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Revolution from Within: The Düsseldorf Academy and language of its multi-figured cast. By 1830, this division had suffered
the Invention of the Secular Devotional Picture a blow it did not recover from. A new form of historia had arisen that
no longer insisted on pantomimic legibility and did not feel obliged
The birth moment of the Nazarenes was closely tied, as we have to depict a story’s most pregnant moment but instead recast history
seen, to the anti-academic impulse that would become a hallmark as personal anecdote: the so-called genre historique. Among the early
of modernism (Think, for example, of the 1863 Salon des Refusés practitioners of this new type of historical painting had been the French
held for innovative artists whose works had been rejected by the Troubadours, whose jewel-like depictions of kings playing with their
official Salon; or its 1883 repeat now organized by the rejected children or noblewomen pining for their loved-ones visualized in
Impressionists). But what happens when such secessionists became paint what Sir Walter Scott’s had achieved in his fashionable historical
themselves, as in our case, princes of painters and head the very novels. Yet only when painters like Paul Delaroche (1797–1856) and his
institution they had rebelled against in their youth? To answer student Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) elevated the genre historique
this question, let’s follow Wilhelm Schadow to his new home at to monumental scale and world-wide success did it turn into a rather
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the Rhine, where he assumed his position as the director of the formidable threat to the academy’s core teachings. This detour
Düsseldorf Academy in 1826. What we will discover there is a quiet into France is crucial to understand the surprising and path-breaking
revolution, rarely noted in art history, that carried the Lukasbund’s reaction to this crisis across the Rhine, at the Düsseldorf Academy.
mission and spirit of reform into the heart of the establishment.
Schadow could have cared less about the academic status quo.
When Schadow assumed his post, the academy as an institution In contrast to his French counterparts, his formative years had been
was in a crisis. For 150 years, its original Parisian incarnation—the shaped by looking at medieval and Renaissance religious art, and it
Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture founded in 1648—had showed. His ultimate model of painting derived from his fascination
been perhaps the single most influential art institution in history. with devotional art and his insistence of portraiture as the basis of all
In 1793, however, the French Revolution put an end to its cultural painting, history included. From this perspective, dramatic story-telling
hegemony, and when it was revived in 1817 as the École des Beaux- or muti-figured compositions lost their role as history painting’s core
Arts, it almost immediately encountered resistance, from outside essence, nor was the past only picture-worthy as an exemplum virtutis.
and from within. Among the core values that came under attack was As a disciple of medieval devotion, Schadow was more inclined toward
the hierarchy of genres which until then had determined the value, soul-searching and an empathetic exploration of emotions and states
both pecuniary and concerning prestige, of the various categories of mind rather than showing human nature in action. And, as a true
of painting. Based upon ancient literary parallels, the academy had Nazarene, he preferred the Middle Ages anyway over antiquity, and thus
ranked history painting the highest, followed by portraiture, landscape allowed his students to roam freely through the entirety of European
painting, still life and, finally, the lowly everyday genre category itself. history. The Düsseldorf academy director certainly did not dismiss
The placement of genre painting far below the traditional peinture academic history painting as an option; but he had no qualms to expand
d’histoire already indicates that the academy’s conception of history its traditional parameters. Without much ado, he simply integrated the
was rather lofty and did not include life as such. Contemporary or new genre historique into his own academic pantheon. Under Schadow’s
military events, and even most historical periods, the Middle Ages tutelage, the Düsseldorf School turned historia into soul-painting.
among them, were considered unsuitable subjects. Instead, history
painting elevated religious, allegorical or mythological themes as well
as edifying episodes from antiquity. Not surprisingly, the treatment of
these themes had to be similarly elevated and guided by Aristoteles’
dictum that “human nature in action is the proper sphere of both
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painters and poets.” Thus, history painting’s high-minded or heroic
narratives presumed figures in action and a clearly orchestrated body

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