From the Publisher This wonderfully illustrated book offers the reader a richly detailed exploration of European art in the eighteenth century. The age of the Enlightenment is traced from its origins in France, and the creation of the Academy, to the revival of the Arcadian dream and the exuberance of the Venetian scene. Works of art are given full-page illustrations, with detailed enlargements that further reveal technique and content. These images capture an age that produced an extraordinary range of styles and subjects, including the splendor of the courts, magnificent landscapes and the raging storm of the Revolution. It is difficult to find a single definition to encapsulate European art in the eighteenth century. The architecture of the period inherited all the magnificent convolutions of the Baroque but they were interpreted with a lighter and more graceful touch. Painting, too, appeared to accept the exuberance of the Baroque, but quieted it down. Canaletto, Bellotto and Guardi produced wonderful “stills” of a contented Europe that were later known as “rococo.” In England, architecture turned towards the severe Palladian style and painting became biting social satire under Hogarth’s brush. The French philosophers of the Enlightenment proposed a new social order based on the supremacy of reason, and classical form was considered the most effective way of giving the new credo expression in the visual arts. The excavation of the sites at Herculaneum and Pompeii fueled this enthusiasm. Intellectuals from all over Europe set out on the Grand Tour to Italy, collecting curios. Neoclassicism takes the reader on a dazzling visual journey through this unique time of artistic splendor and turbulent social upheaval.
