Painting War

War featured strongly in European art during the Renaissance, especially in painting. At that time, depicting war meant painting battles: it was a question of illustrating in order to tell a story. Already, however, artists began to be drawn to the suffering of civilians and to denounce the violence of war. This tendency increased in the late eighteenth century with the advent of mass war. Increasingly politically committed, artists became the heralds of pacifism in the twentieth century.