FROM NEOCLASSICISM TO ROMANTICISM

Around 1755-60 Italian art seems to orient itself around two distinct poles, completely abandoning the Rococo type of creativity. These two poles catalyze different artistic experiences which are destined to meet only in later times. So while on the one hand we again find at least the formal continuation of the late 17th century Baroque, on the other we can note the first signs of Neoclassicism, to be understood from the beginning not only as a reaction against baroque and rococo taste, but as the clarifications in a more conscious and directed way, of criteria and values already present in some way in the preceding decades. And if with so-called Roman Neoclassicism we make reference to an aesthetic of reaction against the dominant style of the 18th century, as had been the French variety--such as the architectural style in Northern Italy and Milan in particular-, we can also recognize reasons and motivations which place it solidly in the evolution of 18th century thought and custom.

In this way we can quickly distinguish two moments of neoclassical production as regards both the intentions and the socio-geographical-cultural conditions that determine them. On the one hand French Neoclassicism (and David in particular) is tied up with the fate of the bourgeoisie and the French Revolution and therefore is also predestined to feed into the Empire style; on the other hand, Roman neoclassicism, as it is called, is that of Canova and the papal culture, and aspires to an ideal and total beauty, in no sense foreign, taken from archaeological reminiscences given new life by new excavations.

The climate of the Enlightenment provides a common denominator in which, in the second half of the 18th century, there arises an interpretive style which proposes according to reason a new expressive language, beyond concerns of geography or differences in aspirations. The Encyclopedia's thirty-five volumes comprise not only the knowledge but also the esprit of an epoch, a "new system of purely earthly life, formed by nature and reason together under the sign of political freedom, religious tolerance and the liberation from metaphysical chains" (Wieder). Surely this is the spirit of Rococo and corresponds to a new vision of the world which can be traced back to the rationalism which finds its roots in the 17th century in Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and Locke.

Through reflections starting from the thought of Locke and Berkeley, Hume will arrive at critical empiricisn and will establish the first bases of positivism. This concerns France in particular where rationalism really dominates 18th century culture, spreading into a radical transformation of attitudes, language and customs, directly related to the evolution of society. Rococo had already wanted to be the bearer of a new vision of reality, a new taste, pervaded by the concept of an earthly life filled with sensuality and a joyful disregard for any metaphysics, inspired by purely human values, based on the natural desire for beauty, progress and tolerance. It is in relation to such a culture that a purely enlightenment Neoclassicism develops, linked to an affirmation of "ratio," to the life of the bourgeoisie and to the causes of the state.

J. L. David, as was said, is the central figure at this point; quite apart from revolutionary events and goals that are exclusively French, he shows a profound similarity with and connection to Roman neoclassicism, alien to any social ferment in the conception of an art still breaking free from history, though it too is surely traceable in some ways to the culture of the Enlightenment. The same passion for archaeology, which contributed so such to the birth of the neoclassical aesthetic, can only be fully understood from within such a climate as this, a proof if there ever was one, that Europe was invaded by it, giving new life to the orientation toward antiquity which gained scientific stature with the excavations and related studies. The Enlightenment is also that adherence to the present which already set the bourgeoisie Rococo apart from 17th century Baroque and which undoubtedly is a vital part of this Neoclassicism. It is seen, logically, in David, for whom at a certain time the artistic choices were no longer separable from the political ones, but it can also be seen in Canova (cfr. ad vocem), who evidently is concerned with an apolitical present in his works, where the great themes of man dominate, as is also true in the literature and poetry of the time, so that it is possible to trace a parallel, for example, between Foscolo's "Dei Sepolcri" (On Tombs) and Canova's Monument to Cristina of Austria, both having the meditation on death as its central theme; or between the Foscolo of the Ode to a Healed Friend and the Canova of Paolina Borghese, where the subject of reflection shifts to the myth of beauty. These are comparisons which allow us to notice, outside of any analysis of language, the protoromantic dimension of Neoclassicism. And it is this dimension, which leads back to the "sublime," that best marks the break from the earlier rococo artistic culture, whose poetics were rather connected to the "picturesque," a category in which the artist creates visual sensations, often resorting to artifice, to particular motifs (the "rocaille" for example, from which the name rococo) and directs the viewer to the proper feeling. Instead, in the poetic of the sublime the vision of the real is "sublimated" in a kind of transcendental reality, in an absolute which according to Kant is the origin of negative pleasure because at the same time it attracts and alarms. Still fully within an enlightenment climate, then, reason and experience seem to share in this attempt of art's to reach a deeper knowledge of man, digging within his own conscience, seeking new heights and depths, which is already an entirely romantic motivation.

