Perspective: Decoding the Secrets of Romanticism in Art

foreign [Music] 1789. [Applause] the Bastille in Paris is overrun by the forces of the French Revolution heralding the start of a new era not only for France but for the whole of the western world when one considers the profound developments in European life in the decades that followed in war and politics and economic growth in technological advances and intellectual thought 1789 can be considered the beginning of the present Modern Age in the history of art II the French Revolution appears to Signal the start of a new age a time of significant changes both for the subject matter of visual art and for the individual artists creating it was a time that produced some of the world's greatest masterpieces the time of the Romantics [Music] thank you looking back at the history of art the Romantic Movement is somewhat indefinable clearly there were certain themes that are common to the whole movement and they were manifested right the way across Europe in a way it's by looking at these great romantic masterpieces that we can Define romanticism and see what the masters of this movement accomplished [Music] the classical world that had seen to be a model for behavior and action couldn't explain War horror and the Carnage of the Napoleonic era so therefore people started to look far more at the individual response to things and really the individual is at the core of Romanticism the word romantic itself provides the first step to identifying these themes romantic in its original use referred to the romances the supernatural literature and poetry of the Middle Ages which included for example the legendary Tales of King Arthur among the many other fanciful Tales [Music] in the 18th century this romantic literature's emphasis on feeling emotion and exotic wild nature began to appeal to many in an age dominated by the belief in the power of science order and reason Romanticism was the predominant artistic movement of the 19th century and it's encompassed not only painting but music and literature so that we can see that people as diverse as Byron and woodsworths and Beethoven all work within the Romantic tradition it was here in London in the middle of the 1700s that the Great British politician and philosopher Sir Edmund Burr developed a theory that became very important to the Romantic Movement he made the case that psychologically there were two types of artistic aesthetic that satisfied the human being one of these Aesthetics was that of beauty the other though was that of the sublime Romanticism in a way is a contrast and sometimes a violent contrast of these two Aesthetics on the one hand romantic painting had to be beautiful it had to have a sense of Harmony and proportion and indeed it was very important that art B attractive history hit is a streaming platform that is just for history fans with fantastic documentaries covering fascinating figures and moments in history from all over the world we aim to bring you only the most dramatic and fascinating stories of the past through our award-winning documentaries find out about the rise of leaders such as Cleopatra and Napoleon in our latest offering of exclusive documentaries sign up now for a free trial and prospective fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code perspective at checkout and yet on the other romantic master refer to something that was that was whether it was the Grandeur of History the Grandeur of nature it was something larger than man himself but Romanticism tried to refer to the Romantic movements can be seen as a reaction against the neoclassical period if the broad theme of the neoclassical period was the idea that the collective should be working towards the common good the predominant idea of the Romantic Period was that of the Dignity of the individual who was existing beyond the bounds of normal society at the time when Burke was writing Western Art was almost exclusively concerned with beauty the Art Market across Europe was dominated by the tastes of the wealthy for beautiful art for their Town and Country Homes to meet this need a would-be artist would undergo an academic training in the techniques of the Masters of the past who it was felt could not be surpassed Fine Art had become a taught discipline with clear objectives and restriction as the great portraitists sir Joshua Reynolds said to his Royal Academy students in 1772 art has its boundaries though imagination has none the Romantic artists would soon take issue with this opinion [Music] the reverence of the past inherent in artistic life that Reynolds time was if anything stronger than it had ever been the mid-18th century saw the excavations of Pompeii and herculanean and the first authoritative Research into Greek architecture the neoclassicist movement a rome-based artistic style of the second half of the 18th century stemmed from these discoveries a movement whose artists sought the noble Simplicity and quiet Grandeur of Greco-Roman forms the artist most associated with the neoclasses his style was the Frenchman who spent seven years in Rome before returning to France in 1781. a man who would become profoundly connected with the art and the politics of his day Jacques Louis David [Music] although