I have to admit Romanticism is one of my favorite period of western art history. I think there is something compelling about a movement that recenters in favour of nature and the grandeur of nature. We talked a little while ago in my seminar class about Wolfflin’s categories for Baroque and Renaissance art, and frankly while listening to this lecture I kept thinking that Wolfflin’s categories work well while comparing romanticism to neoclassicism. Romanticism favors color over form, and it is as painterly as can get. It is emotional and dramatic, there is no containment of figures and the composition cannot be clear cut between the represented figures. It also stirs away from human’s as the center of the arts, and I tend to incline towards this sort of depictions.
I am not so much a fan of Lord Byron as a person, but I do have to admit that “Death of Sardanapalus” by Delacroix is one of my favorite paintings inspired by literature.