Jacques Louis David

See also: David

Jacques-Louis David , painter French born on August 30th, 1748 with Paris and dead on December 29th, 1825 with Brussels, is regarded as the leader of the neo-classic School of which it incarnates the pictorial style and the intellectual option (to regenerate arts by developing a painting that the traditional Greeks and Romans, according to the proper formula of David, would have without hesitating been able to take for theirs.).

He was one of the most admired, envied artists and honnis of his time, as much for his political commitments that for his esthetic choices. In the past, seldom an artist married at this point the great causes of his time by mixing art and policy closely.

David votes the death of the king Louis XVI, then puts himself at the service of the emperor Napoleon i. He operates a rupture with the gallant style and libertine of the painting of the 18th century, and asserts the heritage of the classicism of Nicolas Poussin, but is also inspired by the style baroque of Rubens. He was a Master for two generations of artists, from all Europe to be formed in his workshop which with its apogee, counted forty pupils.

Biography

Childhood

Born with Paris, Quay of the Tawing, in a family of the lower middle class, its father, Louis-Maurice David, is wholesale iron merchant-draper in Paris. To rise socially, it buys a load of Commis to the aydes (equivalent of receiver of the taxes) with Beaumont-in-Trough in the Calvados. His/her mother Marie-Genevieve, born Buron, belongs to a family of Master-masons: his/her brother François Buron is architect of National Forestry Commission, his/her brother-in-law Jacques-François Desmaisons is architect and its second brother-in-law Marc Desistaux is Master-carpenter. She is also dependant, of with dimensions maternal, with the family of the painter François Boucher.

The young David is put in pension at the convent of Picpus until December 2nd, 1757, date on which his/her father dies, at the age of thirty-five years. According to the first biographers of the painter, the cause of the death would be a duel with the sword. David is then nine years old and his/her mother calls upon her brother François Buron to help it to deal with the education of her son. After having made it follow courses at a repeater, it inserts it to the Collège Four-Nations in the class of rhetoric. Consequently, it is withdrawn with Évreux and leaves the whole education of David to the load of his brother. Having noticed her provisions for the drawing, its family initially plans to make him embrace the career of architect, like her two uncles.

Formation

After having learned the drawing with the Saint-Luc academy, François Butcher, first painter of the king, is initially approximate to form it. Too much old to teach, it estimates that the young David could draw a better benefit from the training of the new pictorial tendencies than can bring Joseph-Marie Vien to him. It is, can be, at the time of these years of training which it develops a tumor in the consecutive left cheek with a combat with the sword with one of its school-fellows of workshop. In its self-portraits David dissimulated this physical defect by a shade, but of other artists like Jerome-Martin Langlois and François Rude show without kindness the deformation caused by the cyst.

In 1769 the third medal which it receives with the “ Prix of district ” opens him the way towards the contest of the Grand Prix of Rome. In 1771, it obtains the second price with its work, the Combat of Minerve against Mars in a style inherited the Rococo and of a composition considered to be weak, the prize winner was Joseph-Benoit Suvée.

In 1772, it again misses the first price with Diane and Apollon boring their arrows the children of Niobée the Grand Prix being decreed ex-æquo with Pierre-Charles Jombert and Gabriel Lemonnier following an arranged vote of the jury. After this failure which he lived like an injustice, he solves to let himself die of hunger, but after two days one of sworn Gabriel-François Doyen convinces it to give up his suicide attempt. In 1773, it is still a failure with the death of prone Sénèque inspired of Tacite, the prize winner was Pierre Peyron for which the ancient style was rewarded for its innovation, the composition of David being considered to be too theatrical. Not being able to receive the second price twice, as a consolation the Academy decrees the price of the to him Étude of the heads and the expression for its pastel entitled the pain .

These successive failures affect the opinion of David against the academic institution, which leads in 1793 to the decree that it makes adopt for the removal of the academies

With the end of the year 1773, Marie-madeleine Guimard first dancer of the Opera, charges David with taking again the decoration of its private mansion transformed into private theater, that Fragonard had left unfinished following disagreements.

Boarder of the Academy in Rome

In 1774, it gains finally the first Price of Rome which enables him to then remain during four years with the Palais Mancini residence of the Académie from France to Rome. Work presented Érasistrate discovering the cause of the disease of Antiochius in its love for Stratonice (3Ecole Nationale Sup3erieure of the Art schools, Paris) is in conformity with the new gun of the dramatic composition.

