ABSTRACT
Paul Delaroche's innovations can also be construed according to a theory which was not explicit in academic teaching, but can be gleaned from the astute critical commentary of a critic like Diderot. In the case of Granet and the Lyons School – let alone Delaroche – the combination of religious and historical themes works powerfully to intensify the absorptive mood. The new style of painting does indeed involve, on the primary level, a novel representational formula, deriving from the Lyons School in part and building upon concrete developments in spectacle and museology, but essentially dependent on the possibilities offered by the pictorial format and its conditions of exhibition. For several centuries the Albertian concept of 'istoria', extended and redefined by the French Academy in the category of 'history painting', had occupied the highest place in the hierarchy of the genres, and stood as the supreme test of artistic achievement.
