Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David trained in Paris and Rome, where the study of antique sculpture shaped his sense of order. The Oath of the Horatii (1784) made his name: three brothers swear on swords in a bare, sharply lit room, composed like a relief. The Death of Socrates (1787) and The Lictors Bring Brutus the Bodies of His Sons (1789) pressed the same stern lessons of duty.

A Jacobin deputy, he painted The Death of Marat (1793) and staged the festivals of the Revolution. Under Napoleon he became First Painter, producing Napoleon Crossing the Alps, which exists in five versions, and the vast Coronation (1805–07). Exiled as a regicide in 1816, he died in Brussels in 1825. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Antoine-Jean Gros were among his pupils.