The Neoclassical period came about during a time when academic art was both classical and historical. That meant a lot of the art produced made subjects of ancient Greece and Rome, their people, their architecture, and their mythology. (Rosenfeld, 2004) Neoclassicism was art as classical history lesson.
The French revolution meant that Neoclassical art could not afford to be only …show more content…
First, you have to know who Marat was. If you read one of Marat’s publications, you’d probably know who Marat was and who murdered him, but otherwise as a viewer you’d be lost. Marat was a Jacobin and so was David and this painting was for the Jacobins (one of the political groups of the French revolutionaries). In that sense it’s kind of exclusionary. Second, you have to pick up the Christian symbolism in Marat’s knife wound (similar to Jesus being speared while on the cross) and understand the revolutionary significance of David depicting a man of the revolution as a martyr’d …show more content…
Lady Liberty Leading the People is especially violent, with the dead broken and lying on the barricade. Excitement like that is what drove art in France from Neoclassicism to Romanticism. This was probably the influence of the French revolutions. Neoclassical art was stoic, and Romantic art was vital. Neoclassical art was cerebral, and Romantic art was passionate. Neoclassicism represented the state of art before the first French revolution. Romanticism is the result of classically trained French artists living within the historical context of two bloody revolutions as bookends to the Napoleonic