Charles Rollin and Early Neoclassicism

Abstract

The classical introduction to Neoclassical art begins by comparing a painting such as Joseph Marie Vien's Vendors of Love with its antique source, in this case a Roman wall painting. Such a comparison illustrates the impact on the arts made by the mid-eighteenth century archaeological discoveries at Herculaneum, Pompeii, Athens, and elsewhere in the Mediterranean world. These discoveries generated an excitement that precipitated, or at least provided a direction to, the emergence of Neoclassicism.1 Actually, the sort of direct, complete borrowing seen in the Vien work was quite rare. A more typical example is Jacques-Louis David's Paris and Helen, in which all the details of pose, architecture, furniture, and other accessories were borrowed from a variety of antique sources.2 The late eighteenth century artist was thus enabled by the new archaeological discoveries to recreate the world of antiquity with more accuracy, and in greater detail, than his seventeenth century counterpart had been able to do.