Classicism as a cultural style of the 17th century. Luxury and severity of classicism

Queen's House - Queen's House, 1616-1636) in Greenwich. Architect Inigo Jones

The time has come, and the high mysticism of Gothic, having gone through the trials of the Renaissance, gives way to new ideas based on the traditions of ancient democracies. The desire for imperial greatness and democratic ideals was transformed into a retrospection of imitation of the ancients - this is how classicism appeared in Europe.

At the beginning of the 17th century, many European countries became trading empires, a middle class emerged, and democratic transformations took place. Religion was increasingly subordinated to secular power. There were many gods again, and the ancient hierarchy of divine and worldly power came in handy. Undoubtedly, this could not but affect trends in architecture.

In the 17th century in France and England, a new style arose almost independently - classicism. Just like the contemporary Baroque, it became a natural result of the development of Renaissance architecture and its transformation in different cultural, historical and geographical conditions.

Classicism(French classicisme, from Latin classicus - exemplary) - artistic style and aesthetic direction in European art of the late 17th - early 19th centuries.

Classicism is based on ideas rationalism emanating from philosophy Descartes. A work of art, from the point of view of classicism, should be built on the basis of strict canons, thereby revealing the harmony and logic of the universe itself. Of interest to classicism is only the eternal, the unchangeable - in each phenomenon it strives to recognize only essential, typological features, discarding random individual characteristics. The aesthetics of classicism attaches great importance to the social and educational function of art. Classicism takes many rules and canons from ancient art (Aristotle, Plato, Horace...).

Baroque was closely associated with the Catholic Church. Classicism, or the restrained forms of the Baroque, proved more acceptable in Protestant countries such as England, the Netherlands, Northern Germany, and also in Catholic France, where the king was much more important than the Pope. The possessions of an ideal king should have ideal architecture, emphasizing the true greatness of the monarch and his real power. “France is I,” proclaimed Louis XIV.

In architecture, classicism is understood as an architectural style common in Europe in the 18th - early 19th centuries, the main feature of which was an appeal to the forms of ancient architecture as a standard of harmony, simplicity, rigor, logical clarity, monumentality and reasonableness of filling space. The architecture of classicism as a whole is characterized by regularity of layout and clarity of volumetric form. The basis of the architectural language of classicism was the order, in proportions and forms close to antiquity, symmetrical axial compositions, restraint of decorative decoration, and a regular system of city planning.

Usually divided two periods in the development of classicism. Classicism developed in the 17th century in France, reflecting the rise of absolutism. The 18th century is considered a new stage in its development, since at that time it reflected other civic ideals based on the ideas of the philosophical rationalism of the Enlightenment. What unites both periods is the idea of ​​a reasonable pattern of the world, of a beautiful, ennobled nature, the desire to express great social content, sublime heroic and moral ideals.

The architecture of classicism is characterized by rigor of form, clarity of spatial design, geometric interiors, softness of colors and laconicism of external and internal decoration of buildings. Unlike Baroque buildings, the masters of classicism never created spatial illusions that distorted the proportions of the building. And in park architecture the so-called regular style, where all lawns and flower beds have the correct shape, and green spaces are placed strictly in a straight line and carefully trimmed. ( Garden and park ensemble of Versailles)

Classicism is characteristic of the 17th century. for countries in which there was an active process of formation of national states and the strength of capitalist development was growing (Holland, England, France). Classicism in these countries carried new features of the ideology of the rising bourgeoisie, fighting for a stable market and expanding the productive forces, interested in centralization and national unification of states. Being an opponent of class inequalities that infringed on the interests of the bourgeoisie, its ideologists put forward the theory of a rationally organized state based on the subordination of the interests of classes. The recognition of reason as the basis for the organization of state and social life is supported by the arguments of scientific progress, which the bourgeoisie promotes by all means. This rationalistic approach to assessing reality was transferred to the field of art, where the ideal of citizenship and the triumph of reason over elemental forces became an important theme. Religious ideology is increasingly subordinate to secular power, and in a number of countries it is being reformed. The adherents of classicism saw an example of a harmonious social order in the ancient world, and therefore, to express their socio-ethical and aesthetic ideals, they turned to examples of ancient classics (hence the term classicism). Developing traditions Renaissance, classicism took a lot from the heritage baroque.

Architectural classicism of the 17th century developed in two main directions:

• the first was based on the development of the traditions of the late Renaissance classical school (England, Holland);
• the second - reviving classical traditions, developed the Roman Baroque traditions (France) to a greater extent.

English classicism

The creative and theoretical heritage of Palladio, who revived the ancient heritage in all its breadth and tectonic integrity, especially appealed to the classicists. It had a great impact on the architecture of those countries that took the path earlier than others architectural rationalism. Already from the first half of the 17th century. in the architecture of England and Holland, which were relatively weakly influenced by the Baroque, new features were determined under the influence Palladian classicism. The English architect played a particularly important role in the development of the new style. Inigo Jones (Inigo Jones) (1573-1652) - the first bright creative individual and the first truly new phenomenon in English architecture of the 17th century. He owns the most outstanding works of English classicism of the 17th century.

In 1613 Jones went to Italy. Along the way he visited France, where he was able to see many of the most significant buildings. This trip, apparently, became a decisive impetus in the movement of the architect Jones in the direction indicated by Palladio. It was to this time that his notes on the margins of Palladio’s treatise and in the album date back.

It is characteristic that the only general judgment about architecture among them is devoted to a reasoned criticism of certain trends in the late Renaissance architecture of Italy: Jones reproaches Michelangelo and his followers that they initiated the excessive use of complex decoration, and argues that monumental architecture, c. unlike scenography and short-lived light buildings, it must be serious, free from affectation and based on rules.

In 1615, Jones returned to his homeland. He is appointed inspector general of the Ministry of Royal Works. Next year he begins to build one of his best works Queen's House - Queen's House, 1616-1636) in Greenwich.

In the Queens House, the architect consistently develops the Palladian principles of clarity and classical clarity of order divisions, visible constructiveness of forms, balance of proportional structure. The general combinations and individual forms of the building are classically geometric and rational. The composition is dominated by a calm, metrically dissected wall, built in accordance with an order commensurate with the scale of a person. Balance and harmony reign in everything. The plan shows the same clarity of division of the interior into simple, balanced spaces.

This was Jones's first building that has come down to us, which had no precedents in its severity and naked simplicity, and also contrasted sharply with previous buildings. However, the building should not (as is often done) be assessed by its current condition. At the whim of the customer (Queen Anne, wife of James I Stuart), the house was built directly on the old Dover Road (its position is now marked by long colonnades adjacent to the building on both sides) and originally consisted of two buildings separated by the road, connected over it by a covered bridge. The complexity of the composition once gave the building a more picturesque, “English” character, emphasized by the vertical stacks of chimneys arranged in traditional clusters. After the death of the master, in 1662, the gap between the buildings was built up. This is how the resulting volume was square in plan, compact and dry in architecture, with a loggia decorated with columns on the Greenwich Hill side, with a terrace and staircase leading to a two-story hall on the Thames side.

All this hardly justifies the far-reaching comparisons between the Queenhouse and the square, centric villa at Poggio a Caiano near Florence, built by Giuliano da Sangallo the Elder, although the similarities in the drawing of the final plan are undeniable. Jones himself mentions only the Villa Molini, built by Scamozzi near Padua, as the prototype of the façade on the river side. The proportions - the equality of the width of the risalits and the loggia, the greater height of the second floor compared to the first, rustication without breaking into individual stones, a balustrade over the cornice and a curvilinear double staircase at the entrance - are not in the character of Palladio, and are slightly reminiscent of Italian mannerism, and at the same time rationally ordered compositions of classicism.

Famous Banqueting House in London (Banqueting House - Banquet Hall, 1619-1622) in appearance it is much closer to the Palladian prototypes. Due to its noble solemnity and consistent order structure throughout the entire composition, it had no predecessors in England. At the same time, in terms of its social content, this is an original type of structure, passing through English architecture since the 11th century. Behind the two-tiered order façade (at the bottom - Ionic, at the top - composite) there is a single two-light hall, along the perimeter of which there is a balcony, which provides a logical connection between the exterior and the interior. Despite all the similarity to the Palladian facades, there are significant differences here: both tiers are the same in height, which is never found in the Vincentian master, and the large glazing area with small recessed windows (an echo of local half-timbered construction) deprives the wall of the plasticity characteristic of the Italian prototypes, giving it a clearly national look. English features. The luxurious ceiling of the hall, with deep coffers ( later painted by Rubens), differs significantly from the flat ceilings of English palaces of that time, decorated with light reliefs of decorative panels.

With name Inigo Jones, a member of the Royal Building Commission since 1618, is associated with the most important urban planning event for the 17th century - laying out of the first London square created according to a regular plan. Already its common name is Piazza Covent Garden- speaks about the Italian origins of the idea. Placed along the axis of the western side of the square, the Church of St. Paul (1631), with its high pediment and two-columned Tuscan portico in the antes, is an obvious, naive in its literalness, imitation of the Etruscan temple in the image of Serlio. Open arcades in the first floors of the three-story buildings that framed the square from the north and south are presumably echoes of the square in Livorno. But at the same time, the homogeneous, classicist design of the urban space could have been inspired by the Parisian Place des Vosges, built just thirty years earlier.

St. Paul's Cathedral on the square Covent Garden (Covent Garden), the first temple built line by line in London after the Reformation, reflects in its simplicity not only the desire of the customer, the Duke of Bedford, to fulfill cheaply his obligations to the members of his parish, but also the essential requirements of the Protestant religion. Jones promised the customer to build “the most beautiful barn in England.” Nevertheless, the facade of the church, restored after the fire of 1795, is large-scale, majestic despite its small size, and its simplicity undoubtedly has a special charm. It is curious that the high doorway under the portico is false, since on this side of the church there is an altar

The Jones ensemble, unfortunately, has been completely lost, the space of the square has been built up, the buildings have been destroyed, only the building erected later, in 1878, in the northwestern corner allows us to judge the scale and nature of the original plan.

If Jones's first works suffer from a dry rigorism, then his later, estate buildings are less constrained by the ties of classical formalism. With their freedom and plasticity, they partly anticipate the English Palladianism of the 18th century. This is, for example, Wilton House (Wilton House, Wiltshire), burned down in 1647 and rebuilt John Webb, Jones's longtime assistant.

I. Jones’s ideas were continued in subsequent projects, of which the architect’s London reconstruction project should be highlighted Christopher Wren (Christopher Wren) (1632-1723) being the first grandiose reconstruction project of a medieval city after Rome (1666), which was almost two centuries ahead of the grandiose reconstruction of Paris. The plan was not implemented, but the architect contributed to the general process of the emergence and construction of individual nodes of the city, completing, in particular, the ensemble conceived by Inigo Jones hospital in greenwich(1698-1729). Ren's other major building is Cathedral of St. Paul's in London- London Cathedral of the Church of England. Cathedral of St. Pavel is the main urban development focus in the area of ​​the reconstructed City. Since the consecration of the first Bishop of London, St. Augustine (604), according to sources, several Christian churches were erected on this site. The immediate predecessor of the current cathedral, the old cathedral of St. St. Paul's, consecrated in 1240, was 175 m long, 7 m longer than Winchester Cathedral. In 1633–1642 Inigo Jones carried out extensive renovations to the old cathedral and added a west façade in classical Palladian style. However, this old cathedral was completely destroyed during the Great Fire of London in 1666. The present building was built by Christopher Wren in 1675-1710; The first service took place in the unfinished church in December 1697.

From an architectural point of view, the Cathedral of St. Paul's is one of the largest domed buildings in the Christian world, standing on a par with the Florence Cathedral, the Cathedrals of St. Sophia in Constantinople and St. Peter's in Rome. The cathedral has the shape of a Latin cross, its length is 157 m, width 31 m; transept length 75 m; total area 155,000 sq. m. In the middle cross at a height of 30 m, the foundation of a dome with a diameter of 34 m was laid, which rises to 111 m. When designing the dome, Ren used a unique solution. Directly above the middle cross, he erected the first dome in brick with a 6-meter round hole at the top (oculus), completely commensurate with the proportions of the interior. Above the first dome, the architect built a brick cone that serves as a support for a massive stone lantern, the weight of which reaches 700 tons, and above the cone is a second dome covered with lead sheets on a wooden frame, proportionally correlated with the external volumes of the building. An iron chain is placed at the base of the cone, which takes on the lateral thrust. A slightly pointed dome, supported by a massive circular colonnade, dominates the appearance of the cathedral.

The interior is mainly finished with marble cladding, and since there is little color, it looks austere. Along the walls there are numerous tombs of famous generals and naval commanders. The glass mosaics of the vaults and walls of the choir were completed in 1897.

Huge scope for construction activities opened up after the fire of London in 1666. The architect presented his city ​​reconstruction plan and received an order to restore 52 parish churches. Ren proposed various spatial solutions; some buildings are built with truly baroque pomp (for example, St. Stephen's Church in Walbrook). Their spiers along with the towers of St. Paul form a spectacular panorama of the city. Among these are the churches of Christ in Newgate Street, St. Bride's in Fleet Street, St. James's in Garlick Hill and St. Vedast in Foster Lane. If special circumstances required it, as in the construction of St Mary Aldermary or Christ Church College in Oxford (Tom's Tower), Wren could use late Gothic elements, although, in his own words, he did not like to “deviate from the best style”.

In addition to the construction of churches, Ren carried out private orders, one of which was the creation of a new library Trinity College(1676–1684) in Cambridge. In 1669 he was appointed chief warden of the royal buildings. In this position he received a number of important government contracts, such as the construction of hospitals in the Chelsea and Greenwich areas ( Greenwich Hospital) and several buildings included in Kensington Palace complexes And Hampton Court Palace.

During his long life, Wren was in the service of five successive kings on the English throne and left his position only in 1718. Wren died at Hampton Court on February 26, 1723 and was buried in St. John's Cathedral. Pavel. His ideas were picked up and developed by the next generation of architects, in particular N. Hawksmore and J. Gibbs. He had a significant influence on the development of church architecture in Europe and the USA.

Among the English nobility, a real fashion arose for Palladian mansions, which coincided with the philosophy of the early Enlightenment in England, which preached the ideals of rationality and orderliness, most fully expressed in ancient art.

Palladian English villa was a compact volume, most often three-story. The first one was rusticated, the main one was the front floor, there was a second floor, it was combined on the facade with a large order with the third - the residential floor. The simplicity and clarity of Palladian buildings, the ease of reproducing their forms, made similar ones very common both in suburban private architecture and in the architecture of urban public and residential buildings.

The English Palladians made a great contribution to the development of park art. In place of fashionable, geometrically correct " regular"The gardens have arrived" landscape parks, later called “English”. Picturesque groves with foliage of different shades alternate with lawns, natural ponds, and islands. The paths of the parks do not provide an open perspective, and behind each bend they prepare an unexpected view. Statues, gazebos, and ruins hide in the shade of trees. Their main creator in the first half of the 18th century was William Kent

Landscape or landscape parks were perceived as the beauty of natural nature intelligently corrected, but the corrections did not have to be noticeable.

French classicism

Classicism in France was formed in more complex and contradictory conditions, local traditions and the influence of the Baroque had a stronger impact. The emergence of French classicism in the first half of the 17th century. took place against the backdrop of a peculiar refraction in architecture of Renaissance forms, late Gothic traditions and techniques borrowed from the emerging Italian Baroque. This process was accompanied by typological changes: a shift in emphasis from the non-urban castle construction of the feudal nobility to the urban and suburban construction of housing for the official nobility.

The basic principles and ideals of classicism were laid in France. We can say that everything started from the words of two famous people, the Sun King (i.e. Louis XIV), who said “ The state is me!” and the famous philosopher Rene Descartes, who said: “ I think, therefore I exist"(in addition and counterbalance to Plato's saying - " I exist therefore I think"). It is in these phrases that the main ideas of classicism lie: loyalty to the king, i.e. to the fatherland, and the triumph of reason over feeling.

The new philosophy demanded its expression not only in the mouth of the monarch and philosophical works, but also in art accessible to society. Heroic images were needed, aimed at instilling patriotism and rationality in the thinking of citizens. Thus began the reform of all facets of culture. Architecture created strictly symmetrical forms, subjugating not only space, but also nature itself, trying to get at least a little closer to the created Claude Ledoux utopian ideal city of the future. Which, by the way, remained exclusively in the architect’s drawings (it is worth noting that the project was so significant that its motifs are still used in various movements of architecture).

The most prominent figure in the architecture of early French classicism was Nicolas Francois Mansart(Nicolas François Mansart) (1598-1666) - one of the founders of French classicism. His merit, in addition to the direct construction of buildings, is the development of a new type of urban dwelling for the nobility - a “hotel” - with a cozy and comfortable layout, including a vestibule, a main staircase, and a number of enfiladed rooms, often enclosed around a courtyard. The Gothic-style vertical sections of the facades have large rectangular windows, a clear division into floors and rich order plasticity. A special feature of the Mansar hotels are the high roofs, under which additional living space was located - the attic, named after its creator. An excellent example of such a roof is a palace Maison-Laffite(Maisons-Laffitte, 1642–1651). Mansar's other works include: Hotel de Toulouse, Hotel Mazarin and Paris Cathedral Val de Grace(Val-de-Grace), completed according to his design Lemerce And Le Muet.

The heyday of the first period of classicism dates back to the second half of the 17th century. The concepts of philosophical rationalism and classicism put forward by bourgeois ideology represented by absolutism Louis XIV takes as official state doctrine. These concepts are completely subordinate to the will of the king and serve as a means of glorifying him as the highest personification of the nation, united on the principles of reasonable autocracy. In architecture, this has a twofold expression: on the one hand, the desire for rational order compositions, tectonically clear and monumental, freed from the fractional “multi-obscurity” of the previous period; on the other hand, an ever-increasing tendency towards a single volitional principle in the composition, towards the dominance of an axis that subordinates the building and adjacent spaces, to the subordination to the will of man not only of the principles of organizing urban spaces, but also of nature itself, transformed according to the laws of reason, geometry, “ideal” beauty . Both trends are illustrated by two major events in the architectural life of France in the second half of the 17th century: the first - the design and construction of the eastern facade of the royal palace in Paris - Louvre (Louvre); the second - the creation of a new residence of Louis XIV, the most grandiose architectural and landscape ensemble in Versailles.

The eastern façade of the Louvre was created as a result of a comparison of two projects - one that came to Paris from Italy Lorenzo Bernini(Gian Lorenzo Bernini) (1598-1680) and Frenchman Claude Perrault(Claude Perrault) (1613-1688). Preference was given to Perrault's project (implemented in 1667), where, in contrast to the baroque restlessness and tectonic duality of Bernini's project, the extended façade (length 170.5 m) has a clear order structure with a huge two-story gallery, interrupted in the center and on the sides by symmetrical risalits . The paired columns of the Corinthian order (height 12.32 meters) carry a large, classically designed entablature, completed with an attic and balustrade. The base is interpreted in the form of a smooth basement floor, the design of which, as in the elements of the order, emphasizes the structural functions of the main load-bearing support of the building. A clear, rhythmic and proportional structure is based on simple relationships and modularity, and the lower diameter of the columns is taken as the initial value (module), as in the classical canons. The height dimensions of the building (27.7 meters) and the overall large scale of the composition, designed to create a front square in front of the facade, give the building the majesty and representativeness necessary for a royal palace. At the same time, the entire structure of the composition is distinguished by architectural logic, geometricity, and artistic rationalism.

Ensemble of Versailles(Château de Versailles, 1661-1708) - the pinnacle of architectural activity of the time of Louis XIV. The desire to combine the attractive aspects of city life and life in the lap of nature led to the creation of a grandiose complex, including a royal palace with buildings for the royal family and government, a huge park and a city adjacent to the palace. The palace is a focal point in which the axis of the park converges - on one side, and on the other - three rays of the city's highways, of which the central one serves as the road connecting Versailles with the Louvre. The palace, the length of which from the side of the park is more than half a kilometer (580 m), with its middle part is sharply pushed forward, and in height it has a clear division into the basement part, the main floor and the attic. Against the background of order pilasters, Ionic porticos play the role of rhythmic accents that unite the facades into a coherent axial composition.

