Shepherd Boy

The revolutionary movements at the end of the eighteenth century, which were by no means confined to France, adopted a noble Roman pose. Napoleonic Neoclassicism was to take over these canons, nor only in sculpture but in all the arts including architecture, painting, and even furniture and women’s clothes. A classic simplicity became the order of the day. Earlier Greek examples, or Roman copies from them, rather than late Imperial Roman models became the ideal. Once it was really established by the opening of the nineteenth century, the new movement became truly European to a degree that had not been the case since Gothic, with Canova in Italy, Flaxman in England, artists like Thorwaldsen in Denmark and Schadow in Germany all equally representative.