Page 66 - All About History - Issue 186-19

This stark and powerful painting of Marat’s death is now considered to be a masterpiece
Jacques-Louis David began work on his painting
of the murder of Marat almost immediately after
the crime was committed, determined to create
a suitably moving memorial to a man who’d been
his friend and political colleague for a number
of years. David had become politically involved
early in the revolution and joined the Jacobin
club, where he befriended not just Marat but also
Robespierre, Danton and other leading figures of
the revolution. He eventually became a deputy
in the Convention, which enabled him to vote
for the execution of Louis XVI. He had visited
Marat at his home the day before the murder
and used his intimate knowledge of the dead
This painting of Marat
was done by Montagnard
© Getty Images supporter Jacques-Louis
David just months after
the murder
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man’s lifestyle as the basis of his painting. It was
intended to not just to glorify Marat as a martyr
of the revolution but also inspire sympathy by
underlining the fragile humanity of the ‘ami du
peuple’, who had been felled by an assassin while
he lay exposed and vulnerable in his bath. Marat’s
limp posture deliberately evokes memories of
medieval paintings of Christ after he has been
taken down from the cross. Crucially, the spotlight
is entirely upon Marat, while Corday is nowhere
to be seen, although the note that she sent to him
earlier in the day is depicted, soiled and bloody,
in his outstretched hand. However, despite
David’s efforts to keep Corday at a distance from
his solemn tableau, within just a few years of his
masterpiece’s completion demand for depictions
of Marat had dwindled away, while people
clamoured for paintings and engravings of his
enigmatic murderess. Although the painting is
now considered a masterpiece, Marat had been
completely discredited and the once celebrated
work itself virtually forgotten by the time David
died in Brussels in 1825, with the result that his
family were unable to find a buyer when they
tried to sell it. It would eventually be donated to
a museum in Brussels, where it still remains as
a poignant memorial to the bloody turmoil of the
French Revolution.