The axis of the palace serves as the main disciplinary factor in the transformation of the landscape. Symbolizing the boundless will of the reigning owner of the country, it subjugates elements of geometric nature, alternating in strict order with architectural elements for park purposes: stairs, pools, fountains, and various small architectural forms.

The principle of axial space inherent in Baroque and Ancient Rome is realized here in the grandiose axial perspective of green parterres and alleys descending in terraces, leading the observer’s gaze deeper into the canal located in the distance, cruciform in plan, and further to infinity. Bushes and trees trimmed in the shape of pyramids emphasized the linear depth and artificiality of the created landscape, turning into natural only beyond the border of the main perspective.

Idea " transformed nature" corresponded to the new way of life of the monarch and the nobility. It also led to new urban planning plans - a departure from the chaotic medieval city, and ultimately to a decisive transformation of the city based on the principles of regularity and the introduction of landscape elements into it. The consequence was the spread of the principles and techniques developed in the planning of Versailles to the reconstruction of cities, especially Paris.

André Le Nôtre(André Le Nôtre) (1613-1700) - creator of the garden and park ensemble Versailles- came up with the idea of ​​regulating the layout of the central area of ​​Paris, adjacent to the Louvre and Tuileries palaces from the west and east. Louvre - Tuileries axis, coinciding with the direction of the road to Versailles, determined the meaning of the famous “ Parisian diameter", which later became the main thoroughfare of the capital. The Tuileries Garden and part of the avenue - the avenues of the Champs Elysees - were laid out on this axis. In the second half of the 18th century, the Place de la Concorde was created, uniting the Tuileries with the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, and in the first half of the 19th century. The monumental Arch of the Star, placed at the end of the Champs Elysees in the center of the round square, completed the formation of the ensemble, the length of which is about 3 km. Author Palace of Versailles Jules Hardouin-Mansart(Jules Hardouin-Mansart) (1646-1708) also created a number of outstanding ensembles in Paris at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries. These include round Victory Square(Place des Victoires), rectangular Place Vendôme(Place Vendome), complex of the Invalides hospital with a domed cathedral. French classicism of the second half of the 17th century. adopted the urban development achievements of the Renaissance and especially the Baroque, developing and applying them on a more grandiose scale.

In the 18th century, during the reign of Louis XV (1715-1774), the Rococo style developed in French architecture, as in other forms of art, which was a formal continuation of the pictorial trends of the Baroque. The originality of this style, close to baroque and elaborate in its forms, was manifested mainly in the interior decoration, which corresponded to the luxurious and wasteful life of the royal court. The state rooms acquired a more comfortable, but also more ornate character. In the architectural decoration of premises, mirrors and stucco decorations made of intricately curved lines, flower garlands, shells, etc. were widely used. This style was also greatly reflected in furniture. However, already in the middle of the 18th century there was a move away from the elaborate forms of Rococo towards greater rigor, simplicity and clarity. This period in France coincides with a broad social movement directed against the monarchical socio-political system and which received its resolution in the French bourgeois revolution of 1789. The second half of the 18th and the first third of the 19th centuries in France mark a new stage in the development of classicism and its wide spread in European countries.

CLASSICISM OF THE SECOND HALF OF THE XVIII century in many ways developed the principles of architecture of the previous century. However, the new bourgeois-rationalist ideals - simplicity and classical clarity of forms - are now understood as a symbol of a certain democratization of art, promoted within the framework of the bourgeois enlightenment. The relationship between architecture and nature is changing. Symmetry and axis, which remain the fundamental principles of composition, no longer have the same importance in the organization of the natural landscape. Increasingly, the French regular park is giving way to the so-called English park with a picturesque landscape composition imitating the natural landscape.

The architecture of buildings is becoming somewhat more humane and rational, although the huge urban scale still determines a broad ensemble approach to architectural tasks. The city with all its medieval buildings is considered as an object of architectural influence as a whole. Ideas for an architectural plan for the entire city are put forward; At the same time, the interests of transport, issues of sanitary improvement, location of trade and industrial facilities, and other economic issues begin to occupy a significant place. In work on new types of urban buildings, much attention is paid to multi-story residential buildings. Despite the fact that the practical implementation of these urban planning ideas was very limited, increased interest in the problems of the city influenced the formation of ensembles. In a large city, new ensembles try to include large spaces in their “sphere of influence” and often acquire an open character.

The largest and most characteristic architectural ensemble of French classicism of the 18th century - Place de la Concorde in Paris, created according to the project Ange-Jacques Gabriel (Ange-Jacque Gabriel(1698 - 1782) in the 50-60s of the 18th century, and received its final completion during the second half of the 18th - first half of the 19th century. The huge square serves as a distribution space on the banks of the Seine between the Tuileries Garden adjacent to the Louvre and the wide boulevards of the Champs Elysees. Pre-existing dry ditches served as the boundary of a rectangular area (dimensions 245 x 140 m). The “graphic” layout of the square with the help of dry ditches, balustrades, and sculptural groups bears the imprint of the planar layout of the Versailles Park. In contrast to the closed squares of Paris in the 17th century. (Place Vendôme, etc.), Place de la Concorde is an example of an open square, limited only on one side by two symmetrical buildings built by Gabriel, which formed a transverse axis passing through the square and the Rue Royale formed by them. The axis is fixed in the square by two fountains, and at the intersection of the main axes a monument to King Louis XV was erected, and later a high obelisk). The Champs Elysees, the Tuileries Garden, the space of the Seine and its embankments are, as it were, a continuation of this architectural ensemble, enormous in scope, in a direction perpendicular to the transverse axis.

Partial reconstruction of centers with the establishment of regular “royal squares” also covers other cities of France (Rennes, Reims, Rouen, etc.). The Royal Square in Nancy (Place Royalle de Nancy, 1722-1755) especially stands out. Urban planning theory is developing. In particular, it is worth noting the theoretical work on city squares by the architect Patt, who processed and published the results of the competition for Place Louis XV in Paris, held in the mid-18th century.

The space-planning development of buildings of French classicism of the 18th century cannot be conceived in isolation from the urban ensemble. The leading motif remains a large order that correlates well with the adjacent urban spaces. The constructive function is returned to the order; it is more often used in the form of porticoes and galleries, its scale is enlarged, covering the height of the entire main volume of the building. Theorist of French classicism M. A. Laugier M. A. fundamentally rejects the classical column where it really does not bear the load, and criticizes placing one order on top of another if it is really possible to get by with one support. Practical rationalism receives broad theoretical justification.

The development of theory has become a typical phenomenon in the art of France since the 17th century, since the establishment of the French Academy (1634), the formation of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture (1648) and the Academy of Architecture (1671). Particular attention in theory is paid to orders and proportions. Developing the doctrine of proportions Jacques Francois Blondel(1705-1774) - a French theorist of the second half of the 17th century, Laugier creates a whole system of logically substantiated proportions, based on the rationally meaningful principle of their absolute perfection. At the same time, in proportions, as in architecture in general, the element of rationality, based on speculatively derived mathematical rules of composition, is enhanced. Interest in the heritage of antiquity and the Renaissance is growing, and in specific examples of these eras they strive to see a logical confirmation of the principles put forward. The Roman Pantheon is often cited as an ideal example of the unity of utilitarian and artistic functions, and the most popular examples of Renaissance classics are the buildings of Palladio and Bramante, in particular the Tempietto. These samples are not only carefully studied, but also often serve as direct prototypes of the buildings being erected.

Built in the 1750s-1780s according to the design Jacques Germain Soufflot(Jacques-Germain Soufflot) (1713 - 1780) Church of St. Genevieve in Paris, which later became the national French Pantheon, one can see the return to the artistic ideal of antiquity and the most mature examples of the Renaissance inherent in this time. The composition, cruciform in plan, is distinguished by the consistency of the overall scheme, the balance of the architectural parts, and the clarity and clarity of construction. The portico goes back in its forms to the Roman to the Pantheon, a drum with a dome (span 21.5 meters) resembles a composition Tempietto. The main façade completes the vista of a short, straight street and serves as one of the most prominent architectural landmarks in Paris.

Interesting material illustrating the development of architectural thought in the second half of the 18th - early 19th centuries is the publication in Paris of competitive academic projects awarded the highest award (Grand prix). A common thread running through all these projects is reverence for antiquity. Endless colonnades, huge domes, repeated porticos, etc., speak, on the one hand, of a break with the aristocratic effeminacy of Rococo, on the other, of the flowering of a unique architectural romance, for the implementation of which, however, there was no basis in social reality.

The eve of the Great French Revolution (1789-94) gave rise in architecture to a desire for austere simplicity, a bold search for monumental geometricism, and a new, orderless architecture (C. N. Ledoux, E. L. Bullet, J. J. Lequeu). These searches (also marked by the influence of the architectural etchings of G.B. Piranesi) served as the starting point for the later phase of classicism - Empire style.

During the years of the revolution, almost no construction was carried out, but a large number of projects were born. The general tendency towards overcoming canonical forms and traditional classical schemes is determined.

Culturological thought, having gone through another round, ended in the same place. The painting of the revolutionary direction of French classicism is represented by the courageous drama of historical and portrait images of J. L. David. During the years of the empire of Napoleon I, magnificent representativeness in architecture increases (C. Percier, L. Fontaine, J. F. Chalgrin)

The international center of classicism of the 18th century - early 19th century was Rome, where the academic tradition dominated in art, with a combination of nobility of forms and cold, abstract idealization, not uncommon for academicism (German painter A. R. Mengs, Austrian landscape painter J. A. Koch, sculptors - Italian A. Canova, Dane B. Thorvaldsen).

In the 17th and early 18th centuries, classicism was formed in Dutch architecture- architect Jacob van Kampen(Jacob van Campen, 1595-165), which gave rise to a particularly restrained version of it. Cross-connections with French and Dutch classicism, as well as with the early Baroque, resulted in a short brilliant flowering classicism in Swedish architecture late 17th - early 18th century - architect Nicodemus Tessin the Younger(Nicodemus Tessin Younger 1654-1728).

