Lecture 39: Neoclassicism and the Birth of Romanticism
Te r ro r. The committee condemned to the guillotine many people perceived
as enemies of the revolution. Marat’s newspapers were widely read and
inÀ uential, and his writing was extreme and bloodthirsty.Charlotte Corday, Marat’s murderer, was a young woman from Caen who
had been no admirer of the king but could not stomach the excesses of the
Jacobin extremists. Marat suffered from a dis¿ guring skin disease all over
his body. To ease the pain, he spent hours in a medicinal bath, with a board
placed over it to serve as his desk. Corday went to his apartment and sent a
note to Marat in his bath, saying that she had the names of traitors to reveal.
Admitted, she drew out a large kitchen knife and severed his carotid artery
with a single stroke. She was guillotined four days later. Now David had a
contemporary hero and martyr to paint with the concision he had brought to
Roman and Greek history.The composition is a combination of realism and idealism; there is reference
to Christian martyrdoms, and Marat’s arm is comparable to Christ’s arm in
Michelangelo’s Pietà. The immediacy of the body and the realism of the
details shock viewers even today. The bathwater is red with blood: It stains
the note that Corday had sent in and the sheet; it runs the length of Marat’s
arm, leading our eyes to the blood-stained knife, Marat’s pen, and David’s
dedicatory signature, “To Marat, David.” His face is turned toward us and,
in its pathos, invites us to contemplate the betrayal. Ironically, only Marat’s
open sores have been suppressed. The funeral of Marat was also arranged
by David. This painting, when completed, was carried in procession through
the streets.David’s horri¿ c image unintentionally announced that revolutionary
principles had led to violence and that the revolution had failed to achieve
its ideals. David seems to have become mentally unstable for a time, and
when another hero emerged from the chaos, David devoted himself to him
completely. He was, of course, Napoleon Bonaparte.The revolutionary wars of liberation launched by the French armies had
begun in 1792 with the invasion of Austria. General Bonaparte’s string of
victories in Europe and Egypt paved the way for the coup d’etat of 1799 and
his appointment as First Consul. We see here David’s Napoleon Crossing the