Romanticism And Realism

Romanticism and Realism

At the end of the Baroque Period in the eighteenth and nineteenth century art was divided into two
distinct categories, Romanticism and Realism. Romanticism, the passion-filled works illustrating
stimulating accounts of specific events with symbolic gestures emerging from the scene, separated itself
from the more politically correct stance taken by Realists.

A fine example of Romanticism is Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa. The brutal scene, set afloat on
the wild seas, is emphasized by the chiaroscuro modeling of the lump of figures in the center of the raft.
The X form of the composition draws your eye all around the composition. The eye starts at the top right
with the Revolutionary figure holding on to a piece of cloth in the colors of the French Revolution and then
is drawn down the diagonal. Géricault then depicts the striving, the dying, and the dead as they overlap
each other in a fierce struggle to survive. The eye is then drawn up and down the dark opposing diagonal.
This whole scene is then placed on the mighty ocean to delineate the fact that the raft is a metaphor for
France being on a hostile ocean of depravity.

The Grande Odalisque also typifies Romanticism. Ingres, using example such as the Mannerist
Parmaganino’s Madonna with a long neck, takes the artistic license to elongate the figure of this Turkish
harem girl. Influenced by the neo-classical revival Ingres draws upon the Greek technique of flat linear
forms and de...

Romanticism And Realism

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