Classicism - 16c.

Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clarkobserved, "if we object to his restraint and compression we are simply objecting to the classicism of classic art. A violent emphasis or a sudden acceleration of rhythmic movement would have destroyed those qualities of balance and completeness through which it retained until the present century its position of authority in the restricted repertoire of visual images." Classicism, as Clark noted, implies a canon of widely accepted ideal forms, whether in the Western canon that he was examining inThe Nude (1956), or the Chinese classics.

 As the name for an epoch, classicism can be placed in the time period between 1750 and 1840. From a socio-political perspective, this equates to the transition between absolutism and the Enlightenment. Instead of an all-encompassing humanism, now special knowledge is required; also in art, logic and clarity were to reign, mirroring morals and ethos.

The School of Athens or Scuola di Atene in Italian, is one of the most famous frescoes by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. It was painted between 1510 and 1511 as a part of Raphael's commission to decorate with frescoes the rooms now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. The Stanza della Segnatura was the first of the rooms to be decorated, and The School of Athens the second painting to be finished there, after La Disputa, on the opposite wall. The picture has long been seen as "Raphael's masterpiece and the perfect embodiment of the classical spirit of the High Renaissance. 

Key Artists : Nicolas Poussin, Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Anton Raphael Mengs, Charles Le Brun.