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Introduction to the subject -

First Chapter

History of Art: its development and patrons

Meaning of Art:

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In art, progress lies not in an extension, but in knowledge of
limitations.

- Braque
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Everyone wants to understand art. Why not to try to understand

the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, the flowers,
everything around one without trying to understand them? But in
case of a painting, people have to understand.

- Pablo Picasso

Art is nothing but humanized science.

- Gino Severini
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Plato on Art:

Plato had a love-hate relationship with the arts. He must have had some
love for the arts, because he talks about them often, and his remarks show
that he paid close attention to what he saw and heard. He was also a fine
literary stylist and a great story-teller; in fact he is said to have been a

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poet before he encountered Socrates and became a philosopher. Some of
his dialogues are real literary masterpieces. On the other hand, he found
the arts threatening. He proposed sending the poets and playwrights out
of his ideal Republic, or at least censoring what they wrote; and he
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wanted music and painting severely censored. The arts, he thought, are
powerful shapers of character. Thus, to train and protect ideal citizens
for an ideal society, the arts must be strictly controlled.
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Plato's influence on western culture generally is a very strong one, and
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this includes a strong influence on the arts, and on theories of art. In the
case of the arts and aesthetic theory that influence is mostly indirect, and
is best understood if one knows a little bit about his philosophy.

1. Art is Imitation;

This is a feature of both of Plato's theories. Of course he was not the first
or the last person to think that art imitates reality. The idea was still very
strong in the Renaissance, when Vasari, in his Lives of the Painters, said
that "painting is just the imitation of all the living things of nature with
their colors and designs just as they are in nature. It may still be the most
commonly held theory. Most people still think that "a picture must be a
picture of something and that an artist is someone who can make a
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picture that "looks just like the real thing". It wasn't until late in the
nineteenth century that the idea of art as imitation began to fade from
western aesthetics, to be replaced by theories about art as expression, art
as communication, art as pure form, art as whatever elicits an "aesthetic"
response, and a number of other theories.

So art is imitation. But what does it imitate? Here is where Plato's two
theories come in. In the Republic, Plato says that art imitates the objects

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and events of ordinary life. In other words, a work of art is a copy of a
copy of a Form. It is even more of an illusion than is ordinary experience.
On this theory, works of art are at best entertainment and at worst a
dangerous delusion.
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2. The Artist is Divinely Inspired;

The idea of the artist as divinely inspired, or even possessed, has also
persisted to the present day. Some of our most common art vocabulary
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derives from this idea. For example, the word "music" derives from the
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Greek Muses, the demigods who inspired an artist's work. The notion of
"genius" is originally the same; your genius was your personal daimon or
inspiring spirit. There are countless paintings from the Renaissance
which depict a genius of this sort, or an inspiring muse; and there are
some which combine the ideas of inspiration and imitation, showing an
artist or musician contemplating a divine ideal, and producing art as a
result. An example, which may appear a bit differently to modern eyes
than to Renaissance ones, is Titian's "Venus and Music" (Venere, Amore
e Organista). The idea of genius was strong in the Romantic period, and
has certainly not gone away since that time!
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Thus the definition of Plato has always been a point of contention as to

whether art is imitation or not. We will stick our discussion to general
explanations, what is accepted by most prudent people of the present as
correct since our aim is not divulge in to the different theories but to
come to the conclusion, with the help of other influencing factors, what
the main topic of this research is.

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rt’; the three letter word is more complex when it comes

‘A to defining it rather than ‘Science’, the seven letter word.

Open your eye in the greatest wilderness or in the most
modern, most civilized and developed region and one
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finds the things that naturally attract. It is so natural, an
inseparable part of our lives, that we hardly ever realize its
existence in its natural state. It is only when we give it a certain
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shape, a certain entity that we realize and call it art. The art is
omnipresent. It touched the lives of primitive people and it has
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touched us too, the present generation.

