Practice question · True or false
"History painting" in academic usage covers mythological and scriptural subjects as well as historical ones.
Hints
- Ask what the category was actually defined by.
- Narrative and moral content with multiple figures in action.
Show the answer
True
Why
True. The category is defined by narrative and moral content with multiple figures in action, not by whether the events happened. Scripture, myth, allegory and literature all qualify, which is why so much of what sits at the top of the hierarchy is not history in any ordinary sense.
Practise Themes, Genres and the Hierarchy
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More questions on Themes, Genres and the Hierarchy
- Sort each picture description by the academic genre it belongs to.
- Women were excluded from the life class in most academies, and history painting required the nude figure in…
- The academic hierarchy of genres was an institutional apparatus rather than a taxonomy of personal taste.…
- Complete the account of the hierarchy.
- How many ranks did Félibien's hierarchy of genres contain?
- Arrange the academic genres from the highest rank to the lowest.
- Dutch seventeenth-century painting had already inverted the academic hierarchy in practice.
- Arrange these developments in the life of the genre hierarchy in order.