A Revolution at Rest: The Death of Marat and the Moral Ambiguity of History
Exploring the complex legacy behind Jacques-Louis David’s haunting masterpiece; a painting so beautiful it moved me to tears.
I didn’t think The Death of Marat, my favorite painting from my high school AP European history class, was in the Louvre. So, when I turned a corner and saw it, I stopped in my tracks. In the dimly lit painting, Jean-Paul Marat’s head rolls sideways, eyes closed, fingers gently curled around a quill and a note. Painted in 1793 by Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Marat, both the oil painting’s title and the inscription on the wood podium, now rests in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, but a replica is displayed in a hall of the Louvre Museum in Paris, where I was lucky enough to notice it.
Born in Switzerland in 1743, Jean-Paul Marat became a notable doctor in London in the 1770s and began publishing scientific works, which were largely unsuccessful. After being rejected from the Academy of Sciences, it is said that Marat developed a sort of martyrdom complex, associating himself with the likes of Sir Isaac Newton, “the persecuted scientist.” This development came along the same time as the beginnings of the French Revolution, another movement that aimed to destroy the likes of modern establishment. Naturally, he resonated with this ideology and took a divisive political position.
In 1790, Marat penned the infamous L’Ami du Peuple (“The Friend of the People”), a viciously radical publication that called for a guillotine against all enemies of the revolution, from aristocrats to sans-culottes (the lower class, largely radical, Frenchmen) who uttered a mere foul word against the Republic. In July 1790, he wrote, “Five or six hundred heads cut off would have assured your repose, freedom, and happiness.” With the arrest of the king in 1792, Marat was elected as a deputy of Paris to the Convention.
Marat was tortured by a lifelong skin condition, exacerbated by his unsanitary hiding places, such as dingy basements and damp sewers. His life was characterized by discomfort and frequent hiding and banishment. Marat’s condition has never been identified, confusing scientists and historians. His physical sickness is immortalized in the painting, portraying him writing his final letter in the bathtub of his home. Rhiannon Piper, an artist and painting conservator, suggested the idea that Marat’s bathtub was not merely a representation of his sickness, but a portrayal of baptism and purity, exalting him as a political martyr.
This may not be incorrect because of Marat’s, although extremist, reputation as a beloved leader for laborers’ rights and social equality. In 1793, he was accused by an opposing party of several acts of conspiracy against the state. However, the court eventually dropped all charges, and a peasant crowd triumphantly paraded him throughout the streets of Paris. According to The Joint Centre for History and Economics, a department of the Magdalene and King’s College of the University of Cambridge, “David’s painting of the death of Marat chrystallised the heroic view of the death of the tribune, perpetuated by the artwork’s iconic status and enduring place at the Louvre.”
His premature death occurred on July 13th of 1793. His executioner, Charlotte Corday, was a young French girl born into a tragically impoverished aristocratic family. She dabbled in early revolutionary parties, before they devolved into the radical bloodlust of Marat’s reign. In her own biography, she wrote, “How long, oh! miserable Frenchmen, will you be pleased with disorder and divisions. Long enough and too long have some factious men, some wicked men placed the interest of their ambition in the place of the general interest.” Later, she detailed her disdain for Marat and other revolutionary extremists.
After plotting to kill him at a parade, she discovered that he was ill and homebound, confined to his bathtub. She tried several times to reach him, often unsuccessful, until she came under the guise of offering him information on traitors. She drew a knife from her bodice and fatally stabbed him. She calmly waited for the police to arrest her and was guillotined four days later, a fitting end for the last of Marat’s political enemies. As she awaited her sentence, she proclaimed, “I killed one man to save 100,000.” An 1831 painting depicting her, calmly awaiting the inevitable fate of death, was once housed in the Louvre, but is now housed at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, England.
The Death of Marat was painted in 1793, the same year he was murdered, by Jacques-Louis David, one of the most prominent artists of France in the 18th century, was a skilled neoclassical artist along with a revolutionary himself. David crafted paintings to depict the early revolution to the birth of a new empire, later being commissioned by Napoleon for Napoleon Crossing the Alps and The Coronation of Napoleon. The painting was created with intricate details, dramatic lighting, and a palette of dark and moody shades.
As someone with an avid interest in the French Revolution, the painting moved me, combined with the fact that I was standing in the Louvre, in Paris, France, for the first time in my life at 17 years old. I cried in front of it, as the once-pixelated image from my teacher’s lecture slideshow had come alive, standing as close as I was allowed, focusing on it for uninterrupted minutes, as if I was trying to memorize each brushstroke of paint or the tears on Marat’s face.
Standing in front of The Death of Marat, it’s easy to forget, or even be oblivious, to the chaos outside the frame. To some, Marat was a champion of the working class, while to others, he was a raging executioner. History rarely produces mere saints or sinners, but Marat’s story still bleeds through the paint, inviting you to stand before it, embracing all of what it represents, and make your own decision: if the painting depicts a hero at rest or a cruel reminder of how revolutions consume their own.
Sources
[1] Rhiannon Piper: Behind the Painting: the Death of Marat, [2] The Good Life France: Mystery of Jean-Paul Marat’s bathing habit, [3] HISTORY: Charlotte Corday assassinates French Revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat,[4] Britannica: Jean-Paul Marat, [5] Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité: Marat: The King is a Friend of the People, [6] Joint Centre for History and Economics, Magdalene College and King’s College, University of Cambridge: Marat the extremist, loved and hated, [7] The Online Resource for Visual Arts: The Arrest of Charlotte Corday, [8] The Science Survey: The Angel of Assassination: A Profile on Charlotte Corday, [8] University of Michigan Library: Charlotte Corday, her biography.
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