Hémicycle (section 3) 1842

This monumental mural was painted by Paul Delaroche in the mid-19th century, for the École des Beaux-Arts here in Paris. Hémicycle is a grand, idealized depiction of artists throughout history. It presents a pantheon of great creators as a kind of 'school' of genius, a lineage to which the students of the Beaux-Arts might aspire. Look at the way Delaroche uses the architecture of the setting – the columns, the curved wall – to create a sense of classical order and authority. The École des Beaux-Arts was, at the time, the gatekeeper of official artistic taste in France. So, we might ask, what does it mean to enshrine artistic tradition in this way? Is it a celebration of creativity, or a way of controlling it? To answer that, we can look to the archives of the École des Beaux-Arts, to the writings and debates of the time, to understand the institution's role in shaping French art and culture. Art doesn't exist in a vacuum. Its meaning is always tied to the social and institutional context in which it is made and displayed.