Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David's paintings use clear contours and ordered figures for historical narratives. The Oath of the Horatii, commissioned for Louis XVI, stages the brothers' pledge beneath three arches. The Death of Socrates combines expressive gestures with furniture and clothing informed by antiquarian scholarship. Portraits apply related attention to pose and definition, while The Death of Marat and images of Napoleon served the political purposes of revolutionary and imperial France.