it's often seen as being an exponent of neoclassicism and Associated ideas in his paintings he shows that he could actually draw on Romanticism to add new elements of meaning to his neoclassical paintings [Music] with the famous oath of the Horatio he established himself as a major figure in society society which would shortly afterwards be plunged into the turmoil and exhilaration of Revolution a revolution which David passionately supported for the study of romantic art though the well-known events of the Revolution are not as important as the ideas behind it and these ideas stem mainly from the work of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau his fervent championing of the rights of the individual summed up in his classic phrase man is Born Free and lives forever in Chains inspired many in the late 18th century in romantic art this respect for the individual would Express itself in the recurring theme of heroism but as well as emphasizing the rights of the individual and the group Russo also believed in the importance of human emotion an emotion would become another key theme of the Romantic age the philosophy of Romanticism was that of a personal response to things a personal response to to landscape a personal response to the events the Great um emotional events that happened at the time so that because it was a personal response each artist produced work which whilst belonging to a romanticist ideal was individual to themselves so the individual's own feelings rather than General feelings became Paramount so Romanticism is about the self-portrait about journals it's about emotion so Romanticism takes over from neoclassicism where passion takes over from reason following the events of 1789 Jacques Louis David became deeply involved with Rob spierre and other leaders of the early Revolution his most famous work of this period his painting of the murdered Statesman Mara was an undeniably heroic rendition and with the rise of Napoleon for many at the time the ultimate hero figure David continued with the heroic theme as the new Leader's official painter David's large canvas of 1800 showing the French leader on Horseback dramatically about to cross the San Bernard pass was possibly his most memorable work from this period David Rose on the idea of the heroic individual we have instances of dramatic movements in the the flowing drapery of Napoleon and of the hair of the horse indeed there seems to be almost a type of struggle between man and nature in this painting yet David remains true to his neoclassical ideals because Napoleon Remains the master of nature he hasn't entered into the true Spirit of Romanticism where nature overpowers the small individual but although David became the official painter of the Napoleonic era in terms of the development of romantic art one of his contemporaries was even more significant the little known Antoine grow a former pupil of David is 1798 Napoleon at arcole implied a much greater emotional quality in the French leader than David gross's work became a strong influence on two of France's greatest painters of the Romantic age the first of whom was Theodore Jericho born into a wealthy family the young Jericho grew convinced of his Destiny as a great artist in his own words he wanted to shine to illuminate to astonish the world so in 1812 and virtually self-taught apart from two brief apprenticeships Jericho announced himself to society with his first contribution to the Paris Salon the charging light cavalrymen although there are elements of the painting which kind of reveal that he hadn't had a formal academic training such as the problems of proportion and the kind of awkward posture of the male figure in a way he plays upon the fact that he haven't had the formal training and this allowed him to emphasize his particular use of florid brush stroke his desired to allow paint to be visible he's he's wish to kind of show that he'd been physically engaged with the paint and with the canvas two years later he displayed a companion piece the wounded heavy cavalrymen where again technical flaws were offset by the artist's overall power of execution mixed reaction to this second work however combined with an ill-considered affair with a young wife of one of his uncles persuaded the disillusioned Jericho to undergo a trip to Italy in 1816. in the years he spent there he traveled widely and studied hard in a concerted attempt to improve his technical skills notably in drawing and the representation of the human form when he returned to Paris a year later he felt ready to produce his Masterpiece and he chose a fresh contemporary event as the vehicle for his high ambition another strand within Romanticism is that painting should be about the present day people of the early and mid 19th century Antiquity was remote it didn't relate to their own experience and Jericho is really the first artist that elevates a contemporary event in onto the scale of a Monumental history painting the episode he commemorates is the raft of the Medusa the Medusa was a French frigate that ran aground in 1816. the story of the Medusa had outraged French society following the Medusa's loss the ship's officers had commandeered the lifeboats for themselves so while the captain in the