Ancient world showing
Alexander the Great (left) defeating
Darius III of Persia; a floor mosaic excavated from
Pompeii, c. 100BC Art depicting military themes has existed throughout history. The
Battlefield Palette, a
cosmetic palette from the
Protodynastic Period of Egypt (circa ~3500 to 3000 BC) is incomplete, but shows prisoners being led away, and wild animals feasting on the dead. The
Narmer Palette from the same period shows a military victory in a more symbolic style. The
Stele of the Vultures, about 2,500 BC, is one of a number of
Mesopotamian "victory
stelae". Also around 2,500 BC, the earliest known depiction of a city being besieged is found in the tomb of Inti, an official from the
21st nome of Upper Egypt, who lived during the late Fifth Dynasty. The scene shows Egyptian soldiers scaling the walls of a near eastern fortress on ladders. Although the
Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC appears to have been inconclusive, reliefs erected by
Ramesses II show him scattering his
Hittite opponents with his chariot. Surviving
Assyrian art mainly consists of large stone
reliefs showing detailed scenes of either military campaigns or hunting; the
Lachish reliefs are an example of the former. The ancient Greek
Parthenon Marbles show lengthy parades of the city's volunteer
cavalry force, and many
Greek vases show scenes of combat. In
Han dynasty China, a famous stone relief of c. 150–170 AD from the
Wu family shrines shows a battle between cavalry forces in the
Campaign against Dong Zhuo. In
Ancient Roman art the most elaborate
Roman triumphal columns showed very long reliefs of military campaigns winding round the body of huge columns; among the most impressive are those of
Trajan and
Marcus Aurelius in Rome. The
Alexander Mosaic is a large and dramatic battle scene showing
Alexander the Great defeating
Darius III of Persia; it is a floor mosaic excavated from
Pompeii, probably copying a lost painting. Many
Hellenistic and Roman
sarcophagi showed crowded scenes of combat, sometimes mythological (an
amazonomachy is a term for a scene of battle between
Amazons and
Greeks), and usually not relating to a particular battle; these were not necessarily used to bury people with military experience. Such scenes had a great influence on Renaissance battle scenes. By the
Late Roman Empire the reverse of coins very often showed soldiers and carried an inscription praising 'our boys', no doubt in hope of delaying the next military revolt.
Medieval Christian art produced for the church generally avoided battle scenes, although a rare
Late Antique motif shows Christ dressed as a victorious emperor in general's dress, having conquered the devil, in
Christ treading on the beasts and other
iconographies. The violent tastes of the
Anglo-Saxon elite managed to add the
Harrowing of Hell, conceived as a raid on Satan's stronghold, led by Christ, to the standard group of scenes for a cycle on the
Life of Christ.
Soldier saints, shown in military dress, were extremely popular, as were images of the
Archangel Michael stabbing Satan as a dragon with a cross with a spear-point at its base. Some
illuminated manuscripts illustrated the many battles in the
Old Testament. Secular works produced for secular patrons often show military themes, for example in illuminated manuscript copies of histories like the 15th century
Froissart of Louis of Gruuthuse (BnF Fr 2643-6), where most of the 112 miniatures show military scenes. The
Siege of the Castle of Love, often found on Gothic
ivory mirror-cases, showed knights attacking a castle defended by ladies, a metaphor from the literature of
courtly love. The 11th century
Bayeux Tapestry is a linear panoramic narrative of the events surrounding the
Norman Conquest and the
Battle of Hastings in 1066, the only surviving example of a type of embroidered hanging with which rich
Anglo-Saxons used to decorate their homes. In
Islamic art the battle scene, often from a fictional work of
epic poetry, was a frequent subject in
Persian miniatures, and the high viewpoint they adopted made the scenes more easily comprehensible than many Western images.
