Romantic art puzzle

Our romantic puzzles feature artworks by the most important painters of Romanticism.

In 1830, when Neoclassicism was gradually losing its influence throughout Europe, the new generations of artists and writers were searching for something completely new. The result of this search was the definition of new canons and literary and artistic characteristics that led to the birth of Romanticism.

Romanticism in art presented characteristics clearly opposed to those of Neoclassicism. Unrestrained passion, strong feelings and a renewed fervor for the religious world are its main traits. Moreover, while the conviction of the neoclassical artist was that the perfection of art had been achieved by the ancients, the romantic artist instead drew inspiration from the dark and mysterious world of the Middle Ages. Until that moment, artists had considered this period as an age without importance and mainly negative.

The Romantic season is characterized by essential traits that define, more generally, the entire Romantic movement.

First of all, nature is interpreted as the expression of the divine on earth, the immanence of the absolute in the sensible world, of which man is only a fleeting manifestation.
Nature with its beauty generates contrasting feelings in human beings, capable of terrifying them as much as calming them. Catastrophism, in particular, arouses in the human soul a sense of unease mixed with horror.

Secondly, the return to the medieval past.
It translates into a real plunge into faith, with works that express the need to reconcile man with God, a relationship that can be restored thanks to a rediscovered spirituality.

Finally, a strong aspiration to the absolute and the infinite.
The idea that the absolute spirit is the way in which reality becomes is a typical instance of idealism and traces a common thread through all the characteristics of Romantic art.

Painting is the figurative art par excellence of Romanticism and takes on very different facets depending on the territory in which it developed. Among the great precursors of the Romantic movement was Francisco Goya.

However, there was no real manifesto of Romantic art. In fact, the romantic characteristics of art were identified by various scholars through careful analysis of common elements and, consequently, were not proclaimed by the artists themselves in their romantic paintings.

According to Romantic ideas, or rather according to the general conception of Romanticism, nature was the main driving force of reality. Nature is the only one capable of providing images to human beings, which lead to two important feelings: the picturesque and the sublime.

Human beings live according to an infinite process of self-improvement of the spirit that permeates reality, a constant tension toward perfection.

Rediscover Romanticism with our selection of romantic puzzles!