John Flaxman

John Flaxman (July 6th 1755 - December 7th 1826), Sculptor and draftsman English. He attends the Royal Academy of London and from 1773 devotes itself to the production of wax models for manufacture Wedgwood the ceramics. From 1787 to 1794, he lives with Rome, where he is very active in the neo-classic medium and is also interested in the experiment purist. It is of this period which the illustrations for the Iliade and the Odyssée date, the Divine comedy and tragedies of Eschyle: in all 21 drawings. Of return to London, it enters in Royal Academy (1800), where it will be then named professor of sculpture, and receives important orders, in particular in the field of the funerary sculpture (monument of Lord Mansfield, London, Abbaye of Westminster). This refined interpreter of the neoclassicism was admired and studied by the largest artists of his time.

The return to the line, sublimated ideal removed from any sensuality of terrestrial, the side of the abstraction. He illustrates the Songs of Homère and the Divine comedy of Dante. He in parallel carries out medallions and subjects for vases which he models for the manufacture of Wedgwood. He eliminated in his illustrations from Iliade and the Odyssey from 1793 the nuances changeantes, the lights, and remains on simple contour with the feature on plain paper. the axis of composition is more elementary near to the primitive art. There is in its work a desire of clean slate, of return to a stripped, anti-realistic style carried out with a simple contour, a plane and linear technique. Its style is of this fact close to primitive Italian like Cimabue. For its illustrations of the Divine comedy of Dante, the scenes are even air. It restores spaces symbolic systems as the hell by abstract torments of lines which intersect. From its works emerges a desire to set out again to zero.

It became famous for its illustrations of Greek mythology.

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