Classicism in different countries.
Classicism as an official style in architecture and visual arts developed and maintained in Europe from the early 18th century to the first 30 years in. XIX. It was first adopted in England, it will be ok. r. 1720 as so-called. „styl Georgian” (from the names of three successive rulers of England: George I, George II and George III). In France, classicism begins during the reign of kings Louis XV and Louis XVI ("Louis XVI style"), is in the midst of a great revolution, Directory and Empire of Napoleon I (as so-called. "empire style" or "empire"). In Poland, the earlier phase of classicism dates back to the reign of Stanisław August ("Stanislaus August style"), later - for the post-partition times, Duchy of Warsaw and Kingdom of Poland. The second phase of classicism in Europe (ok. 1800— 1830) it is also called neoclassicism.
Classicist art found true enthusiasts in Poland, not only in the person of King Stanisław August, but also the great writers and thinkers of the Enlightenment: Krasicki, Staszic, Kołłątaj, champions of national culture and art, staunch opponents of the Baroque, in which they found perversion and rudeness, characteristic of the mental and spiritual decline of the Saxon times. Winckelmann's ideas were taken up by an art expert and theoretician, and also an architect, amateur and collector of works of ancient art, STANISLAW KOSTKA POTOCKI, author of the first work in Poland devoted to the history of art entitled. About the art of the ancients, that is Polish Winckelmann. Sharing with Winckelmann the cult of the art of antiquity, Stanisław Kostka Potocki did not accept all of his views. We know that he entrusted art with important civic and social tasks to the ideas of the Polish Enlightenment, he also raised - contrary to Winckelmann - the dependence of art on nature, as an inexhaustible treasury of themes and forms.