Chapter 13: Neo-Classicism, Romanticism, and the Rococo

1. Buildings across Time, 4th Edition
Chapter Thirteen: Neo-Classicism,
Romanticism, and The Rococo
Introduction
Eighteenth-century architectural developments were complex and diverse. The late
Baroque lingered into the century in various parts of Europe. A late strain of the Baroque,
called Rococo, is a style at once playful and highly decorative.
Both the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution began in the eighteenth century in
Europe, and with them came the dominance of modern science. The Enlightenment was a
philosophy that sought to apply the rigor of evidence-based scientific method to all aspects
of human thought and endeavor, and the Industrial Revolution was the transition from
hand production methods to machine-made manufacturing processes. Radical changes in
philosophy and government, as a result of both of these, were accompanied by equally
radical changes in architecture.
Architects and archaeologists, dissatisfied with their knowledge of the architectural past,
returned to Greece and Italy, where they subjected ancient ruins to a new, more scientific
scrutiny. Others, dissatisfied with the restrictive rationality of Neo-Classicism and science
created Romanticism, an anti-rational and emotional philosophical system, and its aesthetic
component, the Picturesque.

2. The Rococo
Amalienburg Pavilion
Francois Cuvillies, Amalienburg
Pavilion at Nymphenburg Castle
near Munich, 1734-39. Within
this diminutive garden structure,
stucco ornamentation breaks out
in a riot of color and texture to
accompany the boiserie or ornate
woodwork. This late flowering of
the Baroque during the first half
of the eighteenth century is
known as the Rococo. The name
combines the words rocaille,
describing the organic shapes of
water-worn rocks, plants, and
shells, and coquille, meaning
“seashell.” Rococo ornament
covers the exterior walls of this
small hunting pavilion.

3. The English Neo-Palladians
Mereworth Castle
Some English architects were
turning away from the style of
Wren, Vanbrugh, and Hawksmoor
in favor of the simpler approach
that they found in the works of
Andrea Palladio. Central to the
Neo-Palladian movement was a
great respect for Vitruvius,
enthusiasm for the buildings of
Palladio, and admiration for the
works of Inigo Jones (Queen’s
House, Greenwich).
Colen Campbell, Mereworth
Castle, Kent, 1723. Colen
Campbell was among the circle of
Neo-Palladians assembled around
Lord Burlington. This is Campbell's
English interpretation of the Villa
Rotonda.

4. The English Neo-Palladians
Chiswick House
Lord Burlington (Richard Boyle),
Chiswick House, London, 1725-29.
Lord Burlington designed his own
variation of the Villa Rotonda at
Chiswick House (1725-29) on the
outskirts of London. Chiswick is a
smaller version of the Palladian
original, enlivened by a certain
amount of creative borrowing from
other sources. Obelisks placed at the
edge of the roof contain the chimney
flues in an antique disguise, and the
interior spaces follow Palladian
proportions. However, there are
features not used by Palladio: the
dominant twin stairs, the thermal
windows placed in the octagonal
drum, and the Pantheon-like dome.

5. The English Neo-Palladians
Chiswick House
Burlington: Plan of Chiswick House,
London. The plan is even more unlike
Palladio’s work than the elevation. It is a
nine-part grid of squares, rectangles,
circles, and polygons.

6. The Enlightenment
Abbe Laugier's Primitive Hut
The eighteenth century witnessed the birth of the
Enlightenment, the movement in which scientists and
mathematicians laid the foundations for modem
achievements in their fields; philosophers pondered
political legitimacy; archaeologists and explorers probed
past and distant civilizations for an understanding of other
cultures; and first traditional mechanics, then modem
engineers invented devices and machines that were to
transform industry, commerce, and transportation.
France was the center of this extraordinary phenomenon:
the Enlightenment stimulated the ongoing development of
the modern age by calling for a separation of church and
state and so encouraging secularization, by challenging the
authority of hereditary monarchies in favor of egalitarianism
and political democracy, and, as a corollary, by advancing
economic capitalism.

7. The Enlightenment
Abbe Laugier's Primitive Hut
If one were to choose a single voice to represent
Enlightenment thinking as it applied to architecture, it
might be that of the Abbe Marc-Antoine Laugier (1713-
69).
In his widely read Essai sur l'architecture (Essay on
Architecture, 1753), he argued that all proper
architecture could be derived from a single prototype in
prehistory, "Laugier’s primitive hut" a simple
composition of freestanding columns, lintels, and a
sloping roof. These few components, arranged in this
configuration, provide a freestanding shelter that
protects people from the environment and is the
fundamental basis for all subsequent architectural
designs.
"The little rustic cabin that I have just described, is the
model upon which all the magnificences of architecture
have been imagined."

8. The Return to Antiquity
English Neo-Classicism
During the eighteenth century,
publications of measured drawings from
ancient sites greatly expanded the
available information relating to
architectural history. Remains of the
Greek colonial town of Paestum were
closely examined, and the Roman cities
of Pompeii and Herculaneum were
discovered in the course of road con-
struction in the Kingdom of Naples.
For the first time scholars and architects
had abundant detailed evidence of
imperial Roman architecture,
decoration, and daily life. Napoleon's
military expedition to Egypt in 1798
included a large group of archaeologists
and engineers whose published reports,
further encouraged popular enthusiasm
for things Egyptian.

9. The Return to Antiquity
Giovanni Battista Piranesi
The leading exponent of Neo-
Classicism in Italy and an
unabashed promoter of
ancient Roman architecture
was Giovanni Battista Piranesi
(1720-78). From the mid-1750s
until the end of his life, he
issued a series of engravings
titled Vedute di Roma, or Views
of Rome. These views of
ancient ruins rising
enigmatically and provocatively
from the accumulated detritus
and among Renaissance and
Baroque buildings designed by
the masters of those ages
sparked the imaginations of
artists and architects
throughout Europe.

10. The Return to Antiquity
Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Perhaps most provocative are
his Carceri, or Prisons, a series
of fourteen plates made in
1745, and reissued in around
1760, depicting vast spaces
teeming with unidentified
toilers whose labors are
illuminated by obscure light
sources. The scale is gigantic, of
the magnitude of the great
Roman baths, while the spatial
organization is even more
complex. Arches, vaults, and
staircases rise in the gloom and
are revealed by shafts of light.
Piranesi's engravings were
widely distributed across
Europe in his own time, and
they continue to impress
architects and artists today.

11. The Return to Antiquity
Giovanni Battista Piranesi

12. Robert Adam
Williams-Wynn House
Robert Adam: The Williams-
Wynn House, London, 1772.
He employed a distinctive
graphic method for
representing interior
elevations, arranging them
orthographically around a
room's plan as if they were
walls folded down. Thus he
could study five related
interior surfaces
simultaneously. The unified
results are evident in the
Williams-Wynn House
where Adam spread a thin
"net" of stucco ornament,
inspired by Raphael's and
Giulio Romano's inventive
grotesques, and introduced
colors taken from the
excavations at Pompeii and
Herculaneum.

13. Robert Adam
Williams-Wynn House
Adam claimed, and
probably rightly, that his
elegant, attenuated
decorations brought about
a revolution in English
architectural taste, and the
results became known as
the "Adam Style" or simply
the Adamesque.

14. Robert Adam
Luton Hoo
Robert Adam, First floor plan of Luton Hoo,
Bedfordshire, 1767-69. One might compare
the spatial effects that Adam created in the
core of this English country house to those
found in the ancient Roman Hadrian's Villa.
Along the central entry axis, intermingled
perforated walls and column screens make
for a many-layered three-dimensional
experience.

15. Robert Adam
Luton Hoo
Robert Adam, First floor plan of Luton Hoo,
Bedfordshire, 1767-69. One might compare
the spatial effects that Adam created in the
core of this English country house to those
found in the ancient Roman Hadrian's Villa.
Along the central entry axis, intermingled
perforated walls and column screens make
for a many-layered three-dimensional
experience.
Primary Axes

16. Robert Adam
Luton Hoo
Robert Adam, First floor plan of Luton Hoo,
Bedfordshire, 1767-69. One might compare
the spatial effects that Adam created in the
core of this English country house to those
found in the ancient Roman Hadrian's Villa.
Along the central entry axis, intermingled
perforated walls and column screens make
for a many-layered three-dimensional
experience.
Primary Axes
Secondary Axes
Rooms are enfilade, or open on to each
other in an aligned sequence

17. William Chambers
Somerset House
William Chambers, Somerset House,
London, 1776-86. Along the Thames,
Chambers designed a centralized
structure for British government offices.
He created a facade organized in the
French manner, with pavilions
punctuating highly textured expanses of
masonry walls. At the highly rusticated
base, he inserted thermal windows and
below them huge arches with
prominent voussoirs, like something
from Piranesi's etchings of grand
remains in ancient Rome or Ledoux's
gatehouses.

18. Architectural Theory in France
Ecole des Beaux-Arts
Jacques-Francois Blondel
formed the first actual
architectural school in France,
in 1743, and his success
encouraged the King’s
Academie Royale
d'Architecture to do the same.
By 1762 Blondel was one of its
professors in what would
eventually become the famous
Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
In 1771-77 Blondel set forth
his ideas about architecture in
his Cours d'architecture
(Lectures on Architecture).

19. Architectural Theory in France
Ecole des Beaux-Arts
Blondel discussed designing
both the plan and the facade.
Both were governed by
ordonnance, convenance, and
bienseance.
Ordonnance referred to the
correct relationship of parts to
one another and to the whole.
Convenance and bienseance
concerned appropriateness
and the correct form of a
building relative to its purpose
and social rank; Blondel's
writings explain in detail the
essential elements of good
architecture and the appro-
priate hierarchy and related
treatments of buildings.

20. Boullee
Newton Cenotaph
Etienne-Louis Boullee, Cenotaph for Sir
Isaac Newton, 1784. His design for a
cenotaph, or monument without a
tomb, for Sir Isaac Newton who
discovered the laws of classical
mechanics, is a hollow sphere 500 feet
in diameter, the top half of which
represents the dome of heaven,
perforated with holes to give the
impression of stars and the moon when
viewed from the interior. Suspended
inside the sphere is a giant lamp
representing the sun.

21. Boullee
Unbuilt Concepts

22. Boullee
Unbuilt Concepts
visualization of Boulee’s unbuilt work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04cpR_SHQ94

23. Claude Nicolas Ledoux
Chaux
Claude Nicolas Ledoux:
Chaux, 1775-79. Only half of
Ledoux’s plan for this
saltworks was constructed. In
the center is the Director’s
House, with buildings for salt
production flanking it and
workers’ housing in the
surrounding oval. This project
was never actually
constructed, but Portions of
this design were built
between the French cities of
Arc-et-Senans.
https://www.youtube.com/w
atch?v=RuMiDLnckjU

24. Claude Nicolas Ledoux
Hotel de Thellusson
Ledoux: View of the
Hotel de Thellusson,
Paris, 1778-83. In the
foreground, Ledoux
placed a gateway like
an ancient Roman,
half-buried triumphal
arch. A walkway at the
second level then leads
back to the main block
of the house, with its
central motif
appearing as an
embedded trabeated
circular temple.

25. Claude Nicolas Ledoux
Inspector's House
Ledoux's unbuilt
design for the
"Inspector's House at
the Source of the River
Loue" is shaped like a
hollow cylinder set
horizontally on a
podium, with the
stream flowing
through the lower half
of the cylinder and the
rooms of the building
arranged in buttress
like rectangular blocks
along its tunnel sides.

26. Claude Nicolas Ledoux
Barriere de la Villette
Claude-Nicholas
Ledoux, Barriere de la
Villette, Paris, 1784-89.
In the late eighteenth
century Paris was
ringed by Ledoux's
tollgates, many of
them not so grand as
this one, which
achieves its
architectural effect by
contrasting the almost
primitive portico, with
its baseless columns
and elemental capitals,
against the drum rising
above and behind it,
with its repetitive
Serliana producing a
rich column screen.

27. Other French Neo-Classical Architects
Petit Trianon
Ange-Jacques Gabriel (1698-
1782) designed the Petit
Trianon (1761-64) in the
grounds at Versailles as a
convenient and comfortable
alternative residence to the
sprawling palace.

28. Other French Neo-Classical Architects
Trianon
Gabriel: Plan of the Petit
Trianon, Versailles, 1761-
64. Each façade of this
building is symmetrical.
However, only one set of
rooms, that on the west
front, is symmetrically
distributed. Otherwise
the partitions are
cleverly arranged to
achieve internal
convenience without
sacrificing outward
formality.

29. Other French Neo-Classical Architects
Pantheon
Jacques-Gabriel Soufflot, Pantheon
interior, Paris, 1757--90. As a young
man, Soufflot had traveled to Rome and
had been much impressed by the scale
and monumentality of the ancient ruins.
At the Pantheon he recreated this
grandeur. Soufflot based his design on
freestanding Corinthian columns and
lintels, and he experimented with
concealed flying buttresses to stabilize
the dome.
Soufflot placed what amounted to a
columnar building inside a bearing-wall
building. However, his skeletal system
eventually proved to be too open, and
the piers of the crossing had to be
modified.

30. Jacques-Gabriel Soufflot: Plan of the
Pantheon, Paris. Like the exterior, this
interior of this church has been
modified; the piers of the crossing have
been modified, as the original columns
here began to fail. The many other
columns remain intact, demonstrating
Soufflot’s interest in lofty Gothic
openness.
Other French Neo-Classical Architects
Pantheon

31. Other French Neo-Classical Architects
Comédie-Française
Marie-Joseph Peyre and
Charles de Wailly:
Comédie-Française, Paris,
1770. Large theaters
were a new phenomenon
in eighteenth-century
Paris. They were more
than venues for
entertainment, being
settings for social
spectacle and something
akin to temples of French
drama. The main facade
of relentlessly rusticated
masonry features a
temple front without
pediment, the first such
form used for a theater.

32. Other French Neo-Classical Architects
Hôtel des Monnaies
Antoine: Hôtel des Monnaies, Paris, 1768-75. Jacques-Denis Antoine designed the Hôtel des
Monnaies, or Royal Mint. His challenge was to house what amounted to a foundry within
appropriately dignified quarters. For the main facade facing the river Seine and the city, he chose to
cap a central pavilion with a deep attic story but, as at the Comedie-Francaise, no pediment, and to
stretch the wings laterally. In so doing, he produced a strongly horizontal, subdued, and elegant
composition appropriate for a building that symbolized the strength of the nation's finances.

33. The Distinctive Style of Sir John Soane
Bank of England
John Soane, Bank of England
rotunda, London, begun
1788. In his London building
complex for the Bank of
England (1788 and later; now
destroyed except for its
perimeter walls) he had to
use daylight in imaginative
ways because bank security
required absolutely blank
exterior walls. Soane met the
challenge with courtyards,
clerestories, and skylights
that, when coupled with the
pure forms of the rotundas
and vaulted spaces of the
interior, seem inspired by
Piranesi engravings.

34. The Distinctive Style of Sir John Soane
Bank of England
John Soane, The Colonnade, 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields
(Sir John Soane's Museum), London, 1812-37.
Soane made the rear portion of his own house into
a museum. Here he collected paintings by Hogarth,
etchings by Piranesi, and shards from classical and
medieval sites visited by him or his friends. His
ornament was most often incised, or cut into the
surface, in order to emphasize spatial volumes.

