English 233:  Introduction to Western Humanities -- Baroque & Enlightenment

Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825)

Our study will focus on the following 4 neo-classical paintings from immediately before and during the French Revolution.

• The Oath of the Horatii (1784)

• The Death of Socrates (1787)

• Brutus Awaiting the Delivery of the Bodies of His Sons by the Lictors [aka The Lictors Bring Brutus the Bodies of His Sons] (1789)

• Marat Assassinated (1793)

Begin by reading the material in WH on the neoclassical painting of Jacques-Louis David (pp. 417-419).  Follow this up with the biographical sketches at CGFA (Carol L. Gerten's site at the University of North Carolina) and at the Louvre's WebMuseum. 

In addition to the latter page, here are some places where you can find links to digital images of the paintings listed above.

• Mark Harden's Artchive has a page on page on David with links to these 4 paintings.

• There is also an excellent site on David by CGFA.  There is a continuation of the index page, with links to additional paintings.

• A very useful page is the list of links to works by David at OCAIW -- Oscar Centaro's Art Images on the Web.  Here you can find multiple sources for a given painting, in case a given link happens to be down.

You will want to review the page on the logical structure of art-historical period style concepts.  Suppose we were to form a concept of "revolutionary neo-classicism" in which the above 4 paintings were to serve as paradigm examples.  What features would we want to import into our notion?

  Go to the Home Page of the course.

  Suggestions, comments and questions are welcome.  Please send them to lyman@ksu.edu .

      This page last updated 11 Oct 2000.