Rise of Classicism

Classicism in the later seventeenth century was a movement in art, architecture and literature based on the ideals of ancient Greece and Rome: order, clarity, symmetry and restraint. It was strongest in France under Louis XIV, where the state promoted it through academies and the great building programme at Versailles. In painting its leading figure was Nicolas Poussin, who worked mostly in Rome, and in drama the playwrights Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine and Moliere followed rules such as the unities of time, place and action. The poet Nicolas Boileau set out its principles in verse. It should be distinguished from the later Neoclassicism of the late eighteenth century, which looked to excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Open on the timeline