The Death Of Marat

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The Death of Marat

Jacques-Louis David, 1793

oil on canvas

162 × 128 cm

Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

64 worlds greatest paintings

The Death of Marat is a 1793 painting by Jacques-Louis David, and is one of the most famous images of the French Revolution.

The painting depicts the 1793 assassination of Jean-Paul Marat, the writer of the radical newspaper L'Ami du peuple (The Friend of the People) and a prominent member of the Jacobin faction during the Reign of Terror. Marat was stabbed while writing in his bathtub by Charlotte Corday, a supporter of the more moderate Girondist faction. (Marat often sought the comfort of a cool bath due to a skin disease said to have been contracted years earlier, when he was forced to hide from his enemies in the Paris sewers. More recent examination of Marat's symptoms has led to the assertion that Marat's skin eruptions came not from a disease contracted in the Paris sewers but from celiac disease, an allergy to gluten, found most commonly in wheat).

David was a close friend of Marat, as well as a strong supporter of Robespierre and the Jacobins. Determined to memorialize his friend, David not only organized a lavish funeral for Marat, but painted The Death of Marat soon afterwards. Despite the haste in which it was created (the painting was complete and presented to the National Convention less than four months after Marat's death), it is generally considered among the best of David's work.

The painting has often been compared to Michelangelo's Pietà; note, in particular, the elongated arm hanging down in both works. The similarities may be deliberate; David sought to transfer the sacred qualities long associated with the monarchy and the Catholic Church to the new Republic. Consequently, David painted Marat in a style reminiscent of a Christian martyr, with the face and body bathed in a soft, glowing light.

Although the figure of Marat himself is idealized--for example, none of the skin problems from which Marat suffered are evident in David's depiction--the details that surround the subject are largely true-to-life. David had visited Marat the day before his assassination and remembered seeing the sheet, the green rug, the papers, and the pen. The name of the assassin, Charlotte Corday, can be seen on the paper held in Marat's left hand.