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The Death of Marat
Jacques-Louis David · Rococo & Neoclassicism
- Artist
- Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825)
- Date
- 1793
- Dimensions
- 165 x 128 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, Belgium
The Death of Marat shows the revolutionary journalist Jean-Paul Marat, murdered in his bath on 13 July 1793 by Charlotte Corday. His friend Jacques-Louis David painted the picture within months, turning the political leader into a martyr of the Revolution.
A closer look
Marat, who suffered from a skin disease and worked in a medicinal bath, slumps to one side, a quill still in his hand and the letter with which his murderer gained entry in the other. The knife lies on the floor; the wound is small and almost bloodless. The upper half of the canvas is an empty, shimmering darkness. On the wooden crate that served as his desk, David painted a simple dedication: “To Marat, David.” The pose recalls images of Christ taken down from the cross.
History of the painting
David presented the painting to the National Convention in November 1793, and it hung in the assembly hall alongside his portrait of another martyr of the Revolution. After the fall of Robespierre in 1794 it was returned to the artist, who kept it out of sight. When David went into exile in Brussels after the restoration of the monarchy, the picture stayed in his family's hands; his heirs offered it to the French state, which declined it, and in 1886 they gave it to the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels, the city where David had died.
