I feel very much at home in the early nineteenth century and am not inclined to leave it.
One of the Age of Enlightenment's most hypnotic images is Ledoux's rendering of his neoclassical theater of 1775 - 1784 in Besancon, surreally reflected in the colossal eye of an unidentified cosmic being.
The Lincoln Memorial is related to the toga and the civilization that wore it.
To achieve the very pinnacle of good taste, the neoclassicists wrote their plays entirely in alexandrine verse, a rarefied meter that is uniquely tailored to the French language and fits no other.
The Princess Borghese, Bonaparte's sister, who was no saint, sat to Canova as a reclining Venus, and being asked if she did not feel a little uncomfortable, replied, "No. There was a fire in the room."
Architecture was pretty much the sexiest thing to be doing from 1700-1800.
I want to be like Madame de Stael.
You may go from the Battery to Harlem, and in our monuments and statues of public men you will see the slavish adherence to Greek and Roman ideals, from which our artists cannot get away.
