Universalism and Consumerism. Inspired by the Enlightenment and guided by the authority of antiquity, eighteenth-century painters embraced the universalist ideal that all individuals share the same human condition and the same fundamental principles. Equally important, painters found themselves working in a new environment, a consumer culture in which artworks increasingly became commercial products. The transition from the old court society to the new market society was gradual, but everywhere signs pointed toward the new. In fact, though it looked to ancient Greece and Rome for models, Classicism as a style owed much of its success to the new conditions of the late eighteenth century. In 1764 Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768), a German art theorist, laid out the fundamental principles of Classicism in his book Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (The History of Ancient Art). According to Winckelmann, the ancient Greeks...