Fine art or the fine arts describes an art form developed primarily
for aesthetics and/or concept rather than practical application. Art
is often a synonym for fine art but not all art can be considered
‘Fine Art’. Historically, the fine arts were limited to painting,
sculpture, architecture and engraving. Today, the fine arts
commonly include visual and performing art forms, such as
painting, sculpture, installation, Calligraphy, music, dance, theatre,
architecture, photography and printmaking. However, in some
institutes of learning or in museums fine art, and frequently the
term fine arts as well, are associated exclusively with the visual art
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forms. One definition of fine art is "a visual art considered to have
been created primarily for aesthetic purposes and judged for its
beauty and meaningfulness, specifically, painting, sculpture,
drawing, watercolor, graphics, and architecture. The word "fine"
does not so much denote the quality of the artwork in question, but
the purity of the discipline. This definition tends to exclude visual
art forms that could be considered craftwork or applied art, such as
textiles. The ‘Visual Arts’has been described as a more inclusive

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and descriptive phrase for current art practice, and the explosion of
media in which high art is now more recognized to occur. The term
is still often used outside of the arts to denote when someone has
perfected an activity to a very high level of skill. For example, one
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might metaphorically say that "Pelé took football to the level of a
fine art."1

Nobody wants to be devoid of art yet everyone finds it difficult to

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define. So what is art? The Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary
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defines art as, ‘a skill in performance, acquired by experience,

study and observation’. The dictionary also uses two terms for it
‘dexterity’ and ‘knack’ as explanation. Obviously an artist is a
practitioner of this skill by virtue of his knack and dexterity. The
former is inborn and the latter acquired. It is by the virtue of a
combination of dexterity and knack i.e. the skill acquired by
practice and ‘innovation of representation’ (which comes from
insight) that an artist is able to execute and bring into existence, a
work that is called ‘art’. A work that takes the viewer beyond the

1
Wickipedia - Edison Arantes do Nascimento (born 23 October 1940), best known by his
nickname Pelé. A Brazilian football player who is widely regarded, by polls among football
experts, former players and fans, as the greatest footballer of all time. He perfected football to
such level that his skill took it to the level of fine art.
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perception and forces him to see or visualize from his inner view;
much deeper than what is presented before his eyes.

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“The Rape of the Sabine

Women” by Giambologna : An example of Fine Art.

It does not mean that to qualify as an art work a creation

essentially has to have a deeper meaning but it includes a
common place thing made uncommon through unique
presentation. It is this quality that opens the gates of exploration
into the new realms of art. It incorporates painting, architecture,
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sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, photography and others. Media

may very but the concepts have distinct similarities. Thus what
can be ‘art’and what cannot is a question ever contested. Of the
numerous examples when ‘What is Art’was questioned, the most
significant was the birth of Dadaism2. The Dada art movement
was intended to question and defy everything that art was
perceived as at the time. “Dada is irony.” “Dada is politics.” “Dada
will kick you in the behind,”exclaimed its participants.

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Appearing first in Zurich in 1916, and quickly spreading across
many other cities, including Berlin, Paris, and New York, Dada was
the method of practice and a shared attitude rather than a common
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style. It’s method of shock tactics to sabotage the viewers
expectations of art work was thought to challenge the repressive
and conventional work of that era.
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'Fountain' 1917, by Marcel Duchamp one of
the most famous example of Dadaism.
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'Fountain' 1917 a signed urinal by

Marcel Duchamp. This piece was
both shocking and one of the most
important of the Dada movement.
It raised numerous questions of
what art is and could be, and
completely changed opinions of how art is perceived today. The
definition and evaluation of art has become especially problematic

2
Dadaism or Dada, a post-World War I cultural movement in visual art as well as literature
(mainly poetry), theatre and graphic design that rejected of the prevailing standards of art.
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Realist Painting - William Adolphe Bouguereau

“The Last Pleiad” 1884

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Photograph, Marilyn Moonroe

since the early 20th century.

