Religious art
Even if landscapes, portraits and genre scenes were thronging the 19th century salons, religious painting continued to be commissioned in great numbers (copies or original works) executed for the adornment of new churches built from the Restoration period in reaction to the relative flagging of religious practice. Between 1830 et 1870 the main sites were confided to Delacroix (Saint-Denis du Saint-Sacrement and Saint Sulpice in Paris) or to Ingres' pupils such as Hippolyte Flandrin (Notre-Dame de Lorette in Paris, Saint-Paul in Nîmes, Lyon) and Chassériau (Saint-Philippe-du-Roulle, Saint-Merry in Paris).
Alongside these masters whose powerful originality was indeed exceptional, many were the artists like Villemsens, who had been the master of Jean-Paul Laurens, or Lazerges whose works adopted a more restrained but more convincing style, which seems to be the reflection of their own historical painting genre.
The painters took their references from early works, Fra Angelico and the Primitives being the most favourite models, although rarely followed Sainte Affre by Clémence Guizard, painted in 1852, is a good example of this art which soon became known as "sulpician".
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