Hierarchy of genres

In literature, the epic was considered the highest form, for the reason expressed by Samuel Johnson in his Life of John Milton: "By the general consent of criticks, the first praise of genius is due to the writer of an epick poem, as it requires an assemblage of all the powers which are singly sufficient for other compositions."

In the Early Medieval period, lavish pieces of metalwork had typically been the most highly regarded, and valuable materials remained an important ingredient in the appreciation of art until at least the 17th century.

The hierarchy grew out of the struggle to gain acceptance of painting as one of the liberal arts, and then controversies to establish an equal or superior status within them with architecture and sculpture.

These matters were considered of great importance by artist-theorists such as Leon Battista Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci, and Giorgio Vasari.

[4] Theorists of the Early and High Renaissance accepted the importance of representing nature closely, at least until the later writings of Michelangelo, who was strongly influenced by neoplatonism.

Ideas of decorum also fed into the hierarchy; comic, sordid or merely frivolous subjects or treatment ranked lower than elevated and moral ones.

However no theorists emerged to champion the new genres, and the relatively small amount of Dutch theoretical writing, by Karel van Mander, Samuel Dirksz van Hoogstraten,[11] Gerard de Lairesse and others, was mostly content to rehash Italian views, so that their writings can seem oddly at variance with the Dutch art actually being produced in their day.

[12] The hierarchy was mostly accepted by artists, and even genre specialists such as Jan Steen, Karel Dujardin and Vermeer produced a few history paintings, which were better paid when commissions could be obtained, but in general far harder to sell.

Celui qui peint des animaux vivants est plus estimable que ceux qui ne représentent que des choses mortes & sans mouvement; & comme la figure de l'homme est le plus parfait ouvrage de Dieu sur la Terre, il est certain aussi que celui qui se rend l'imitateur de Dieu en peignant des figures humaines, est beaucoup plus excellent que tous les autres ... un Peintre qui ne fait que des portraits, n'a pas encore cette haute perfection de l'Art, & ne peut prétendre à l'honneur que reçoivent les plus sçavans.

This had occasionally been breached in the past, especially in large Flemish works, and the monumental The Young Bull of the Dutch artist Paulus Potter, as well as the larger of the two Butchers' Shop canvases of Annibale Carracci.

What was said of Virgil, that he threw even the dung about the ground with an air of dignity, may be applied to Titian; whatever he touched, however naturally mean, and habitually familiar, by a kind of magic he invested with grandeur and importance."

Though European academies usually strictly insisted on this hierarchy, over their reign, many artists were able to invent new genres which raised the lower subjects to the importance of history painting.

Jean-Antoine Watteau invented a genre that was called fêtes galantes, where he would show scenes of courtly amusements taking place in Arcadian settings; these often had a poetic and allegorical quality which were considered to ennoble them.

Claude Lorrain practised a genre called the ideal landscape, where a composition would be loosely based on nature and dotted with classical ruins as a setting for a biblical or historical theme.

It is synonymous with the term historical landscape which received official recognition in the Académie française when a Prix de Rome for the genre was established in 1817.

Finally, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin was able to create still life paintings that were considered to have the charm and beauty as to be placed alongside the best allegorical subjects.

Toward the end of the 19th century, painters and critics began to rebel against the many rules of the Académie française, including the status accorded to history painting, which was beginning to be bought mainly by public bodies of one sort or another, as private buyers preferred subjects from lower down the hierarchy.