About on October 2nd, 1775, David, accompanies his Master Joseph-Marie Vien, who has just been appointed director of the academy from France to Rome, and two other prizes winner, the first price of sculpture in 1774, Pierre Labussière and Jean Bonvoisin second price of painting in 1775. At the time of its tour it is filled with enthusiasm for paintings of the Italian Rebirth which it sees with Parma, Bologna and Florence. The first year of his stay in Rome, David takes the advice of his Master while devoting itself primarily to the practice of the drawing. He studies the Antiques attentively, making hundreds of sketch of monuments, statues and low-reliefs. The whole of its studies compose five bulky folio collections. It realizes in 1776 a large drawing, the combat of Diomède (Vienna Graphische Sammlung Albertina) which represents one of its first tests in the historical kind, test which it concretizes two years later with the funeral of Patrocle (National Gallery off Ireland, Dublin) a large-sized study painted with oil, intended for the commission of the Academy of the fine arts which was charged to evaluate the sendings of the boarders of Rome. That Ci encouraged the talent of David, but underlined weaknesses in returned space, the general darkness of the scene and the treatment of the prospect. It paints also several paintings in a style borrowed from the Caravagisme: two academies of man, one entitled Hector (1778) and the second known as Patrocle (1780), inspired by the marble, Gallate dying of the Museum of Capitole, a Holy Jerome a Head of philosopher and a copy of the Cène of the Valentine. From July in August 1779, David goes to Naples in company of the sculptor François Marie Suzanne. This stay where he visits the ruins of Herculanum and of Pompéi is at the origin of its conversion to the new style inspired of antiquity. The painter, later, wrote It seemed to me that one had just made me the operation of the cataract I understood that I could not improve my way in which the principle was false, and which it was necessary to divorce all that I had initially believed to be the beautiful one and truth . Old biographies suggested that the influence of the amateur of antiquity Antoine Quatremère de Quincy follower of the ideas of Winckelmann and Lessing, and whose it would have made knowledge in Naples, was not foreign there, but no source at that time confirms a meeting between the two men.

After this voyage, it is prone to a deep crisis of depression which lasts two months, whose cause is not clearly defined. According to the correspondence of the painter at that time, it is due to a relation with the chambermaid of Mrs Vien, associated with one period of doubt after the discovery of the vestiges of Naples. To leave it this crisis of melancholy, its Master makes him have an order for a table with religious topic commemorating the epidemic of plague to Marseilles in 1720, Saint Roch interceding near the Virgin for the patients of the plague intended for the vault of the Lazaret of Marseilles (museum of beautiful arts of Marseilles). Even if some resurgences of the caravagism are perceived, work testifies to a new manner of painting at David, and is inspired directly by the style of Nicolas Poussin by taking again the composition in diagonal of the Apparition of the virgin with saint Jacques major the (1629 museum of Louvre) Achevé in 1780 the table is presented in a room of the Mancini palate and produces a strong impression on the Roman visitors. During his exposure to Paris in 1781, the philosopher Diderot is impressed by the expression of pestiferous with the foot of Roch Saint.

Approval by the Academy

Pompeo Batoni senior of the Italian painters and one of the precursor of the neoclassicism, tried without success to convince it to remain with Rome but David leaves the capital on July 17th, 1780 by carrying with him three works, the Saint Roch , and two fabrics then unfinished, Bélisaire asking alms and for the equestrian Portrait of the count Potocki . Stanislas Potocki is a Polish gentleman and esthète (it translated Winckelmann), that the painter had met in Rome and that it represents while taking as a starting point the equestrian portraits of Antoon Van Dyck

It arrives at Paris at the end of the year and finishes its Bélisaire (museum of beautiful arts of Lille) large-sized table intended for the approval of the artist by the royal Academy of painting and sculpture, only means for the artists of the time of then obtaining the right to expose to the Salon of the Academy, following the decision of the count d' Angiviller managing director of the Building industries of the King, to limit the access of the Living room to the only artists recognized by the Academy and to prohibit the other public exposures. It is after having seen the table on the same subject painted for the Cardinal of Bernis by Pierre Peyron old competitor for the price of Rome, that David decides to carry out to him also a fabric on the deposed Roman general. Both take as a starting point the novel of Marmontel. Work testifies to its new pictorial orientation and its assertion of the neo-classic style. Receipt unanimously, it can present its three paintings to the Living room of 1781, like its great study of the Funérailles of Patrocle , where they are noticed by the critic, in particular Diderot which acknowledges its fascination for the Bélisaire The every day I see it and always believe to see it for the first time .