Renaissance to Napoleonic Wars , a 1521 drawing by
Urs Graf Italian Renaissance painting saw a great increase in military art by the leading artists,
battle paintings often featuring near-contemporary scenes such as the huge set of three canvases of
The Battle of San Romano (c. 1445) by
Paolo Uccello, and the abortive
Battle of Cascina (1504–1506) by Michelangelo and
Battle of Anghiari by
Leonardo da Vinci (1503–1506), which were intended to be placed opposite each other in the
Palazzo Vecchio in
Florence, but neither of which were completed. For Renaissance artists with their new skills in depicting the human figure, battle scenes allowed them to demonstrate all their skills in depicting complicated poses; Michelangelo choose a moment when a group of soldiers was surprised bathing, and almost all the figures are nude. Leonardo's battle was a cavalry one, the central section of which was very widely seen before being destroyed, and hugely influential: it "exerted a fundamental change on the whole idea of battle painting, an influence that lasted through the Late Renaissance and the Baroque up until the heroic machines of the Napoleonic painters and even the battle compositions of
Delacroix", according to the art historian
Frederick Hartt. All of these depicted frankly minor actions where Florence had defeated neighbouring cities, but important battles from distant history were equally popular.
Andrea Mantegna's
Triumphs of Caesar shows the
Roman triumphal parade of
Julius Caesar, though concentrating on the booty rather than the army following it; the print series
Triumphs of Maximilian shows both, leading up to
Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor riding on a huge carriage.
The Battle of the Milvian Bridge by
Giulio Romano brought a huge and "seminal" battle scene into the
Raphael Rooms in the
Vatican Palace. For Peter Paret, from the Renaissance "the glorification of the temporal leader and of his political system – which had of course also been present in medieval art – replaces the Christian faith as a determining interpretive force" in military art. Naval painting became conventionalized in 17th century
Dutch Golden Age painting, and from then on artists tended to specialize in it or not attempt it; apart from anything else "Marine artists have always dealt with a particularly demanding class of patron", as
J. M. W. Turner found when the "Sailor King"
William IV of the United Kingdom rejected his version of
The Battle of Trafalgar because of inaccuracy.
Hendrick Vroom was the earliest real specialist, followed by the
father and
son team of Willem van de Velde, who emigrated to London in 1673, and effectively founded the English tradition of naval painting, "producing a stunning visual record of the Anglo-Dutch naval wars, which set the conventions of maritime battle painting for the next 150 years". Vroom had also worked for English patrons, designing a large set of tapestries of the defeat of the
Spanish Armada which was destroyed when the
Houses of Parliament burnt down in 1834. The 17th and 18th centuries saw depictions of battles mostly adopting a
bird's eye view, as though from a hill nearby; this made them less interesting to paint, and the major artists now tended to avoid them. A very different view of warfare is seen in
Les Grandes Misères de la guerre ("The Misfortunes of War"), a set of twelve
etchings produced by
Jacques Callot during the
Thirty Years War which follows a group of soldiers ravaging the countryside before eventually being rounded up by their own side and executed. Also in the first half of the 17th century, a branch of
genre painting in
Dutch Golden Age painting specialized in
guardroom scenes of rather disorderly soldiers, not often in battle, but ransacking farmhouses or sitting around in a camp guardroom. The paintings of
Salvator Rosa, essentially
landscapes, often showed groups variously described as bandits or soldiers lurking in the countryside of Southern Italy.
The Surrender of Breda by
Velázquez (1634–35) shows a crowded scene as the two sides meet peacefully to surrender the town; a theme more often copied in naval painting than land-based military art. In the mid-18th century, a number of artists, especially in Britain, sought to revive military art with large works centered on a heroic incident that would once again bring the genre to the fore in
history painting, as it had been in the Renaissance. The standard contemporary battle scene tended to be grouped in the lowly category of
topographical painting, covering maps and views of country houses.
The Death of General Wolfe (1771) by
Benjamin West,
The Death of Captain James Cook (1779) by
Johann Zoffany,
The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 1782 and
The Death of Major Pierson (1784) by
John Singleton Copley are leading examples of the new type, which ignored complaints about the unsuitability of modern dress for heroic subjects. However, such works had more immediate influence in France than in Britain. '', 1812 by
Théodore Géricault In the
Napoleonic era, France added
Romanticism to its style and began to portray individual soldiers with more character. Battle paintings were increasingly produced for large public buildings, and grew larger than ever before.
