ABSTRACT
The world of antiquity was rarely absent from the seventeenth-century mind. Nicolas Poussin's view of the unbridgeable distance separating the Rome of his day from that of antiquity is summed up in a story told by Bellori. Francois Duquesnoy's attitude to antiquity seems in fact to have been a remarkably sophisticated one. One cannot speak of a single Baroque conception of antiquity. The widely differing attitudes adopted by artists towards the ancient past might rather be viewed as paralleling, or even as reflecting, the rich stylistic diversity of the period. The graceful goddess at the left is Calliope, muse of epic poetry, whose attitude and drapery show that she has been modelled after antique statuary. In the decorative arts of the Louis XIV period a different attitude towards the classical architectural vocabulary may be seen making its appearance under the influence of Italian models.
