In fall 2013 John Walsh, Director Emeritus of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, presented a popular semester-long public lecture series that took a close look at eleven important paintings from Yale’s art museums that represent scenes from history, myth, scripture, or literature. In every case the artist intended to do more than delight and entertain the audience. The paintings depict situations in which moral issues are at stake, usually acts of heroism of one kind or another. The lectures traced the tradition of “history painting”—the category to which all of these works belong—from the Renaissance on through its rise to official dominance, its fall from privilege in the eras of Realism in the 19th century and abstract art in the 20th, and its reappearances in the 21st. A recurring question is whether for a modern audience these works still pose moral questions that we ought to take seriously. Visit the page for each week below to learn more and to watch lecture videos.

Benvenuto Tisi, called il Garofalo, The Conversion of Saint Paul ca. 1525
Watch the Lecture Videos
Lectures
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Lecture, Introduction to History Painting
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Lecture, Unintended Consequences: Antonio del Pollaiuolo’s Hercules and Deianira (ca. 1475–80)
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Lecture, Darkness to Light: Garofalo’s The Conversion of Saint Paul (ca. 1525)
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Lecture, “But, Lord, He Stinketh!”: Marco Pino’s The Resurrection of Lazarus (ca. 1570)
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Lecture, Against Nature: Peter Paul Rubens’s Hero and Leander (ca. 1604)
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Lecture, “To Paint the Way the Spartans Spoke”: Gavin Hamilton’s The Death of Lucretia (1763–67)
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Lecture, Truth to Power: Benjamin West’s Agrippina Landing at Brundisium with the Ashes of Germanicus (1768)
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Lecture, John Trumbull and Historical Fiction: The Battle of Bunker’s Hill, June 17, 1775 (1786)
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Lecture, Find the Hero: Ary Scheffer’s The Retreat of Napoleon’s Army from Russia in 1812 (1826)
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Lecture, Handwriting on the Wall: John Martin’s Belshazzar’s Feast (1820)
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Lecture, History at the Academy and the Salon: Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Ave Caesar! Morituri te salutant (1859)
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Lecture, History Painting after Two World Wars: Anselm Kiefer’s Die Ungeborenen (2001)