Download or read book Nationalism and Classicism written by Athena S. Leoussi and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 1998 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a comparative study of the national significance of the classical revival which marked English and French art during the second half of the nineteenth century. It argues that the main focus of artists' interest in classical Greece, was the body of the Greek athlete. It explains this interest, first, by artists' contact with the art of Pheidias and Polycletus which portrayed it; and second, by the claim, made by physical anthropologists, the classical body typified the race of the European nations.