and Fontaine, court architects who specialized in interior decoration.
In the decorative arts, neoclassicism is exemplified in French furniture of the Empire style; the English furniture of Chippendale, George Hepplewhite and Robert Adam, Wedgwood's bas reliefs and "black basaltes" vases, and the Biedermeier furniture of Austria. The Scottish architect Charles Cameron created palatial Italianate interiors for the German-born Catherine the Great in Saint Petersburg.

Interior design

Indoors, neoclassicism made a discovery of the genuine classic interior, inspired by the rediscoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum. These had begun in the late 1740s, but only achieved a wide audience in the 1760s, with the first luxurious volumes of tightly controlled distribution of Le Antichità di Ercolano Esposte. The antiquities of Herculaneum showed that even the most classicizing interiors of the Baroque, or the most "Roman" rooms of William Kent were based on basilica and temple exterior architecture turned outside in, hence their often bombastic appearance to modern eyes: pedimented window frames turned into gilded mirrors, fireplaces topped with temple fronts.
The new interiors sought to recreate an authentically Roman and genuinely interior vocabulary. Techniques employed in the style included flatter, lighter motifs, sculpted in low frieze-like relief or painted in monotones en camaïeu, isolated medallions or vases or busts or bucrania or other motifs, suspended on swags of laurel or ribbon, with slender arabesques against backgrounds, perhaps, of "Pompeiian red" or pale tints, or stone colours. The style in France was initially a Parisian style, the goût grec, not a court style; when Louis XVI acceded to the throne 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 Roman furniture until around the turn of the century, and furniture-makers were more likely to borrow from ancient architecture, just as silversmiths were more likely 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".
A new phase in neoclassical design was inaugurated by Robert and James Adam, who travelled in Italy and Dalmatia in the 1750s, observing the ruins of the classical world. On their return to Britain, they published a book entitled The Works in Architecture in installments between 1773 and 1779. This book of engraved designs made the Adam style available throughout 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 and more elegant feel to Georgian houses. The Works in Architecture illustrated the main buildings the Adam brothers had worked on and crucially documented the interiors, furniture and fittings, designed by the Adams.