The Restoration of the Catholic Religion in Strasbourg

Claude Guy Hallé - The Restoration of the Catholic Religion in Strasbourg - The Metropolitan Museum of Art The French Royal Academy assigned specific, often challenging, subjects to aspiring members—once students passed this test, they could rise within the official ranks. In 1681 Charles Le Brun, head of the Académie, assigned Hallé a recent historical event: Louis XIV’s restoration of Catholicism over Protestantism in the city of Strasbourg. To give concrete visual form to an abstract transformation, Hallé included allegorical figures of Religion, Truth, Heresy, and Victory alongside the king. This small painting is a highly finished oil sketched in preparation for the large-scale final painting that secured Hallé’s admission to the academy in December 1681.