Jacques-Louis David

Edward David Lilley (University of Bristol)
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David was a relatively mature thirty-six when he achieved his first incontestable success with the exhibition of his work

The Oath of the Horatii

(Paris, Musée du Louvre) in Paris in 1785. For the previous twenty years or so, artists had been attempting to inject an ethical and moral dimension into painting but it took David’s stunning canvas to consolidate these efforts and to define what later came to be called Neoclassicism. Having developed a new artistic vocabulary, David quickly built upon his burgeoning esteem with the exhibition of

The Death of Socrates

(New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) in 1787. This work was praised in the English periodical

The World

(2 October 1787) as

the most exquisite and admirable effort of art which has appeared since the Capella Sistina and the

2946 words

Citation: Lilley, Edward David. "Jacques-Louis David". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 September 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1150, accessed 19 March 2024.]

1150 Jacques-Louis David 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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