Aestheticism

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a very important and influent art and potery movement. The
members of this movement get their inspiration from the late Medieval Italian art, characterized by
semplicity of line, brilliant colours and tendency towards the realistic, tipical of the early italian
painters before Raphael. It's most inportant exponent was Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82).
The artists in this movement were opposed to materialism and middle-class life, so vulgar and
conventional; they were devoted to their art since their only goal was to achive beauty.

The Aesthetic Movement

Walter Pater (1839-94) rapresented the reaction to the utilitarian idea of art, he bealived that the
only end of art was beauty. He exluded any paratical or ethical purpose of art, promoting the
concepet of “art for art's sake”, and to pursue an hedonistic lifestyle. The most importat exponent
of this point of view was Oscar Wild; he wrote about it in essays of aesthetics and particularly in
the original novel titled “The Picture of Dorian Gray”.