A Study Of The Three Patterns Of Western Historical Painting

History painting is a very important kind of artistic creation in the history ofwestern art development and plays a critical role in the research of western humanitiesand social sciences. The meaning of history painting can be extended from variousangles. From its main function, history painting is based on the demands of particularinterest groups to have a purpose of “reproduction” and “creation”, and with theattitude of “what they are” and the “beauty of appearance” appear in front of theworld. History painting has presented the most comprehensive and most completemeaning of oil painting in the aspects of meaning and theme, and participated in theconstruction in the process of human civilization of the western culture character inthe development of the western art history.Based on the relationship between history painting and society, history paintingand age, this paper examines the age connotation and ideological demands of historypainting. Through a close reading of the text, this paper summarized the developmentof western history painting in three forms, that is, from the “god” to “person”,“classical” to “romance”, and the “history” to “realistic”. All of these three forms areinterpreted and analyzed from the history painting in the aspects of theme selection,formal language, objectives and so on.This paper can be divided into four parts:Section1discusses the history painting in the era of Renaissance and itscharacteristics. The Middle Age is called the “dark age”; one of the importantdimensions in this age is human oppression and individual desire depreciation. TheRenaissance through the revival of ancient Greek culture, re-establishing andpositioning of the reality of human life attitude and life purpose based on thephilosophy and ancient Greek lifestyle, and trying to get rid of the “God”control tohuman nature. History painting as times of visual culture symbol, it will reveal theRenaissance era characteristics and ideological appeal. Whether it is Giotto for newtastes and painting consciousness or Botticelli in creation and rendering, the call ofnature makes the history of Renaissance painting expresses the secular flavor, and lessreligious paintings conceptualized and image enlightenment. From this period,“thedivine” was reviewed and “the human nature” returned to earth.Section2discusses the history painting in the era of transformation. Neoclassicalpainting as the imitation of classical and reference, showed a new era characteristic and individual character. The Neoclassical painting also is different from theRenaissance painting. Poussin as an important representative of Neo classicism, hishistory paintings became the paradigm example. The standardization construction ofacademy of fine arts in the17th and18th century formed a strict and orderly trainingmode and evaluation standard. History painting as the most superior characterizationreveal the artist’s mental labour, has become the highest form of art. Other species,such as portraits and still lifes become lower than history painting performance of themodel is placed at a specific value system. With the arrival of the enlightenment of thedevelopment and the industrial revolution, earth-shaking changes have taken place inhuman society during this period. People faced the urbanization and the machine, lostthe spirit of the “old rhyme”, and the relationship between human and human, humanand machine became complicated and contradictory. At this time, the romanticadvocated people’s creativity and psychology uniqueness. The history of painting hasexperienced transformation from the “classical” to the “romantic”.Section3discusses the characteristics of Russian history painting. With theinfluence of machine production to human alienation and the impact of camerainvention to realistic painting, artists have to consider the way of look at the worldand express themselves. Artists to the form of excavation and the attention to abstractlanguage, makes history painting in the19th century crisis.However, Russia is in the social transition period at that time, it has an excellentinheritance of western history painting context, and joined the new regionalcharacteristics and cultural temperament, which makes history painting reborn inRussia. Russia’s artistic creation has the characteristic of literariness and reality,therefore, the history of Russian painting presents from “history”to “reality”.In the final part, according to the western history painting and logical exposition,this paper expounds the point of view. This paper also regarded the fine arts creationof contemporary Chinese historical themes as an opportunity to reflect on the status ofthe western history painting creation evolution on Chinese history painting creationand dissemination and the influence of the enlightenment.