A generation or two before the Impressionists, French artists didn’t have the luxury of lolling about fields painting haystacks and generally having a wheeze of a time. At a time of seismic social and political change, an artist had to box clever to stay on the right side of dangerous political forces. Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825) was one such painter who managed to successfully navigate his way — and his art — from the final years of the Ancien Régime through the French Revolution and the rise and fall of Napoleon.
David was considered to be the preeminent painter of the Neoclassical era, that return to the high-minded severity of the arts of ancient Greece and Rome in contrast to the frivolity of the late Baroque. David’s history painting matched the moral climate of the final years of Louis XVI and he was favoured by the Court. However, David later became an active supporter of the French Revolution and friend of Robespierre, and his Death of Marat (1793) became one of the most famous images of the era.
Imprisoned briefly after Robespierre’s fall from power, he aligned himself with yet another political regime upon his release: that of Napoleon, the First Consul of France. As well as his suitably heroic rendering of Napoleon in his Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass (1801), he also created the monumental The Coronation of Napoleon (1806). Finally, after Napoleon’s fall from power and the Bourbon revival, David exiled himself to Brussels, where he remained until his death.
However, let’s return to David’s origins with a painting considered a Neoclassical masterpiece, Oath of the Horatii (1784). It depicts a scene from a Roman legend about a seventh-century BC dispute between two warring cities, Rome and Alba Longa. Instead of the two cities sending their armies to war, they agree to choose three men from each city; the victor in that fight will be the victorious city. From Rome, three brothers from a Roman family, the Horatii, agree to fight three brothers from a family of Alba Longa, the Curiatii.
The three Horatii brothers, willing to sacrifice their lives for the good of Rome, are shown saluting their father who holds their swords out for them. There could be no more evocative a scene of patriotic duty and, although painted four years before the Revolution, it nonetheless became a symbol of loyalty to State and a defining image of the time.
Of the three Horatii brothers, only one will survive the confrontation and he will kill each Curiatii brother in turn, seizing victory for Rome. Aside from the three brothers depicted, David also represents, in the bottom right corner, a woman crying. She is Camilla, a sister of the Horatii, who happens to be also betrothed to one of the Curiatii fighters, and thus she weeps in the realisation that, whatever happens, she will lose someone she loves.
