In architecture it featured sobriety, straight lines, and forms, such as the pediment and colonnade, based on Ancient Greek and Roman models.

Neoclassicism in France emerged in the early to mid-18th century, inspired in part by the reports of the archeological excavations at Herculaneum (1738) and especially Pompeii (1748), which brought to light classical designs and paintings.

The French antiquarian, art collector and amateur archeologist Anne Claude de Caylus travelled in Europe and the Mideast, and described what he had seen in Recueil d'antiquités, published with illustrations in 1755.

In 1667 the king rejected a baroque scheme for the new east façade of the Louvre by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the most famous architect and sculptor of the Baroque era, in favor of a more sober composition with pediments and an elevated colonnade of coupled colossal Corinthian columns, devised by a committee, consisting of Louis Le Vau, Charles Le Brun, and Claude Perrault.

[5] The result, incorporating elements of ancient Roman, French, and Italian architecture, "resolves itself into the greatest palace façade in Europe.

The façades Gabriel designed were carefully rhymed and balanced by rows of windows and columns, and, on large buildings like those the Place de la Concorde, often featured grand arcades on the street level, and classical pediments or balustrades on the roofline.

The École de Chirurgie, or School of Surgery in Paris by Jacques Gondoin (1769) adapted the forms of the neoclassical town house, with a court of honor placed between a pavilion with a colonnade on the street and the main building.

[10] One of the best-known neoclassical buildings of the period is the Château de Bagatelle (1777), designed and built by François-Joseph Bélanger for the Comte d'Artois, Louis XVI's brother.

Marie-Antoinette had a similar small neoclassical belvedere created by architect Richard Mique, who had also designed her picturesque rustic village in the gardens of Versailles.

Claude-Nicolas Ledoux designed the Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans with exaggerated neoclassical buildings arranged in circles around a central "temple", where the director's home and office was placed.

His designs for an immense spherical monument to Isaac Newton (1784) and a vast new royal library in Paris in the form of a giant barrel vault (1785) were never seriously considered, but foreshadowed the architecture of the 20th century.

Pierre-Alexandre Vignon (1763–1828), a student of Ledoux, was charged with remaking the Church of the Madeleine, begun in 1761 but abandoned during the Revolution, into a "Temple of Glory" dedicated to Napoleon's army.

A change of style began to appear early in the 19th century, particularly after the publication in 1802 of le Génie du christianisme by one of the leading figures of French romanticism, François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848).

Beginning in 1784 he painted works based on stories from classical literature, including Oath of the Horatii (1781), a celebration of duty and sacrifice in Roman times.

When the French Revolution began in 1789, David became an active participant in the most extreme wing, the Jacobins, He supported the dissolution of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, and designed sets for revolutionary pageants and ceremonies.

The later neoclassical painters put aside the political messages and concentrated on idealized figures and ideas of beauty; they included François Gérard, who like David, made a famous Portrait of Juliette Récamier, much to the annoyance of David; Jean-Baptiste Regnault (1754–1829); Pierre-Paul Prud'hon (1758–1823); Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842) and Anne Louis Girodet-Trioson (1767–1824).

His works varied widely from neoclassical to rococo; he conceived a terra-cotta model for an extraordinary monumental sculpture, covered with statuary of angels and cupids, to celebrate the first balloon flight in Paris by the Montgolfier brothers (1784).

The points of view of those who sing range from a deputy to their soldiers, mother, wives, husbands, and fathers, depicting the roles they must take and live through during this era of revolution.

Banned by both Napoleon and Louis XVIII for its revolutionary ties, La Marseillaise, achieves the similar goal of uniting the people of France by evoking from them a sense of patriotism, as it was nicknamed “Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin” (War song for the Army of the Rhine).

[23] Uniting them through a renewal of both baroque and classical music,[24] it is not of the glorious history of France, but of the resilience of its people who fought, and still fight to create the nation in which they dreamed to build.

The goût Grec or "Greek taste" in design was introduced in France in 1757 by Jean-François de Neufforge in his book Recueil élémentaire d'architecture, which praised "the majestic and sober style of the architects of ancient Greece."

He offered engravings of classical vaults, garlands of laurel leaves, palmettos and guilloches (braided interlaced ribbons) and other motifs which soon appeared in Paris salons.

[25] Beginning in the 1770s, the style pompéien or Pompeii style came into fashion in Paris, based on reproductions of designs found in Pompeii, augmented with arabesques, griffons, sphinxes, horns-of-plenty and vases on tripods, interlaced with vines and medallions and painted on tall rectangular panels on the walls painted white and bordered with gilded stucco.

The boudoir of Marie Antoinette at the Palace of Fontainebleau, designed by Rousseau de la Routière in 1790, just after the Revolution began, is a notable example.

The Empire style had extraordinary coherence and audacious simplicity, thanks to Napoleon's two energetic chief designers, Charles Percier (1764–1838) and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine (1762–1853).

The motifs were usually symbols of empire, including crowns and laurel wreaths, medals, lyres, horns of plenty, and classical heads seen in profile.

[27] The first "Greek taste" furniture in France, made in 1756 and 1757 to designs by Jean-François de Neufforge (1714–1791) and Jean-Charles Delafosse (1734–1791), was massive, rectangular and heavily decorated, with gilded columns, friezes and hanging garlands.

However, soon afterwards the royal cabinet maker Jean-Francois Oeben produced much lighter and more graceful works for Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour.

The type of Greek chair called the klismos became especially popular; Jacob produced a variety of neoclassical divans and stools, as well as the Lit de Repos, or day bed, which appeared in Jacques-Louis David's Portrait of Madame Récamier.

Gilded bronze ornaments of extremely fine craftsmanship were made in Paris workshops and exported to the royal houses of Europe.