Around 1800, several artistic currents flourished side by side in the German-speaking lands, all shaped by a renewed fascination with the past. Neoclassicism looked back to the world of Mediterranean antiquity, taking its ideals of harmony, clarity and proportion from Greek and Roman art. Romanticism, by contrast, found inspiration in the Middle Ages, in northern legends and in works such as The Songs of Ossian, presented as poems by a 3rd-century Scottish bard but later revealed as an 18th-century literary fabrication.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a passionate admirer of classical art after his travels in Italy, played a key role in promoting a taste for the Antique in Germany. In a politically fragmented region, this shared admiration for classical antiquity offered a cultural ideal that many hoped could serve as a unifying thread.