officers were saved the other ranks and some passengers were put on a makeshift raft 150 of these people were crammed onto a raft with inadequate food and water only 10 survived the two weeks of thirst disease murder and eventually cannibalism that resulted before the raft was picked up by a passing ship the moment when the desperate survivors cite The Rescuers is what Jericho chose to depict in a truly Monumental canvas for the salon of 1819. the raft of the Medusa what we see then is the moment when the rescue ship is cited so we have figures trying to attract the attention of the rescue ship but what happens is that this commemorates an episode when the rescue ship sees them for the first time and then fails to pick them up it returns later for the final saving of the crew so we have on the top of the picture these figures waving frantically for the attention but then as you drift through the painting the figures in the bottom foreground are slumping back recognizing that they hadn't been seen one of the people who survived from the raft of the Medusa was the ship's Carpenter who constructed supervised the construction of the raft so Jericho sought him out and asked him to produce a complete scale replica as a model of the raft so that he could then use that as an image from which he could construct his painting and the painting in fact is 24 feet wide so it's a a fairly uh huge image now although Jericho wanted to suggest this misery and deprivation of this act we don't see any Act of cannibalism on this raft clearly because cannibalism is one of the great taboos of Western Society what we also see are whole bodies clearly a corpse that's ravaged by the Sun and heat for a number of days is going to start to decay all these Dead figures on the raft of the Medusa seem like dead antique athletes so there is an element of decorum kept in it what we also see is that raft is tipped up at an angle so we're invited to share this misery that's taking place so in many ways the rafter the Medusa is a key document in Romanticism in that the self and individual involvement is being looked at but also the present day is being magnified as an object worthy of Art when Jerry Cole exhibited the painting of the salon um he as he looked at the image he realized that pictorially speaking there seemed to be a gap rather on the the lower right hand side of the painting um which in a sense required another figure so he had his life Model come and pose for him and he painted this figure uh into the picture within the week preceding the exhibition unfortunately for Jericho the adulation that he expected from his great canvas did not arrive reaction to the painting was generally favorable but the work was not purchased by the state of Jericho had hoped it would seem that although the raft of the Medusa was well received its style and message was simply too bold to be hailed right away as a masterpiece so it was that with great disappointment the Jericho came here to London after a short time painting here he then returned to Paris back in Paris Jericho became very interested in painting portraits of the patients of the local lunatic asylum indeed Jericho launched here what is generally perceived as a romantic trait Plumbing the depth of extreme human psychological states of mind romantic artists were interested in figures who manifested certain traits of deviance from a prescribed Norm people who were outside the boundaries of society people who are mad people who were ill people who were poor anyone who really was different in some way [Music] age 33 Jericho died tormented and frustrated Saul only posterity would give him the status of romantic hero that he so desired in life [Music] by contrast the second great figure of French romantic painting would attain great Fame in his own Lifetime and live on into his 60s Eugene delacroix born seven years after Jericho and like him the product of wealthy parents was inspired by the older man's tragic story and by the raft of the Medusa in particular his earliest successful work his Dante and Virgil of 1822 overcomes technical weaknesses with a harmonious overall handling of light and color very much as Jericho had done with his charge in cavalrymen further success would come in 1824 with his large canvas the massacre at kiosk his own giant rendition of a horrifying scene from recent history in this case the slaughter of the Islanders of the Greek island of kiosk by occupying Turkish forces the Greek struggle for Independence was widely supported in artistic circles and this support was boosted when the Great poet of the Romantic age in literature Lord Byron himself died fighting for their cause in 1824. it was a fitting way for him to die a heroic romantic Fighter for Liberty and freedom later a memorial was posted here at Westminster Abbey in London in the famous poets corner delaqua who is a great admirer of Byron's writing adapted one of his plays to make his dramatic painting of the death of sardinopolis it's full of passion and it's full of emotion and this is dressed by a heavy use of paint dramatic brush work huge huge buildup of figures one on top of another complex use of diagonal lines a complex use of lines of muscle lines of bodies and a return to the the dark somber