In the middle of the 18th century, the principles of classicism were transformed in the spirit of Enlightenment aesthetics. In architecture, the appeal to “naturalness” put forward the requirement for constructive justification of order elements of the composition, in the interior - the development of a flexible layout for a comfortable residential building. The ideal setting for the house was the landscape of an “English” park. The rapid development of archaeological knowledge about Greek and Roman antiquity (excavations of Herculaneum, Pompeii, etc.) had a huge influence on the classicism of the 18th century; The works of I. I. Winkelman, I. V. Goethe, and F. Militsiya made their contribution to the theory of classicism. In French classicism of the 18th century, new architectural types were defined: an exquisitely intimate mansion, a ceremonial public building, an open city square.

In Russia classicism went through several stages in its development and reached an unprecedented scale during the reign of Catherine II, who considered herself an “enlightened monarch,” corresponded with Voltaire and supported the ideas of the French Enlightenment.

The ideas of significance, grandeur, and powerful pathos were close to the classical architecture of St. Petersburg.

17th century: classicism and baroque, Rembrandt and Rubens

Bar oh kko- the main trends in art and literature of the seventeenth century, which was marked by the establishment of absolutism in France and Spain, the counter-reformation and the Thirty Years' War in Germany, the first bourgeois revolutions in the Netherlands and England. These events were reflected in drama and poetry, in prose and in the visual arts. However, writers and poets of the seventeenth century relatively rarely illustrated the political life of their era, preferring to talk about modernity, resorting to historical associations and mythological allusions.

Classicism and Baroque arose in the depths of the Renaissance. Classicus is exemplary and worthy of classroom study. In the 17th century The works of ancient authors, especially Virgil and Horace, who glorified Octavian Augustus, were considered classical. In relation to the works of the 17th century, created in accordance with the canons of classicism, the definition “classicist” or “classicist” is used.

Imitating ancient artists and poets, the champions of classicism, unlike the Renaissance humanists, borrowed from the heritage of antiquity not so much content as artistic principles, which were understood quite formally. Thus, based on the fact that in ancient tragedies the events took place in front of the palace from sunrise to sunset, and all plot lines were interconnected, the famous requirement of three unities is put forward: the unity of place, time and action, which the playwright was obliged to obey.

Classicism found its most complete embodiment in French art, which turned out to be very consonant with the idea of ​​serving the sovereign and the state. In France at Louis XIII (1610-1643) the de facto ruler of the country was Cardinal Richelieu, who managed to defeat the Fronde - the protests of the nobility against centralized power, which was later reflected in the historical novels of Alexandre Dumas. At the same time, ethics takes shape based on the subordination of private interests to state ones, and priority is accordingly given to duty rather than feelings. The hero of the classicists was obliged to subdue his passions with the power of reason, which was reflected in Descartes’ famous aphorism: “I think, therefore I exist.” Let us recall another well-known maxim. King Louis XIV (1643-1715) declaring: “I am the State.” The Sun King was right in his own way, for the monarch became a symbol of the consolidating nation; serving the king meant fulfilling a national duty.

Political centralization influenced art: palaces and parks had a symmetrical structure, the viewer's gaze was turned to the center. In a five-act tragedy, the third act was always the climax. At the royal residence in Versailles, a regular park was laid out, decorated with fountains and copies of ancient sculptures. The crown of the trees was trimmed in the form of cones and balls, which was also no coincidence. According to the garden and park architects, nature needed transformation, it needed to be given the correct shape.

French society was based on class principles, which were transferred to the sphere of art, which was divided into high and low.

The highest genres - epic, ode, tragedy - embodied the destinies of monarchs and their entourage. The lower genres - comedy, satire, fable - reflected the everyday life of common people.

The main principles of classicist art were determined by the French Academy, created by Richelieu. Members of the Academy, called “immortals”, or more correctly they should be called permanent, had to ensure that all writers maintained unity and divided genres into tragic and comic. Apostates were severely punished, denying them the subsidies that all faithful creators received.

The aesthetics of classicism was finally formed in the treatise Nicolas Boileau (1636-1711)"Poetic Art". The son of a judicial official at the beginning of his creative career acted as a satirist. Introduced to the king, he soon becomes the court historiographer. In “Poetic Art” (1674), written in verse, he formulates the official doctrine of classicist art, and does this with talent, being convinced that the principles he defends have always existed and will remain forever.

Boileau's “poetic art” is a holistic aesthetic system that outlines the goals of art - the glorification of the monarchy - and the poetic means of achieving the desired effect. The first literary theorist of modern times places rationality, expediency and plausibility, alien to imitation, at the forefront. However, to create a true work of art, this is not enough; you also need taste and talent:

Looking at Parnassus, he rhymes in vain

In the art of poetry one imagines reaching heights,

If it is not illuminated from heaven by an invisible light,

When he is not born a poet by the constellations:

He is constrained by scarcity of talent every hour,

Phoebus does not heed him, Pegasus balks.

Being a poet himself, N. Boileau gives expressive characteristics to lyrical genres: idyll, eclogue, ode, advice, talks about the origin of tragedy and comedy from Dionysian chants, admires the talent of the Renaissance poets C. Marot and P. Ronsard.

The year Boileau was born was also the year the greatest tragedy of the French theater was created. “The Cid” was written by an unknown lawyer from Rouen, Pierre Corneille (1606-1684). True, “The Cid” was not Corneille’s debut; he was already the author of the tragedy “Melita” and “Comic Illusion”. However, “Sid” brought success and at the same time caused a scandal. The plot of the tragedy is taken not from ancient history, but from the events of the medieval Spanish Reconquista. This was already a challenge, since the French rulers had tense relations with Spain. The hero of the tragedy is Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, to whom the medieval Spanish heroic epic “The Song of Cid” is dedicated. At the same time, P. Corneille turned to the youth of Sid, when he was young and passionately in love with Dona Jimena. Nothing prevents the future happiness of lovers, but the quarrel of their fathers destroys the harmony. Loving Jimena, Sid challenges her father to a duel, who insulted the venerable old man - Sid's father. Rodrigo killed his beloved's father in a duel. For Sid, it is not passion that is of paramount importance, but honor and duty. Having taken revenge, he fulfilled his filial duty. But now Doña Jimena, still in love with Sid, seeks revenge and his death - such is her filial duty.

P. Corneille's play is structured very clearly. The Cid at the beginning fulfilled his personal moral duties, but it is much more significant that, obeying the will of the king, he goes to fight the Moors and defeats the infidels. According to P. Corneille, the king acts as the arbiter of the highest justice. Commanding them to forget about the quarrel that had occurred, he unites the lovers.

Pierre Corneille violated many of the requirements of classicism, which he, a provincial, had never even heard of. This may be true, but the example of Corneille convinces us that genius is always above the rules. The author of “Sid” was reproached for violating the three unities, condemned for giving his tragedy a happy ending, and accused of plagiarism. All these insinuations came from the French Academy and were inspired by Cardinal Richelieu, who himself wrote plays and was jealous of the success of P. Corneille. The production of “Cid” was accompanied by triumph; the French aristocratic society saw in the hero its ideal, which it wanted to imitate. Nicolas Boileau subsequently responded to the success of “The Cid” with the following words: “In vain is the minister forming a league against the “Cid”, all of Paris looks at Ximena through the eyes of Rodrigo.”

The playwright confirmed his fame with the tragedies that followed “The Cid”: “Horace” (1639), “Cyina, or the Mercy of Augustus” (1640), “Nycomedes” (1651), in which he glorified patriotic service to the fatherland, no matter what sacrifices it required. However, the decline in talent became more and more noticeable over the years. At the end of the sixties, two tragedies with a similar name and plot appeared. The French audience unconditionally gave the palm to the young competitor of Pierre Corneille; in an unexpected competition, “Berenice” by J. Racine won, in which he showed with inimitable skill how love and duty struggle in the souls of the heroes.

Jean Racine (1639-1699) - the second great playwright of the French classic stage, “the singer of women and kings in love,” as A.S. said about him. Pushkin. In Racine's work, a new quality enters French dramaturgy - psychologism. Corneille cared little about the psychological motives of the characters' behavior. Racine focuses on depicting the inner life of heroes who are immersed in themselves, and are not at all focused on the machinations of their opponents. Racine became an unsurpassed master of depicting human passions. In J. Racine's first masterpiece, Andromache, Hector's widow and the mother of his son are surrounded by enemies who fear that the grown Astyanax will avenge his father's death.

Andromache is focused on how best to fulfill her maternal duty. Passions are boiling around her. The Epirus king Pyrrhus, who captivated her, became her captive of the heart, Pyrrhus's fiancée Hermione was rejected by him, Orestes is hopelessly in love with Hermione... Fatal passions are destructive, all the heroes die, Andromache wins, not allowing herself to be stupefied by passions and acting rationally in the most hopeless situation.

The fate of Phaedra in the tragedy of the same name (1677) is different. The wife of the Athenian king Theseus experiences a destructive passion for her stepson Hippolytus. The conflict is initially unresolvable. Phaedra's illness causes suffering. The queen's confession, torn out by the maid, aggravates the tragic conflict. Having learned from the servant about the shameful attraction of his stepmother to him, Hippolyte perceives passion as an insult. Then Phaedra has the idea of ​​vengeance on her stepson, who does not believe in the sincerity of her stepmother’s feelings, suspecting that intrigues and deceit lurk behind her false passion. Slandered, he dies. Phaedra also dies, but her death is majestic; Racine’s heroine is elevated by the passion and fear she experienced, and the repentance that came to her at the end of the tragedy.

In an effort to protect his heroine, Jean Racine argued: “Indeed, Phaedra is neither completely criminal nor completely innocent. Fate and anger aroused in her a sinful passion, which terrifies herself first of all. She makes every effort to overcome this passion. She prefers to die rather than reveal her secret. And when she is forced to open up, she experiences a confusion that shows quite clearly that her sin is rather a divine punishment, the act of which is her own will.”

