Of all the genres of painting, history is without question the most important. The history painter alone
is the painter of the soul, the others only paint for the eye. He alone can bring into play that enthusiasm,
that divine spark which makes him conceive his subjects in a powerful, sublime manner; he alone can
create heroes for posterity, through the great actions and the virtues of the famous men he presents; so
the public does not coldly read about but actually sees the performers and their deeds. Who does not
know the advantage the faculty of sight has over all the others, and the power it has over our soul to
bring about the deepest, most sudden impression? (Étienne La Font de Saint Yenne, Reflections on
some Causes of the Present State of Painting in France (1747)
(Réflexions sur quelques causes de l’état present de la peinture en France) in Harrison, Wood and Gaiger, 2000, 556)The term “history painting” derives from the Italian term istoria meaning story, history or chronicle. Leon
Battista Alberti (1404–1472) used it in his 1435 treatise On Painting (De Pictura), as he tried to
attribute to this kind of painting the same high cultural status as that of the ancient liberal arts of Grammar
and Rhetoric, exemplified in the writings of Cicero (106–43 BCE) and Quintilian (35–c. 96 CE). When
applied to painting istoria designated a (generally) largescale work most often representing a number of
figures mutually engaged in a significant incident derived from a canonical written source such as those
produced by the writers of ancient Greece or Rome (often Ovid, b.43 BCE; Virgil, 70–19 BCE; Livy,
c. 59 BCE–17 CE), the Bible, or Renaissance works such as the poetry of Dante (1265–1321). Key
narrative moments from such sources provided moral and intellectual exemplars with universal
relevance: such were, for example, moments drawn from the exemplary lives of Christ, the apostles or
saints, which were intended to inspire in the viewer theologically based contemplation and meditation.
These and other “history” subjects were represented in styles often described as “grand,” “noble,” or
“sublime.” “Grand machines,” as such paintings were often known, were characterized by dramatic
action, emotionally intense, expressive figures and poses, and styles of representation that owed a great
deal to the low reliefs, murals and figurative vase designs of antiquity, or to the “ideal” bodies, classical
dress and expressive features carved by ancient Greek and Roman sculptors, many of which were
familiar to an eighteenthcentury audience through the medium of line engravings.
In grand history painting heroes appeared centrestage and a unified composition, including an
appropriate distribution of light and shade, subsidiary actions and figures, appeared around them (Figure
2.1). Such subjects and styles were felt to embody the degree of liberal education and imaginative
transformation appropriate to the highest and most “heroic” kinds of art. Eighteenthcentury history
painting was highly literary in nature, deeply influenced by hagiography, legend and myth (Scott, 1995,
177). In order to fend off occasional charges regarding the esoteric nature of such subjects, a tradition of
written explanations had developed from the Renaissance onwards and was continued into the eighteenth
century in, for example, exhibition catalogues, pamphlets, letters and learned articles. On the whole,
however, the chosen subjects were familiar to an educated audience.