colors of painters from the Baroque era [Music] the year 1830 brought yet more political upheaval in France with July Revolution installing the Constitutional Monarch Louis Philippe it was a development widely popular with liberal thinkers and artists for the Paris Salah of 1831 no fewer than 23 artists contributed work glorifying the new Revolution thank you but of those Works only one is still remembered today a work that many believe to be Eugene delacroix's finest achievement LIberty Leading the People 's painting of LIberty Leading the People is a rendering of the events of the July Revolution in 1830. and delacroix said that whilst he couldn't perhaps fight for the revolution at least he could paint for it delacroix chooses to show a day on July the 28th when the Revolutionary mob attacks the royalist forces and in the center of this painting we have a personification of Liberty so she's bare breasted holding the trickler and a musket in her hand she's the central figure and she's surrounded by other figures from different classes of society so we have a humble factory worker the figure in the top hat is probably a factory supervisor on the other side of Liberty we've got a Ruffian from the streets holding pistols under the base of the barricade we have a figure in a blue shirt seemingly dying and if you like his dying vision is of this representation of Liberty it was a painting that was produced through a great many working studies so that uh delaqua tried to create an image that people would recognize as an event which had happened only shortly before Liberty on the barricade is seen as one of the great romantic statements about modernity and spontaneous action the figure groups in this painting seem very weighty and Monumental Liberty herself might well be modeled on the Venus de Milo Liberty also wears a red cap that's the the Bonnie Rouge the Red Cap of freedom and of course it becomes a very potent symbol for Liberty and freedom fighting and of course it occurs on the 100 Franc French banknote by 1831 delacroix was widely acknowledged as the leader of French romantic painting and there can be no doubt that his great works with their handling of intense emotion horror and violence earn him a place among the great painters of all time but the Romantic artistic themes that inspired deliqua were not restricted just to France in England and Germany as we shall see landscape artists in particular felt the Romantic spirit Spain too would make a contribution to the art of the age but although that contribution may have been limited to the works of just one artist that artist genius was such that many consider him to be the greatest painter of the Romantic Era Francisco de Goya born in 1746 to a Goldsmith father and an aristocratic mother Goya received a formal artistic training and quickly made a name for himself both as a designer for the Spanish Royal tapestry Factory and as a portraitist goya's paintings of the Madrid Society of his day show the influence of the great 17th century Spanish portraits Velasquez like his great predecessor Goya would eventually become the official painter to the Spanish Court but for all their undoubted Excellence it is not for portraits such as these that Goya is regarded as a romantic genius for students of Goya the year 1792 is of the utmost significance for that year he was struck down with a grave illness we don't exactly know what it was but two years later when he recovered he was found to be stoned deaf and that um created within within him uh a feeling which rather darkened his view of the world so that whilst his earlier paintings were quite assertive and rather positive his later paintings became much more filled with rather terrifying images for example he made a series of prints Los capriccios the Caprices the Follies of mankind in which he pilloried such things as witchcraft and superstitious beliefs it was a later print however which he titled the sleep of Reason produces monsters that makes the full romantic point and goes beyond the stage of the Enlightenment the tortured artist depicted is almost certainly Goya himself as a representation of the Romantic theme of the solitary heroic artist fighting a terrible battle against private demons it was utterly unsurpassed [Music] Goya would go on to produce further collections of illustrations in his lifetime with the subject matter growing progressively more horrific the series The disasters of War unpublished till after his death was a great Spanish artist's response to the particularly bloody conflict between his country and the forces of Napoleonic France in a way maybe goya's lithographs of the disasters um have some kind of connection with political cartoons or the type of satirical cartoons that were popular in the 19th century press particularly the 19th century popular press they were direct they didn't require a knowledge of art they didn't require a classical education to be understood and this is very important if Gaia was trying to reach a broad audience and maybe an audience who didn't have the privilege of Education status and money thank you but for all the intensity of his illustrations goya's greatest work would be executed in paint with the war of Spanish Independence again the subject