Neoclassical vs. Romantic Painting: Ingres, Delacroix & More

Introduction: Two Styles, Two Worldviews

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Eugène Delacroix were contemporaries, but they practiced two very different styles: the former was a Neoclassical painter and the latter a Romantic painter. Neoclassicism emphasized symmetry and simplicity and found its inspiration in the ancient art of Greece and Rome. Its practitioners celebrated the artistic styles of the Greco-Roman world, rejecting the drama of the Baroque and adopting a more intellectualized approach to the visual arts. The subjects of these paintings were often political, social, historical, and classical—a portrait of the Horatii, for example, or a scene from Homer's Iliad. The visual style was decorous, concise, restrained, balanced, rational, and sometimes witty; it appealed to the Enlightenment thinkers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Romanticism, on the other hand, was more emotional. Its subjects more often focused on nature, the individual, the common man, and the spirit of the times ("Comparison"). Attention to fine detail was less important than the capturing of a certain feeling. In each of these genres, the role of woman is featured differently—as Ingres's Joan of Arc at the Coronation of Charles VII and Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People demonstrate respectively.

Joan of Arc and Liberty: Two Ideals of Womanhood

Ingres's Joan and Delacroix's Liberty are two distinct representations of woman. While both are idealized, each presents a unique ideal that is exceedingly rich and complex. Joan is presented by the Neoclassicist as full of dignity, calm, strength, and heroic leadership—her battle armor attests to this—yet also femininity, as her legs are mostly covered by a long skirt worn over that armor. A halo encircles her head, signifying her saintliness; her eyes are directed upward toward Heaven, whose decrees she followed in liberating France.

She is depicted as still, stable, and strong, yet humble. She has not taken on her mission as a result of her own will but rather has subjected her will to God's will—it was His desire that she lead the French, not hers. This is why her eyes are directed upward: she resembles the icons of the early Church, whose figures point toward Heaven, alerting the viewer to the reality of what lies above and to the ultimate goal toward which all human beings should be moving. Ingres's Joan is remarkable because she is so self-possessed and modest even in her battle garb, which her maidenly virtue covers so that she does not appear dressed like a man. She celebrates her sex in a way that is conventional and orthodox yet attractive.

She does not bare all in the same manner as Delacroix's Liberty. In the Romantic painting, Liberty's chest is exposed, symbolically illustrating to her followers that she will sustain them in the New Age—the people will drink, as it were, from the milk of Liberty. There is no such revolutionary doctrine in Ingres's portrait of Joan. Joan is humble whereas Liberty is proud; Joan is self-possessed whereas Liberty is flaunting; Joan is restrained and ordered whereas Liberty is depicted in the midst of chaos and war, with bodies rising and falling, hair tossed, skirts waving, flags flying, guns raised, and smoke billowing.

Joan is not portrayed in the midst of battle because, for the Neoclassicist, battle is an occasion of violence best left offstage. Violence is brutish and perhaps necessary, but better left to those who must engage in it. The ordered and rational mind takes more pleasure in viewing the subtleties and nuances of a hero in a posture like that of Michelangelo's David—mission accomplished, the long night over, the day arrived and the sun shining.

Spiritual Orientation and Political Meaning

In this sense, Ingres's Joan is somewhat anachronistic to modern times. Strict feminists may be attracted to Joan's strength of character and ability to lead into battle, but they might also balk at her conventional modesty and humble devotion to God—a nod both to the power of the patriarchy and to the separateness of the roles of men and women. Joan represents a kind of contradiction for the modern mind, which is more likely to see in Liberty the type of womanhood it is accustomed to celebrating: a woman taking the lead, a woman in action, rallying the men behind her, using her sexuality to attract attention, adopting a political stance, engaging in revolutionary ideas, and acting vociferously in public. The child behind Liberty raises a pistol in a salute to her passionate leadership, and the bodies of Liberty's foes lie at her feet as the people march forward out of the smoke and din of battle.

Liberty looks over her shoulder at those who follow her. Her eyes are not directed upward like Joan's, whose ultimate destination is Heaven. Liberty's eyes are directed downward at the earth; her ultimate goal is earthly, worldly, social, and political—not spiritual or religious. She is the anti-Mary, the anti-Virgin. There is nothing submissive about her. She does not submit to a higher power but rather acts as the higher power—the force of guiding light and intelligence. She is the spirit that will move and intervene. She is Joan without Joan's modesty, without Joan's grace, and without Joan's sense of hierarchy, proportion, balance, and reason.

A Trinity of Paintings: Leonardo, El Greco, and David

Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine, El Greco's Christ Carrying the Cross, and Jacques-Louis David's The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries are three paintings from three distinct styles—Renaissance, Mannerist, and Neoclassical—that each represent an individual holding something deeply symbolic. In the first, Leonardo's Lady clutches an ermine, a weasel prized for its fur but not an animal one would ordinarily cradle in real life. In the second, El Greco's Christ carries the cross—the instrument upon which He would die and by which He would effect salvation for all souls who have faith in Him. In the third, Napoleon is clutching himself in the typical hand-in-waistcoat expression common among many dignitaries of the era.

What each figure holds—the ermine, the cross, himself—is symbolic of the historic trends of society throughout the period from the Renaissance (mid-fifteenth century) through the Mannerist style (seventeenth century) to the Neoclassical era (nineteenth century). Society was moving away from the rich but mannered ideals of the Renaissance world toward the self-important grandiosity of the Romantic-Enlightenment world of the 1800s. From Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine through El Greco's Christ to David's Napoleon, one can trace a progression of historical significance that relates the underlying transformation in the social and political order of those centuries.

Conclusion: A Progression of Western Thought

In Leonardo's Lady, El Greco's Christ, and David's Napoleon, one can see a progression of thought that indicates a movement in Western society's soul. At the center of this trinity of paintings is El Greco's Christ—coming in the Mannerist school—sandwiched between the Lady and the Emperor like a cry of one vanquished but never wholly forgotten. El Greco's Christ is, even still, the centerpiece of human history, the marker by which mankind once dated all events. Though BC and AD have been replaced by the politically neutral markers BCE and CE in order to circumvent the significance of Christ's Incarnation, His centrality remains like a phantom speaking from the other side of the grave—telling the world that, try as it might, the hand in the waistcoat is no replacement for the hand that subdues the ermine and makes it a passive recipient of the grace that the Old World recognized and sought after with faith.

Works Cited

"Ars Quatuor Coronatorum." Freemasonry. http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/aqc/napoleon.html

"Comparison." Weebly. http://bhs11english.weebly.com/uploads/1/4/0/4/14044352/microsoft_word_-_comparison_chart%5B1%5D%5B1%5D.pdf

"The Lady with an Ermine." Italian Renaissance. http://www.italian-renaissance-art.com/Lady-with-an-Ermine.html

Pater, Walter. The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Literature. VictorianWeb. http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/pater/renaissance/conclusion.html