Richard Wollheim distinguishes
three approaches: the Realist,
whereby aesthetic quality is an
absolute value independent of
any human view; the Objectivist,
whereby it is also an absolute
value, but is dependent on general human experience; and the
Relativist position, whereby it is not an absolute value, but
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depends on, and varies with, the human experience of different

humans. An object may be characterized by the intentions, or lack
thereof, of its creator, regardless of its apparent purpose. A cup,
which ostensibly can be used as a container, may be considered
art if intended solely as an ornament, while a painting may be
deemed craft if mass-produced. Thus it becomes important to
historically analyze how the term ‘Fine Art’ came into existence
and what it really means.

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Let’s look at Art from the point of History to understand it better
what went in to transformation of art :-
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Pre Historic Era –
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Latin, præ = before; Greek, ?s t ???a = history) is a term
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used to describe the period before recorded history. Paul

Tournal originally coined the term Pré-historique in
describing the finds he had made in the caves of southern
France. It came into use in France in the 1830s to
describe the time before writing, and the word
"prehistoric" was introduced into English by Daniel
Wilson in 1851.

Not many people are aware that the oldest form of “human art” has
been found in India. The oldest known "human art" is the series of
Stone Age petroglyphs (cupules3). It was discovered in the 1990s

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They have been described as "the most common motif type in world rock art". The actual
term "cupule" was invented recently by the world-famous archeologist Robert G. Bednarik, in
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in two ancient quartzite caves in India: Auditorium Cave,

Bhimbetka and a Daraki-Chattan rock shelter. Geological
investigations of the prehistoric sites by renowned archeologists
Bednarik, Kumar and others, have established that this rock art are
older than Acheulean culture of the Lower Paleolithic era and so it
must at least be of 290,000 BC era. New methods indicate that it
may have originated in 700,000 BC. Even so, the Bhimbetka
cupules are four times older than the Blombos Cave art, which is

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the next oldest site of Stone Age art.

Petroglyphs are images incised in rock, usually by prehistoric,

especially Neolithic, peoples. They were an important form of pre-
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writing symbols, used in communication from approximately
10,000 B.C. to modern times, depending on culture and location.

The word comes from the Greek words ‘petros’ meaning "stone"
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and glyphein meaning "to carve" (it was originally coined in French
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as pétroglyphe).

The term 'petroglyph' should not be confused with pictograph,

which is an image drawn or painted on a rock face, both of which
contribute to the wider and more general category of rock art.
Petroforms, or patterns and shapes made by many large rocks and
boulders in rows over the ground, are also quite different.

an attempt to provide a consistent name for a phenomenom which hitherto had been called
"pits", "hollows", "cups", "cupels", "cup stones", "pitmarks", "cup marks" - even "pot-holes".
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Petroglyphs of different regions

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Bhimbaithka Drawings
(petroglyphs)

Though there have been many other examples of ‘Pre Historic Art’
but Altamira Caves are thought to be one of the best examples.
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The drawings are of very high quality. “In the oldest known
examples of graphic art, the representations of animals play a
large part; humans appear rarely and then frequently with animal
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attributes or as mixed human–animal figures. In the context of the
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whole situation, the view that these representations were merely

ornamentations or served a purely artistic need may be dismissed"
-Encyclopedia Britannica

A prehistoric drawing from

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Altamira Caves : Picasso
exclaimed “After Altamira, all is
decadence”