matter on the 2nd of May 1808 the people of Madrid rose up against the occupying French forces the 68 year old Goya would depict this Uprising six years later and a large canvas that fully captured the emotion and energy inherent in such a tumultuous event this work alone represents an artistic Triumph of the first order but with his companion painting depicting the terrible revenge of the French on the 3rd of May 1808. his achievement was even greater [Music] in it French forces have been rounding up Spanish civilians they've been prepared here for execution and one of them is standing with his back against the wall in order to make his point Goya has chosen his moment very carefully the man knows he's about to be shot the whole scene is lit by a dramatic Stark Candlelight the forces of the French are there on the right and there on the left the man stands seconds before the trigger is pulled he's thrown his arms up he's completely defenseless and like Christ himself is about to be crucified now when we see commemorative paintings like this we usually expect them to be extremely heroic and if you like if death is taking place it's seen as being a way to an ultimate Victory but we don't find this in the 3rd of May 188 we contrast the terrorized victims on the left-hand side of the painting with the faceless firing squad of the French these figures all seem too close together in reality a firing squad would have had more distance between them what effectively we get here is an anti-heroic painting The Man in the white shirt isn't a hero he's a victim the the colors that seem to be almost thrown onto the canvas rather like a blood-spattered image and the background is Black Knight that overall hangs like Paul above the whole scene it creates a very Sinister image and the figures of the French executioners they are all depicted in a very aggressive pose whilst the show sort of no pity for the people who they're executing we have if you like three distinct time frames in this painting we have the present with the firing squad just about to shoot the group in the middle if we go back a few moments the people that are lying on the left-hand side would once have been alive and then on the other side of the central group we have those terrorized figures that are waiting to be shot this rather gruesome element in Gaius painting is really what gives it the sincerity which a subject like that needed England of course was generally spared the cataclysmic political upheavals that dominated the societies of Jericho delacroix and Goya and this may explain why the most significant Works produced by great English artists during the Romantic Period were not contemporary history paintings but Landscapes and through the work of John Constable and jmw Turner England contributed fully to the art of the Romantic age and in so doing changed the art of landscape forever prior to the Romantic age landscape paintings were dominated by the concept of the picturesque in a time when Nature was felt to be subordinate to man landscape paintings like other branches of painting conformed certain formal Notions of beauty these formal Notions were derived mainly from the work of great 17th century French painters such as Cloud Lorraine whose calm idealized scenes were inspired by his interpretation of the classical age of Greece and Rome foreign the 18th century was the age of the English landscape garden and the picturesque aesthetic with its mix of the beautiful and Sublime would dominate landscape painting until a young man from East Anglia began to change the rules the painter John Constable was a type of painter who wanted to go out into the English landscape and paint what he saw as he put it in a letter to a friend there's room enough for a natural painter [Music] and to pursue this aim he chose to paint almost exclusively in the area Suffolk where he had grown up the pictures he produced are now among the best loved of all in English art [Music] here we are in birmingham's museum and art gallery to have a look at a fine example of a late Constable painting it shows Salisbury Cathedral and it was painted from the garden of his friend Arch Deacon Fisher it's typical of a romantic landscape painting it's got loose open brush work and reflects his great love of nature however Constable had a difficult time making a living painting Landscapes as most painters were in the business of portraiture painting however his friend Arch Deacon Fisher helped him guaranteed a certain price for his paintings and gave him the peace and Tranquility he needed to carry on with his work romantic landscape painting varies in style in this case it has large open brush work typical of the sketches he made for the final versions which he would show in the Royal Academy every year this is a small sketch of course the final versions were much larger Constable wasn't interested in the idea of an idealized classical landscape he was more interested in a specifically British type of landscape one of the ways that he could achieve this was a more varied type of composition where he could just focus on a small aspect of a landscape or he could focus on a part of a landscape that he remembered from his childhood something that was personal to him or personal