Baron Gros painted mostly glorifications of Napoleon and his victories, but his 1808 painting of the
Battle of Eylau does not neglect the suffering of the dead and wounded on the frozen battlefield. In contrast,
Goya's large paintings
The Second of May 1808 and
The Third of May 1808, perhaps consciously conceived as a riposte to Gros, and his related series of 82
etchings,
The Disasters of War (Spanish:
Los Desastres de la Guerra), emphasized the brutality of the French forces during the
Peninsular War in Spain. British depictions of the
Napoleonic Wars continued the late 18th century patterns, often on a larger scale, with the death of Admiral
Horatio Nelson quickly producing large works by
Arthur William Devis (
The Death of Nelson, 21 October 1805) and West (
The Death of Nelson).
J. M. W. Turner was among the artists who produced scenes of Nelson's victories, with
The Battle of Trafalgar. The
British Institution ran competitions for sketches of art commemorating British victories, the winning entries being then commissioned. In this period the uniform print, concentrating on a detailed depiction of the uniform of one or more standing figures, typically hand-coloured, also became very popular across Europe. Like other prints these were typically published in book form, but also sold individually. In Britain the 87 prints of
The Loyal Volunteers of London (1797–98) by
Thomas Rowlandson, published by
Rudolph Ackermann, mark the start of the classic period. Though Rowlandson usually satirized his subjects to some degree, here the soldiers were "represented as they, and particularly their colonels who paid for their uniforms, preferred to see themselves", which remained the usual depiction in such prints. A
set of prints by
Carle Vernet of the splendid uniforms of
La Grande Armée de 1812 showed most foot-soldiers in pairs in camp, in a variety of relaxed poses that showed one from the front and the other from behind. A rare oil painting by a leading artist that treats soldiers in the spirit of the uniform print is
Soldiers of the 10th Light Dragoons (the "Prince of Wales Own") painted in 1793 by
George Stubbs for their
Colonel in Chief, the future
George IV of the United Kingdom. Other paintings of single soldiers were more dramatic, like
Théodore Géricault's
The Charging Chasseur (c. 1812).
Nineteenth century by
Mór Than, 1849
Eugène Delacroix, who also painted many smaller combat scenes, finished his
The Massacre at Chios in 1824, showing a then notorious attack on Greek civilians by
Ottoman forces during the
Greek War of Independence, who are shown in an entirely negative light. It had a more immediate impact on European art than Goya's
Tres de Mayo (
The Third of May 1808) of a few years earlier, which was apparently not even on display in the
Prado Museum until some years later. In contrast, Delacroix's
Liberty Leading the People of 1830 showed fighting in a positive light, but not the "military" as it shows armed civilian revolutionaries of the
July Revolution, advancing against the unseen uniformed forces of the government. Turkish atrocities were to remain a recurrent theme in 19th-century painting, especially in former Ottoman territories escaped from the declining empire (often pre-rape scenes treated rather salaciously), and general anti-military sentiments, previously mostly found in prints, were also to emerge regularly in large oil paintings. Military art remained popular during the remainder of the 19th century in most of Europe. French artists such as
Ernest Meissonier,
Edouard Detaille, and
Alphonse de Neuville established military genre painting in the
Paris Salon. New forms of military art which developed in the 1850s met considerable opposition from the
Royal Academy in the United Kingdom. '' by
Jan Matejko, 1878 European artists in a generally
academic style who were well known as painters of battle scenes, still often of subjects from the Napoleonic Wars or older conflicts, included
Albrecht Adam,
Nicaise de Keyser,
Piotr Michałowski Antoine Charles Horace Vernet,
Emile Jean Horace Vernet,
Wilhelm Camphausen and
Emil Hünten. The rise of
nationalism promoted battle painting in countries such as Hungary (great attention paid to uniforms), Poland (huge forces) and the
Czech Lands.
