Classicism Style

Classicism was a separate trend in Baroque European painting, a style of art in which adherence to accepted aesthetic ideals takes precedence over the individuality of expression. In simple terms, it was a restrained, harmonious style that believed in the primacy of design, rather than color or expression. During the Baroque era of the 17th century, the classical tradition was personified by the French artist Nicolas Poussin, who spent most of his career in Rome. Poussin is probably best known for his mythological paintings like Abduction of the Sabine Women(c.1634) andEt in Arcadia Ego(c.1638), although he was also an important pioneer of classical arcadian landscape painting - a genre dominated by another French painter based in Rome, Claude Lorrain. Like Poussin and Lorraine, Simon Vouet also spent a major part of his career in Rome, before returning to Paris as court painter to King Louis XIII. He was noted, in particular, for his muted style of Baroque painting, which avoided both the extreme naturalism and drama of Caravaggio, and the contrived painterly effects of the more intense Italian Baroque art.