The Death of Marat

The Death of Marat, oil painting (1793) by French artist Jacques-Louis David depicting the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat, a radical activist of the French Revolution, by Charlotte Corday, a supporter of the opposing political party. With The Death of Marat, David transformed traditional history painting, usually reserved for biblical or Classical narratives, by depicting a scene from a contemporary event.

History

Marat was a physician and publisher, who, with the start of the French Revolution in 1789, used his newspaper, L’Ami du Peuple (“The Friend of the People”), to voice his support for the most radical and democratic measures. In 1792 he joined the National Convention, the assembly that governed France after the overthrow of the monarchy (August 10, 1792). The Convention’s first months were dominated by two opposing revolutionary factions, the Montagnards and the more moderate Girondins. The Montagnards were closely associated with the Jacobin Club of Paris and favoured granting the poorer classes more political power. The Girondins, on the other hand, were composed of the educated provincial middle class of France and favoured a bourgeois republic. Marat was one of the most prominent members of the Convention, and attacks on him by the Girondin faction made him a symbol of the Montagnards, although he held no position of real influence.

The Girondins had promoted a war against the anti-revolutionary European coalition (comprising Austria, Prussia, and Great Britain, later called the First Coalition) in 1792 and were held responsible in 1793 when France suffered a series of defeats. They were overthrown by the popular insurrection of May 31 to June 2 of that year. Many of its leaders fled to Caen, where Charlotte Corday, a young woman of noble birth but of little means, often attended political meetings. She was inspired to go to Paris to work for the Girondin cause. Using the pretext of providing information on dissidents in Normandy, Corday was admitted to see Marat on July 13, 1793. She found him working while taking a medicinal bath. Corday then drew a knife from under her dress and stabbed him mortally in the chest. She was arrested on the spot, and within days she was tried and convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal. She was guillotined on July 17, 1793.

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Marat’s assassination at the moment that the Montagnards triumphed over the Girondins transformed him overnight into a martyr of the people’s cause, and the government commissioned David to paint him. At the time, David had a reputation as France’s foremost painter, but he was also a leading member of the Committee of Public Instruction, the Convention’s unacknowledged propaganda agency. The Death of Marat was one of a number of artworks the government requested of David in order to establish a canon of Revolutionary heroes.

Jacques-Louis David and The Death of Marat

David was a leading proponent of the Neoclassical movement, which arose in reaction to the Rococo style. Toward the second half of the 18th century, Rococo had come to represent the lavish excesses of the aristocracy. In response to this extravagance, artists grew to regard Classical antiquity as the height of human civilization. Many identified with the values associated with the Roman Republic, including simplicity, heroism, and stoic virtue—ideals that are promoted in The Death of Marat. The composition of the painting is restrained and the narrative is clear. Marat is the only figure in a shallow setting; he slumps in the bathtub toward the viewer, his right arm hanging over the side, a quill pen in his hand. His assassin is not pictured, but Marat’s left hand still holds her letter asking to gain admittance, the bloodied knife lies on the ground, and a wound bleeds just below his collarbone.

Marat’s expression shows no surprise or horror but remains neutral, as if he is merely asleep. He is an idealized figure; David has given him a youthful face, pristine skin, and muscular arms. His pose recalls that of Christ in Caravaggio’s The Entombment of Christ (c. 1602–04). In that painting, the body of Christ lies slack, his right arm hanging at his side, as Nicodemus and John the Evangelist place him in the tomb. Even Marat’s gash recalls Christ’s stigmata, the wounds he is said to have received while on the cross. David thus links Marat to Christ. Like Christ, who died for humanity’s salvation, Marat is shown to have died for the Revolution’s cause.

In 1794 the Revolution entered a new phase; there was a reaction against radicalism, and public opinion toward Marat changed. David hid the painting for fear it would be destroyed. Maximilien Robespierre, the virtual dictator of France between 1793 and 1794, whom David had supported throughout the Revolution, was guillotined. David himself was put on trial and escaped death only by renouncing his activities. He was imprisoned twice before being released in 1795. Later, he was made the official painter to Napoleon. With the emperor’s final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, however, David was exiled to Brussels. He took The Death of Marat with him and died about 10 years later after being injured in a carriage accident. In the late 19th century, his descendents bequeathed The Death of Marat to the city of Brussels. The painting is now in the collection of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.

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