ter half of the eighteenth century when there would be a return to a more rigorous classicism in reaction to the excessive ornamentation of the rococo style.
The turning point to neoclassicism in France came with the Marquis de Marigny's tour of Italy with architect Soufflot in 1749-1751:
Before this period classical monuments in Rome were largely unexcavated and covered in vegetation . . . But with the discovery of Herculaneum (1738) and Pompeii (1748), as excavations revealed more of the art of antiquity, interest shifted to more serious study for the sake of knowledge and for the same of imitation . . . Thus with a new spirit Marigny returned to Paris and began to commission paintings, sculptures and several notable buildings (including the Ecole Militaire, Ste.-GeneviFve or the Pantheon, and the Place Louis XV or de la Concorde). . . .
The revival of classical forms thus came once those forms could be observed, studied, and imitated. The theory underlying neoclassicism was to "cleanse architecture of artificialities and wanton freaks of fancy introduced by Rococo." Neoclassical architects placed their emphasis on the stark contrasts between the various masses of a building or group of buildings, and this is one of the reasons the Roman Pantheon served as a model:
With the return to the conviction of the excellence of antiquity, it was considered desirable to adapt classical models in art and architecture to modern use. As neoclassicism developed from the late eighteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth, the taste in art and sculpture changed to more heroic and severe subjects with calm and majestic attitudes and highly idealized features. In architecture there was a shift in emphasis as to what should be expressed in official buildings in France.
The Ecole Militaire was one of the structures produ
...