Ken's Classical Music Website: A Short History of Western Art (Classicism vs. Romanticism)

Classical artists tend to use vertical and horizontal lines, right angles, and bright colors

(especially blue skies).

The outlines of their figures are sharp and clear-cut.

They tend towards less decoration, less busy works.

Romantic artists prefer diagonal lines, circles, bends and swirls. Also darker colors and

foggy or stormy skies (and oceans).

They use less-distinct, often smudged or blurred outlines for the figures.

More decoration and often busier (more complex) works.

Roman Art - c. 100 - 250 (Classical)

The Roman Maison Carrée, Nîmes

Strength, endurance, simplicity of form, lightly ornamented

Emperor Augustus Caesar (63 B.C. - 14 A.D)

Calm, confident, courageous, moral, a virtuous leader of his people.

Hellenistic Art (c. 350 - 30 BCE) (Romantic)

Drama, death, fantasy

Romanesque / Byzantine c. 1000 - 1200 (Classical)

Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, 1261

Calm, confident, courageous, moral, a virtuous leader of his people.

Gothic Art - 1150 - 1400 (Romantic)

Characteristics: Emotional, Magical, Mysterious, Fantastical, Dramatic

Mysterious, spooky, imagination, fantasy.

Simone Martini (b. 1284)

High Renaissance Art - c. 1500 (Classical)

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola - Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486)

Michelangelo - David - 1501 - 1504

Calm, confident, courageous, moral, a virtuous leader of his people (same as Augustus Caesar, above).

Albrecht Dürer - Self Portrait - 1500

Focus on philosophers of classical antiquity (intellect), balance.

Raphael - The School of Athens - 1509 - 1511

(Raphael's homage to the ancient Greek philosophers with Plato and Aristotle in the back center of the painting.)

Classical Architecture (Strong, with only moderate ornamentation)

Baroque Art - c. 1600 (Romantic)

Baroque art's romanticism includes (motion) action, drama, passion, anguish, foreboding, turbulence, chaos, tragic charter flaws, the mysterious and the magical. Greek mythology is a recurrent theme.

Baroque Art

Gian Lorenzo Bernini - David - 1623 - 1624

Action, drama, tension, stress

El Greco - View of Toledo - c. 1599

Foreboding, apprehension, gloom

Caravaggio - The Taking of Christ - 1602

Action, Drama, Fear, Character Flaws
(Judas's betrayal of God for 30 pieces of silver)

Peter Paul Rubens - The Fall of Phaeton - 1604

Turbulence, Chaos, Destruction

Baroque Architecture (c. 1680 - 1730)

Later Baroque architecture is busy, highly ornamental, complex, lush and often an overload of sensuality.

Adamskirche, Munich, Germany

Palace of Versailles

Complexity, sensuousness

Rococo Architecture (c. 1720 - 1760)

Rococo art softened Late Baroque art & architecture in color and with curvy lines. It depicted scenes of love, nature, amorous encounters, light-hearted entertainment, and youth. It was more light-hearted and frivolous than Baroque art and corresponds to galant style in music.