NAVIGATION

Leonhard Posch produced a series of cast iron portrait busts of philosophers in the early 19th century who had played an important role in relating the literary movement of Romanticism to contemporary philosophical themes. Schiller was a German poet and man of letters remembered for his influential insistence on the importance of aesthetics, and on the primacy of the imagination on artistic expression. The keynote of the Romantic movement was a belief in the value of individual experience and this marked a reaction from the rationalism of the Enlightenment and orderliness of the Neoclassical style.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, scientist, patron and amateur artist. He was one of the giants of European culture and his writings on the visual arts, particularly on the growth of Romanticism were hugely influential, especially on his fellow philosopher, Schiller. He was a friend and patron of many artists including Caspar David Friedrich and Tischbein. Delacroix, inspired by Goethe’s ‘Faust’ produced a set of lithographs illustrating the literary work.