A neoclassical conundrum: Painting Greek mythology in France, 1780-1825
Item
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Title
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A neoclassical conundrum: Painting Greek mythology in France, 1780-1825
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:ba282e79e8d2:10887
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identifier
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11197
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Creator
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Hanson, Katie,
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Contributor
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Patricia Mainardi
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Date
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2011
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Art history | Antoine-Jean Gros | Jacques-Louis David | Jean-Baptiste Regnault | Mythology | Neoclassicism | Pierre Guérin
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Abstract
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This dissertation analyzes Greco-Roman mythological subjects as a thematic subset of French Neoclassical painting between 1780 and 1825. This style and time period are better known for moralizing and heroic subjects from Roman history and Napoleonic conquest, while amorous and fantastical mythic subjects have remained marginalized. By highlighting this thematic subset, however, my dissertation emphasizes the complementarities between mythological subjects and the more widely studied themes of virtuous action within French Neoclassical painting in particular, as well as continuities with traditions and new directions in French painting more generally.;I contextualize paintings by Jacques-Louis David, Anne-Louis Girodet, Antoine-Jean Gros, Pierre Guerin, and Jean-Baptiste Regnault, as well as the commissioning and purchasing practices of the Director of King's Buildings, the comte d'Angiviller, within contemporaneous art theory, criticism, and mythography to illuminate thematic trends and cultural contexts for the reception of mythic painting. From these sources, I propose new interpretations of paintings depicting the Deucalion flood, Orpheus, Aurora, Morpheus, Ariadne, and Mars, as well as the poet Sappho. My dissertation is divided into thematic chapters analyzing myth as a cultural constant for exhibition, Ovid's illustrated Metamorphoses, otherworldly perfection in superhuman narratives and bodies, myth's embodiment of creative inspiration, and myth as a forum for legacy formation.;French Neoclassical painters' utilization of fanciful narratives from Greek mythology demonstrates continued interest in Rococo subjects as well as the broadening of thematic considerations that would be paramount among Romantics. My dissertation, by considering Neoclassicizing mythologies as a group constituting a trend, demonstrates that such paintings are not isolated anomalies, but rather integrated threads in the art historical fabric, bound to what came before as well as to what would follow. This consideration of mythological paintings as a poetic subset of Neoclassicism promotes a more organic view of French painting; by presenting them as hybrids, at once Rococo (in their ambiguity and eroticism), Neoclassical (in their style and antique characters), and Romantic (in their focus on passions and creative processes of the human mind), my dissertation identifies continuities within French narrative painting from the eighteenth into the nineteenth centuries.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Art History
