rchitectural setting and thematic grandeur with the undertakings of the Old Masters. The minor categories were enriched by immigrant artists that excelled in “ftes champtres”, informal portraiture animal and flower painting and still life. The first Academies of Painting were launched to train a native school of history painters. Finally there was a remarkable growth of aesthetic criticism, particularly in the branch addressed to conoisseurs and artists, and this was to have a profound influence on taste and the practice of painters. What Walpole mistook for an ebb-tide was an incoming one. According to a tradition inherited from the Italian Renaissance, the highest of all categories of painting was “istoria”, the term originally used for narrative pictures of state, for which the Bible and the classical mythology provided the ideal repertory of subjects. Work in the other categories was esteemed in proportion to its aproximation by sacred and classical association and by “greatness of style”. The landscapes of Poussin and Claude told the stories of the Bible and antiquity, the portraits of Rubens introduced their allegories. The hand of Hondecoeter could transform a barnyard fight between poultry into a battle piece, not without humour but unmistakably in great style. Topography itself could be dressed in trimmings of classical landscape. Only one category was excluded from this sliding scale: low-life genre. Such paintings were admired for their skill, ingenuity, and humour, but never confused with high art. One of the most important changes to be noted in this period is the rise of subordinate categories of painting in estimation. With one exception, the decisive factor is rather a shift in taste than a revolution in doctrine. The exception is portraiture, which was elevated by theoretical argument based on other grounds than allegorical association. The writings of Jonathan Richard...