to the people who were looking at his paintings [Music] Constable's Mission with landscape if you like was to recreate the greenness of the English English Countryside and he has this extremely close contact with the areas that he grew up of course he's also the son of a Miller so he's a country boy if you like so he understands weather conditions he was an obsessive Observer of clouds he said that the clouds in a painting were the chief organ of sentiment but it is not Constable's techniques that are most significant from a romantic point of view but the sheer sense of feeling in his work and he never expressed his feeling better than in his best known work the hay Lane [Music] the haywing is certainly the most uh reproduced painting in Britain but like so many very famous paintings it's actually rather misunderstood um it was one of a series of paintings which he called his Canal scenes and this painting the the hay way which she in fact called landscape noon was a third of this series of six paintings and it was this series upon which he wanted his reputation to stand he shows a summer scene so the hey Wayne is the cart that's actually crossing the river and on the left hand side you see a cottage that's Willy lot's Cottage Willie lot was a countryman who allegedly never spent even a night away from home so the whole thing is locked in very closely to Constable's own experience the haywain itself is empty an empty cart but in the far distance we can see another Wane which in fact is is full this time it's it's piled high with hay and this empty cart is coming across the river to replace the the one which has been filled with hay and we can see the tiny figures of the Reapers who are bringing the hay in so it's a working image previous to this a lot of landscape painting hadn't really examined the true range of colors in the countryside Constable is very keen to show the differing ranges of green and yellow and brown that occur in the English Countryside [Music] unlike Claude who very often framed trees on either side to focus a painting there are no framing devices and constables painting and it seems to me that that's because Constable wanted us to imagine that this scene extends either side if you like this is simply a fragment of nature that he's painted for us for all the feeling expressed in Constable's Timeless Masterwork these paintings remain recognizable scenes of the Tranquil rural surroundings he knew so well Constable had a contemporary jwm Turner and it's interesting to compare these two painters works whereas Constable was not particularly interested in looking at Old Master paintings and wanted to be directly out in the landscape Turner was a much more academically minded man who loved the Old Masters and studied them carefully [Music] Turner was a man and many different character traits one of those was as an intellectual and in fact he did read perhaps it was even here at Oxford that he first encountered the writings of the German romantic philosopher Gerta now goethe's writing is extremely romantic and in it he proposes that color in painting can have direct emotional meaning blue for example which is a cool color is taken to be gloomy and melancholic and the least happy of the colors on the other hand there was yellow which was brighter warmer it was more happy and Serene this systematic romantic use of color that was developed by Goethe and then carried on with Turner had some interesting applications in his late years Turner was able to do a sequence of paintings in which he used plus and minus colors to capture the dramatic Universal drama of life and death as a painter what he wanted to do was to show his own personal response to to Nature to the landscape but very much to the dramatic events that happened in the landscape like Constable Turner aimed at the truth but not just the truth as sensed by the eyes but truth is felt and experienced Turner could be seen to be Forerunner of the Impressionists because of his radical treatment of the effects of light and the effects of Rapid movement through the use of paint many artists before turn out almost wanted to conceal the fact that they were using paint who they're concerned with the smooth finish yet Turner wanted to proved that paint could be a very powerful way of expressing nature an example of this new approach is this image slavers throwing overboard the dead and dying from 1839. like Jericho's raft of the Medusa before it this is a depiction of an actual event a disgraceful incident on a slaving ship in 1783 when slaves were thrown overboard during a storm in order for the shipping company to claim the insurance for their loss Turner captures the horror of the event but in an utterly different way from Jericho here the sea almost seems alive such as the sheer sensation of turbulence that Turner was able to create [Music] Turner didn't just turn to the Old Masters to render his sense of the sublime he was also able to capture the sublime experience of modern engineering such as in his famous Reigns Demon Speed of 1844. [Music] it actually depicts a locomotive going over a Railway Bridge outside maidenhead in Berkshire in England now of course at this time the railway age was new one of the aspects of Romanticism was that