Italian Neoclassical and 19th-century art

Art of Italy
Periods
Nuragic Etruscan Ancient Roman Italo-Byzantine Gothic architecture Renaissance painting and sculpture Mannerism Baroque and Rococo Neoclassical and 19th century Modern and contemporary
Centennial divisions
Duecento Trecento Quattrocento Cinquecento Seicento Settecento
Important art museums
Uffizi Pinacoteca di Brera Vatican Museums Villa Borghese Sabauda Gallery Gallerie dell'Accademia Pitti Palace Accademia di Belle Arti Firenze Bargello
Important art festivals
Venice Biennale Rome Quadriennale
Major works
The Tribute Money (Masaccio) The Birth of Venus Primavera Mona Lisa The Last Supper Annunciation (Leonardo) Sistine Chapel ceiling Sistine Madonna Pietà The Last Judgment The Creation of Adam David (Michelangelo) The School of Athens The Battle of San Romano Venus of Urbino David (Donatello) The Calling of St. Matthew Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
Italian artists
Painters Sculptors Architects Photographers Illustrators
Italian art schools
Bolognese school Ferrarese school Forlivese school Florentine school Lucchese and Pisan School Sienese school Venetian school
Art movements
Italo-Byzantine Renaissance Pittura infamante Mannerism Baroque Macchiaioli Futurism Novecento Italiano Metaphysical art Scuola Romana Aeropittura Arte Povera Transavantgarde
Other topics
Italian architecture Sculpture of Italy Timeline of Italian artists to 1800 Raphael Rooms
v t e

From the second half of the 18th century through the 19th century, Italy went through a great deal of socio-economic changes, several foreign invasions and the turbulent Risorgimento, which resulted in the Italian unification in 1861. Thus, Italian art went through a series of minor and major changes in style.

The Italian Neoclassicism was the earliest manifestation of the general period known as Neoclassicism and lasted more than the other national variants of neoclassicism. It developed in opposition to the Baroque style around c.1750 and lasted until c.1850. Neoclassicism began around the period of the rediscovery of Pompeii and spread all over Europe as a generation of art students returned to their countries from the Grand Tour in Italy with rediscovered Greco-Roman ideals. It first centred in Rome where artists such as Antonio Canova and Jacques-Louis David were active in the second half of the 18th century, before moving to Paris. Painters of Vedute, like Canaletto and Giovanni Paolo Panini, also enjoyed a huge success during the Grand Tour. Neoclassical architecture was inspired by the Renaissance works of Palladio and saw in Luigi Vanvitelli and Filippo Juvarra the main interpreters of the style.

Classicist literature had a great impact on the Risorgimento movement: the main figures of the period include Vittorio Alfieri, Giuseppe Parini, Vincenzo Monti and Ugo Foscolo, Giacomo Leopardi and Alessandro Manzoni (nephew of Cesare Beccaria), who were also influenced by the French Enlightenment and German Romanticism. The virtuoso violinist Paganini and the operas of Rossini, Donnizetti, Bellini and, later, Verdi dominated the scene in Italian classical and romantic music.

The art of Francesco Hayez and especially that of the Macchiaioli represented a break with the classical school, which came to an end as Italy unified (see Italian modern and contemporary art). Neoclassicism was the last Italian-born style, after the Renaissance and Baroque, to spread to all Western Art.