genre-painting

Updated: May 8, 2025

This bit of delicate genre-painting, which is as good in its way as anything in Crabbe's homely poems, has indeed nothing to tell us of life in an insula at Rome; but it may serve to show what was the ordinary food of the Italian of that day.

W. Warde (William Warde) Fowler - Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero

Sallust's political genre-painting of the Jugurthine war the only picture that has preserved its colours fresh in the otherwise utterly faded and blanched tradition of this epoch closes with the fall of Jugurtha, faithful to its style of composition, poetical, not historical; nor does there elsewhere exist any connected account of the treatment of the Numidian kingdom.

Theodor Mommsen - The History of Rome, Book IV : The Revolution

Here, too, we must briefly indicate how culture prepared the way for artistic development. From the time of the 'Nencia, a period of eighty years elapses to the rustic genre-painting of Jacopo Bassano and his school. In the next part of this work we shall show how differences of birth had lost their significance in Italy.

Jacob Burckhardt - The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

He could give a voice to passion passion of war, passion of conviviality, passion above all of love as none but the very greatest poets ever have given or will give it; he had also an extraordinary command of genre-painting of all kinds, ranging from the merely descriptive and observant to the most intensely satirical. But what an "only" have we here!

George Saintsbury - A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1780-1895)

Sallust's political genre-painting of the Jugurthine war the only picture that has preserved its colours fresh in the otherwise utterly faded and blanched tradition of this epoch closes with the fall of Jugurtha, faithful to its style of composition, poetical, not historical; nor does there elsewhere exist any connected account of the treatment of the Numidian kingdom.

Theodor Mommsen - The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5)