He marries in 1782 Marguerite Charlotte Pécoul, seventeen years younger than him. His/her father-in-law, Charles-Pierre Pécoul, are building contractor of the King, and equip his daughter with a revenue of 50.000 books, providing to David financial means to install his workshop in Louvre where it also has a housing. She gives him four children, the Jules-Louis groin is born the following year.

He opens his workshop where he receives candidatures on behalf of young artists wishing to make their trainings under his teaching. Fabre, Wicar, Girodet, Drouais, Debret is among the first pupils of David.

After approval David painted in 1783 his “Piece of reception”, the Pain of Andromaque (museum of Louvre), subject which it chooses according to an episode of the Iliade and whose reason is inspired by the decoration of an ancient fleshfly, the death of Méléagre , which it had copied from his notebooks in Rome. With this David work is received like member of the Academy, and lends oath on September 6th, 1783.

Leader of the new school of painting

Since 1781, David thought of making, to answer the ordering of the buildings of the king, large a Peinture of history inspired by the topic of the Combat of Horaces and Curiaces and indirectly of the part of Pierre Corneille Horace . But they is three years later that it concludes this project by choosing an episode absent from the part the Oath of Horaces (1785 museum of Louvre) which it takes again can be of the Roman History of Charles Rollin, or a fabric of Gavin Hamilton the Oath of Brutus takes as a starting point. Thanks to a financing of his father-in-law, David leaves for Rome in October 1784, accompanied by his wife and one by his pupil and assistant Jean-Germain Drouais who contest for the Grand Prix of painting. He continues in Palazzo Costanzi the realization of his table, which he had begun in Paris.

David was not held with the dimension of ten feet out of ten (three meters out of approximately three) imposed by the Building industries of the King, but increases the fabric, giving him a width of ten feet out of thirteen (3,30m on 4,25m). Its disobedience to the official instructions is worth a reputation of rebellious and independent artist to him. It takes the initiative to expose its fabric to Rome, before the official presentation with the Living room, where she knows a great repercussion in the medium of the artists and the archeologists.

Following Jacques Brengues, Luc de Nanteuil and Philippe Bordes have advanced that the painter would have been freemason. But it is only in 1989 at the time of the conference David against David that Albert Boime could attest on the basis of a document gone back to 1787 of the membership of the painter to the maconnic cabin of moderation like affiliated member and suggests that the topic of the oath that one finds in several works like the oath of the play of palm , the distribution of the eagles , Léonidas with the thermopyles , was can be inspired in David by the ritual ones of the Franc-maçonnerie.

In spite of its success in Rome, and the support of the marquis de Bièvre, it must be satisfied with a bad site for its fabric with the living room of 1785, qu ' it charges to its bad relations with Jean-Baptiste Pierre first painter of the King and director of the Academy of the fine arts, but which in fact is due to the delay taken to send work to Paris after the opening of Salonque one does not name yet the Néoclassicisme.

Successes of David as artist established and recognized by his pars, as portraitist of the high society of his time and as professor, do not prevent it from being in hillock with the jealousies of the Academy. The contest of 1786 for the Price of Rome is cancelled because the artists all candidates are of the pupils of his workshop, and its candidature for the position of director of the Academy from France in Rome is refused. This same year, in the absence of an official ordering of the king, it satisfies that of Charles Michel Trudaine of the Sand pit, a liberal aristocrat, lord of the Plessis-Franc and adviser at the Parliament of Paris, by painting the Death of Socrate (1787 Metropolitan museum off art), a table of half-figure (1,29 meter out of 1,96 meter). The epic of the hand directed towards the cut was suggested with the painter, according to the biographer P.A. Coupin, by his friend the poet André Chénier. Exposed to the living room of 1787 work is in competition with the version that Peyron presents same scene, and who was ordered by the buildings of the king. In fact, by choosing the same David subject knowingly confronts themselves again with his former rival of the price of Rome of 1773 and takes its revenge by the success which it meets during his exposure.

It paints in 1788 the Loves of Pâris and Helene (1788 museum of Louvre) for the count d' Artois, future Charles X, which it had begun two years before. It is the only ordering emanating directly of a family member royal; that of a portrait of Louis XVI showing the constitution with the dolphin, that the king asks him in 1792, will never be carried out. The year 1788 was disturbed by the early death of its favorite pupil Jean-Germain Drouais, of the continuations of the Petite pox. With the advertisement of this news the painter wrote I lost my emulation .

