Costuming in History Painting

Modern costume became an issue for French art in the 1820s and 1830s in the context of what could be called “the historical turn,” an engagement with postclassical history that changed the character of literature, theatre, history writing, and the visual arts. The author exemplifies the different modalities of history painting in play by considering Heinrich Heine's discussion of Paul Delaroche's Cardinal Mazarin's Last Sickness and Cromwell Opens the Coffin of Charles I as indicative of the privileged status of modern historical costumes; Eugene Delacroix's July 28: Liberty Leading the People as revealing attitudes toward beleaguered contemporary dress; and Horace Vernet's Judith and Holofernes as representing the changing character of classicizing drapery. Picturesque costumes were central to a new, relaxed, historicizing approach to history painting that Heine observed at the 1831 Salon.