Thank goodness I never went to "art school"! My "art" education was limited to "Art and Archaeology," dealing with ancient Greek and Roman art.
Interestingly, Alma-Tadema, who did a number of the paintings in this article, did painstaking research to make sure that his ancient Greek and Roman clothing, situations, and furnishings were accurate. My main objection to his paintings is that, particularly in the couple paintings, his girls are pretty English Victorian bourgeoise. Not Romans or Greeks. We have plenty of Roman portrait busts and Greek vase paintings to show us what a beautiful Greek or Italian girl looked like in their day.
I think, though, that this is more obvious to us than it was to them, because painters tend to paint the current ideal of feminine beauty, and it's changed substantially since his day. The pre-Raphaelites (also well represented here) did the same thing, although Burne-Jones was the only one who tended to paint an idealized female head. The others (especially D.G. Rosetti, who is not one of my favorite painters) tended to paint over and over again their lady love of the moment.
I'm a little disappointed in this article's focus on the "idealist" school of painters. Just off the top of my head, although Burne-Jones and Alma-Tadema are fine painters, those with more depth include Hogarth (the ultimate realist) and William Holman Hunt (an amalgam of realism and idealism), with Holbein for portraits.
Check these out:
Hogarth: The Painter and His Pug
Herring, Archbishop of Canterbury (Hogarth in his most formal style)
Hunt: Portrait of His Father
Be sure to use the viewer to enlarge the last one justice, it has so much detail and is so beautifully painted. It represents the slaughtered Holy Innocents appearing to the baby Jesus on the Flight into Egypt.
Just my idiosyncratic opinion. Any other offerings from the floor?
