Humanities

In this essay I am going to talk about some of the neoclassical art and architecture that is in our text book. I will be going over the way the art or architecture has expressed the enlightenment ideals of reason and liberty. I will also be talking about how the artiest used their technique and different styles to help show their ideas in the works of art. By the end of this essay I will have shown how the different artiest have help shape the way everyone see their art or their architecture in our world today.

The first painting that I am going to talk about is by Antoine Watteau witch is called Departure from the Island of Cythera (Fiero, 2011, p179). This island is the birthplace of the goddess Venus. This painting was based off a play where the central character invites her friends to visit the island birthplace of Venus, where a single man or woman might find a wife or husband (Fiero, 2011, p179). I see that the artiest is trying to show that people will go to great distances to find love even if they have to go to an island that might not even help them in their search for love. This is their way of finding enlightenment and the path to their happiness when other way might have failed to help them. The technique and style that the artist has used in this painting are different from the other artiest of his time because he showed the world in the pleasures of nature or the voluptuous world (Fiero, 2011, p177).

The next painting that I am going to talk about is by Jean-Baptiste Greuze and this painting is called Village Betrothal (Fiero, 2011, p182). This is a painting that you can see a lot of emotion in the painting between the two families' that are being show. This to me looks like it is a marriage that looks to be a type of financial gain to one of the families because when you look at the painting you see what looks like a bag of money in the hand of the groom and the man at the table looks to have some type of paperwork to give him in return. This is showing the way that some family's may joined together during some hard time as a way to help both family's out in the end. I believe this because when you look at the faces of the people in the painting you really don't see any of them looking happy about the marriage that is about to happen. In the text book it shows a very different perspective of what is going on in the painting. It goes on to say that the father gave his blessing to the groom and the mother is sad because she is losing her daughter (Fiero, 2011, p182).

The next work of art I am going to talk about is the architectural vision of Napoleon Bonaparte when he had the Arc De Triomphe build in Paris during his time (Fiero, 2011, p199). The arc is model off of the arc that is in Rome called the Arch of Constantine. You can see the details that were put in to the arc just from looking at the picture that is in our text book. You see that on the arc there are too