Revolutionary age

In 1788 David makes the Portrait of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his wife. The chemist Antoine Lavoisier who is also farmer general and occupies at the time the function of administrator of the powders and salpetres, caused in August 1789 a riot with the arsenal of Paris to have stored gunpowder there. Following this incident, the administration of the Art schools judges more careful not to expose the painting to the living room of 1789.

It is also what failed to arrive for the fabric the lictors bringing to Brutus the body its wire . D' Angiviller fearing a comparison between the intransigence of the consul Lucius Junius Brutus sacrificing its sons which conspired against Rome, and the weakness of Louis XVI vis-a-vis the intrigues of the count d' Artois against the Third-state, ordered not to expose it whereas it was about a ordering of the buildings of the king. The newspapers of the time seized business, seeing a censure of the authorities there. Shortly after this press campaign the table is exposed to the Living room, but the painter agrees to remove the distinct heads of wire of Brutus planted on spades which were reproduced initially on the fabric. The Brutus knows a great popularity near the public going until influencing the fashion and furniture. One adopts hairstyles “in Brutus”, the women give up the powdered wigs and the cabinetmaker Jacob carries out piece of furniture “Romans” drawn by David.

At that time David attends since 1786 the medium of the liberal aristocrats. Via the Trudaine brothers it amongst other things makes the knowledge of Chénier, Bailly and Condorcet, with the living room of Mrs. de Genlis it meets Barère, Barnave and Alexandre de Lameth future protagonists of the Revolution. Two former school-fellows met in Rome, the architect Mathurin Crucy and the sculptor Jacques Lamarie, propose to him to make an allegory to celebrate the events pre-revolutionist which proceeded in Nantes with the end of the year 1788, the project do not end but affirm the sympathy of David to the revolutionary cause. In September 1789 taking the head with Jean-Bernard Restout, of the dissenting Academicians a group founded to reform the institution of the Art schools, it requires the end of the privileges of the Academy, and in particular the right to the artists not approved to be able to expose to the living room. In 1790, it undertakes to commemorate the Serment of the play of palm. This project inspired to the painter by Dubois-Crancé and Barère, is the most ambitious realization of the painter. The work which, once finished, would have been the largest table of David (ten meters broad on seven meters in height, a little larger than the Sacre ) was to represent the 630 deputies present at the time of the event. The project is initially proposed, by its first Dubois-Crancé secretary, at the Company of the friends of the constitution, first name of the Club of the Jacobins, from which David comes to adhere. A subscription for the sale of an engraving according to the table for the financing of the project is launched but this one does not make it possible to join together the required funds for the completion of the table.

In 1791 Barère proposed with the Constituent Assembly to take the continuation of the financing of the Serment , but in spite of the success of the exposure of the drawing to the living room of 1791 the table was never completed, David giving up the project in 1801 definitively. According to the biographers the causes are multiple, initially financial, the subscription is a failure, a sum of 6624 pounds is joined together instead of the 72000 pounds envisaged, then for political reasons, the evolution of the events makes that certain personalities like Barnave, Bailly and Mirabeau are discredited by the patriots for their moderantism and their bringings together with Louis XVI, and for esthetic reasons, David not being satisfied with the representation of modern costumes in an ancient style.

While continuing its artistic activity, it enters in policy, by taking the head in 1790 of the Commune of arts , resulting from the movement of the dissenting Académiciens . It obtains in 1790 the end of the control of the Living room by the Academy of the fine arts and takes part as police chief associated in the first “Living room of the freedom” which opens on August 21st, 1791. In September 1790 it militates near the assembly for the removal of all the Academies, the decision is not ratified by a decree supported by the painter and the Abbé Gregoire only on August 8th, 1793, meanwhile it also makes remove the position of director of the Academy of Rome.

July 11th, 1791 takes place the transfer of ashes of Voltaire to the the Pantheon, of the doubts remain as for the role of David in his organization. It seems in fact to have been only one to advise and not to have taken an active share with the ceremony.

Painter and conventional

The David July 17th, 1791 belongs to the signatories of the petition asking for the forfeiture of Louis XVI joined together the Champ de Mars right before the shooting, it makes on this occasion the knowledge of Roland. In September of the same year it tries without success to be made elect like deputy with the legislative Assemblée. Its artistic activity is made moin presents, if it finds time to make its second self-portrait known as Autoportrait with the three collets (1791 Florence Gallerie of the Offices) it leaves unfinished several portraits of which those of Mrs. Pastoret and Mrs. Trudaine.