35. Neo-Classicism
Neue Wache
Neo-Classicism in the area
equivalent to modern-day
Germany is closely identified
with the work of Karl Friedrich
Schinkel ( 1781-1841). The
Neue Wache, or Royal Guard
House (1817-18), located on
the Unter den Linden, Berlin's
most important ceremonial
street, celebrated the emerg-
ing power of Prussia under
King Friedrich Wilhelm III.
Schinkel's final proposal placed
a Doric portico between heavy
pylons, both detailed with
such austerity that the
building achieves
monumentality despite its
modest size. Here, he
succeeded in uniting the
architectural forms of
fortification and civic splendor.

36. Neo-Classicism
Altes Museum
Schinkel's most famous building is Berlin's Altes Museum, or Old Museum (1823-28), the first public
art museum in Europe. The museum's facade is a giant Ionic colonnade raised on a high base and
stretching the full width of the building. Its orthogonal simplicity both creates a sense of urban dignity
and prepares the visitor for the clever rigor of the plan behind. Here, Schinkel placed a central rotunda
flanked by open courts that are surrounded by flexible gallery spaces.

37. Neo-Classicism
Altes Museum
Schinkel's most famous building is Berlin's Altes Museum, or Old Museum (1823-28), the first public
art museum in Europe. The museum's facade is a giant Ionic colonnade raised on a high base and
stretching the full width of the building. Its orthogonal simplicity both creates a sense of urban dignity
and prepares the visitor for the clever rigor of the plan behind. Here, Schinkel placed a central rotunda
flanked by open courts that are surrounded by flexible gallery spaces.

38. Neo-Classicism in the United States
Virginia State Capitol
Thomas Jefferson, Virginia State
Capitol, Richmond, Virginia,
1785-89. While serving as
minister to France in 1785,
Jefferson was asked to propose
a design for the State Capitol of
Virginia. The model he
prepared in response was
based on the Maison Carrée in
Nimes. Jefferson converted the
relatively small Roman temple
into a two-story legislative
building, with a circular, domed
assembly room that is not
expressed on the exterior. He
changed the Corinthian order
of the Maison Carrée to the
Ionic for Richmond because he
feared American stone carvers
would lack the skill to handle
the more complex Corinthian
capitals.
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=pdy5AvIdfSw&t=
73s

39. Neo-Classicism in the United States
Monticello
Thomas Jefferson, Monticello, Charlottesville, Virginia, begun 1770. Jefferson began his own home,
Monticello, in 1770 and used it as an architectural laboratory, continuing to evolve it until his death more
than fifty years later. Initially he envisioned a Palladian villa with two-story portico, but the final realization
documents Jefferson's French architectural experiences, specifically his admiration for the new Parisian
hotels, freestanding private townhouses linking an entry court and a garden.

40. Neo-Classicism in the United States
Monticello
Jefferson: Plan of Monticello,
Charlottesville, Virginia, begun 1770. For
his own house Jefferson turned the
familiar Palladian five-part organization
backward in order to focus the complex
on spectacular mountain views. He
depressed the floor levels to produce a
basement for service underneath both
the house and the wings. This plan
shows the principle floor of the central
block and the basement level of the
wings.

41. Neo-Classicism in the United States
University of Virginia
Jefferson: Lawn at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1817-26. Still the most admired example
of campus planning in America, the University of Virginia was called an “academical village” by
Jefferson. Extending from the library at the top of the scheme are the two files of five pavilions each
connected by the walkways fronting dormitory rooms or what Jefferson called “ranges.”

42. Neo-Classicism in the United States
University of Virginia
Behind the pavilions are gardens and behind them more ranges as well as dining halls. Jefferson
designed a library based on the Pantheon (at half-scale) to serve as the head of the scheme.