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Discovered accidently in 1868 by a hunter named Modesto Cubillas, the caves of Altamira
are located in Santillian del Mar in Cantabria, Northern Spain, about 30kms. West of
Santander, and are one of the finest examples of Prehistoric art.
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(1) Paleolithic Art (ca. 30,000-10,000 BC)
Paleolithic or "Old Stone Age" is a term used to define the oldest
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period in the human history. The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic - lit. old
stone from the Greek paleos=old and lithos=stone. It began about
2 million years ago, from the use of first stone tools and ended of
the Pleistocene epoch, with the close of the last ice age about
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13,000 BC.
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Subdivisions of the
Paleolithic include the:
Lower Paleolithic
(Oldowan, Clactonian,
Abbevillian, Acheulean),
Middle Paleolithic, the
time of the hand axe-industries (Mousterian) and Upper Paleolithic
(Châtelperronian, Aurignacian, Solutrean, Gravettian,
Magdalenian). The Paleolithic is followed by the Mesolithic or
Epipaleolithic.
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The Lower spans the time from around 4 million years ago when
the first humans appear in the archaeological record, to around
120,000 years ago when important evolutionary and technological
changes ushered in the Middle Palaeolithic.

In Europe and Africa the Middle Paleolithic (or Middle Palaeolithic)

is the period of the early Stone Age that lasted between around
120,000 and 40,000 years ago. It was the time when early humans

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gained increasing control over their surroundings and later saw the
emergence of modern humans around 100,000 years ago. Stone
tool manufacturing developed a more sophisticated tool making
technique which permitted the creation of more controlled and
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consistent flakes. Hunting provided the primary food source but
people also began to exploit shellfish and may have begun
smoking and drying meat to preserve it. This would have required
a mastery of fire and some sites indicate that plant resources were
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managed through selective burning of wide areas. Artistic
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expression emerged for the first time with ochre used as body
paint and some early rock art appearing. There is also some
evidence of purposeful burial of the dead which may indicate
religious and ritual behaviors.

The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last
subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood
in Europe, Africa and Asia. Very broadly it dates to between
40,000 and 8,500 years ago. Modern humans, who had begun
migrating out of Africa during the Middle Paleolithic period, began
to produce regionally distinctive cultures during the Upper
Paleolithic period. The earliest remains of organized settlements in
the form of campsites, some with storage pits, are encountered in
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the archaeological record. Some sites may have been occupied

year round though more generally they seem to have been used
seasonally with peoples moving between them to exploit different
food sources at different times of the year. Technological
advances included significant developments in flint tool
manufacturing with industries based on fine blades rather than
cruder flakes. The reasons for these changes in human behavior
have been attributed to the changes in climate during the period

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which encompasses a number of global temperature drops. Artistic
work also blossomed with Venus figurines and exotic raw materials
found far from their sources suggest emergent trading links.
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For the purposes of Art History, though, when we refer to
"Paleolithic" art, we're talking about the Late Upper Paleolithic
period. This began roughly around 40,000 years ago and lasted
through the Pleistocene ice age, the end of which is commonly
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thought to have occurred near 8,000 B.C. A leeway of a few
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centuries on both sides is understood. This period was marked by

the rise of Homo sapiens and its ever-developing ability to create
tools and weapons5.

Paleolithic Art, produced from about 32,000 to 11,000 years ago,

falls into two main categories: Portable Pieces (small figurines or
decorated objects carved out of bone, stone, or modeled in clay),
and Cave Art.

Palaeolithic items are represented by artifacts from the Caucasus,

Crimea, Russian steppes, Siberia and Altai. These are
characteristic stone implements 500,000 to 350,000 years old
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Shelley Esaak <http://arthistory.about.com/cs/arthistory10one/a/paleolithic.htm>
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excavated in Armenia, the Kuban and Altai regions, and in the

vicinity of the River Dnestr.

Varied artistic objects from the Stone Age were found in the Malta
(Siberia), Maininsk (Siberia) and Kostenky (River Don)
Settlements.

Female figurines from the Malta dwellings are worthy of particular

attention; amongst them are exceptionally rare early Palaeolith

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figurines wearing some form of garments.

Paleolithic female figurine 23,000-21,000

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BC, Kostenky
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Plates made from a mammoth

tusk with depiction of a
mammoth and snakes, and
figurines of flying birds were
also discovered in this
settlement.

