Karl Von Piloty, born in Munich on the first day of October 1826, is best known for his carrying of the banner of history painting in mid nineteenth-century Germany. The son of a lithographer, he enrolled in the Munich Academy in 1840 and began teaching in 1858 (or 1856, according to Weimer and Holt). His training was in Paris under Paul Delaroche, and back in Munich under Louis Gallait (1810-1887), a Belgian painter who directed the Munich Academy when Piloty was a student.

Piloty himself became director of the Academy after the death of Wilhelm Kaulbach (1805-1874). In 1879, the art critic who championed the impressionists, Louis-Edmond Duranty, described Piloty as "the king of painting in a t...