43. Jefferson: Pavilion VII,
University of Virginia,
Charlottesville. This pavilion
design was suggested to
Jefferson by William Thorton,
winner of the competition for
the U. S. Capitol. It is the only
pavilion façade given an
archade of arches on piers.
Neo-Classicism in the United States
University of Virginia

44. Neo-Classicism in the United States
U.S. Capitol
Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1766-
1820) became Jefferson's architect
of choice. He was born in England,
educated there, and practiced as
an architect and engineer in
London, before immigrating to
America to become the country's
first professional architect.
In 1803 Jefferson commissioned
him to work on the U.S. Capitol.
Latrobe completed both the north
and south wings, introducing into
the work his own designs for
American orders: tobacco-leaf
capitals in the rotunda of the
Senate chamber and corncob
capitals in the north basement
vestibule. He also used capitals
based on those of the Archaic
Greek temples at Paestum in the
Supreme Court chamber.

45. Romanticism and the Picturesque
A parallel and often overlapping
orientation in art and architecture
called Romanticism was developing.
Its design beginnings can be seen in
the English landscape movement that
accompanied the Neo-Palladians
during the first half of the eighteenth
century, that stressed the power of
emotion and the importance of
individual subjectivity. Romantics
delighted in the asymmetrical and
irregular because of the highly scenic
qualities they could produce. Ruins in
general became a Romantic
obsession, as their ruggedness,
wildness, and fragmentation
illustrated the powerlessness of men
and women in the face of irresistible
natural forces. An emphasis was
placed on the sublime - possessed of
such alternative qualities as power,
vastness, and obscurity.

46. Romanticism and the Picturesque
The English Landscape
The English landscape-garden
tradition, is one in which the
landscape architect
exaggerated and "improved"
on natural conditions. Instead
of the rigid geometric
plantings favored by the
French, English garden
designers cultivated a certain
irregular wildness.
The English sought to imitate
the irregularity of nature
rather than artificially ordering
natural elements in geometric
patterns as in the Italian and
French garden traditions

47. Romanticism and the Picturesque
The English Landscape
A ha-ha is a recessed landscape design element that creates a
vertical barrier while preserving an uninterrupted view of the
landscape beyond. The design includes a grassy incline that
slopes downward to a sharply vertical face (typically a masonry
retaining wall). Ha-has are used in landscape design to prevent
access to a garden by, for example, grazing livestock without
obstructing views from the main residence higher on the hillside.
The name "ha-ha" is thought to have stemmed from the
exclamations of surprise by those coming across them, as the
walls were intentionally designed so as not to be visible on the
plane of the landscape.

48. Romanticism and the Picturesque
Blenheim Palace
Lancelot Brown (1716-83) was the
leading promoter of this
Picturesque attitude toward
landscape architecture. When
asked his opinion of a piece of
ground, he would say that it had
"capabilities," and thus he
became known as Capability
Brown.
Among his most celebrated works
are the re-landscaped gardens
and park at Blenheim Palace, laid
out after 1764 and still extant.
Working throughout the length
and breadth of the nation, he
trans formed large areas of
unkempt countryside into the
kind of lush parkland for which
England has become renowned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H50KYjUBgX8

49. Romanticism and the Picturesque
Gothick
Picturesque architecture in England
began with follies, the use of small
and sometimes fanciful structures
or ruins of structures as focal points
in the layout of gardens.
This early phase of Romanticism in
England is often termed "Gothick"
(the spelling deliberately
medievalized) to reflect the rather
lighthearted character of the work.

50. Romanticism and the Picturesque
Strawberry Hill
Horace Walpole, Strawberry Hill, begun 1748. Here, it becomes clear that Walpole, amateur though
he was, intended for Strawberry Hill to present a rich silhouette against the sky, intended that its
character should change as one moved around the perimeter, and intended for the ensemble to
appear as though it had been built not all at once, but had grown up randomly over time, as had its
medieval inspirations.
The return of the Gothic would be only one among many such revivals in that rampant borrowing
from the past called eclecticism.

51. Romanticism and the Picturesque
Charlottenhof
Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Court
Gardener's House,
Charlottenhof, 1826-33.
Schinkel wanted this building
to resemble the vaguely
classical, vernacular
farmsteads that he had seen
while traveling in Italy as a
student. The tower, the low-
sloping, gabled masses, and
the many arched openings
and pergolas are all united in
a singular picturesque
composition.