Jean Baptiste Moliere (1622-1673) , who began his career as an actor, staged tragedies by P. Corneille and J. Racine. However, over time, he abandoned the tragic repertoire and devoted himself to the comedy genre. ,

His real name was Poquelin, the playwright was the son of a venerable royal upholsterer, and received a good education at Clermont College. The father did not mind if his son, having abandoned the hereditary career, became a lawyer, but Jean Baptiste dreamed of the stage. In 1643, he, together with his friends - the Bejart family - organized the “Brilliant Theater” troupe, the very first performances of which were a brilliant failure. Moliere and his friends had no choice but to go on a journey that lasted thirteen years. Moliere and his troupe traveled all over France.

In the southern provinces, Italian actors often performed simultaneously with Moliere's troupe, performing a comedy of masks - commedia dell'arte. The text of the performance was improvised, the characters were endowed with one, but bright, character trait. Moliere borrowed buffoonery techniques from the Italians and began to compose comedies himself, bringing to the stage misers, jealous people, charlatans.

In 1658, Moliere and his friends appeared in Paris. He was allowed to play P. Corneille's tragedy "Nycomed" in the Louvre. The performance was a moderate success. Then Moliere took a risk: he offered to show His Royal Majesty the comic skit “The Doctor in Love.” The farce made him famous, and Moliere himself finally realized his calling: he is a comedian and comedy writer.

During his short life, Moliere wrote about thirty comedies. Despite the fact that their content is closer to reality in comparison with tragedies, the author, basically, remains faithful to the norms of classicism. He gives preference to poetic comedy, almost always observes three unities, and the characters - misers and spendthrifts, braggarts, liars and scammers, misanthropes and hypocrites - are devoted to one passion, which causes ridicule from others and laughter from the audience.

His first comedies are relatively harmless, but targeted. Thus, in the comedy “Funny Primroses,” he made fun of Madame Rambouillet’s salon, where connoisseurs of so-called precision (French précieuse - precious) literature gathered. In her blue drawing room, ladies and gentlemen met to exchange exquisite compliments, compose and listen to madrigals, in a word, behave as the refined heroes of Madeleine Scuderi’s novel “Clelia or Roman History” behaved. This is how M.A. characterizes the masterpiece of precision. Bulgakov: “The novel was gallant, false and pompous to the highest degree. The Parisians were engrossed in it, and for the ladies it simply became a reference book, especially since the first volume of it was accompanied by such a delight as the allegorical Map of Tenderness, which depicted the River of Inclination, the Lake of Indifference, Villages of Love Letters and so on.”

In the comedy “Funny Primroses” (1659), Moliere ridiculed two young girls who strive to imitate aristocratic fashion. Rejecting worthy suitors, they almost jumped out to marry their servants only because they dressed up as dandies and spoke pompously and manneredly, as in Madame Rambouillet's salon. Needless to say, the “precious” ones recognized themselves in the cartoon, harbored a grudge and played dirty tricks on the comedian who had offended them.

In Moliere's work, satire is combined with didactics. In the subsequent comedies “The School for Husbands” (1661), “The School for Wives” (1662), and “Learned Women” (1662), the playwright strives to give useful instructions regarding family relationships.

Not a single Moliere comedy brought him so much suffering, but also such enduring success as Tartuffe.
(1664-1669). For five years the playwright fought for its production, correcting the text, softening the critical focus of the comedy. Moliere directed his attack on the secret religious organization “Society of the Holy Gifts,” which was engaged in surveillance of ill-intentioned fellow citizens and apostates. By removing specific allusions to the activities of the Society of the Blessed Sacrament, he achieved more by showing how religious fanaticism cripples the souls of believers. “Tartuffe” eventually became a parable about how ardent piety deprives a person of sound mind. Before meeting Tartuffe, Orgon was a caring father of the family, but the bigot and hypocrite hypnotized him with ostentatious asceticism so that the noble nobleman was ready to give the swindler everything he owned. Orgon, who finds himself in an unpleasant situation, is saved by the king, who sees everything, knows and cares about the welfare of his subjects. Tartuffe failed to get his hands on Orgon's property, but the viewer was worried because Orgon, who had succumbed to the charms of the imaginary saint, almost went to prison, and rejoiced when the police officer in the finale reported that the king had ordered the arrest of the swindler.

But for the comedy to reach the viewer, Moliere had to fight the powerful church authorities for five years. The ban on Tartuffe dealt a blow to Moliere's repertoire. The playwright hastily composes the comedy Don Juan (1665) in prose, ignores classicist rules and creates a masterpiece.

The Seville nobleman Don Juan da Tenorio, who lived in the 14th century, became the hero of a popular legend, which was translated and processed by the Spanish playwright Tirso de Molina in the play “The Mischief of Seville, or the Stone Guest” (1630). Don Juan (or Don Juan - in Moliere, in Pushkin - Don Guan) is obsessed with the pursuit of sensual pleasures. A deceiver of women, mocking the husband of one of his victims, he invites a tombstone to dinner - a statue of the commander. The invitation turned into the death of the hero; the libertine was stolen by the forces of heaven.

It was not by chance that Moliere turned to the legend of Don Juan. He obviously drew the plot from the performances of Italian comedians, giving it a deep, multi-valued meaning. The satirist first of all debunks the dissipation of aristocrats; his hero drags after every lady, satisfying not so much his desire as his vanity. But at the same time, Moliere’s hero is a brave and free-thinking person. He is alien to any kind of religiosity. But the lack of faith leads him to a loss of morality, and this in turn causes disappointment in life values, which ultimately leads to the destruction of the individual. Tired of living from countless victories, he voluntarily rushes towards retribution.

In this comedy, Moliere goes extremely far beyond the boundaries of classicist aesthetics.

One of the most favorite genres among the aristocratic public was comedy-ballet. Simple action was interspersed with pantomime and dancing. While creating an entertaining performance, Moliere knew how to fill it with a serious idea. In the comedy "The Bourgeois in the Nobility", the music for which was written by the famous composer Lully, Moliere portrayed the rich bourgeois Jourdain, who dreamed of an aristocratic title. A completely everyday story acquires psychological complexity. An attempt to break out of the boundaries of class existence was fraught with many losses. Both the teacher, who teaches him good manners and science, and the noble rogues, who extract money from him for very vague promises, profit from the desire to become an aristocrat. Losing his class way of life, Jourdain also loses his common sense. Moliere himself acts as a mentor to the third estate, in a comic form instilling the idea that one should be proud of one’s class and human dignity; the aristocratic arrogance of his hero does not lead to good.

Moliere's last performance was The Imaginary Invalid. He, being terminally ill himself, amused the audience by playing a man suffering from ailments he himself invented. What was it? An attempt to deceive the disease? Force himself to believe that he will overcome his illness? Moliere died after performing the play “The Imaginary Invalid.” The illness took its toll, then it was the turn of the church. The great writer was denied a proper Christian burial. Only the king's intercession helped his favorite find peace according to the Christian rite.

The classicist concept covered all areas of art in France, including architecture and painting.

Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665)- the largest classicist painter in the scale of all European art. The title of exact sciences and familiarity with the monuments of antiquity allowed him to clearly formulate and put into practice the ideas of harmoniously clear art. “The artist must demonstrate not only the ability to formulate the content, but also the power of thought in order to comprehend it,” argued Nicolas Poussin.

Poussin lived for many years in Italy. The artist was well acquainted with the Renaissance style of his predecessors Leonardo and Raphael, he observed the general fascination with the Baroque art of his contemporary Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1689), who completed the construction of St. Peter's Cathedral in the Vatican and decorated it with magnificent sculptural decoration. Poussin remained indifferent to the achievements of the Baroque, remaining faithful to the strict classics. Appealing equally to reason and feeling, he creates such canvases as “Rinaldo and Armida” based on the plot of one of the episodes of Torquato Tasso’s poem “Jerusalem Liberated” and “Tancred and Erminia”, the plot of which is also borrowed from Tasso. Poussin went down in art history as an unsurpassed master of the epic landscape. In the paintings “Landscape with Polyphemus” and “Landscape with Hercules” nature is large-scale and majestic and at the same time complemented by the expectation of some heroic deed that will take place against the backdrop of a grandiose landscape. Poussin's late paintings "The Four Seasons" (1660-1665) reflect the four ages in human life.

Bar oh kko(port. barrocco - an irregularly shaped pearl) - in opposition to classicism. Baroque contrasted classicist rationalism with increased emotionality and splendor of forms. Baroque artists are characterized by religious mysticism; reality seems illusory to them. In this regard, the title of the play by the greatest playwright of the Baroque era, Spaniard Pedro Calderon, “Life is a Dream” (1634), in which Prince Segismundo is thrown into prison by his father, the Polish king Basilio, is very indicative. The heir will not become king, for it was predicted: Segismundo will be a cruel, bloody ruler. But is the father-king right, who, in the name of the good of his subjects, doomed his son to a semi-animal existence? Basilio decides to correct the mistake, Segismundo temporarily becomes the ruler of the country. He rules the kingdom with excessive cruelty, avenging past grievances. So, did the prophecy go astray? Segismundo is again thrown into prison. His mind is clouded, he is unable to distinguish between reality and dream. Having come to terms with his existence, he finds peace. When the rebellious people proclaimed him king, he accepted power and began to rule in accordance with fair laws.

The fate of Segismundo is a parabola of human existence as interpreted by a deeply religious playwright. Calderon believes that the divine secrets of existence cannot be comprehended by the human mind. Human life is a dream in eternity. Only faith is saving, the highest victory of man is victory over himself, humility reconciles the believer with the universe. This idea is expressed in Calderon’s dramas “Adoration of the Cross”, “The Steadfast Prince”, etc.

The fine arts of Spain noticeably gravitated toward baroque trends. Spanish painters are very inclined to depict the suffering of saints, as well as the sufferings of Christ on the cross, which are overcome by the power of the spirit. For Catholic Spain, which fought for centuries with the Moors, where the Protestant movement did not meet with any support, the authority of faith remained unshakable and inspired artists to glorify the feat for the glory of Christ.

