Antiquity is a springboard to invent new things

Alexandre Dumas said: "the ancient is the aristocracy of history". The writer wanted to mean that there were more nobility to emulate the Greeks and the Romans to write, paint and sculpt. Before him already in the 18th century, then that bloom rockery style and scenes of kind purely decorative, garlands and pastel colours, a new wave spread throughout Europe. It is based on the style that Dumas as "aristocratic", antiquity, and accompanies the discovery of new archaeological sites.

The Museum of the Louvre decrypts in 150 works, how the currents and the riptides in response to the vogue of the ancient. Generic is impressive David Piranese passing by Hubert Robert, Goya and Füssli. But the Commissioners sought to tell many stories at the time and eventually to lose. The exhibition allows however to enjoy unique works, Rarities in the history of art.

"Antiquity is a springboard to invent new things." "A suite of Whirlpool movements", explains one of the Commissioners, Christophe Leribault. The exhibition opens on a room dedicated to Edme Bouchardon (1698-1762). This forgotten history (apart from experts), says the trend before everyone. And the Museum is able to make one his marble statues "Love earning his bow in the Club of Hercules" of 1750, with a work that directly inspired him "Love tending his bow" a Roman sculpture. Already Voltaire remained doubtful about the charm of Bouchardon sculpture: "do you think that love knocking chips at his feet is a very pleasant object."

One could expect that abound the paintings of the great painter to the ruins and ancient nostalgia of the 18th century, Hubert Robert (1733-1808). But there is at the Louvre that two of his paintings, a retrospective in preparation for the Grand Palace. One of them is grandiose. "The discovery of the Laocoon", from Richmond, Virginia, romantise wish the Group of Greek sculptures rediscovered in the 16th century and acquired by the Vatican. In a temple to infinite opportunities arises the sculpture in a proliferation of characters.

Need to dwell on a lesser-known painter, Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain (1715-1759), which at the end of his life served as the Academy of the fine - arts of Saint Petersburg. It performs an architectural whim, working the shadows as will the be later in photography, "forcing the draw." In this setting of columns and temples, this pictorial party gives a dramatic atmosphere composition.

The most striking room is devoted to the sublime. The Zurich Johann Heinrich Füssli (1741-1825) spent ten years in Rome before moving to London in 1779. In 1782 he exhibited at the Royal Academy "The nightmare", a beautiful sleeping, according to ancient tradition, upon which sits a devil. The work is facilitated a high expressive intensity, also found in an extraordinary array of the Irish James Barry "King Lear crying on the body of Cordelia".

The exhibition concludes on a table out of David (1748-1825), unlikely mix between the girondes forms of the modern Swiss Felix Valloton and the voluptuous women of Ingres, on an almost pointillist background form. "Abandoned psyche", which belongs to a private collector, was painted after 1787. The beautiful lost eyes, anomaly in the history of art, is it only the displacement at the Louvre.