a. Study for Clovis (middle register); b. Study for Clovis (middle register); c. St. Dominic and another Friar, after Fra Angelico; (studies for wall paintings in the Chapel of Saint Remi, Sainte-Clotilde, Paris, 1858)

Early Renaissance or Quattrocento (Italian mille quattrocento, or 1400) refers to the 15th century in Florentine art. Extraordinary wealth was accumulated in Florence among a growing middle and upper class of merchants and bankers. Florence saw itself as a city-state where the freedom of the individual was guaranteed, and where a significant share of residents had the right to participate in the government. In 1400 Florence was engaged in a struggle with the Duke of Milan. Then, between 1408 and 1414 again, by the King of Naples. Both died before they could conquer Florence. In 1425 Florence won the war against Milan. The Florentine interpreted these victories as signs of God's favor and imagined themselves as the "New Rome". In this new optimistic and wealthy environment, Florentine artists immersed themselves in studies of the humanities, architecture, philosophy, theology, mathematics, science, and design. They spurred a rejuvenation of the glories of classical art in line with the humanistic and individualistic tendencies of the contemporary era. Quattrocento was followed by the High Renaissance, North European Renaissance, Mannerism, and Baroque periods. Unlike the previous proto-renaissances, the innovations that emerged in Florence would go on to cause reverberations in Italy and Northern Europe, which continue to influence culture until today.

Born into a family of artists, Isidore-Alexandre-Augustin Pils was a student of François-Edouard Picot at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He won the Prix de Rome in 1838 and spent the next five years in Italy, until 1844. The early part of his career was taken up with mostly religious subjects, although he began to paint military scenes after the Crimean war, in which he acted as an observer. His success as a military painter led to further commissions, including a number of paintings for Napoleon III. One of the artist’s most important paintings, Soldiers Distributing Bread and Soup to the Poor, was commissioned by the State for the sum of 4,000 francs and was exhibited at the Salon of 1852. (The painting has since been lost, and is known only through a lithographic reproduction.) In 1857 a large canvas of a major Crimean episode, The Passage of the River Alma, was commissioned for Versailles. Pils was also interested in scenes from modern history, exemplified by his famous painting of Rouget de Lisle Singing the 'Marseillaise', exhibited to popular acclaim at the Salon of 1849. Pils also executed a number of paintings for Parisian churches - notably the decoration of the chapel of Saint André in the church of Saint Eustache, painted between 1849 and 1852 and still in situ - and took part in the mural decoration of the Opéra. In 1864 he was appointed a Professor at the École des Beaux-Arts, and made several watercolours of life in Paris during the Prussian siege of the city in 1871. Pils made numerous drawings, watercolours and oil sketches in preparation for each of his paintings, and particularly for individual figures within the composition. He made his first watercolours of military subjects in the early 1850s, when he began to make studies of soldiers encamped at Vincennes, near Paris.