Oxford Reference

The Oxford Companion to Western Art

Hugh Brigstocke

Publisher: Oxford University Press Print Publication Date: 2001

Print ISBN-13: 9780198662037 Published online: 2003
Current Online Version: 2003 eISBN: 9780191727597

history painting

History painting is a form of narrative painting depicting several figures enacting a scene normally drawn from classical
history or mythology, or from the Bible. Its special position from the early Renaissance to the 19th century stemmed
directly from the generally dominant aesthetic doctrine that the highest aim of painting was to discover and represent
perfect forms of the human passions and intellect.

Alberti's seminal De pictura (1435) described istoria as the most important part of a painter's work and touched on all the
issues that were to dominate the theoretical discourse. Thus, an istoria should only depict the few essential characters;
the (preferably life-size) figures should demonstrate their feelings clearly, though with grace and modesty, and with
postures appropriate to the action. The figure drawing should be anatomically expert, combining a selection of beautiful
features to create a faultless whole, and contrasting human types should be depicted. Variety and abundance were
desiderata and restrained components of animals, buildings, landscape, etc. should therefore be included.

Alberti mentions only one post-classical work of artGiotto's Navicella mosaic (Rome, S. Peter's; destr.)but he cites
many classical literary sources describing vanished works. His appeal to classical authority and insistence on the vast
knowledge required to paint an istoria constantly recur in later commentaries. All this underlines that much of the lasting
agenda of classical art theory (see CLASSICISM) was to establish painting among the acknowledged liberal arts. The
academies that were established from the late 16th century were naturally dedicated to this project to take painting away
from its craft associations and to present it as a learned vocationanalogous to poetry and subject to essentially the
same theory that was applied to literature.

By definition, the distinction between history painting and other kinds of painting could not be fully evident until the
emergence of the various genres (portraits, landscapes, still life, etc.) around the early 17th century. From then the
dominance of history painting was taken as read in every commentary that appeared. Even in the naturalizing
environment of the Netherlands (where Lastman and Rembrandt aimed to be history painters) the theorists simply
repeated the classical clichs.

Caravaggio's claim simply to imitate nature was a short-lived rebellion against classical authority, but even amongst those
who did agree on general theory there was argument on modes and styles. In 16348 the Accademia di S. Luca (see
under ROME) disputed whether illustrations of historical themes should depict few or many figures. The reductionists,
following Sacchi, argued for the simplicity of tragedy; their rivals, led by Pietro da Cortona, argued for the magnificent
expansiveness of epic. By the 1670s, when the arch-classicist theoretician Bellori was secretary to the Accademia, the
purists had won the argument and Raphael, in such works as Christ on the Road to Calvary (c.1517; Madrid, Prado), was
universally recognized as the supreme modern master of history painting. Poussin, who assisted Bellori, was the most
cerebrally controlled of all painters who sought to express narrative and moral content within this tradition. His own
written comments (culled from ancient and modern sources) emphasize that the Grand Manner required noble subjects,
a concentration on essentials, and a clearly intelligible projection of the various emotions implicit in the action. In one
comment he says that painting is an idea of incorporeal things, even though it shows bodies.

These ideas were inflexibly codified and prescribed by the Acadmie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris under
Le Brun. In particular, the various genres were formally ranked into a fixed hierarchy, with history painting occupying the
summit and with academy membership tied to a particular category. Style was also prescribed, with the ancients,
Raphael and his Roman followers, and Poussin ranked in that inexorable order of excellence, while the Venetian, Dutch,
and Flemish schools were explicitly discounted.

Between Alberti and the French Academy, therefore, the broader idea of the istoria had become narrowed down to mean
one highly prescribed type of painting. Furthermore, this type had become effectively tied to the classical/Raphaelesque
Grand Manner as its necessary style.

After Le Brun's time the supremacy of the ancients and of Raphael both came under challenge but throughout the first
half of the 18th century the French Academy was attempting to nurture traditional history painting, while the work that
was actually being commissioned tended strongly towards the hedonistic and the Rococo. The Academy's history
painters still steeped themselves in the classics, in search of recherch subjects, but they were an isolated elite. The
severely archaizing neoclassical style was deliberately conceived in the 1750s and 1760s as a reaction to Rococo
licence and David's successes in this style, such as Belisarius (1781; Lille, Mus. des Beaux-Arts) and The Oath of the
Horatii (1785; Paris, Louvre) mark the last occasion when unambiguous history painting of the traditional kind was at the
forefront of European art.

In his Discourses (176990) to the new Royal Academy in London Reynolds preached the familiar classical art theory,
constantly emphasizing the history painter's concern with general ideas rather than particular description, exhorting the
students not to stray from the conventional Grand Manner, and justifying the restriction of subjects to classical and
scriptural texts on the grounds that these were familiar and interesting to all Europe. His hope was that the Academy's
training would give rise to a British school of public art, understood by a public trained to appreciate the generalized
depiction of central forms. These hopes were to be disappointed, though Barry, West, and Haydon were among the
painters whose own performance was cruelly unable to live up to the bombastic fervour of their claims for English history
painting.

Reynolds himself was not a history painter but he infused his society portraits with a vague aura of classical authority
derived from the Grand Manner. In an analogous way Greuze composed his bourgeois anecdotes in classical formats,
and in his Death of Wolfe (1770; Ottawa, NG Canada) West packaged a modern-dress battle piece as a classical
tableau. However, the propaganda by David and Gros for the cult of Napoleon represents the most technically assured
and emotionally charged attempt to enlist the authority of history painting in the depiction of contemporary events. Gros's
Napoleon Visiting the Plague Hospital at Jaffa (1804; Paris, Louvre) is an exceptional example.

During the 19th century most countries developed a voracious appetite for paintings of historical events, running the
gamut from fancy-dress confections to work with more serious aims. Simultaneously, distinctions between the genres
became blurred and classical art theory became just one among several competing doctrines. The circumstances that
had supported the traditional idea of history painting thus effectively disappeared. Scholars disagree about the extent to
which 19th-century historical painting can be said to discharge the functions previously associated with academic history
painting, but it becomes progressively more difficult to apply the term meaningfully to work later than the Napoleonic
period.

ANTHONY LANGDON
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