And so the reflection on Neoclassicism leads to an ulterior clarification. There exists a Neoclassicism of the French Enlightenment and bourgeoisie, totally connected--painting, sculpture and especially architecture--to events in society; and a Roman Neoclassicism (in a broad sense Italian, though Northern Italy is culturally tied to France) which is proto-romantic, disattached from the social and political, instead connected to events in the human soul. The two share a language, that is a "style," which partly owes its definition to the interest in archaeology which culminated in the inclusion of the study of ancient statues in the programs of Academies, and in the proliferation of engravings referring to the monuments of antiquity. A definitive role in this sense was played by Piranesi, who though he was still tied to the pictorial tradition of the Venetian 18th century, offers Neoclassicism an extremely important catalogue of motifs in the tableaux of the "Different ways to decorate the chimney and every other part of the building" (1769) and "Vases Candelabras Cippi Sarcophagi Tripods Lanterns and Ancient Ornaments" (1778).

The diffusion of the "style," almost a fashion, corresponds to a similar theoretical tendency, which will grow out of a new doctrine of art, of which Winckelmann and Mengs are the major spokesmen. In the consideration of Greek art as the highest artistic expression, in the exaltation of Greek beauty, in the final assertion that "the highest beauty is in God,"

Winckelmann reveals the evident contradiction between the rigid and rational literary precepts of formal neoclassicism and the yearning for the absolute and the sublime which mark so many neoclassical works. If by dogmatic rigor any concession to the feeling of the individual artist is excluded, that will result in the individual feeling surfacing on the spiritual level, sometimes with mystical accents. The "character of truth" is for Winckelmann "given by the feeling" and that is enough to make us understand how the rationality of forms is intimately connected to their spirituality, understood in terms that are increasingly agitated and emotional. Rationalism is most prominent in architecture. Carlo Lodoli dwells on the importance of material in the determination of style regarding the functionality of a building, but with a rigor that rules out the search for beauty" which is still destined however to be an ideal of Milizia who in "Principles of Civic Architecture" (1781) proposes the superiority of Greco-Roman architecture, beautiful by its very nature. Milizia's theories, however, like Lodoli's and Algarotti's, Memmo's etc. as well, belong to the so-called "functionalism": in architecture everything must have its function. The search for beauty, then, must go hand in hand with the search for comfort, solidity, and especially functionality. To Winckelmann's concept of transcendental beauty Milizia adds the concept of a beauty according to reason. Mengs occupies an intermediate position; while still accepting Winckelmann's ideas, he expands on them sustaining that the beautiful exists in nature.

But a rigorous analysis of the aesthetic theories of the period would require a specific center, such is the mixture of tendencies, as is the case with the whole artistic panorama of the neoclassical period. Rationalism, "feeling," the diffusion of conceptions of "genius," the rapid definition of the sublime, characterize a very agitated scene, not without multiple contradictions. Thus, beyond the austere language of one referring himself back to the ancients, we find different neoclassical movements next to one another, be they primitive, purist, etc.

In the field of Neoclassical painting, Italy had a far more provincial tone than France, and not only because of the noted socio-cultural reasons, but also because of the absence of artistic personalities who could compete with the talent of the French.

Principal points of reference of neoclassical artistic production in Italy were therefore the Academies and their frigid programs. In Rome Mengs' activity stands out, his informative precepts are found, for example, in the decorative pictorial cycle in Villa Borghese, begun around 1782 and carried forward with the collaboration of several artists. Toward the end of the century Camuccini's canvases in Rome possess a more strongly dramatic character; he is also known as a portraitist. In Rome, however, painting seems contained within the limits of academism, in contrast with Milan, which is much livelier, due in part to Milan's new political role.

Andrea Appiani (cfr. ad vocem) certainly stands out in the neoclassical climate, especially when on Bonaparte's arrivral in Milan he becomes official painter of the Emperor, the author as such of many pompous and rhetorical works, far inferior to those he created away from Napoleon. His portraits especially indicate the arrlval of that psychological questioning which will characterize romantic portraiture.

The panorama of what was called Neoclassical painting in Italy is still rather homogeneous. In Florence, Sabatelli, perhaps more than others, anticipates the ways of romanticism with his predilection for a more heightened emotional tone, but for the most part the cities of Italy in this fin du siecle period appear dominatd by the Academies. In Genoa the Ligustica Academy, in Milan the Brera, then those in Parma, Verona and Bergamo, where there is outstanding work by Giuseppe Diotti, who contributed so much to forming the character of what would be the Lombard school of artists, like Piccio and those close to him.

The climate still remains academic, even retaining for different cities the regional stamp from ancient times. Thus the Veneto is less influenced by neoclsssical currents, because of the persistence of the local colorism in practice, though weakened and incapable of providing a strong contrast to the academic set of precepts.

