Jacques-Louis David: Pageant-Master for the Revolution

The briefest of squibs today on one of my favorite visual artists since boyhood, Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825). David’s period of activity stretched from the end of the Ancien Régime, through the Revolutionary Period (when he was an ally of Robespierre), the Napoleonic Era, and the Bourbon Restoration (when he lived in exile in the Low Countries). David’s heroic portraits, and works on classical, historical, and mythological themes have always spoken to me, as has the extreme formalism that buttressed and elevated his subjects. The Death of Socrates (1787) is among his best known; I used to illustrate this post on my love of philosophy. Other well known ones include The Death of Marat (1793), Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass (1801, above) and The Coronation of Napoleon (1806).

We seldom venture into the realm of visual art for its own sake here however. What I thought might be of interest to our readers is that David’s art also branched into ceremonial performance, As a kind of informal minister of art and propaganda during the First Republic, he organized, produced and designed elaborate pageants designed to indoctrinate the French masses into support for the new regime. He designed settings, costumes and movement for such events as the funereal depositing of Voltaire’s ashes at ThePanthéon (1791), a parade in honor of the Swiss Guard soldiers who chose not to defend Tuileries Palace during the Revolution (1792), the Festival of Brotherhood (1793), and the Feast of the Supreme Being (1794), a special ceremony designed to promote the Revolution’s new civic religions, supposed to replace Christianity. For this, David constructed a huge artificial mountain with a Tree of Liberty atop it.

The latter event seemed by man to be overreach and marked the beginning of the fall of Robespierre, David kept his head down (and managed to keep it attached to his shoulders) until the advent of Napoleon, whose court painter he also became, for a time.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité!