Describe Neoclassicism as a vehicle for noble idealism and authority in Western art

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

By mid-century, the Neoclassical style came to dominate the arts. The style was marked by the self-conscious revival of Greco-Roman culture. During the seventeenth century, artists of the European academies had resurrected the Classical ideals of clarity, simplicity, balance, and restraint, as configured in the grand manner of Raphael and other High Renaissance masters. A rise in archeological digs of old Greco-Roman sites helped to inspire this stylistic trend. One scholar, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, captured the thought behind Neoclassicism: artists could achieve greatness only by imitating the ancient Greeks, in whose best works there was "a noble simplicity and a quiet grandeur." Neoclassicism was the ideal mode of expression for the Enlightenment paradigm of reason, clarity, and order—a style that equated beauty with goodness, virtue, and truth.