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One of the earliest Neoclassical paintings—Neoclassical in message, subject, and style—was Benjamin West’s Agrippina Landing at Brundisium with the Ashes of Germanicus (Figure 2.2), commissioned in 1766 by York’s archbishop, Robert Drummond. West began as a portraitist in rural Pennsylvania; his parents were Quaker (although West MRLQHG WKH $QJOLFDQ &KXUFK WR DIÀOLDWH KLPVHOI  ZLWK %ULWDLQ·V SRZHU HOLWH :HVW

befriended Philadelphia’s richest man, the merchant William Allen, and accompanied Allen’s son on his Grand Tour. Arriving in Rome in 1760, West met Cardinal Albani, Batoni, Mengs, and Winckelmann, and became good friends with Gavin Hamilton, who advised him about the fortune to be made in Neoclassicism. At the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, West moved to London where he enjoyed a meteoric rise:

Figure 2.1

James Gillray, A Cognoscenti Contemplating the Beauties of the Antique from Punch, 1801.

Figure 2.2

Benjamin West, Agrippina Landing at Brundisium with the Ashes of Germanicus, 1766.

Oil on canvas, 164 × 240 cm (5 ft 5 in × 7 ft 10 in).

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven.

George III named him Historical Painter to the King in 1772, and he succeeded Reynolds as president of the Royal Academy (which West co-founded) in 1792.

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at that time since he was trying to reconcile disagreements among various factions within the Anglican Church. When West showed Agrippina to George III in 1772, the NLQJUHFRJQL]HGDPHVVDJHSHUWLQHQWWRKLVGLIÀFXOWLHVZLWKWKHUHEHOOLRXV$PHULFDQ

colonies. As told by Roman historian Tacitus in his Annals (c. 110), Emperor Tiberius felt threatened by his popular and successful nephew, General Germanicus, reassigned from Germany to Asia Minor, who ruled from the Roman stronghold of Antioch (Syria). Following Germanicus’s dismissal of the uncooperative governor of Syria personally appointed by Tiberius, the emperor arranged for the poisoning of Germanicus in the year 19. His devoted widow, Agrippina, returned to Rome with his FUHPDWHGUHPDLQVDUULYLQJÀUVWDWWKHSRUWRI %UXQGLVLXP%ULQGLVLZKHUHVKHZDV

greeted by grieving crowds.

In designing his composition, West selected visual references familiar to Grand Tourists. Agrippina’s entourage closely resembles the processional frieze on the Ara Pacis (9 BCEDVDFULÀFLDODOWDUHUHFWHGLQ5RPHE\(PSHURU$XJXVWXV7KH3DODFHRI  Emperor Diocletian (c. 300), situated in the former Roman colony of Spalato (Split, Croatia) on the Adriatic coast, forms the backdrop. While few British had been there because its location on the Balkan Peninsula brought it under control of the Ottoman Empire, it had recently been illustrated in Robert Adam’s Ruins of the Palace of Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia (1764). The architectural setting has the simplicity of a theatrical set and the entourage of Agrippina seems to walk across a narrow stage parallel to the picture plane, in a manner recalling Roman art, but the large cast RI FKDUDFWHUVZLWKDÁDQNLQJÀJXUHD5RPDQVROGLHUSRLQWLQJWRWKHPDLQDFWLRQ

belonged to the ceremonial style of academic painting used to depict solemn and SROLWLFDOO\VLJQLÀFDQWHYHQWV

While it extolled the loyalty of Germanicus to a deceitful ruler, Agrippina also celebrated a devoted wife who accompanied her husband on military campaigns, dutifully returned his ashes to Roman soil, and courageously confronted Tiberius with his paranoid betrayal of her husband. Accompanied by two of their six children (Julia /LYLOOD DQG WKH IXWXUHVDGLVWLFDQG LQVDQH HPSHURU &DOLJXOD $JULSSLQD H[HPSOLÀHG

stoic behavior that would be equally admirable in a man: she sheds no tears nor ÁDLOVDERXWLQK\VWHULFDOPRXUQLQJEXWTXLHWO\GHWHUPLQHGO\DQGPRGHVWO\SXUVXHV

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male and female spheres as distinct and oppositional, such stately behavior, at least in images, became exclusively male.

Comparison of Agrippina with Vien’s nearly contemporaneous Seller of Cupids (Figure 1.14), shows how artists tailored images to their patrons. Although both have classical themes and archaeologically accurate details, the erotic frivolity of Vien’s VXEMHFWUHÁHFWHGXSSHUFODVV)UHQFK5RFRFRWDVWHZKLOH:HVW·VH[HFXWHGIRUDUHIRUP

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British sculptor Thomas Banks (1735–1805) represented a different moment in the Germanicus story—his death (1773–74, Figure 2.3). After serving a seven-year apprenticeship to an ornament carver, Banks enrolled at the St Martin’s Lane Academy, one of several private art academies in London. He exhibited at the Society

of Arts and the Free Society of Artists, which provided exhibition opportunities for artists before Royal Academy (RA) exhibitions began in 1769. Banks became an RA member in 1785. Banks executed Death of Germanicus during his seven-year stay in 5RPH ² ZKHQ KH EHFDPH (QJODQG·V ÀUVW 1HRFODVVLFDO VFXOSWRU ,PLWDWLQJ

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and a simple architectural setting. The purity of white marble forged a conceptual link to the perceived restraint and virtue of classical culture, and Banks’s contemporaries would have been shocked to discover (as became clear in the mid-nineteenth century) that ancient sculptures were painted in a life-like manner.

