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Celtic and Roman periods |
From the Proto-Celtic Urnfield and Hallstatt cultures, a continental Iron Age Celtic art developed; mainly associated with La Tène culture, which flourished during the late Iron Age from 450 BC to the Roman conquest in the first century BC. This art drew on native, classical and perhaps, the Mediterranean, oriental sou... |
Celtic art is very ornamental, avoiding straight lines and only occasionally using symmetry, without the imitation of nature nor ideal of beauty central to the classical tradition, but apparently, often involves complex symbolism. This artwork includes a variety of styles and often incorporates subtly modified elements... |
The region of Gaul (Latin: Gallia) came under the rule of the Roman Empire from the first century BC to the fifth century AD. Southern France, and especially Provence and Languedoc, is known for its many intact Gallo-Roman monuments. Lugdunum, modern Lyon, was at the time of the Roman Empire the largest city outside It... |
Medieval period |
Merovingian art |
Merovingian art is the art and architecture of the Merovingian dynasty of the Franks, which lasted from the fifth century to the eighth century in present-day France and Germany. The advent of the Merovingian dynasty in Gaul during the fifth century led to important changes in the arts. In architecture, there was no lo... |
Carolingian art |
Carolingian art is the approximate 120-year period from 750 to 900—during the reign of Charles Martel, Pippin the Younger, Charlemagne, and his immediate heirs—popularly known as the Carolingian Renaissance. The Carolingian era is the first period of the Medieval art movement known as Pre-Romanesque. For the first time... |
Illuminated manuscripts, metalwork, small-scale sculpture, mosaics, and frescos survive from the period. The Carolingians also undertook major architectural building campaigns at numerous churches in France. These include, those of Metz, Lyon, Vienne, Le Mans, Reims, Beauvais, Verdun, Saint-Germain in Auxerre, Saint-Pi... |
With the end of Carolingian rule around 900, artistic production halted for almost three generations. After the demise of the Carolingian Empire, France split into a number of feuding provinces, lacking any organized patronage. French art of the tenth and eleventh centuries was produced by local monasteries to promote ... |
Multiple regional styles developed based on the chance availability of Carolingian manuscripts as models to copy, and the availability of itinerant artists. The monastery of Saint Bertin became an important center under its abbot Odbert (986–1007), who created a new style based on Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian forms. The... |
Romanesque art |
Romanesque art refers to the art of Western Europe during a period of one hundred and fifty years, from approximately 1000 AD to the rise of the Gothic style, which arose in the middle of the twelfth century in France. "Romanesque Art" was marked by a renewed interest in Roman construction techniques. For example, the ... |
Most Romanesque sculpture was integrated into church architecture, not only for aesthetic, but also for structural purposes. Small-scale sculpture during the pre-Romanesque period was influenced by Byzantine and Early Christian sculpture. Other elements were adopted from various local styles of Middle Eastern countries... |
Gothic |
Gothic art and architecture were products of a Medieval art movement that lasted about three hundred years. It began in France, developing from the Romanesque period in the mid-twelfth century. By the late fourteenth century, it had evolved toward a more secular and natural style known as, International Gothic, which c... |
Gothic architecture was born in the middle of the twelfth century in Île-de-France, when Abbot Suger built the abbey at St. Denis, c. 1140, considered the first Gothic building, and soon afterward, the Chartres Cathedral, c. 1145. Prior to this, there had been no sculpture tradition in Île-de-France—so sculptors were b... |
The designations of styles in French Gothic architecture are as follows: Early Gothic, High Gothic, Rayonnant, and Late Gothic or Flamboyant. Division into these divisions is effective, but debatable. Because Gothic cathedrals were built over several successive periods, and the artisans of each period not necessarily f... |
The French ideas spread. Gothic sculpture evolved from the early stiff and elongated style, still partly Romanesque, into a spatial and naturalistic treatment in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century. Influences from surviving ancient Greek and Roman sculptures were incorporated into the treatment of drapery, f... |
Paris, at the time, the largest city in the Western world, became a leading center for the production of luxurious artifacts in the 13th and 14th century, especially little ivory sculptures and ivory caskets with scenes of courtly love (such as Casket with Scenes of Romances in the Walters Art Museum). Paris also devel... |
French Gothic art |
Painting in a style that may be called "Gothic" did not appear until about 1200, nearly fifty years after the start of Gothic architecture and sculpture. The transition from Romanesque to Gothic is very imprecise and by no means clearly delineated, but one may see the beginning of a style that is more somber, dark, and... |
Northern France was also the main European center for illuminated manuscripts production. Illuminated manuscripts represent the most complete record of Gothic painting, providing a record of styles in places where no monumental works have otherwise survived. The earliest full manuscripts with French Gothic illustration... |
Iluluminated manuscripts flourished especially in the 15th century, thanks to the many ducals courts that rose to power in France at the time. In the 15th century, these precious painted books were usually made by Flemish painters from the Burgundian Netherlands (then under the French rule of the dukes of Burgundy) or ... |
French Gothic art |
Early Modern period |
In the late fifteenth century, the French invasion of Italy and the proximity of the vibrant Burgundy court, with its Flemish connections, brought the French into contact with the goods, paintings, and the creative spirit of the Northern and Italian Renaissance. Initial artistic changes at that time in France were exec... |