Scientists earlier used to think that Paleolithic man was using tools
only about 20,000 years ago but it was later discovered that Stone
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Age ''blacksmiths'' were using fire to make tools at least 72,000
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years ago.
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Just as raising temperature can change the properties of iron and
other metals, early humans heated stone to make it easier to flake.
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The process transformed a stone called silcrete into an

outstanding raw material for tool manufacture.

Paleolithic Tools
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This was the beginning of developing man’s skill, firstly for making
things of his daily need and then slowly but steadily man evolved
many art forms, which later on became popular as a decoration
piece or creative endeavors.

(2) Mesolithic Art (ca. 10,000-8,000 BC)

In recent art history writings, the Mesolithic period ("Middle Stone
Age") is only briefly mentioned as a "transitory" era between the
Paleolithic and Neolithic ("New Stone Age") periods. Known as
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"Middle Stone Age", the Mesolithic period covered a brief span of

around 2,000 years. It is the period between Paleolithic and
Neolithic ages. The examples of art in this era are not very
interesting, to some extent boring, nothing significant or new was
achieved in art terms. This era saw the beginnings of both settled
communities and farming.

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A Mesolithic
dwelling
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Apparently
people also
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had a few spare minutes on their hands, because the Mesolithic
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period saw the invention of the bow and arrow, pottery for food
storage and the domestication of a few animals - either for food or,
in the case of dogs, for help in the hunting of food.

The art fond in this era chiefly consists of ‘pottery’, though it was
mostly utilitarian in design. In other words, a pot just needed to
hold water or grain, not necessarily exist as a feast for the eyes.
The artistic designs were mainly left up to later peoples to create.

The portable statuary of the Upper Paleolithic was largely absent

during the Mesolithic era. This is likely a result of people settling
down and no longer requiring art that could travel. Since the
invention of the arrow had occurred, much of this period's "carving"
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time seems to have been spent knapping flint, obsidian and other
minerals which lent themselves to sharp, pointy tips.

The most interesting Mesolithic art that we know of consists of rock

paintings. Similar in nature to the Paleolithic cave paintings, these
moved out of doors to vertical cliffs or "walls" of natural rock, often
semi-protected by outcroppings or overhangs.

Between Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic eras, the biggest shift in

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painting occurred in subject matter. Where cave paintings
overwhelmingly depicted animals, rock paintings were usually of
human groupings. The painted humans typically seem to be
engaged in either hunting or rituals whose purposes have been
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lost to time.

Marching Warriors, Spain, 7000-

4000 BC
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Far from being realistic,

the humans shown in rock
painting are highly
stylized, rather like glorified stick-figures. These humans look more
like pictographs than pictures, and some historians feel they
represent the primitive beginnings of writing (i.e.: hieroglyphs).
Very often the groupings of figures are painted in repetitive
patterns, which results in a nice sense of rhythm (even though it is
not certain what exactly the people of the time wanted to depict).
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Though these rock paintings have been found in locations ranging

from the far north in Europe to southern Africa, as well as
elsewhere around the globe, the largest concentration of them
exists in eastern Spain's Levant.

While no one can say with certainty, the theory exists that the
paintings' locations weren't chosen at random. The spots may

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have held sacred, magical or religious significance. Very often, a
rock painting exists within close proximity to a different, more
suitable spot upon which to paint.
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(3) Neolithic Era (ca. 8000-3000 BC)
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The Neolithic period, also called New Stone Age, began when men
first developed agriculture and settled in permanent villages. It
ended with the discovery of bronze. The prime medium of Neolithic
art was pottery. Other important artistic expressions were statuary
of the universally worshiped Mother Goddess and megalithic stone
monuments. Free standing sculpture had already begun by the
Neolithic, the earliest being the anthropomorphic figurines, often
embellished by animals.
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The "Thinker" & the
"Seated Woman" - Masterpieces of Neolithic Art
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Megalithic monuments are found in the Neolithic from Spain to the
British Isles and Poland. It is generally accepted that they started
in the 5th Millennium BC, but some researchers and historians
differ on the point and argue that they actually began to be made
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in Mesolithic Period itself.
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While the most well-known of these is Stonehenge, were the main