Many paintings by the famous painter Jusepe de Ribera (1588 or 1591-1652) dedicated to the lives of saints undergoing torture to which the pagans subject them. These are his paintings “The Torment of Saint Bartolomeo”, “Sebastian and Irene”, “Lamentation”, “Trinity”, numerous drawings depicting the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, St. Albert, Apostle Bartholomew. Ribera always worked on dramatic contrast: the more painful the saint’s suffering, the stronger his faith in the Savior.

Another Baroque plot is related to a miracle. A miracle appears as a result of true faith. This is one of his most famous paintings, “St. Inesa" : “Inesa, abused for her loyalty to Christianity, kneels on the stone floor. Nude, she is exposed to shame in front of the crowd, which should be in front of the canvas, in the same place where the viewer is. But long flowing hair hid her nakedness, and the angel, depicted in the shadowed upper corner of the picture, brought a white blanket, in the end of which Inesa wrapped herself. Her hands are folded in prayer, her eyes are directed upward with an expression of gratitude.”

In many of Ribera’s paintings one can feel their theatricality: sharp contrast, expressive mise-en-scène, naked psychologism. And the plot of his paintings is often close to the miraculous.

The influence of the mindset and aesthetics of the Baroque on the work of the greatest Spanish artist of the 17th century was not so obvious. Diego Velazquez (1599-1660). Most of his works, executed in the realistic manner of the high Renaissance, delight in beauty and perfection. Such are his children's portraits, Italian landscapes and the grandiose canvas “Las Meninas” (1657). Initially, the canvas measuring 318x276 cm was called “The Family of Philip IV”, then it was renamed “Las Meninas” - “Ladies of the Court.” The canvas depicts the artist’s workshop, and he himself working on a painting. In addition, there is a mirror hanging in the room, all this creates a feeling of mutual reflection, reality multiplies. The whole picture breathes life, the infanta is surrounded by ugly court ladies. The etiquette is presented in all the specific details, and at the same time, there is something ghostly, almost mystical in the reflections repeating it in the twilight of the hall.

The genre diversity of Velazquez's paintings is amazing. He painted ceremonial portraits of kings, queens and infantes ( ), including equestrian portraits of Philip IV, the first wife of Doña Isabella and the second - Mariana of Austria , Count Olivaros, Prince Balthasar Carlos, Rearing horses on which riders confidently sit, and all this against the backdrop of a silver-gray deep landscape that testifies to transient youth and power. And this already brings the portrait painter closer to baroque ideas about the frailty of earthly life.

Like his compatriots, Velazquez turned to gospel images. In Madrid, in the Prado Museum, where the most significant part of Velázquez’s legacy is stored, the master’s religious painting is represented by such subjects as the wedding of the Mother of God, the Nativity of Christ and the gifts of the Magi and the tragically painful crucifixion (see. , , ). As was typical of Baroque artists, Velazquez lingers on all sorts of curiosities of nature, not disdaining to depict the ugly and frightening. Such are his numerous grotesque depictions of jesters and dwarfs.

But, perhaps, the master’s large painting “The Spinner” (1657) is closest to the baroque worldview. At first glance, this is an ordinary genre painting; the canvas depicts women engaged in exhausting labor. But there are two planes on the canvas - real and symbolic, which is accentuated by the tapestry in the background. Obviously, this is the result of their long labors. The tapestry depicts a world full of harmony and perfection. What the spinners created makes us look at seemingly ordinary working women differently. Each of them holds a thread in her hands - the thread of fate, the thread of history, the thread of the future. The spindle of time is spinning, but the thread on it is so thin and fragile that it can break, and then it will become clear: life is just a dream, sometimes radiant, but sad.

In Madrid, Velazquez met Rubens, who had a significant influence on his work.

Paul Rubens (1577-1640)- the greatest artist of the Baroque era. His legacy consists of more than a thousand paintings, and in addition to them countless sketches, engravings, frescoes, altarpieces and tapestries woven from his designs.

The artist was an outstanding art theorist and diplomat. His Protestant parents were originally from Amsterdam, but moved to Germany to escape the Spanish terror of the Duke of Alba. Rubens was born in the small German town of Sigin. After the death of her husband, the mother converted to Catholicism and settled with her sons in Antwerp, where the future artist began to learn to draw. In 1600 he travels to Italy, spends seven years there, studying the works of Renaissance masters. He develops his own style: sublime, solemn, allegorical. He creates many representative ceremonial portraits of his contemporaries, including self-portraits. The portrait is one of the undisputed masterpieces the artist himself together with his wife Isabella Brant (1609).

Rubens's paintings amaze first of all with the scale of their images. They are huge, they usually depict a plot with the participation of many characters tensely experiencing a turbulent event, which finds its expression in the dynamics of a multi-figure composition. Rubens, being a deeply religious man, turned to biblical subjects, often conveying a mystical feeling. Despite the brightness and splendor of the image, it is not without illusory and illusory quality. This is especially noticeable in his paintings “The Elevation of the Cross” (
, ) and "Descent from the Cross" (
, ). Rubens remains in the history of art an unsurpassed master of battle episodes and hunting scenes. In the film “St. George with the Dragon” (1606-1610) he conveys the violent movement of opposing characters. A rearing horse, a wave of an armed hand, a frightened monster - everything is subordinated to rapid movement, which contrasts with the calmness of the princess, for whose sake George entered the battle.

No one knew how to convey the ecstatic movement of people and animals in brutal fights. This is confirmed by such grandiose paintings as “The Hunt for Tigers and Lions” and “The Hunt for Hippopotamus”, in which the master amazes with various kinds of wonders of nature and the intensity of human passions.

The ideas of the Baroque were embodied in painting, but the paintings of Baroque artists are not so sad compared to literary works, especially Rubens. see also
, , .

Rembrandt Harmens van Rijn (1606-1669) thirty years younger than Rubens, and Leiden, where Rembrandt was born, is not so far from Brussels, where Rubens' workshop was located. But the fates of the two geniuses are so different, and their artistic creations are so dissimilar, that the illusion arises that they belong to different eras.

Rembrandt was born into a miller's family, the eldest brother inherited his father's business, the middle brother became a shoemaker, the youngest was destined to become an artist. After graduating from the Latin school, he entered the University of Leiden, but, feeling a craving for painting, leaving the humanities, he became an apprentice to the historical painter Pieter Lastman, who worked in Amsterdam.

Eighteen-year-old Rembrandt stopped his studies and refused to go to Italy to complete his education. Throughout his life, the creator of “Danae” never left Holland. While there were no orders, he painted portraits of his parents and self-portraits, leaving more than sixty images of himself from his youth to old age.

Since 1631, Rembrandt has lived in Amsterdam. At the same time, the painting “Anatomy of Doctor Tulpa” was commissioned.
, in which the young artist appears as a realist. The body of the deceased was meticulously depicted, becoming the center of the composition. The neutral expression on the face of the pathologist giving explanations contrasts with the faces of the seven listeners who follow the explanations with intense attention. Moreover, everyone’s reaction is purely individual. Already in this work, Rembrandt showed his amazing play with chiaroscuro: everything unimportant is muted by darkness, everything essential is highlighted.

The first order is the first great success, and after it new orders. This was a happy period in Rembrandt’s life, which can be judged by the famous self-portrait with Saskia on his lap (1634): he is talented, rich, loved. Saskia van Uylenburg is a wealthy burgomaster heiress who was recently orphaned. A young couple buys a spacious house, the artist collects oriental carpets, fabrics and utensils, which he then recreates in canvases painted based on biblical motifs. Rembrandt repeatedly refers to the image of the Savior. Researchers of his work note that through the works of the famous Dutchman one can trace the entire thirty-three-year earthly journey of Christ from birth to Golgotha ​​( ).

Rembrandt often turned to Old Testament subjects. The Hermitage painting “David and Uriah” recreates a dramatic episode: David, who fell in love with Uriah’s wife Bathsheba, sends his military leader to certain death. David is tormented by his conscience, but passion wins - which, by the way, would be impossible in the works of the classicist. The Hermitage also displays other masterpieces by Rembrandt: “Flora”, “David and Jonathan”, “The Holy Family” , "Return of the Prodigal Son" , several portraits of old people and, finally, “Danae” (1636), recently restored. The plot of the picture is taken from an ancient myth. Danae is the daughter of the Argive king Acrisius. The king was predicted that he would die at the hands of his grandson. In order not to marry off his beautiful daughter, he hid her in a dungeon. But Zeus, seduced by her, entered the dungeon in the form of a golden shower, after which Danae gave birth to Perseus, who accidentally killed his grandfather while throwing a discus. The gods' prediction came true.

This subject was addressed before Rembrandt by Titian
, Tintoretto, Tiepolo, Poussin, etc. Rembrandt’s image of Danae is illuminated by the expectation of happiness. She is not as young and beautiful as her predecessors were. But Rembrandt’s “Danae” conveys a rare unity of the carnal and the spiritual. The painting is especially refined by the reflections of golden light on the bedspread, curtains and tablecloth, and most importantly, the heroine’s face framed by golden hair.

The happy period in Rembrandt's life did not last long. In 1642, Saskia died, leaving a nine-month-old son, Titus, in his father’s arms. His mother was his mother, and his father's wife was replaced by the former maid Hendrikje Stoffels. He writes repeatedly about his new family ( , ), but poverty comes to the house, and then poverty. There are no orders. "The night Watch. The company of Captain Frans Banning Cock and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch" (1642) caused a scandal. The customers were dissatisfied with the way the master painted them: he completely ignored who paid how much, absent-mindedly drawing those who paid a large fee in the background.

He was destined to outlive his son and second wife. The tragedy of his worldview intensified. In the last self-portrait, the old man’s face is barely visible through the darkness, his confused smile and silent question: “Why were fate and contemporaries so merciless to my genius?”

Another brilliant painter was not recognized during his lifetime Jan Wermeer of Delft (1632-1675). At the end of the fifties, Vermeer painted the landscape "View of Delft", then in another picture he painted a quiet street of the city where he was born and lived, never leaving it. He entered the history of art as a writer of everyday life of a burgher city. In Holland, hardworking city dwellers were the first to create their own bourgeois culture with its unchanging values: family, a cozy home, everyday work that brings joy and well-being. In Dutch art there is a great interest in material culture. Hence the careful detailing of the decoration of the house, red-brown carpet tablecloths, blue Delft faience, strict geometry of tiles neatly laid on the floor.

