The Two Sides of Swedish Neoclassicism. The Tension of Compositional Quests in Carl August Ehrensvärd

The aim of this chapter is to re-examine the complexity of the relationship that Nordic thinkers and artists established with the Mediterranean, through their studies and travels. It seems important to take a second look at some of these experiences, separating them from the common interpretation according to which Nordic travellers were driven to search for the absolute beauty of classical antiquity, from which they tried to take some principles back to the Nordic lands, despite being aware that they would never be able to render the entirety of that ideal world. In reality, this migration of themes and figures was backed up by a more complex, less linear interplay of aspirations and feelings, capable of creating a production with its own identity and character, independent from the original references. In the last decades of the eighteenth century, the study of the classical world plays a decisive role in shaping the renewal that Enlightenment thought was propelling. It is therefore not a process of repetition of the forms of the past, but rather the search for a new rationality. The ideal foundation that attributes to Antiquity the coherence between civic values and artistic expressions makes it possible to graft new elements onto the local Nordic tradition and redefine each national identity of the different countries included in this collective name