The Death of Marat

AE #5: Formal Visual Analysis  The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David a. The medium of the artwork was oil on canvas. b. The work’s dimensions is 5 ft. 3 in x 4 ft. and 1 in. c. The Death of Marat was originally created in France, but can now be found at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium. d. The genre of the painting is history. e. Jacques-Louis David painted the Death of Marat as a memorial to Jean Marat, who was a dear friend of his. f. When David originally painted the Death of Marat, I’m sure the targeted audience was everyone around in that day. It was a personalized sort of “news story”. Mostly, it was a memorial, but it also provided mostly true facts on Jean Marat’s death, even down to the murderess’s name written on…

A good example of Neoclassical style is the painting, “Death of Marat”. Created by one of the most influential and important artists of the French Revolution, Jacques-Louis David in 1793, this painting holds a great deal of history. David was part of a revolutionary parliament, who supported the idea of the king’s execution. When one of his good friends, and famous revolutionary chief reporter, Jean-Paul Marat was murdered in his bathtub, the parliament ordered David to paint, portraying…

even if it meant lopping off a few heads. Within a mere decade the dingy cobblestone streets that King Louis XVI once presided over, ran red with his royal blood; the utter hysteria of the French Revolution had swallowed Paris whole. Enlightenment ideals of individualism and rationality, that, along with exorbitant taxes and food prices, indecisive governing, and the American Revolution, had encouraged the abolishment of the monarchy, took on a violent fervor that rapidly transcended the…

In the image you see Marat leaning slumped over the side of his bath, still holding the piece of work that allowed Charlotte in to do her terrible deed. It is painted in true Neo-classical form with emphasize on the ideal instead of the natural. There is no sign of the horriable skin condition that would cause someone to spend the majority of their time in water, and there is no blood and gore to magnify the horror of the incident. This is where Goya and David differ greatly amongst their works.…

Jacques Louis David was both a genuine artist as well as an apologist and propagandist for violence. Genuine means to be actual, real, or true and David’s art displays this well. David wanted France to snap out of its slow decline into decadence and instead enter a golden age. He believed France could achieve this by striving to be more like the Roman republic. At first, he stood by the side of the royal family, even offering to paint portraits of them. However, when the revolution began to take…

The Back Stabbing Truth of Julius Caesar and Jean- Paul Marat According to Marcus Tulius Cicero, “The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living” (Proverbia, 2015). In the past, many important people have died and, even after their death, influenced the lives of the many people around them. Julius Caesar and Jean-Paul Marat happened to be very influential to the citizens around them, but were struck down when they were assassinated by those who rejected them. These men were very…

Neoclassicism and “The Death of Marat” As early as the 17th century, Classicism was established in France aims to revitalize Ancient Greece and Rome art. Thus, Neoclassicism was relative to Classicism but not the repetition of it. In France it during 18th to 19th century, the Enlightenment was formed while the first half of the Neoclassicism period. That was the moment when philosophical theory and political revolution influenced the whole world. However, Neoclassicism and the Enlightenment…

First, you have to know who Marat was. If you read one of Marat’s publications, you’d probably know who Marat was and who murdered him, but otherwise as a viewer you’d be lost. Marat was a Jacobin and so was David and this painting was for the Jacobins (one of the political groups of the French revolutionaries). In that sense it’s kind of exclusionary. Second, you have to pick up the Christian symbolism in Marat’s knife wound (similar to Jesus being speared while on the cross) and understand the…

frequency of the sight of severed heads. Astonishingly, this all occurs a few months within the declaration of the National Assembly. The violence would only increase in the following years leading up to the Terror with events such as the Insurrection of the Tuileries and several massacres. Violence has become second nature at this point which is why the Terror is nothing unusual except that the Terror was an organized way of killing and was controlled by a handful of men. One of the most…

One fantastic example of French Revolutionary women is Charlotte Corday. Born on July 27, 1768 in Normandy, France, she is known for her extreme action of murdering a Jacobin leader named Jean-Paul Marat (“Charlotte Corday (French Noble)”). As a member of the Girodin political party, Corday opposed Marat’s Jacobin agenda and planned to murder him during the Bastille Day parade on July 14, 1793 (“Charlotte Corday Assassinates Marat”). However, Corday changed her plan for some reason and attempted…