- [Voiceover] We're in Brussels looking at
one of Jacques-Louis David's Revolutionary canvases.
This is "The Death of Morat".
- [Voiceover] Revolutionary in two senses.
Revolutionary in that it was painted
during the French Revolution, which started in 1789.
France was made a republic in 1792.
And David here commemorates a hero of the Revolution.
But it's also revolutionary in that it's depicting
a contemporary event.
Before this David had painted
scenes from classical antiquity.
- [Voiceover] Early on in the Revolution,
David had joined the Jacobin Club.
This was a group of the most
violent and radical revolutionaries.
And David himself became quite close
with the leader of the Jacobins, Robespierre.
- [Voiceover] David voted for the beheading
of King Louis XVI.
His signature is on documents created
for the arrest and execution of members of the aristocracy,
of people who were against the Revolution.
So David was really in the thick of it.
He served in the Revolutionary government.
He helped to dissolve the Royal Academy of the Arts.
And he was essentially the Minister of Propaganda,
spreading the ideals of the Revolution through images.
- [Voiceover] And that's what this is.
The Revolutionary government asked him to produce
a series of three images that would
heroicize new martyrs.
Not a Christian martyr,
but now a martyr to the Revolution.
- [Voiceover] This shift from Christian martyr
to political martyr is an important one.
We have the beginnings of the end
of the world of the monarchy,
of the the "ancien régime",
of an absolutist ruler,
and the beginnings of a new republic.
The beginnings of a world where the people
participate in the government.
- [Voiceover] The French Revolution had been inspired,
at least in part, by the American Revolution
just a few years earlier.
But France would oscillate between
republican and royalist governments
over the next century.
- [Voiceover] A royalist named Charlotte Corday,
a woman who believed in the monarchy
of absolutist rule, went to see
Marat, the leader of the Revolution.
And by tricking him, murdered him in his bathtub.
- [Voiceover] You can see the knife which she used
to stab him lying on the bottom left corner of the canvas.
And the letter that she used to gain entrance
being held by Marat.
He was a publisher, so his role
in the Revolution was important,
because he helped to disseminate revolutionary ideas
and to rally the people.
- [Voiceover] He holds this letter that she used
to get in to see him.
David is showing, look at how duplicitous this woman was.
She tricked Marat, he was innocent, he was good.
He was working for the republic, for the French Revolution.
And she came in and brutally stabbed him.
- [Voiceover] There is this extreme contrast
between her duplicity and his nobility.
- [Voiceover] He's ideally beautiful.
We know that he was disfigured by the skin disease
that caused him to spend many hours of each day in the bath.
You have no sign of that here.
- [Voiceover] And his pose reminds us of the Pietà,
of the image of Christ being mourned
having just been taken down from the cross.
So the idea that a martyr to the Revolution
is replacing the central Christian martyr
is vividly rendered.
- [Voiceover] That was a key idea of the Revolution.
To dismantle, not only the monarchy,
but the church as well.
And to secularize French life.
And we see that also in the creation
of a new calendar for the Revolution.
And below the signature, David has written "Year Two".
So we're not in 1793, we're in Year Two of the Revolution.
This whole replacing of the old world
with a new Revolutionary order
for a new French republic.
- [Voiceover] The idea of rationalism was being
violently instituted.
Instead of the older, traditional measurements for example,
this is when we first have the more rational
metric system being introduced.
- [Voiceover] This is the Enlightenment,
this is a time of rational thinking,
of believing in empirical observation over
the superstitions and traditions of the church.
- [Voiceover] And this is a painting
that is all about observations.
This really interesting contrast between
the specificity of the foreground,
especially the crate on which he's written his name,
and written "Á Marat", "To Marat".
Against the indeterminate, open brushwork
of the background that almost doesn't look finished.
It's got this soft, feathery, warm quality.
- [Voiceover] It isolates Marat,
it focuses our attention on him.
- [Voiceover] But as we look around
at other paintings in this museum,
what I see in the upper part
of a painting are angels.
And David can't have that anymore.
And a new iconography has not yet developed.
So instead what we have is a lighter field
in the upper right corner
balancing Marat's body in the lower left corner.
- [Voiceover] And what a body.
The anatomy, the muscles in the shoulder
and the arms and the collarbone.
We can see that neoclassical interest
in studying the anatomy,
painting it very carefully,
paying a lot of attention to contours,
modelling in the effects of light and dark.
But what strikes me is the spareness.
In direct contrast to the luxurious interiors
of Rococo paintings of the lifestyle
of the aristocracy, which was the subject
of Rococo paintings.
Here, a decidedly stark interior,
Spartan, no elaborate furniture, no gold.
This is a man, David wants to tell us,
lived according to the republican ideals
of the Revolution.
- [Voiceover] And it looks like they will endure forever.
But soon the Revolutionaries will turn against each other.
- [Voiceover] And David is imprisoned
for his involvement in the Revolution.
And then becomes First Painter to Napoleon,
who becomes the Emperor of France.
And so a lot of art historians
look at David's career and say,
"Where were his actual principles?"
- [Voiceover] Where were his loyalties?
- [Voiceover] Did he truly believe
in the ideals of the Revolution?
And then become a follower of Napoleon
and abandon those values?
- [Voiceover] Or was he politically mercenary?
Was he really looking for
commissions from whoever was in control
at that moment?
It's hard to look at "The Death of Marat"
and not see a man who was convinced
of the importance of Revolutionary ideals.