Neoclassicism

Jacques-Louis David

Marat assassiné

1793

Oil on canvas, 65 × 50 1/2 in. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels

An assassinated man painted with almost nothing around him, so the death becomes a still, monumental image.

Look at

• The top half of the canvas is an empty, brushed brown wall; all the drama sits in a band across the bottom.
• Light from the upper left picks out the head, shoulder and hanging arm against the dark ground.
• The wooden crate in front is plain and flat, lettered with the dedication like an inscribed slab.

• Dedicated, signed and dated on the crate: 'A Marat, David, l'an deux'.
• Left to the museum by Jules-David Chassagnol in 1886; it arrived in 1893.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain