History painting is the painting of a serious story told through human figures, usually on a large canvas. Its subjects came from ancient history, the Bible, mythology or literature, and from the late eighteenth century onward, from recent events as well.
From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the art academies of Europe ranked it above every other kind of picture.
The picture above, a canvas of 1784 by the French painter Jacques-Louis David, is a famous example. On the left, three brothers stretch out their arms toward three swords that their father holds up in the center. On the right, the women of the family sit slumped in grief.
The history in the genre's name does not mean the past. Behind it stand the Latin historia and the French histoire, which meant a story or a narrative. A scene from the Bible or from a Greek myth therefore counted as history just as much as a battle did.
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Alberti's story and the Academy's ladder
In the 1430s, the Italian theorist Leon Battista Alberti called a scene told through many figures the painter's greatest work, the hardest to make…
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