HISTORY OF FRENCH ART
AN EXAMPLE TO EUROPE: 12TH CENTURY
In the 12th century France is in the forefront of the intellectual and artistic life of Europe. In the visual arts this is most evident in sculpture. The century spans the transition from Romanesque to Gothic, and the surviving French examples are the finest in each style.
The vigorously dramatic carved scenes decorating churches such as Moissac and Conques date from the early years of the 12th century. They are the climax of the Romanesque in sculpture. Just a few years later, in mid-century, Chartres provides the earliest surviving examples of the very different Gothic style.
THE SCULPTURES OF CHARTRES: 1150-1220
The earliest porch of Chartres cathedral - the triple entrance …show more content…
They transform them into a classicism which is unmistakably French.
The oldest of the three is Georges de la Tour, who uses as his main stylistic device the strong contrast between light and shade pioneered by Caravaggio. He takes this to far greater lengths than his predecessor, often limiting the source of light in his paintings to a single candle. The result is a startlingly beautiful severity, with simple outlines of light picking out the contours of flesh or fabric. Where the Italians transform the example of Caravaggio into baroque, a French artist takes it towards classicism.
It is not known whether La Tour visits Italy, but the style of Caravaggio is anyway familiar through the master's northern followers in the Netherlands. The other two French classical painters spend nearly all their working lives in Rome.
Nicolas Poussin moves to Italy in his twenties, in 1624. He makes an intense study of classical sculpture and finds himself increasingly out of sympathy with the baroque style prevailing in Rome. His response is to devise his own alternative. Where baroque painters engage in flamboyant visual gestures, carried along on a flood of emotion, Poussin develops a rational pictorial grammar to express the inner meaning of a scene and the attitudes of the …show more content…
His theories become the cornerstone of the academies of art founded in the 17th and 18th centuries.
His own paintings divide viewers more decisively than those of any other great master. Enthusiasts rate them among the highest achievements of European painting. Others see only stilted exercises, revealing the effect of the wax figures which Poussin poses and groups on a miniature stage to help in perfecting his compositions.
The third French classicist of the 17th century is altogether gentler in his appeal. Like Poussin, Claude Lorrain moves to Rome in his twenties and hardly ever leaves the region. Like Poussin, he is much taken with the evocative traces of the classical world in the city and the surrounding countryside. But what entrances Claude most of all is the Roman landscape itself, and the light which suffuses it.
Claude invents his own very original form of landscape painting. His countryside is beautifully calm and composed (no wind shakes a leaf in a Claude painting). Classical buildings frame striking vistas. Small figures, often mythological, move discreetly among