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Jacques Louis David's

Oath of the Horatii

In 1784, the French painter Jacques Louis David painted this work intended to be exhibited in the Salon, a great public exhibition of art in Paris (read excerpts on the Salon from Thomas Crow's Painting and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris). The drawing below shows David's painting prominently displayed in the Salon of 1785:

David's Oath of the Horatii has become the prime example of the late eighteenth-century style we call Neo-Classicism. David was what the French characterize as the "artiste engagé." He was committed to the public role of the artist, and the use of painting as a pedagogical device to instruct the public. In creating this work David was committed to having his work express what he considered to be "universal values." The success of David's painting is still manifested today by our ability to read the painting without knowledge of the complex story drawn from Roman history it is based on.

As a E-Journal Assignment (due by 9:00 PM Monday, April 22), I would like you to present your reading of this painting. Some of you have already encountered this painting in the Survey course. For the spirit of the assignment, please ignore what you know about the specific details of the narrative. Base your "reading" on formal reading of the painting. Especially important here are the binaries that we have established in our reading of Michelangelo's David and Titian's Venus of Urbino as well as our consideration of the Albrecht Dürer print of the artist drawing a nude.

 

Compare the gender contrasts used by David with the following ad for boys' and girls' pajamas:

 

Zoffany, The Royal Academy.

Cochereau, The Studio of David.