Jean-Paul Laurens was, without a doubt, a painter with a dramatic temperament. He loved history, especially melancholy episodes or those imbued with drama. He represented only a few scenes of action or movement, preferring the tense, single moment of dawning fear or the desolate aftermath of a disaster.
The success of his compositions surely lies in his decisive sense of the moment in historical tragedy. A striking example of such a moment is in his famous painting "L'Excommunication de Robert le Pieux" (The excommunication of Robert the Pious) (1875). The painting was even criticised, for some felt that they were looking at the last act of a play with all the effects of the final tragic outcome. His ability to capture a moment of shock was also a strong point. This is confirmed in "François Borgia devant le cercueil d'Isabelle de Portugal" (Francisco Borgia before the coffin of Isabelle of Portugal) (1876) where Borgia is so profoundly affected by the sight of the decomposing body of the sovereign, renowned for her beauty, that later, he renounces to the world and enters the Jesuit order.
But this taste for solemn subjects sometimes shifted into the macabre. The painter had a reputation at the time for unearthing some "very fine horrors" such as Le Pape Formose et Etienne VII (Pope Formosa and Stephen VII) (1872), which is indeed a very fine example. Purely anecdotal, this painting illustrates the trial of the predecessor of a pontiff of the high Middle Ages. The deceased is replaced on the roman throne for the occasion. Its treatment makes it an example of morbid realism.
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