This study is an inquiry into the fortunes, in both theory and practice, of the idea of history painting during the Napoleonic period. Its main argument is that under Napoleon, French history painting, especially battle painting, encountered a series of questions as to its nature and function. These questions arose in part from the (often contradictory) demand of a propaganda-machine operating within a postrevolutionary crisis of political legitimation, but also from changes in artistic taste which both retained and re-directed an earlier notion of the civic responsibilities of the history painter. This is a resolutely interdisciplinary book: drawing on perspectives from political thought and history, military theory and practice and art history, which centres on the work of the painter, Antoine-Jean Gros, and his controversial painting, La Bataille d'Eylau .
- ISBN10 0198174020
- ISBN13 9780198174028
- Publish Date 1 July 1997
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 12 November 1998
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Oxford University Press
- Imprint Clarendon Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 237
- Language English