In 1792 its political positions radicalize themselves, as of August 1790 Charlotte David in dissension with the opinions of his/her husband makes a step of separation and withdraws a time in a convent. April 15th it organizes its first revolutionary festival in the honor of Swiss of Chateauvieux which was mutinés in the garrison of Nancy. Its supports with this cause causes the final rupture with its old liberal relations and in particular André Chénier and Mrs. de Genlis.

September 17th 1792 it is elected 20ère appointed of Paris to the national Convention with 450 votes with the elections of the second degree, and supports it of Jean-Paul Marat who classifies it among the “excellent patriots”. It sits with the party of the Montagne.

Little after October 13rd it is named with the Comité state education and for this reason, is charged with the organization with the civic festivals and revolutionist and propaganda. At the committee of 1792 to 1794 in addition to its combat against the academy it deals with the administration of arts. As Member of the Commission of the monuments it proposes the establishment of an inventory of all the national treasures and plays an active role in the reorganization of the Muséum of Arts, offering a station to Jean-Honore Fragonard. It conceives with the beginning of the year a 1794 program of embellishment of Paris and makes install the horses of Marly at the entry of the Champs Elysées.

From January 16th to 19th 1793 (27 to the 30 nivôse year I) it votes for the death of the king Louis XVI what causes the divorce of his wife. After the assassination on January 20th, 1793 of the conventional regicide Louis-Michel Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau, killed by old a bodyguard of the king, passed in the constitutional Guard of the King, David takes the initiative to carry out a portrait of the victim under the fatal sword. This table, exposed to Convention, then recovered by David in 1795, will cease being visible in 1826, but remains to us known by a drawing of Anatole Desvoge, raises of David, and an engraving.

After the assassination of Marat on July 13rd, Convention, by the voice of the Guirault deputy, order with David to do for Marat what it had done for Lepeletier. In October 1793, David announces that it finished. As from November and until the fall of Robespierre, the two tables go trôner on both sides of the platform of Convention. Marat assassinated (1793) exposes in its crudeness the reality of the crime, with the favor of an icon dedicated to the worship of revolutionary martyrdom. In a table remained unfinished David makes appear naked Bara, tightening the tricolor rosette on its chest and sacrificing themselves for the fatherland, a such ancient hero.

David is named with the Comité of general security, on September 14th, 1793, it contresigns a great number of orders of arrests which led some of marked to the guillotine, and takes part like witness in the interrogation of the dolphin Louis XVII.

It organizes the ritual of the supreme Fête Être.

During the Directory

After the Fall of Robespierre, Thermidor 9 (July 27th 1794), David is included/understood in the proscription. But absent from convention this day, having been prevented by a friend, he escapes from accuracy from the scaffold. Denounced by Lecointre as robespierrist it is put in charge and imprisoned at old the Hôtel of the general Farms, then in Luxembourg. Its students mobilize and obtain his release the 8 nivôse year III (December 28th 1794). He is again imprisoned in 1795 before being amnestied.

During his imprisonment, David does not remain inactive, it paints the Autoportrait of Louvre and conceives Sabines . This table is a capital work of David, of neo-classic style, in which it symbolizes the fratricidal competitions of the revolutionary factions and the virtues of the harmony. Sabines attracted criticisms of the Barbus, a group made up of some of its pupils by Pierre-Maurice Quays which preached a return to primitivism. David had to separate from these disturbing elements.

It is at that time that it renews contact with its Charlotte ex-wife who forgives him her acts and which accepts to marry it again.

Napoleonean time

As of the first successes of Bonaparte in Italy, it was allured because it found in him its legendary heroes. Towards the end of year VI (1797), its meeting with the young Bonaparte general completes to convince it and it makes its first portrait which remains unfinished.

It realized, for the new Master of France then of Europe, several tables at ends of propaganda and became the official painter of the First Empire. Its first major representation was Bonaparte with the Large-Saint-Bernard assembled on an impetuous horse. David of which it was the first great realization for Bonaparte wanted to make a table symbolizing of it the conqueror in the line of Hannibal with the name of Bonaparte engraved on a stone, bellow, on the left of the table. Originally the fabric was ordered by the king of Spain. There exist four other specimens of this table which were carried out by the workshop of David. This major work reproduced in France in all the handbooks of history since Jules Ferry is one of the rare equestrian portraits of Napoleon.