Vermeer's legacy is small - only thirty-five paintings. So far no one has been able to discover the unknown masterpieces of the Delft master, and the appearance of his paintings on the antique market each time resulted in the exposure of fakes.

Vermeer took a seemingly inconspicuous, but essentially revolutionary step in the history of art. Previously, paintings were painted for palaces and temples. Vermeer was one of the first to create paintings for home and family. He painted on canvases an inconspicuous private life for private clients, who, apparently, did not tower above the characters in his paintings, but shared their activities and interests.

Wermeer's paintings are, as a rule, small in size, but their composition is mathematically verified.

Vermeer's picturesque masterpieces are simple in plot. He wrote most often to ladies who write or read letters, play music, draw, do handicrafts ( , , ,
). He painted burgher intellectuals - a geographer, musician, artist, astronomer acted not only as masters of their craft, but also personified their professions.

An essential feature of Vermeer's paintings is that, being genre paintings, they carry a certain mysterious meaning.

For example, in the painting “Woman Holding Scales,” a lady in a rich home outfit is weighing gold or pearls. What exactly is unclear. A simple action takes on a symbolic meaning, since pearls represent purity and virginity, and the lady, judging by the cut of her dress, is pregnant. The scene takes on additional meaning due to the fact that there is a painting depicting the Last Judgment hanging on the wall. All these details provide scope for a wide variety of interpretations of the everyday scene. But this is the artistic originality of Vermeer’s painting, who knew how to translate verisimilitude into a philosophical concept of life.

Baroque leading trends in art and literature of the 17th century. However, in this century, so rich in talent, there were artists who were ahead of their era, unappreciated by their contemporaries, and who anticipated the emergence of new trends in the culture of subsequent centuries. But let us return to Baroque literature, which clearly manifested itself in Germany.

Baroque poets proceed from the premise that human existence is a light in the darkness, the world is a vale of suffering, and only faith in the Almighty is saving. These ideas were typical of German lyricists who wrote during the Thirty Years' War of 1618-1648, an endless battle between Catholics and Huguenots, into which the peoples of the Czech Republic, Silesia, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany were drawn. The greatest German poet of the Thirty Years' War period, Martin Opitz, writes the poem “A Word of Consolation Amid the Disasters of War.” Seeing the widespread devastation and devastation, the decline of morals and growing violence, in what way is he trying to find support in life? Only in religion.

He is echoed by another contemporary poet, Christian von Hoffmannswaldau, to whom the world, engulfed in the conflagration of war, seems like a deceptive ghost:

What is this world and the hum of winged rumors?

What is this world and all its beauty?

The wrong ray, compressed by a blind gorge,

For a moment, the grotto sparkled in the darkness;

Blooming honey, entwined with thorns,

An elegant house, concealing a mournful groan,

A slave shelter, open to everyone equally,

Grave decay, which is dressed in marble, -

This is the wrong basis for our affairs,

An idol that flesh is accustomed to elevate.

And you, soul, for the narrow circle of the earthly

Always strive to look fearlessly.

Hans Jakob Christoph von Grimmelshausen is the largest prose writer of the Baroque movement not only in German, but throughout European culture. His novel about the participants of the Thirty Years' War, “The Intricate Simplicissimus” (1669), is characterized by excessive fantasy, fabulous hyperbolic images of villains, and implausibility of good-natured characters.

Hans Grimmelshausen entered the history of German and world literature as the creator of one of the first educational novels. Simplicissimus enters life with a completely unclouded consciousness. His mind is a real tabula rasa, but on a blank slate, society writes its own laws, rules and norms, which a natural person gradually gets used to obeying.

Simplicissimus himself acts as a narrator. When writing his autobiography, he did not fail to emphasize his aristocratic origins. My father, they say, had a palace built with his own hands. It doesn’t matter that it was covered with straw, but they heated it black. The hut had a whole arsenal of weapons, consisting of shovels and hoes. Simplicissimus accepts the shepherd's rank, tending his father's pigs and goats from an early age. Well, this is also a completely honorable occupation, which the heroes of myths and legends did not shy away from.

The peaceful flow of village life is interrupted by the invasion of the Landsknechts, who completely plundered the poor people and burned the house down. This is how Simplicissimus first learned what war was. He miraculously managed to escape.

Grimmelshausen, in the incessant wanderings of Simplicissimus, reveals the absurdity and madness of a world mired in bloodshed, greed and vices.

The character's movement occurs in a spiral. Simplicissimus periodically comes to him, from which he left, which eloquently emphasizes the futility of human efforts.

The image of the main character in the novel undergoes evolution. From a simpleton, Simplicissimus turns into a cunning one. He preserves naivety as a mask, but inside he hides extraordinary intelligence.

During the military operations, Simplicissimus changed six commanders, performed several positions, supplied the army with fodder and provisions, and more than once was on the verge of death, but remained safe and sound.

The cunning of yesterday's simpleton is only a step to the next level of consciousness. Under the influence of everything he has experienced, Simplicissimus gains common sense, which allows him to look at what is happening somewhat from the outside, caring primarily about his own well-being.

Simplicissimus turns from a robbed into a robber. He stole cattle from the surrounding peasants, stole from the treasury, luck was with him.

The nobility acquired through patronage becomes a symbol of Simplicissimus’s successes; he composes a pedigree for himself and comes up with a coat of arms. Thus, stolen wealth turns yesterday’s honest tramp into a nobleman.

However, on the crest of success, disaster awaits the hero every time; this time he was accidentally captured.

Then he will visit France, Hungary and even Russia, create his own utopian island, and then go to discover new lands. Baroque storytelling is characterized by continuity; the talkative author cannot stop, much less part with the hero.

The poetry and prose of the Thirty Years' War turned out to be very relevant in Germany during the struggle against fascism.

Artamonov S.D. History of foreign literature of the 17th-18th centuries. - M., 1978.

Whipper Yu.B. Poetry of Baroque and Classicism // Vipper Yu.B. Creative destinies and history. - M., 1990.

Golenishchev-Kutuzov I.N. Literature of Spain and Italy of the Baroque era // Golenishchev-Kutuzov I.N. Romance literatures. M., 1975.

Oblomievsky D.D. French classicism. M., 1968.

Silunas Vidas. Lifestyle and art styles. Spanish theater of mannerism and baroque. St. Petersburg, 2000.

Morozov A. “Mannerism” and “Baroque” as terms of literary criticism // Russian literature. - 1966. - No. 3.

Ortega y Gasset J. Velazquez. Goya. - M., 1997.

Classicism (French classicisme, from Latin classicus - exemplary) is an artistic style in European art of the 17th - 19th centuries.
A work of art, from the point of view of classicism, must be built on the basis of strict canons. Classicism takes many rules and canons from ancient art.

CLASSICISM - “the grand style of Louis XIV” in France
Classicism developed in 17th century France, reflecting the rise of absolutism. Louis XIV understood the importance of art as a way of promoting his royal greatness.
This style reflected the famous saying of the “Sun King”: “I am the state.”

Classicism from the word classic, exemplary! This is when people again recognized the authenticity of ancient art.
Classicism is based on the ideas of rationalism, which were formed simultaneously with those in the philosophy of Descartes. A work of art, from the point of view of classicism, should be built on the basis of strict canons, thereby revealing the harmony and logic of the universe itself. Of interest to classicism is only the eternal, the unchangeable - in each phenomenon it strives to recognize only essential, typological features, discarding random individual characteristics. The aesthetics of classicism attaches great importance to the social and educational function of art. Classicism takes many rules and canons from ancient art (Aristotle, Horace).

Architecture

The eastern façade of the Louvre (otherwise called the Colonnade) is a striking example of French classicism. It embodies rigor and solemnity, scale and extreme simplicity.

Jules Hardouin-Mansart born in Paris on April 16, 1646. Studied with his great-uncle François Mansart. In 1675, Louis XIV appointed Hardouin-Mansart as court architect. The young architect's first order was the reconstruction of the castle of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Since 1678, Hardouin-Mansart directed the construction of the palace and park ensemble of Versailles. His authorship includes: the royal chapel (1689-1710), the southern (1682) and northern (1685) wings of the royal palace, the park facade, a number of interiors (together with C. Lebrun), incl. Mirror Gallery with the Halls of Peace and War (1678-86), Grand Trianon Palace (1687).
Hardouin-Mansart is the author of the planning and development of the octagonal Place Vendôme (1685-1701), during the construction of which a widely spread type of facade with arches on the ground floor, pilasters of a large order connecting the second and third floors, and an attic floor under a high steep roof was developed. . He is also the author of another Parisian square - the Place des Victories, round in plan, which was conceived as a triumphal one.
One of Hardouin-Mansart's largest works is the Cathedral of the Invalides in Paris (1680-1706), which is a huge domed rotunda and is considered one of the most perfect structures of French classicism.
Hardouin-Mansart died in Marly near Paris on May 11, 1708.

Height 107 m
Paris, France.
The Cathedral of the Invalides, which is a huge domed rotunda, is one of the most significant monumental buildings of the 17th century. in Paris. The facade of the cathedral is an example of grace and symmetry. The central part of the facade projects forward and is accented by Doric columns in the first tier and Corinthian in the second; on the sides the façade is decorated with statues of Saint Louis IX and Charlemagne by Coustou and Coisevox. The cathedral is crowned with a 27-millimeter (diameter) dome resting on a two-tier drum, which is decorated with paired columns on the first floor and large semicircular windows on the second. The Cathedral of the Invalides became an important high point in Paris; its powerful dome, decorated with war trophies, significantly changed the panorama of the city.

Under King Louis XIV, Versailles became the de facto capital of France. Palace and park ensemble of Versailles. 1661 – 1689.
Arch. L. Levo (1612-1670), A. Lenotre (1613-1700), F. Orbe, J. A. Mansart (1646-1708).
As a result of a grandiose reconstruction, the royal palace turned into a magnificent palace and park ensemble, which became the pinnacle of the development of classicism in French architecture of the 17th century.
The Versailles complex is a grandiose ceremonial residence of the French kings, built near Paris (18 km).
Versailles is characterized by:
- strictness of external forms
- splendor of the interiors.