Neoclassical sculpture presents analogous characteristics to those of painting, in Italy and to some extent, all of Europe. Winckelmann's ideal propositions here find a way to realize themselves in an artistic endeavour which, outside of any visible drama, recall the "noble simplicity" and "quiet grandiosity" of the Greeks. Canova was certainly the main representative of this tendency which in Rome also found high expression in the work of the Dane Albert Thorwaldsen, really much more academic than Canova, but like him a reference point for a whole group of artists that spread neoclassical taste throughout Italy. Among them it is worth remembering at least Rinaldo Rinaldi (cfr ad vocem), Giovanni Ceccarini and Giuseppe Fabris. In Milan, very alive artistically in these years, we find, among others, Pacetti, Pompeo Marchesi and Abbondio Sangiorgio.

But it is in architecture, and especially that of Northern Italy, that Neoclassicism shows its most authentic face and its autonomy. If one the one hand we find constant reference to the ancient, and the aspiration toward a formal purity and an ideal beauty, on the other, especially in Lombardy, the imitation of the ancient is but one of the characters of this style which, based on reason, approaches the problem of a building in decisively new terms, as can be seen in the establishment of discreet typologies of public buildings which come to effect the city, socially and in terms of urban planning. The new city, Milan for example, reflects modern institutional and political choices. Buildings spring up inspired by new functional criteria, hospitals, theaters, public housing, museums, etc., all responding to a discipline they share which refers to the urban space, making it an expression of Enlightenment culture. Piermarini and Albertolli (cfr. ad vocem) are the main figures in the aesthetic transformation of Milan, be it in the field of architecture or that of decoration, all the hierarchies in art having by now been abolished.

Milan the capital is at the height of its new dignity, and Antolini's Bonaparte Forum shows us how much the city knew and wanted to take part in its own time.

But aside from decisions made in Milan which related to the particular situation then and there, all of Italy is exposed to a milder neoclassicism in architecture, which if on the one hand seems to quiet the baroque exuberance, on the other ends up with a stylistic choice in which the affirmation of austere, measured forms appears without that commitment to innovation contained rather in the aspirations of theorists and realized, for example, in Milan.

So, if on the one hand, Italian architects are affirming a new formal syntax, rarely does it reach redefinitions in urban planning that are without perceptible amplified tones and rhetoric, if not thoroughly given over to a kind of heroic agitation. If we take a good look we will see that the most artistically interesting neoclassical creations (one thinks for example of Valadier's work in Rome at the Piazza del Popolo and the stairway leading towards the Pincio) incorporate grandiose scenographies whose references to the classica1 and to theoretical canons is decidedly less important than the scenographic requirements, so much so that shortly afterward a gap will open due to "the outbreak of an eclecticism in which the confusion of styles obfuscated the notion of what style was" (A.M. Brizio). But if this tendency, which will culminate in the re-evaluation of the Gothic, has nothing in common with the neoclassical choices of the French or the Milanese, rigorous in their conception and in their execution, it finds its root in the same neoclassical theorizing, which carries with it a great bit of the romantic sensibility, totally centered on the concept of the spirituality of art, which allows for the outbreak of feelings and of the imagination.

Unfortunately, Italian art will only partially experience this type of cultural fervor, while the poetry of the time is full of it.

Italy had long since lost its ancient role as guide in the field of the figurative arts, while it had slowly become provincialized in a series of regional schools, both in terms of geography and style. Thus for all of the 19th century, at least until Divisionism, this provincial tone will prevail in Italian art (only Futurism in the 20th century will signal Italy's definitive re-entry into the European climate), in which different motives and directions coexist. The Academies, at least for the entire first half of the 19th century, are still the point of reference for artistic research, such that while in France at the same time art had declared war on the academy in its search for a more direct relationship with the truth, Italy makes its artistic decisions within a rigidly formal set of precepts, in which however it is always possible to hear the echo of the winds of Romance blowing free over the Alps, and especially into the historical painting and the portrait, the most common genres of the time. Many times it is the subject of an historical painting that changes; the genre has come down to us from the Middle Ages--and at a certain point directly from contemporary history and current events--rather than from greco-roman antiquity or mythology. Certainly the interest in the Middle Ages and the for attraction for the sublime constitute the poles around which all of European Romanticism will turn. Füssli and Blake are the protagonists in this romantic feeling that tends "to affirm the creative value of the unbridling of the passions" and which in Italy rinds pale echoes in the genre of the "patetico" which is seen a little bit everywhere, as in the musical fleld where it occurs as melodrama.

The greatest painter of this Romantic phase is Francesco Hayez (cfr. ad vocem), especially active in Milan, and as much a painter of historical subjects as portraits; he has a great narrative ability and a "melodramatic" temperament. Famous are his portralts of famous people, representing not only their social dignity, but also their psychological and human depth. They present, in a certain sense, the living perception of the soul and the sentiment of the sitter, to the point where precise historical reference is abandoned and the person, now without name or history, becomes the personification of an interior state.

P.B.