structures date from the early Bronze age, such monuments have
been found throughout most of Western and Northern Europe,
notably at Carnac, France, at Skara Brae in the Orkney Islands, in
Portugal, and in Wiltshire, England, the area of Stonehenge, the
Avebury circle, the tombs at West Kennet, and Woodhenge. One
tomb found in New Grange, Ireland, has its entrance marked with
a massive stone carved with a complex design of spirals. The
tomb of Knowth has rock-cut ornaments as well. Many of these
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monuments were megalithic tombs, and archaeologists speculate

that most have religious significance.

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Stonehenge presently
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Stonehenge Original Plan 3000 bc

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Stonehenge was built as an astronomical calendar aligned with
lunar and solar events such as the summer solstice where the sun
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rises directly over the Heel Stone and the first rays shine into the
center of the monument between the open arms of the horseshoe
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arrangements. Built in three phases between 2950 B.C. and 1600

B.C., the original construction was a circular ditch and mound with
56 holes forming a ring. The first stone placed at the site was the
Heel stone erected outside of the entrance to the site. 200 years
later 80 blocks of bluestone were erected forming two concentric
circles. This is a prominent example of man’s extraordinary sense
of art used in to scientific exprementation. Ir was something so
amazng that even the scientists of present day see the massive
structure with awe and aew unable to decide how the humans of
Neolithic Era, made it possible to construct. Many artists and
reseatchers have been greatly impressed with it, as the example
below of one of the great landscape painters, John Constable.
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‘Stonehenge’by John Constable

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Thus it has been ascertained that Neolithic art is represented by a
number of large and varied collections of objects found in vast
isolated areas in Eastern Europe, Siberia and Central Asia.
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Most fully represented are archaeological complexes discovered in
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the forest regions of European Russia. The objects found give an

idea of the culture and art of Neolithic tribes who, from the 6th
millenium to the middle of the 2nd millenium BC, inhabited the
country between the rivers Volga and Oka, the Urals, and southern
areas of the Pskov region including settlements in Karelia.

Head of a Female Elk, 3rd millenium BC

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Neolithic everyday objects reveal that fishing and hunting were the
main occupations of the inhabitants of the forest territories.
Neolithic people decorated clay vessels in a wide variety of ways,
created bone, horn and wooden figurines of people and animals.
Noteworthy are a number of articles intended for tribal cults; these
are polished stone axe-hammers, one end terminating with a
bear's or elk's head executed with a considerable degree of
realism. There are very carefully worked small flint figurines of

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people, animals and birds, which are schematic and stylized and
were probably used as amulets.
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Neolithic Masterpiece: Ram in the Thicket

(c.2500 BCE)

Characteristics of Neolithic art:

It was still, almost without exception, created for some functional

purpose.
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• There were more images of humans than animals, and the

humans looked more, well, human.

• It began to be used for ornamentation.

• In the cases of architecture and megalithic constructions, art was

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now created in fixed locations. This was significant. Where
temples, sanctuaries and stone rings were built, gods and
goddesses were provided with known destinations. Additionally,
the emergence of tombs provided unmoving, "visit-able" resting
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places for the dearly departed - another first.

(4) Classcal Period

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Althugh important the classical period is mainly known for the fine
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music composed during that period. Some of the greatest

musicians in the History belonged to this era.

The Classical era (or Classic era, a usage generally preferred in

the USA) is usually understood to mean the period in which the
central ‘classics’of the standard repertory— essentially, the works
of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven — were composed: that is, from
about 1750 or soon after to sometime between 1800 and 1830.

