Living statues and neoclassical dress in late eighteenth-century Naples

• Autores: Amelia Rauser
• Localización: Art history: journal of the Association of Art Historians, ISSN 0141-6790, Vol. 38, Nº. 3, 2015, págs. 462-487
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Neoclassical fashion -the high-waisted, white muslin gown, often worn with minimal undergarments and a cashmere shawl in the 1790s -didn't emerge from the crucible of political revolution, but rather arose first artistic dress, worn by women to express their status as living statues, as artworks come to life. The idea of the living statue was highly theorized by contemporary artists and aesthetic philosophers, for whom it expressed the utopianism of the Enlightenment and its dreams of human and social perfectibility. Yet in seizing the role, women like Emma Hart and Charlotte Campbell both appropiated the prestige of neoclassical culture and put pressure on its assumptions. It was in Naples, inspired by the distinctively Neapolitan symbol of the bacchante, the provocative 'attitude' performances of Emma Hart, and an intense communion with classicism, that the style of the white muslin dress escaped the studio to clothe women as living artworks.