The paradigm organising modernity is that of a questioning of the medium internal to the medium itself, an issue to which the artist tends to limit his meaning. This self-referential definition of painting as expressed by Courbet and Manet excludes, by definition, the painters of history from the history of painting. It is only at the rear-guard (Gérôme) or with actors about whom historiography has long wondered what to say (Moreau) that history could still be painted. In wagering everything on the subject, Gérôme invents images that are extremely modern, but completely anti-painterly in terms of their execution. In contrast, Moreau tries to reconcile the thinker and the craftsman. In all cases, the impossibility for all these artists to transcend the form/content dualism inherited from Aristotle makes it impossible for them to put history back sustainably at the heart of painterly practice.