The first Bonaparte consul wanted to appoint David “painter of the government” but this last refuses this title estimating to deserve more, and in 1804, the new emperor invests it in the function of “first painter”, function which Charles Le Brun near the Sun king had occupied. Thus at the time of the ceremonies of Crowning, David receives order of four tables of which it will carry out only two of them, “ the Sacring of Napoleon ” and the Distribution of the Eagles , because of difficulties of payment.

He carried out the Sacring of Napoleon in three years and had a cabin with this intention in Notre-Dame from where he could follow, episodes and details of the imposing ceremony. He reported itself how he operated: “ I drew the whole according to nature there, and I made all the principal groups separately. I made notes for what I have not time to draw, thus one can believe, by seeing the table, have attended the ceremony. Each one occupies the place which is appropriate to him, it is covered clothings of its dignity. One hastened to come to be made paint in this table, which contains more than two hundred figures… ”. However, the table is not completely veracious on at least two points: the mother of Napoleon represented in the platform nearest to the furnace bridge, according to the wish of the emperor, did not attend the ceremony, and the pope Pie VII, represented blessing the marriage, was actually only simple spectator, remaining all the ceremony sitting in a resigned attitude.

In table the Distribution of the Eagles it had on order emperor to carry it out two important modifications: it emptied the sky of the “Victoire which throws bay-trees with the officers holding up flags and standards” and after 1809 it made disappear from the Joséphine scene repudiated. The first modification returned without object the movement of head of the marshals looking at from now on the vacuum to the site where the allegory was.

Towards the end of the Empire, the official orders rarefy and David completes his table Léonidas in Thermopyles an episode of the history of the Greek Antiquity which will become with the mode. This table was designed by David towards 1800, time when the glorification of the heroic virtues of the sacrifice for the nation was a model to be followed. King Léonidas with the head of three hundred solved warriors, holds head to several hundreds of thousands of Persian soldiers, giving the Greeks time to begin again itself. The table was completed in May 1814, whereas Napoleon had abdicated and had just exiled himself on the isle of Elba. At the time of the Hundred Days, Napoleon of passage to Paris took time to go to see the table. The painter preserved his fidelity at the Emperor by signing the “additional Act”.

After the Battle of Waterloo, and the return of the king Louis XVIII on the throne, David, to have signed the “additional Act”, is definitively proscribed kingdom of France and must leave in exile, after the law of the January 12th 1816.

Exile in Brussels

Initially, he requests asylum at Italy which refuses it to him. The more liberal Belgium receives it and it finds with the old Brussels other conventional ones: Barrère, Pierre Joseph Cambon, Merlin of Douai, Thibaudeau, Alquier and Sieyès.

It carries out many portraits to live, but its capacities are still there, it did not give up the “great manner” and takes again its subjects related to Greek and Roman mythology.

Refusing the generous interventions tending to obtain its return in France, it will remain in Belgium until its death nine years later in spite of an amnesty. In this country, it finally found quietude and, almost octogenarian, it carries out without silent partner in 1824, a table of more than three meters in height, “ Mars disarmed by Venus and the Graces ”. It was its last philosopher's stone and David died the following year, in 1825.

Work

Pictorial kinds and topics

Of share his formation and his artistic course, David is before a whole painter of history, considered since the XVIIéme century according to the classification of Félibien as the great kind. Until its exile, works of which it grants the most importance are the paintings of history inspired by the subjects drawn from mythology ( Andromaque , Mars disarmed by Venus ) or the history of Roman and Greek antiquity ( Brutus , the sabines , Léonidas ). It tries to adapt its ancient inspiration to the subjects of its time by also painting works on subject contemporaries. The most characteristic works are the Oath of the play of palm , the death of Marat and the the Sacring .

The second pictorial kind that it approaches is the portrait. At the beginning of its career and this until the Revolution, it portraiture its close relations and relations as well as the notable ones of its entourage, his only tests in the official portrait relate to its portraits of equestrian Napoleon, and in costume of the sacring, the portrait of the pope Pie VII, and some members of the mode, like Esteve and French of Nantes. Its style in this kind precedes the portraits of Ingres. Three self-portraits are known to him.

It does not paint a Still life , and one allots one to him Paysage paints that it would have made window of the palate of Luxembourg in 1794 when it was imprisoned, it also drew several landscapes of the Roman campaigns at the time of its stay in Italy.

List works

See also: (To be supplemented, by chronological order)

Principal pupils

See also: List of the pupils of Jacques-Louis David

Among its pupils, it is necessary to name:

Random links:Maurice Greene (type-setter) | Merléac | Luogosano | Charles Miquel | World champions heavy trucks of English boxing | Comté_de_Greeley,_Nébraska