(jazzy music)
Male: We're in the Louvre and we're looking
at a late Jacques-Louis David,
The Intervention of the Sabine Women.
It was meant as a pendant to Poussin's
earlier very famous Rape of the Sabine.
Female: Also in the Louvre.
Male: It takes as its narrative
the story of the founding of ancient Rome.
We're actually located very specifically in Rome,
in the Forum, and we can see rising above
the capital of Rome itself.
The story, very quickly, is that the Romans,
who had no women, attack the Sabine,
a neighboring tribe, and ran off with their women.
Years later, the Sabine attacked Rome
to get the women back.
Here we have Hersilia, who is now the wife
of the Roman leader, Romulus, the king of the Romans,
and also daughter of
Female: The king of the Sabines.
Male: She's watching her husband and her father
about to kill each other.
She steps in the middle with her children,
his grandchildren, his sons,
and says, "Stop."
Think about this in historical context.
This is just a few years after the outrageous
violence of the Reign of Terror at the end
of the French Revolution.
This is a moment and a painting
about reconciliation.
Female: David conceived the idea
while he was in prison.
He was in prison because of his participation
in the Reign of Terror,
the most radical period of the revolution,
the fact that he had been a follower
of Robespierre who had just been beheaded.
So this idea of reconciling the French state,
looking for a political, peaceful solution.
The fact that women play such a pivotal role here
is so different from all David's earlier work
where men are really the actors.
Men are making the sacrifices for the state.
Women are all generally very passive, very emotional,
very concerned about their own selfish needs,
and here those needs become the pivot
to turning the state around.
Male: If we did turn around, we would be looking
at the Oath of the Horatii, which hangs
directly opposite this painting;
David's early masterpiece that does
completely make women ineffectual
and places them in the position there
associated with emotion which is subordinate
to the needs of the state.
Here the needs of the state are served by that emotion.
Female: And Hersilia dressed in white
symbolizes purity and righteousness.
Male: But it's powerful.
Female: Very powerful.
She strides forward.
She spreads her arms.
Another female figure opens her arms
and looks over toward the King of the Sabines
and holds her arms open saying,
"Look at the children; think about the children."
Male: What's so interesting is if you look
at the two male protagonists,
they are focused only on each other;
so much so, that they actually don't see
the world around them.
It's the women that you have a sense
where you have the fuller picture.
Female: While Romulus and Tatius,
the King of the Sabines,
focus exclusively on each other,
another soldier on horseback to the right
understands what's about to happen here
and puts his sword away.
Male: That's right.
Another nude turns his horse around
and walks away from the field of battle.
Female: Although this may look generally Classical to us,
David was looking for something specifically Greek.
Male: By Greek, I think David was really
looking to male nudity.
If you think about the Oath of the Horatii,
those Romans are fully clothed;
but here he's really looking back to Greek sculptures
and to that particularly Greek idea
of the celebration of the human body.
Female: As we're standing here
and I'm looking at the figure of Hersilia,
this really strong female figure that
so dominates the canvas
with her breasts revealed through the drapery,
these beautiful folds of drapery
that highlight her womb, her legs spread
with children in between.
It feels to me that this is about motherhood.
We know that David was imprisoned
and visited by his wife
Male: Even though she was estranged.
Female: And also perhaps had royalist sympathies.
So one wonders if this is a reconciliation
that's both personal and political for David.
(jazzy music)