it should be modern so here Turner is examining modern technology and at the same time contrasting it with landscape so not only do we see this locomotive rushing headlong towards us but we also see a hair crossing the railway line and if we look down onto the river there's a boat here we have a railway train which seems to rush towards us and the story of how this painting was created comes from a lady who was on the train with Turner and she tells us of a rather what she described as a rather funny old man who said would she mind if he stuck his head out of the window so she said if he wished to do this and he stood there for fully nine minutes with his head out of the window of this Railway train mentally absorbing what it was like to be rushing along in a railway train to us in modern ages 30 or 40 miles an hour doesn't seem like any great speed at all but of course at this time people were actually quite worried that human beings might pass out through such extreme speeds what Turner does to animate the painting is to show everything out of focus so he anticipates or suggests the speed of the locomotive by showing it out of focus but it also seems to put the Firebox of the engine at the front so another element of Romanticism is this aspect of imagination and creativity Turner painted the greatest romantic Landscapes and seascapes in England then is equivalent in Germany was undoubtedly Casper David Friedrich the final essential artist of the age born in 1774 he settled in Dresden as a young man and would remain there for the rest of his life as with constable and Turner friedrich's Landscapes would represent his greatest artistic contribution Landscapes inspired by ideas that were utterly romantic emotion characterizes his work in this case a strong sense of melancholy but friedrich's personal views on the role of the artist are significant too he saw the artist's role as being that of a mediator between nature and Humanity nature he believed was too Sublime for the multitude to grasp [Music] whether Friedrich eventually succeeded in this ambitious aim of mediation is uncertain but his Renditions of nature are amongst the most spiritual and Sublime ever created for example with his monk by the Sea we see nature utterly dominant as in the later work of Turner but would land sea and air utterly separated but the highly spiritual Friedrich wanted to do more in his paintings than simply represent the sublime aspect of nature he wanted to instill symbolic meaning into his work his marvelously Transcendent Abbey in the Oak Forest gives us a clue to his intentions foreign the funeral procession takes place in an otherworldly graveyard [Music] but perhaps a stronger example of friedrich's use of symbolic meaning can be witnessed in his first classic work the cross in the mountains widely reckon to be the first use of landscape for an Altarpiece and an image whose every element contains symbolic meaning [Music] Casper David Friedrich was really the first artist who saw that religion and spirituality could be contained in Landscapes alone we know that Friedrich was a devout Protestant and he felt that landscape could be used as a way of examining essential Christian truths of redemption and salvation in 1880 Paints the cross in the mountains now we know that in Germany and Austria still today we have these elaborately carved guilt crucifixes that Adorn the tops of mountains so what we've got here is one of these scenes with the cross in the mountains surrounded by evergreen trees and the dying rays of sunlight Friedrich felt that by examining this kind of symbolism it could be an aid to meditation and understanding religion now of course many people at the time objected to landscape creeping onto the altar as they said Friedrich is also responsible for the elaborately carved frame around the paintings it's supposed to be a kind of devotional Altarpiece we know that this painting was shown in friedrich's studio for a while and it was placed on an altar table so people that came in approached it as a revered object they came and observed it in hushed silence [Music] in looking back at the Romantic age we can see that it was a time in which artists developed new conflicting and often dramatic themes in their paintings of course the abiding political and philosophical concern of this period was that of Liberty artists from the period such as delacroix Goya Constable Turner and Friedrich all celebrated this Liberty and their exploration of painting once this new Liberty had been won by painters they handed it on to the Impressionists and as we will see in the last program in the series this was a liberty that they too would hold very dear [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Perspective

Views: 43,594

Keywords: 18th century art, 19th century art, Perspective, academic art, art appreciation, art interpretation, art philosophy, artistic creativity, artistic freedom, artistic period, artistic rebellion, artistic symbolism, emotional intensity, european art, european painters, historical significance, j. m. w. turner, johann wolfgang von goethe, john constable, romantic movement, romanticism

Id: pBiGVlTLO6Q

Length: 48min 47sec (2927 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 22 2023