Jacques-Louis David, (born August 30, 1748, Paris, France—died December 29, 1825, Brussels, Belgium), the most celebrated French artist of his day and a principal exponent of the late 18th-century Neoclassical reaction against the Rococo style.

Art During the Enlightenment Previous to the Enlightenment, the dominant artistic style was Rococo. When the Enlightenment and its new ideals took hold, Rococo was condemned for being immoral, indecent, and indulgent, and a new kind of instructive art was called for, which became known as Neoclassicism.

Key Points

• Neoclassicism emerged in the second half of the 18th century, following the excavations of the ruins of Pompeii, which sparked renewed interest in the Graeco-Roman world.
• Neoclassical sculpture is defined by its symmetry, life-sized to monumental scale, and its serious subject matter.

Romanticism was a revolt against the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and also a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature. Romanticism legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority, which permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art.

Romanticism had been a reaction to the excess of strict rationalism of the Enlightenment period just as The Enlightenment had been a reaction to a state and church overrun with ignorance. While the Enlightenment movement had thought faith and feeling distorted truth, the Romantics felt truth destroyed emotion.

As such, Romantics sought to restore man’s relationship with nature. They saw nature as something pure and uncorrupted and, therefore, almost spiritual. Most Romantics believed that humans were born pure and good and that society corrupted. Nature, therefore, became a symbol of life without society, a truly good life.

The Romantics were conscious of their unique destiny. In fact, it was self-consciousness which appears as one of the keys elements of Romanticism itself. The philosophes were too objective — they chose to see human nature as something uniform.

The Romantic Period overthrew the values instilled during the Augustan Age and strove to sever itself from the rigid writing styles of the ancient, classical examples of Virgil, Horace, and Homer. Instead, poets and authors were inspired to write in their own individual and creative voices.

The political and economic atmosphere at the time heavily influenced this period, with many writers finding inspiration from the French Revolution. There was a lot of social change during this period. Calls for the abolition of slavery became louder during this time, with more writing openly about their objections.

The Industrial Revolution had the most significant effect on Romantic poetry because it served as a direct antithesis to the poet’s subject matter during that time. During the Industrial Revolution, child labor was common. Labor laws allowed their employers to pay them wages much lower than that of adults.

1 Answer. Romanticism was above all about emotions and expressing yourself, be it in literature or other artistic forms. Romanticists valued individualism, but they also constantly longed to be part of society, which caused them great pain being torn like that.

As mode of thinking, romanticism revolutionized literature, religion and philosophy. It questioned the settled way of thinking which had widely spread with the age of Enlightenment : the age that gave priority to reason, and preference to ideas. This must bring a new idea, which is feelings may lead to ‘truth’.

At its core, composers of the Romantic Era saw music as a means of individual and emotional expression. Indeed, they considered music the art form most capable of expressing the full range of human emotion. As a result, romantic composers broadened the scope of emotional content.