This article deals with the comparative evolution of the fine-arts and of formal education in Greece throughout the 19th century in order to identify their continuities and probable dis continuities.The starting point is the interrogation of the material force of ideas. An ideological scheme prevailed during and after the War of Independence which perceived ancient Greece as the nourishing source of western civilisation and the Europeans as their worthy followers. In the course of time, the Antiquity and the Occident are neither complementary nor equivalents; the former takes the lead and functions as a mirror of the self and as a rule for reading the relationships with the other. Thus, the perception of the past unifies the dominant ideological orientations and regulates the social relations.