The art of the period from François I through Henri IV often is heavily inspired by late Italian pictorial and sculptural developments commonly referred to as Mannerism, which is associated with the later works of Michelangelo as well as Parmigianino, among others. It is characterized by figures which are elongated and... |
Some important French architects who adopted the Renaissance style are Pierre Lescot, who rebuilt a part of the Louvre palace for the king, Philibert Delorme, Jean Bullant and Jacques I Androuet du Cerceau. |
Sculpture had a great development in France during the Renaissance and has been better preserved than painting. Though Francesco Laurana worked in France for a shorte period of time in the late 15th century, it is only in the beginning of the 16th century that the Italian style became prevalent in France, after the Ita... |
French Renaissance art |
Baroque and Classicism |
The seventeenth century marked a golden age for French art in all fields. |
In the early part of the seventeenth century, late mannerist and early Baroque tendencies continued to flourish in the court of Marie de Medici and Louis XIII. |
Art from this period shows influences from both the north of Europe, namely the Dutch and Flemish schools, and from Roman painters of the Counter-Reformation. Artists in France frequently debated the contrasting merits of Peter Paul Rubens with his Flemish baroque, voluptuous lines and colors to Nicolas Poussin with hi... |
Many young French painters of the beginning of the century went to Rome to train themselves and soon assimilated Caravaggio's influence, for example Valentin de Boulogne and Simon Vouet. The later is credited with bringing the baroque in France and at his return in Paris in 1627 he was named first painter of the king. ... |
But at the same time there was still a strong Caravaggisti Baroque school represented in the period by the amazing candle-lit paintings of Georges de La Tour. The wretched and the poor were featured in a quasi-Dutch manner in the paintings by the three Le Nain brothers. In the paintings of Philippe de Champaigne there ... |
In architecture, architects such as Salomon de Brosse, François Mansart and Jacques Lemercier helped define the French form of the baroque, developing the formula of the urban hôtel particulier that was to influence all of Europe and strongly departed from the Italian equivalent, the palazzo. Many aristocratic castles ... |
From the mid to late seventeenth century, French art is more often referred to by the term "Classicism" which implies an adherence to certain rules of proportion and sobriety uncharacteristic of the Baroque, as it was practiced in most of the rest of Europe during the same period. Under Louis XIV, the Baroque as it was... |
For sculpture Louis XIV's reign also proved an important moment thanks to the King's protection of artists such as Pierre Puget, François Girardon and Antoine Coysevox. In Rome, Pierre Legros, working in a more baroque manner, was one of the most influential sculptors of the end of the century. |
Rococo and Neoclassicism |
Rococo and Neoclassicism are terms used to describe the visual and plastic arts and architecture in Europe from the early eighteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century. In France, the death of Louis XIV in 1715 lead to a period of freedom commonly called the Régence. Versailles was abandoned from 1715 to 1722... |
The Louis XV style of decoration, although already apparent at the end of the last reign, was lighter with pastel colors, wood panels, smaller rooms, less gilding, and fewer brocades; shells, garlands, and occasional Chinese subjects predominated. The Chantilly, Vincennes and then Sèvres manufactures produced some of t... |
The most prominent architects of the first half of the century were, apart Boffrand, Robert de Cotte and Ange-Jacques Gabriel, who designed public squares such as the place de la Concorde in Paris and the place de la Bourse in Bordeaux in a style consciously inspired by that of the era of Louis XIV. During the first ha... |
The latter half of the eighteenth century continued to see French preeminence in Europe, particularly through the arts and sciences, and the speaking the French language was expected for members of the European courts. The French academic system continued to produce artists, but some, such as Jean-Honoré Fragonard and ... |
One also finds in this period a Pre-romanticist aspect. Hubert Robert's images of ruins, inspired by Italian capriccio paintings, are typical in this respect as well as the image of storms and moonlight marines by Claude Joseph Vernet. So too the change from the rational and geometrical French garden of André Le Nôtre ... |
The last half of the eighteenth century saw a turn to Neoclassicism in France, that is to say a conscious use of Greek and Roman forms and iconography. This movement was promoted by intellectuals such as Diderot, in reaction to the artificiality and the decorative essence of the rocaille style. In painting, the greates... |
Architects such as Ledoux and Boullée developed a radical style of neoclassical architecture based on simple and pure geometrical forms with a research of symmetry and harmony, elaborating visionary projects, for example the complex of the Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans by Ledoux, a model of an ideal factory developed from... |
Modern period |
19th century |
The French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars brought great changes to the arts in France. The program of exaltation and myth making attendant to the Emperor Napoleon I of France was closely coordinated in the paintings of David, Gros and Guérin. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was the main figure of neoclassicism until ... |
Romantic tendencies continued throughout the century, both idealized landscape painting and Realism have their seeds in Romanticism. The work of Gustave Courbet and the Barbizon school are logical developments from it, as is the late nineteenth century Symbolism of such painters as Gustave Moreau, the professor of Henr... |
Academic painting developed at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts was the most successful with the public and the state: highly trained painters such as Jean-Léon Gérôme, William Bouguereau and Alexandre Cabanel painted historical scenes inspired by the antique, following the footsteps of Ingres and the neoclassics. Though criti... |
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