La revisión de los temas de la Antigüedad en la pintura de Historia Española del siglo XIX: Entre la evocación del pasado y la legitimación del poder

Abstract

Traditionally it has been considered history painting as the most important piece of the plastic arts of the nineteenth century. In both, Neoclassicism and Romanticism, and even later, in the Realism, became a showcase of technical advances and compositional trends that characterized the trend of the art of this century, and its theoretical assumptions and encouragement aesthetics of their works. But this same trend was seen also in the very subjects that were represented. Antiquity, understood as a model of virtue, both artistically and politically, presided over much of the creations of our painters. The repetition of heroic themes as the fall of Numancia and Sagunto became a constant, becoming a landmark in the history of art. We intend to examine the implications that reached these representations of antiquity into the national level, a sample of how Spanish artists knew how to lend their personality to a genre of painting that is often seen predominantly European in their origins, evolution and characteristics.