The lecture explains how Italian art became dominated by classical imitation, losing its popular religious and social functions and becoming formulaic and academic; it critiques Baroque excesses and the 18th‑century revival of antiquity, arguing that erudition and idealizing critics isolated art from the public. It examines the sculptor's early study of classical casts and the tension between naturalistic feeling and learned convention, describes formative experiences among Rome's ruins, and follows his efforts to regenerate sculpture by combining lived observation with neoclassical models while confronting the limitations of a revival that often required explanatory allegory.