The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (411 page)

(1624–99).
Spanish
Baroque
sculptor. He was a fellow student of Pedro de Mena in Granada under the latter's father, Alonso de Mena. By 1656 he had settled at Seville, where he became the leading sculptor of his period and where from 1664 to 1672 he was director of sculpture at the Academy. His greatest work is the spectacular
reredos
for the high altar of the Church of the Hospital de la Caridad (1670–5), which was
polychromed
by
Valdés Leal
. Roldán's daughter and pupil, Luisa (
c.
1656–
c.
1704), was also a sculptor, principally active at Cadiz and Madrid. She was the only woman to hold the position of royal sculptor (to Charles II of Spain).

 
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(
c.
1610–62).
Italian painter and tapestry designer. He was Pietro da
Cortona's
outstanding pupil, and like his master a protégé of the
Barberini
family. Romanelli's graceful style was less energetic than Cortona's (he owed much to his first teacher
Domenichino
) and his restrained type of Baroque proved particularly popular and influential in France, where he worked 1645–7 and 1655–7. He introduced to Paris Cortona's characteristic manner of decoration, consisting of paintings combined with richly gilded
stuccowork
, and this was one of the sources for the great schemes of
Lebrun
at Versailles and elsewhere. Examples of Romanelli's work survive in the Bibliothèque Nationale (painted for Cardinal Mazarin) and (much altered) in the Salle des Saisons of the Louvre (painted for Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV).

 
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Romanesque
.

Style of art and architecture prevailing throughout most of Europe in the 11th and 12th cents., the first style to achieve such international currency. The dominant art of the Middle Ages was architecture, and ‘Romanesque’, like ‘
Gothic
’, is primarily an architectural term that has been extended to the other arts of the period. As the name suggests, it indicates a derivation from Roman art, and sometimes ‘Romanesque’ is used to cover all the developments from Roman architecture in the period from the collapse of the Roman Empire until the flowering of the Gothic—roughly AD 500–1200. More usually, however, it is applied to a distinctive style that emerged, almost simultaneously, in several countries—France, Germany, Italy, Spain—in the 11th cent. It is characterized most obviously by a new massiveness of scale, reflecting the greater political and economic stability that followed a period when Christian civilization seemed in danger of extinction. Romanesque painting and sculpture are generally strongly stylized, with little of the
naturalism
and humanistic warmth of
classical
or later Gothic art. The forms of nature are freely translated into linear and sculptural designs which are sometimes majestically calm and severe and at others are agitated by a visionary excitement that can become almost delirious. Because of its expressionistic distortion of natural form, Romanesque art, as with other great non-naturalistic styles of the past, has had to wait for the revolution in sensibility brought about by the development of modern art in order to be widely appreciated.

 
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Romantic Classicism
.

See
NEOCLASSICISM
and
ROMANTICISM
.

 
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Romanticism
.

Movement in the arts flourishing in the late 18th and early 19th cents. Romanticism is so varied in its manifestations that a single definition is impossible, but its keynote was a belief in the value of individual experience. In this it marked a reaction from the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the order of the
Neoclassical
style. The Romantic artist explored the values of intuition and instinct, exchanging the public discourse of Neoclassicism, the forms of which had a common currency, for a more private kind of expression. Romanticism is commonly seen as the antithesis of
classicism
, and the two concepts are sometimes used in a very general sense to designate polarities in attitude that may be seen in the art of any age—thus
Raphael
might be described as a ‘classical’ artist, whereas his contemporary
Giorgione
is a ‘romantic’ one. However, the exponents of both Romanticism and classicism share a concern with the
ideal
rather than the real, and that there is sometimes no firm dividing line between the two approaches is shown by the use of the term ‘Romantic Classicism’ to describe certain works that show a Romantic response to antiquity. Both Romanticism and classicism embrace concepts of nobility, grandeur, virtue, and superiority. But where the classical seems a possible ideal which will adapt man to his society and mould that society into an orderly setting for him, the Romantic envisages the unattainable, beyond the limits of society and human adaptability. The classical hero accepts the fate over which he has no control and triumphs nobly in this acquiescence, otherwise he would not be a hero. The Romantic hero pits himself against a hostile environment and at no time comes to terms with it even if he reaches his goal, otherwise he would not be Romantic.
Romanticism represents an attitude of mind rather than a set of particular stylistic traits and involves the expression of an idea that tends to have a verbal rather than a visual origin. It lends itself more easily to expression through music and literature than through the visual arts, as a sense of the infinite and the transcendental, of forces exceeding the boundaries of reason, must necessarily be vague—suggestive rather than concrete, as it must be in painting and even more so in sculpture. Almost by definition, the leading Romantic artists differ widely from one another—
Blake
and
Turner
in Britain,
Delacroix
and
Géricault
in France,
Friedrich
and
Runge
in Germany. The movement of which they were a part died out in the mid 19th cent., but in a broader sense the Romantic spirit has lived on, representing a revolt against conservatism, moderation, and insincerity and an insistence on the primacy of the imagination in artistic expression.