Palace and park ensemble of Versailles. 1661-89.

Palace and park ensemble of Versailles. 1661-89. The mirror gallery was erected and decorated by the architect J.A. Mansart.
Decorative work at Versailles was headed by Charles Lebrun, the king's first painter.

A small closed quadrangle of square with cut corners is surrounded by administrative buildings with a single decoration system. Such isolation is characteristic of all classicist squares of the 17th century. Initially, an equestrian statue of Louis XIV was placed in the center of the square (at the beginning of the 19th century it was replaced by a triumphal column in honor of Napoleon I). During the construction of Place Vendôme, Hardouin-Mansart developed a type of facade that later became widespread, with arches on the ground floor, pilasters of a large order connecting the second and third floors, and an attic floor under a high, steep roof.

Painting

Nicolas Poussin (1593 - 1655), in his paintings, mainly on themes of ancient antiquity and mythology, who provided unsurpassed examples of geometrically precise composition and thoughtful relationships between color groups.

Claude Lorrain (1601 - 1682), in his antique landscapes of the surroundings of the “eternal city”, he organized the pictures of nature by harmonizing them with the light of the setting sun and the introduction of peculiar architectural scenes.

18 century

In the last quarter of the 18th century, the so-called “revolutionary classicism” arose, expressing the civic ideals of the bourgeois Enlightenment and bourgeois revolutionary aspirations.
The artist of the French Revolution is called Jacques Louis David (1748 - 1825). His extremely laconic and dramatic artistic language served with equal success to promote the ideals of the French Revolution (“The Death of Marat”) and the First Empire (“The Dedication of Emperor Napoleon I”).

At the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries. The leading artistic style in France was classicism.
JACQUES LOUIS DAVID, (1748–1825) - French painter; founder of French neoclassicism, great artist of the French Revolution. In 1775-1780 he studied at the French Academy in Rome, where he studied ancient art and the work of Renaissance masters. In 1783 he was elected a member of the Academy of Painting.
He actively participated in the revolutionary movement, in 1792 he was elected to the National Convention, and voted for the death of King Louis XVI. Joined the radical ex

Classicism is an artistic style in European art of the 17th-19th centuries, one of the foundations of which was an appeal to ancient art as the highest example and reliance on the traditions of the High Renaissance. The artistic forms of classicism are characterized by strict organization, logic, balance, clarity and harmony of images. There are two stages in the development of classicism: “French classicism of the 17th century” and “neoclassicism of the 18th century”. This message is devoted to the first stage of the development of classicism.

In the art of Western Europe in the 17th century. The Baroque style dominated (translated from Italian it means “strange”, “bizarre” - this name appeared later as a definition of the wild imagination of the masters of this style). The Baroque was based on the religious ideas of the Counter-Reformation. According to the plan of the Catholic Church, which fought against the strengthening of the Reformation, works of art should awaken in the souls of viewers and listeners a devout faith in God - such art was called ARTE SACRA, sacred art. The main features of Baroque works - emotional expressiveness, richness of movement, complexity of compositional solutions - created in the viewer a special spiritual mood that promoted unity with God.

In the 17th century, a new and different style emerged in France - classicism. Just like the contemporary Baroque, it became a natural result of the development of Renaissance architecture and its transformation in different cultural, historical and geographical conditions. Baroque was closely associated with the Catholic Church. Classicism, as well as the more restrained forms of the Baroque, turned out to be more acceptable in Protestant countries such as England, the Netherlands, Northern Germany, and also, oddly enough, Catholic absolutist France.

The second half of the 17th century is the era of the highest prosperity of the French monarchy. For Louis XIV, the “Sun King,” of course, classicism seemed to be the only style capable of expressing the ideas of the wisdom and power of the sovereign, the rationality of the government, peace and stability in society. The key idea of ​​classicism is service to France and the king (“The State is I,” Louis XIV) and the triumph of reason over feelings (“I think, therefore I am,” Descartes). The philosophy of the new era required art that would instill in a person equal parts patriotism and rational thinking, for which the principles of the Baroque were of course not suitable. The internal struggle, agitation, and clashes so obvious in Baroque art did not in any way correspond to the ideals of clarity and logic of French absolutism.

From the point of view of classicism, a work of art is built in accordance with certain canons (established rules), thereby revealing the harmony and logic of the universe itself. Many rules were taken by the ideologists and artists of classicism from antiquity - an era that was perceived as the golden time of the development of civilization (order in architecture, the ideas of Aristotle, Horace).

To implement the ideas of classicism, Louis XIV established the Academy of Arts (active since 1661), the Small Academy (Academy of Inscriptions, 1663), the Academy of Architecture (1666), the French Academy in Rome (1666), and the Academy of Music. , Poetry and Dance (1672).

Academic doctrine was built on a rationalistic basis. Art had to obey the laws of reason. Everything random, low, ordinary, which did not correspond to ideas of beauty, was expelled from the sphere of artistic creativity and teaching. A strict hierarchy of genres was established in each art form, and mixing of genres was not allowed. Only historical painting was recognized as high art. Its concept included religious, mythological, allegorical and historical subjects. The interpretation of these subjects had to correspond to the ideas of the “grand style” of the era and be based on the study of classical examples of ancient art, Raphael, the masters of Bolognese academicism and Poussin. Strict principles and complex rules developed at the Academy and turned into official doctrine determined the stylistic unity of French art. However, they fettered the creative initiative of artists and deprived their art of individual originality

In the field of decorative and applied arts and interior design, the style of the era was established by the Royal Tapestry Manufactory, which created tapestries (woven paintings), furniture, metal, glass and earthenware.

Architecture assumed leading importance in French art of the second half of the 17th century; all other forms of art turn out to be closely connected with it. Large structures are being created throughout the country to glorify the king as the head of a prosperous state. The participation of teams of leading masters in them, the joint work of architects with sculptors, painters, masters of applied art, and the bold and inventive solution of engineering and constructive problems led to the creation of remarkable examples of French architecture.

Louis XIV made a choice between two styles - Baroque and Classicism - during a competition for the project Eastern facade of the Louvre. He rejected the project of the most outstanding Baroque architect Lorenzo Bernini, despite all his merits and world fame (which greatly offended the great master), preferring the simple and restrained project of Claude Perrault, designed in a strict classical spirit.

The eastern facade of the Louvre (1667-1678), which is often called the Colonnade of the Louvre, forms part of the ensemble of two palaces united in the 17th century - the Tuileries and the Louvre (the total length of the facade is 173 m). Its compositional structure is quite characteristic - it features a central and two side risalits (protruding parts of the facade), between which on a high smooth base there are powerful double Corinthian columns supporting a high entablature.

The side projections do not have columns, but are divided by pilasters, creating a logical transition to the side facades. Thus, it is possible to achieve great expressiveness of the order, rhythmically maintaining the unity of a very extended and monotonous façade.

Thus, the Eastern façade of the Louvre displays characteristic features inspired by antiquity and the Renaissance - the use of an order system, clear and geometric correctness of volumes and layout, porticoes, columns, statues and reliefs that stand out on the surface of the walls.

The most grandiose building of the era of Louis XIV and the main monument of French classicism of the 17th century. became Versailles (1668-1689) - a magnificent royal residence, designed, in accordance with the principles of classicism, to glorify the monarch, the triumph of reason and nature. This complex, which has become a standard for palace and park ensembles in Europe, combines stylistic features of both classicism and baroque.

The ensemble of Versailles, located 22 kilometers southwest of Paris, covers a huge territory, including vast parks with various structures, swimming pools, canals, fountains and the main building - the building of the palace itself. The construction of the Versailles ensemble (the main work was carried out from 1661 to 1700) cost enormous amounts of money and required the hard work of a huge number of craftsmen and artists of various specialties. The entire territory of the park was leveled, and the villages located there were demolished. With the help of special hydraulic devices, a complex system of fountains was created in this area, to feed which very large pools and canals for that time were built. The palace was decorated with great luxury, using valuable materials, richly decorated with sculptural works, paintings, etc. Versailles became a household name for a magnificent palace residence.

The main works at Versailles were carried out by the architect Louis Leveau, the horticultural planner André Le Nôtre and the painter Charles Lebrun.
The work to expand Versailles constituted the final stage of Levo's activity. Back in the 1620s, a small hunting castle was built in Versailles. Louis XIV planned to create a large palace on the basis of this building, surrounded by a vast beautiful park. The new royal residence had to match the grandeur of the “Sun King” in its size and its architecture.
Levo rebuilt the old castle of Louis XIII on three external sides with new buildings, which formed the main core of the palace. As a result of the reconstruction, the palace increased several times.

The facade of the palace from the side of Levo Park was decorated with Ionic columns and pilasters located on the second - main floor. The wall of the first floor, covered with rustication (imitation of rough stonework), was interpreted in the form of a pedestal, serving as the basis for the order. Levo considered the third floor as an attic crowning the same order. The facade ended with a parapet with fittings. The roofs, usually very high in French architecture, were made low here and completely hidden behind the parapet.

The next period in the history of Versailles is associated with the name of the largest architect of the second half of the 17th century - Jules Hardouin Mansart (1646-1708), who led the further expansion of the palace from 1678. J. Hardouin Mansart the Younger significantly changes the park facade of the palace by constructing the famous “Mirror Gallery”.

The main room of the palace - the Mirror Gallery - occupies almost the entire width of the central part of the structure (length 73 m, width - 10.3 m, height - 12.8 m). 7 large arched windows on the outer wall correspond to 7 similar shaped mirrors on the opposite wall.

The walls, columns, pilasters are decorated with multi-colored marble, the capitals and bases of the pilasters and numerous reliefs on the walls are made of gilded bronze. The vaulted ceiling is completely covered with paintings in a magnificent gilded stucco frame by Charles Lebrun. The subjects of these pictorial compositions are dedicated to the allegorical glorification of the French monarchy and its head, the king.