From being the agent who strives to give the natural laws of beauty visible, aural, or verbal form, the artist raises himself to become the prime point of reference. In other words, mimesis (art in relation to nature) was replaced by an expressive aesthetic (art in relation to the artist).

---T. C. W. Blanning, "The Commercialization and Sacralization of European Culture in the Nineteenth Century", in The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern Europe