Death of Marat Jacques-Louis David\'s

Death of Marat

Jacques-Louis David's Death of Marat

The famous painting the Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David is considered to be a masterpiece of neoclassical art. It is also probably one of the most iconic images of the French Revolution. In the center of the painting, the torso of a bleeding, dying man emerges. In his left hand, resting on a table, is a piece of paper with writing on it, while in his right hand, falling down to the ground, is a quill. Not far from his right hand, one can make out a knife laying on the ground in the bottom left of the picture - the weapon, it is inferred, with which he has just been stabbed. On a wooden stool adjacent to the figure's right arm is engraved the words "A Marat" - to Marat - under which the artist has signed his own name, David.

David's Death of Marat is meant to dramatize the moment when Jean-Paul Marat, who published the radical newspaper the Friend of the People, was murdered. The event occurred dramatically when Marat was writing in his bathtub. The murderess was one Charlotte Corday. Corday was a member of the Girdonist faction, a more moderate group. She had left her native Normandy in order to come to Paris, intent on killing Marat. She felt that Marat was too radical. She considered her deed one of salvation - by killing Marat, she would effectively save her nation.

The fact that Marat died in the bathtub - and that David's painting blatantly depicts this fact, instead of romanticizing his death - is no coincidence. It reveals a key biographical element that effectively memorializes Marat. Throughout his life, Marat suffered from a severe skin condition that he believed to have contracted during the period when he had been forced to hide in the sewers from his enemies. Cold baths were the only relief Marat had from this itchy, terrible skin condition. Modern medicine has it that Marat was in fact suffering most likely from an allergy to gluten, a substance that is typically found in wheat.

It is also not coincidental that David, of all people, would choose to depict Marat's death via painting. Like Marat, David had close ties to the Jacobins. A strong supporter of Robespierre, David became close friends with Marat during his lifetime. Marat and Robespierre both had the charisma and talent of overwhelming large masses of people through their speeches and actions. David would take on the responsibility of organizing Marat's funeral, as well as painting this beautiful, moving homage to the fallen hero. It is in many ways reminiscent of one of his earlier paintings, the Death of Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau.

David completed the Death of Marat in a very short time span. It would go on to become one of the most famous paintings of Neoclassicism, and is frequently evoked as David's best painting. Many critics have also evoked David as a precursor of Modernism, thanks to the Death of Marat.

Much of the power in David's rendering of his friend's death is its intricate attention to detail and realism. While there are some idealizing components inherent in the work (nowhere do we see any evidence of the skin condition Marat apparently suffered from, for example), most of the other elements of the painting were true to life, as David had visited his friend one day before his assassination and could remember intricate details about his living situation at the time. He had witnessed Marat writing in the bath, and took note of the green rug depicted in the painting, as well as the position that the papers were in on the table, and the way the pen Marat used looked. David was sure to depict his friend performing the noble need that essentially caused his death - and that he was performing as he died: that is, writing in order to improve the lot of humanity.

An interesting detail in the painting is the fact that one can make out the name of Marat's assassin - Charlotte Corday - on the piece of paper resting before him. But David will not do Corday the honor of including her in the picture; she is noticeably absent, despite the fact that in real life she is known to have lingered in the room, refusing to abandon the scene of her crime in order to take full accountability of Marat's death. (She would be decapitated at the guillotine four days later.) the fact that Corday is excluded from the image significantly chips away at the painting's claims to documentary truth. For this reason, more than one critic over the ages has referred to the Death of Marat along the lines of "an awful beautiful lie." Indeed, Corday's absence from the painting certainly detracts from the image's narrative integrity.

Critics have also cited the Pieta of Michelangelo as an influence on David's painting. There are a lot of similarities between the two images, particularly the parallel between the way Marat's arm hangs down; Christ's arm, in Michelangelo's work, hangs in nearly the exact same position.

Indeed, David, like many French Neoclassicists, was obsessed with the work of the great Italian artists who preceded him. One can also find many parallels to the pioneering naturalism of Caravaggio - in particular, the Entombment of Christ.

It is difficult to determine whether or not these references on David's part were deliberate. As an artist who was renowned for being aware of a multitude of different artistic styles, David was essentially attempting to distill the best of those styles into his own work. At the same time, one can see in the Death of Marat how, stylistically, he was attempting to infuse his painting with those qualities that had long been held sacred by the Monarchy and the Catholic Church (i.e. those styles that heralded Classicism in the arts.) in this respect, David's portrayal of Marat's death effectively elevates his subject to the status of martyr, evoking previous images of Christ's suffering on the cross and his ultimate death - a sacrifice for all of humanity, as David implies Marat's death is.

Of special interest in David's painting is the play of light on Marat's features. It is a soft light that enters from the upper right hand side of the picture, illuminating its subject with an angelic glow. Indeed, this is not a gruesome, horrific death, but a rather beautiful one - and this is largely due to the sensitivity of the light depicted by the artist. It is Marat's face that receives the glow, while his chest is darkened in shadow. The interplay between light and shadow in the painting effectively expresses the outrage the painter must have felt at the death of his friend, as well as his strong compassion for what he must have regarded as Marat's ultimate sacrifice at the hands of fate.

The Death of Marat was first unveiled on November 15, 1973. Immediately, the painting became renowned for its warm, poignant portrayal of Marat's fading into oblivion. It has been lauded by humanists around the world as a prime example of one man whose dedication to a cause was so great that he ultimately ended up giving his own life up for it.

The painting's subsequent reception, however, was less than generous. After the fall of Robbespierre, the painting was handed back to its creator. It was only discovered once again after David passed away. The painting then was forced to survive the harsh glances of the Romanticists, who were repelled by what they perceived to be the painting's overt allegiance to Classicism.

Eventually, the painting's popularity was revived by none other than the great poet Charles Baudelaire, who would assert in the year 1846: