Neoclassicism: Neoclassicism represented a reaction against the passionate and enthusiastic renaissance view of man as being basically good and possessed of an endless potential for religious and intellectual growth. Neoclassical theorists, by contrast, saw man as an imperfect being, inherently sinful, whose potential was limited. They replaced the renaissance emphasis on the imagination, on invention, experimentation, and with an emphasis on order, reason, on common sense, on religious, political and economic reaction. They maintained that man himself was the most appropriate subject of art, and saw art itself as essen