Neoclassicism vs. Romanticism
Goya, Goethe, Byron
• The sleep of reason
produces monsters
• The dream of reason
produces monsters
Neoclassicism
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Symmetry
Proportion
Order
Clarity
Restraint
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism
Landscape with Aeneas on Delos
Neoclassicism
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Decorum
Harmony
Restraint
Imitation of Greek and
Roman originals
• Dominance of preestablished rules
Jean-Louis David, Oath
of the Horatians
Neoclassicism
• Purpose of art: to instruct by
delighting
• Dominance of the moral over
the aesthetic function of art.
Romanticism
J.M.W. Turner, Snow Storm - Steam-Boat off a
Harbour's Mouth
Romanticism
Caspar Friedrich, Abbey in the Oak Wood
Romanticism
Romantic Garden
Romanticism
• Prevalence of the individual, subjective,
personal, spontaneous
• Emphasis on the power of imagination,
emotion, irrationality
• Search for the transcendental
• Appreciation for the power/beauty of
untamed nature
Romanticism
• Emotion over reason, senses over the intellect
• Preoccupation with genius, the individual, the
exceptional
• Artist as the supreme creator
• Rejection of rules, importance of experimentation
• Imagination as way to reach transcendental
experience/truth
• Predilection for the exotic, mysterious, weird,
occult, monstrous, diseased, satanic
• Search for national, autochthonous origins
(resurgence of medieval, revaluation of
Shakespeare, Calderón, Lope de Vega)
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes
1746-1828
His life is described as
having four stages:
• Until 1793 – slow rise to
maturity
• 1793 – illness that left him
deaf and released pent up
creative forces within him
• 1808 – Napoleonic
invasion and Goya’s
responses to the war.
• 1819 – a second illness, he
retires to the Quinta del
Sordo, the Black Paintings
First Stage: Tapestry Cartoons
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General impression?
Calm, peace, harmony
Lack of emotion
Beauty, grace
Balance
1808 – 1814 Napoleon and the
War of Independence
The 3rd of May, 1808
The disasters of the war
The Colossus – between 18081812
• Ambiguity of giant
– Ignorant, arrogant prince?
(Ferdinand VII)
• Mountains= the powerful
• Donkey=nobility
– Hercules who rises up
against Napoleon?
– Buried to above the knees
– Back to spectator
– Closed eyes
Black Paintings– 1820-1823
The witches’ Sabbath
Saturn eating his son
Prometheus
• Rebel god (Titan)
• Stole fire from Zeus
and gave it to man
• Chained to a rock
• Eagle ate his liver
each day
• 13 generations later,
Heracles killed the
eagle
Prometheus, Gustave Moreau
Some Romantic works based on the
Prometheus myth
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
“Prometheus” (1774)
• Ludwig van Beethoven, opus 43, Creatures
of Prometheus (ballet), overture (1801)
• Lord Byron, “Prometheus”
• Percy Shelley, Prometheus Unbound (1820)
• Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein
or the Modern Prometheus (1818, 1831)
Johan Wolfgang von Goethe
(1749-1832)
• Perhaps the most important
German writer (poet, essayist,
dramatist, novelist)
• Collected works form around
144 volumes
• Most influential works: The
Sorrows of Young Werther
(1774), Wilhem Meister (18211829), Faust (Part I, 1808, Part
II 1832)
• A principal figure of the Sturm
und Drang movement
Portrait by Eugene Delacroix
George Gordon, Lord Byron (17881824)
• Perhaps the best
known of the English
Romantic poets
• Main works:
– Childe Harold’s
Pilgrimage (18121818)
– Manfred. Dramatic
Poem. (1817)
– Don Juan (1819-1824)
Byronic hero
• Exiled or solitary
wanderer
• Moody, passionate
• Superior intellect
• Heightened sensitivity
• Rejects traditional
values and moral
codes
Goethe and Byron’s “Prometheus”
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In groups of three discuss the following
and choose an image that you feel is
particularly powerful to exemplify each:
1. How the Gods (Zeus, in particular) are
characterized.
2. How Prometheus is characterized.
3. What stage of the Promethean myth is
presented.
4. How the attitudes of the two poets differ.