Whether this is truly a ‘style period’, in the sense that the style of
the three ‘classical composers’ was a universally used one, or
simply a period in which those three great composers worked, has
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been a matter of some contention among students of the period

and of musical history.

The word ‘Classical’, which is derived from the Latin classicus

(meaning ‘of the first class’), is defined in the Oxford English
Dictionary as ‘Of the first rank or authority; constituting a
standard or model … ’; further definitions refer to kinship with
Greek and Latin antiquity (including ‘conforming in style or

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composition to the rules of or models of Greek or Latin
antiquity’). The relevant definition of ‘Classic’is ‘Of the first class,
of the highest rank or importance; approved as a model; standard,
leading’. In common parlance, the word is used primarily to
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distinguish cultivated music that is not popular or traditional, and
probably has its historical roots in ecclesiastical or courtly
traditions; it is thus used in a sense that implies acknowledgment
of some kind of authority, seriousness of purpose, and perhaps
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superiority, and certainly of the idea that it has stood the test of
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time. In this sense it is applied to the music of composers of any

era, from the Middle Ages to the present day, and might even be
understood to include ‘serious’music of the avant-garde. The term
is also often applied, in the discussion of non-Western music, to
courtly music traditions of such cultures as those of East and
South-East Asia and the Middle East. In France, the phrase
‘French Classical Tradition’does not normally indicate music of the
late 18th century but of the age of Louis XIV, an era regarded as a
‘classical’one.

Drawing on the association of merit with the ancient civilizations,

the term was initially used in musical discourse in the sense of
‘classics of their kind’, or works widely recognized as models of
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excellence within their own genre. Forkel, writing in 1802, referred

to Bach's keyboard works as classics; Palestrina's masses and
Corelli's concertos have been similarly described, as representing
an outstanding group of examples of a particular genre. Mozart's
first biographer, F. X. Niemetschek, wrote of the ‘classical value’of
his music, and indeed hinted at the idea of Mozart's belonging to a
‘classical era’ when he wrote that ‘The masterpieces of the
Romans and Greeks please more and more through repeated

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reading, and … the same applies for both connoisseur and
amateur with regard to the hearing of Mozart's music.
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5

December 1791)

The idea of a specific ‘Classical school’, referring to Haydn,

Mozart, and Beethoven6, took firm root in German writings about
music during the 1830s, as a German or Viennese phenomenon,
parallel to the Weimar Classics of Goethe and Schiller; only later
did it come to be called the ‘Viennese Classical School’(and later

6
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), supposedly the greatest ever composer, who became
deaf and yet composed the most beautiful musical compostions.
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‘First Viennese School’, to distinguish it from the Second Viennese

School of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern).

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Ludwig van Beethoven painted in 1820
by Joseph Karl Stieler
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Classical Period-Supposed portrait of

Mozart & Haydn in Mozarteum, Salzburg
 38

It was in the early 19th century that a need was felt for a
terminology that would differentiate the new Romantic Movement
from what had gone before. The word ‘Romantic’, as a term to
describe a musical style or an approach to music, seems to have
entered the musical vocabulary earlier than the word ‘Classical’,
which was now invoked as an antithesis to describe the music of
the preceding era. It was appropriate for a number of reasons,
three in particular, of which the first is that the music of Haydn and

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Mozart (and in effect no other composer) had remained in the
repertory and had come to achieve a canonical or classical status.

Secondly, it is apt because of the curiosity and the kinship felt by

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artists of the second half of the 18th century, and its final quarter
especially, for the ancient classical civilizations and their art. This
was an age during which Greek and Roman literature, art, and
architecture were re-examined, more scientifically than before.
t
Archaeologists had excavated Pompeii beginning in 1748; the
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visible remains were drawn, engraved for wider circulation, and

their design analyzed. The austere temple at Paestum, already
known, was sketched and engraved, and imitated for operatic
stage sets. Writers, of whom the most influential was J. J.
Winckelmann in the 1750s, discovered a ‘noble simplicity’ in
classical architecture. G. B. Piranesi's collections of engravings of
Rome had a wide circulation and influence, and Joshua Reynolds
stressed that the highest achievement in painting depended on the
use of Greek or Roman subjects and their representation of heroic
or suffering humanity. Jacques-Louis David, inspired by Pompeii
and Rome, provided eloquent paintings of Socrates and Brutus in
the 1780s and, following classical principles, went on to become
 39

the official artist of the French Revolution. The sculptor Antonio

Canova used classical statues as the basis for his figures of
modern men and women. At the end of his career, the poet and
librettist Pietro Metastasio wrote a survey of Greek drama and
Aristotelian theory of tragedy, and made a translation of Horace's
Ars poetica, as models for operatic practice.

The turn of the century is sometimes described as a ‘neo-

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classical’ era, but that term is more appropriate to the visual arts
than to music, where it is more aptly and usefully saved for the
stylistic events of just over a century later.

In the visual arts the European movement called "neoclassicism"

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began after A.D. 1765, as a reaction against both the surviving
Baroque7 and Rococo styles, and as a desire to return to the
perceived "purity" of the arts of Rome, the more vague perception
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("ideal") of Ancient Greek arts, and, to a lesser extent, 16th century
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Renaissance Classicism.

Contrasting with the Baroque and the Rococo, Neo-classical

paintings are devoid of pastel colors and haziness; instead, they
have sharp colors with Chiaroscuro. In the case of Neo-classicism
in France, a prime example is Jacques Louis David whose
paintings often use Roman and Greek elements to extol the
French Revolution's virtues (state before family).

Each "neo"- classicism selects some models among the range of

possible classics that are available to it, and ignores others. The

7
An artistic style of late 16th century to the early 18th century, most often defined as "the
dominant style of art in Europe between the Mannerist and Rococo eras, a style characterized
by dynamic movement, overt emotion and self-confident rhetoric."
 40

neoclassical writers and talkers, patrons and collectors, artists and

sculptors of 1765–1830 paid homage to an idea of the generation
of Pheidias, but the sculpture examples they actually embraced
were more likely to be Roman copies of Hellenistic sculptures.
Much "neoclassical" painting is more classicizing in subject matter
than in anything else.

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t el
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Jacques-
Louis David 'Madame Recamire', 1800

Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (26 April

798 – 13 August 1863), France, ‘Girl in a Cemetery’, 1824,
 41

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t el
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Classical Masterpiece - Nymphs and Satyr (1873) by William Adolphe Bouguereau

Thus we see that though Classical Period started with the hight in
music, it had a telling impact on Fine Art as well. A significant
development was that the art in general was getting support from
some specific quarters, who were the first patrons of art.
 42

Patrons
Fine art differs from folk and popular art in that its audience is an
elite one – not only in terms of education but in terms of wealth
and power. Only the wealthy and powerful can afford to buy fine
art and support its endevaors - in other words, to be its patrons.
With the spread of education the educated middle-class has grown
and so has the number of audience for the fine art, at least those

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who give their moot support by visiting and appreciating the works
of fine art, even if they are not capable of buying it their moral
support is no less significant than those who directly purchese
these works and help the livelyhood of the fine artists. Also some
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of them may well be the prospective buyers too. But in the elite
class with their abundance of wealth, they are more readily taken
as the patrons due to the market economics which define patron
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as the one who has the power and the willingness to buy more and
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more works of fine arts. Therefore the choice of subjects to be

handeled were greatly influenced by the choice of the patrons.

During middle ages, the Catholic church was the most powerful
institution in the western world and was also the chief patron of
Fine Art. So the best of fine art done during these periods revolves
round the choice of the churches. Detailed discussion on this has
been done in Chaprter 3.