Another most immediately
recognizable change seen in Post-Revolutionary art is its stark
seriousness. You can't get more opposite
to Rococo. Coming out of the
licentiousness of the past age, the Neoclassics would turn to much more somber
themes and serious paintings. Remember
Fragonard's The Swing? Just two decades
later, Jacques-Louis David painted this.
Dark, grim, not altogether
colorful, and even somewhat macabre at first glance, this painting is of The
Death of Marat. David, as we know, was
very much involved in politics. He was
the one who sketched the Oath of the Tennis Court and took part in the Revolution. Jean-Paul Marat was a major figure of the
French Revolution, a man of the people, and a person whom David looked up
to. In 1793, Marat was assassinated; he
was stabbed to death in his bathtub at his home. Marat suffered from a unique skin disease
that required him to spend many hours soaking in his tub and wearing a towel
wrapped around his head to further remedy the ailment. The assassin, a young woman named Charlotte
Corday, was caught, tried, and executed, and I learned that the actual bathtub
in which the killing took place is said to be on display at the Musée Grévin in
Paris. Yuck.
David painted this as a tribute to
the man. The bottom inscription in
French dedicates the painting to Marat.
As for the painting itself, this is a good example of propaganda, painted
in such a way as to generate sympathy for the death of this noble-looking
man. His corpse lies over the side of
the tub, his face half-smiling in peaceful wisdom and his hand holding up a
note which describes in French how he must suffer for the betterment of
society. Rather than gruesome or gory,
the painting shows a "clean" death without lots of blood so as to
soften viewers to the scene, not appall them.
We see the assassin's knife left at the bottom of the tub, and we are
meant to feel pity for this man. The
dramatic lighting makes him even almost sculpturesque. Marat is like the Dying Gaul of Ancient Greek
and Roman art history. This painting
seeks to make a martyr out of him and does so in a very Romantic way. Romanticism is already beginning to arrive
onto the art stage right now, but we will look at that art movement later as it
becomes more prevalent.
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