Here, Germanicus expires in heroic nudity with composure and dignity—his facial expression, like those of his companions, betrays little if any emotion. The murderer, a barbarian (non-Roman) distinguished by his beard (Romans were clean-VKDYHQ OXQJHV WRZDUG *HUPDQLFXV D GDJJHU LQ KLV OHIW KDQG SUHSDUHG WR ÀQLVK

off the general, while a soldier pushes him away. Another soldier looks passively on, while a companion entwines his arm with Germanicus’s, their eyes locked in a ÀQDOQRQYHUEDOFRPPXQLFDWLRQ$VRQRI *HUPDQLFXVJUDVSVKLVDUPDVLI WU\LQJ

to detain him among the living, while the stoic Agrippina supports her expiring husband, accompanied by a pair of despondent female servants. This difference in female comportment between Agrippina and the servants evidenced linkage between social status and emotional control in the minds of Banks’s upper-class audience. Like his classical precedents, Banks relied on body language rather than facial expression to communicate emotion. His narrative embodied the “noble simplicity and calm JUDQGHXUµ:LQFNHOPDQQLGHQWLÀHGDVKDOOPDUNVRI *UHHNVFXOSWXUH

Figure 2.3

Thomas Banks, Death of Germanicus, 1773–74. Marble.

Holkham Estate.

Banks and West knew Nicolas Poussin’s masterpiece, Death of Germanicus (1628, Figure 2.4). Poussin (1594–1665) was French, but spent his entire career in 5RPHVXUURXQGHGE\DQFLHQWDQG5HQDLVVDQFHZRUNVWKDWLQÁXHQFHGKLVVW\OH+LV

paintings helped establish the Académie Royale’s criteria for history painting and, WKURXJKSULQWVLQÁXHQFHGDUWLVWVVWULYLQJIRUVROHPQLW\DQGGLJQLW\%DQNVUHYHUVHG

Poussin’s composition, suggesting the possibility that he was working from a print.

Although Banks drastically reduced the cast of characters, he too included a thoughtful observer standing at the foot of the bed, chin resting in his hand, and, like Poussin, grouped the women and children by the head of the bed. The sorrowing female in the lower left of West’s painting echoes Poussin’s Agrippina, and the red-cloaked pointing soldier combines elements of two soldiers in the foreground of Poussin’s painting.

“Among all the works of antiquity which have escaped destruction the statue of Apollo is the highest ideal of art.

The artist has constructed this work entirely on the ideal, and has employed in its structure just so much only of the material as was necessary to carry out his design and render it visible. This Apollo exceeds all other figures of him as much as the Apollo of Homer excels him whom later poets paint. His stature is loftier than that of man, and his attitude speaks of the greatness with which he is filled. An eternal spring, as in the happy fields of Elysium, clothes with the charms of youth the graceful manliness of ripened years, and plays with softness and tenderness about the proud shape of his limbs. Let thy spirit penetrate into the kingdom of incorporeal beauties, and strive to become a creator of a heavenly nature, in order that thy mind may be filled with beauties that are elevated above nature; for there is nothing mortal here, nothing which human necessities require. Neither blood-vessels nor sinews heat and stir this body, but a heavenly essence, diffusing itself like a gentle stream, seems to fill the whole contour of the figure. He has pursued the Python, against which he uses his bow for the first time; with vigorous step he has overtaken the monster and slain it. His lofty look, filled with a consciousness of power, seems to rise far above his victory, and to gaze into infinity. Scorn sits upon his lips, and his nostrils are swelling with suppressed anger, which mounts even to the proud forehead; but the peace which floats upon it in blissful calm remains undisturbed, and his eye is full of sweetness as when the Muses gathered around him seeking to embrace him. The Father of the gods in all the images of him which we have remaining, and which art venerates, does not approach so nearly the grandeur in which he manifested himself to the understanding of the divine poet, as he does here in the countenance of his son, and the individual beauties of the other deities are here as in the person of Pandora assembled together, a forehead of Jupiter, pregnant with the Goddess of Wisdom, and eyebrows the contradictions of which express their will, the grandly arched eyes of the queen of the gods, and a mouth shaped like that whose touch stirred with delight the loved Branchus. The soft hair plays about the divine head as if agitated by a gentle breeze, like the slender waving tendrils of the noble vine; it seems to be anointed with the oil of the gods, and tied by the Graces with pleasing display on the crown of his head. In the presence of this miracle of art I forget all else, and I myself take a lofty position for the purpose of looking upon it in a worthy manner.”

Source: Johann Joachim Winckelmann, “The Apollo of Belvedere,” from The History of Ancient Art, 1764 in Lorenz Eitner, Neoclassicism and Romanticism 1750–1850, vol. 1, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1970, pp. 18–19.