Jan Matejko's enormous
Battle of Grunwald (1878) reflects
Pan-Slav sentiment, showing various
Slav forces joining to smash the power of the
Teutonic Knights. The usage of the term "military art" has evolved since the middle of the 19th century. In France, Charles Baudelaire discussed military art, and the impact on it of photography, in the Paris
Salon of 1859. A British critic of the
Royal Academy exhibition of 1861 observed that by
Ivan Aivazovsky, 1848 In contrast, the British artist
Elizabeth Thompson (Lady Butler) explained that she "never painted for the glory of war, but to portray its pathos and heroism." The aftermath of battle was depicted in paintings like
Calling the Roll After An Engagement, Crimea, which displayed at the Royal Academy in 1874. This perspective is also seen in
Remnants of an Army which showed William Brydon struggling into Jalalabad on a dying horse. Dr. Brydon was the sole survivor of the 1842 retreat from Kabul, in which 16,000 were massacred by Afghan tribesmen. of the
Battle of Majuba Hill, for the
Illustrated London News, 1881 The British market began to develop in the middle of the 19th century. The relations between the state and its military, and the ideologies which are implied in that relationship affected the artwork, the artists and the public perceptions of both artwork and artists. By the time of the
American Civil War and the
Crimean War photographers began to compete strongly with artists in coverage of scenes in camp, and the aftermath of battle, but exposure times were generally too long to enable them to take pictures of battles very effectively.
War photography is not covered in this article. Illustrations for newspapers and magazines continued a heroic style with perhaps more confidence than painters, and
Melton Prior followed British forces around Imperial troublespots for decades, working for the
Illustrated London News; his scenes "helped to establish a style of action draughtsmanship which has left an indelible stamp on the art of the
comic strip." Prior and other "special correspondents" such as
Frederic Villiers were known as "specials".
Richard Caton Woodville Jr. and
Charles Edwin Fripp were "specials" and also painters who exhibited at the
Royal Academy and elsewhere. In general, and despite the establishment of large schemes employing official
war artists, the most striking art depicting the war is that emphasizing its horror. Official war artists were appointed by governments for information or propaganda purposes and to record events on the battlefield; but many artists fought as normal soldiers and recorded their experiences at the time and later, including the Germans
George Grosz and
Otto Dix, who had both fought on the Western Front, and continued to depict the subject for the rest of their careers. Dix's
The Trench (1923), showing the dismembered bodies of the dead after an assault, caused a scandal, and was first displayed behind a curtain, before causing the dismissal of the museum director who had planned to buy it. Later, after exhibiting it in their 1937 travelling exhibition of "
Degenerate art", the
Nazi government burnt it. He produced a set of fifty prints in 1924 on
Der Krieg ("The War"). The English artist
Paul Nash began to make drawings of the war while fighting on the Western Front in the
Artists Rifles. After recovering from a wound he was recruited as an official war artist and produced many of the most memorable images from the British side of both World Wars. After the war, the huge demand for
war memorials caused a boom for sculptors, covered below, and makers of
stained-glass.
Posters had become universal by 1914 and were addressed at both the military and the "home front" for various purposes, including recruitment, where the British
Lord Kitchener Wants You (not actually the slogan) was repeated in the United States with
Uncle Sam, and elsewhere with similar totemic figures. The Soviet Union began with very
Modernist posters such as
Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge by
Lazar Markovich Lissitzky but soon turned to
socialist realism, used for most
World War II posters from the Soviet Union, which sometimes are similar to their
Nazi equivalents. In World War II they were even more widely used. Illustrators and sketch artists such as Norman Rockwell also followed the trend away from military themed shots following the Second World War and with the rise of photographic covers in general. The impact of the
Spanish Civil War on a non-combatant populace was depicted in
Picasso's 1937 masterpiece,
Guernica, showing the 1937
bombing of Guernica; a very different treatment of a similar subject is seen in
Henry Moore's drawings of sleeping civilians sheltering from
The Blitz bombing on the station platforms of the
London Underground. Among official World War II war artists, Paul Nash's
Totes Meer is a powerful image of a scrapyard of shot-down German aircraft, and the landscapist
Eric Ravilious produced some very fine paintings before being shot down and killed in 1942.
Edward Ardizzone's pictures concentrated entirely on soldiers relaxing or performing routine duties, and were praised by many soldiers: "He is the only person who has caught the atmosphere of this war" felt
Douglas Cooper, the art critic and historian, friend of Picasso, and then in a military medical unit. Photography and film were now able to capture fast-moving action, and can fairly be said to have produced most of memorable images recording combat in the war, and certainly subsequent conflicts like the
Vietnam War, which was more notable for specifically anti-war protest art, in posters and the work of artists like
Nancy Spero. Contemporary military art is part of the subfield "military and popular culture". ==Art forms==