Of Arms and Artists by Paul Staiti

Author:Paul Staiti
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781632864673
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2016-01-07T16:00:00+00:00

John Trumbull, Priam Returning to his Family with the Dead Body of Hector, 1785

Trumbull was not alone in his vision of American history mingling with ancient stories. In epic poetry, popular songs, and sentimental ballads, Americans compared Washington to Joshua or David or Moses, as well as to Cincinnatus and Marcus Aurelius.71 Likewise, the American fight for independence from Britain was seen as a modern revival of the struggle of the Israelites against Egyptians, or the Christians against the Romans, or the Greeks against the Trojans. And fallen American soldiers like Dr. Joseph Warren, Richard Montgomery, and Hugh Mercer, who would soon be featured in Trumbull’s paintings, were commonly perceived to be modern versions of classical heroes, of slain Old Testament figures, or of Christ himself.72 Trumbull, who saw the war as a titanic battle between good and evil, from this point onward would suffuse his own visions of the American Revolution with all the overtones of Christian faith and classical history. He wished to see the American Revolution as the modern version of the epic stories told in the Iliad, the Aeneid, and the Bible.

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