The Death of Marat
by Jacques-Louis David, 1793
Artwork Details
Details
- Year
- 1793
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Size
- 165 cm × 128 cm
- Gallery
- Neoclassical Gallery
Find It In The Museum
Neoclassical Gallery
Louvre, Paris, Paris
Part of the permanent collection
Cite or Embed This Work
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Jacques-Louis David created this oil on canvas work in 1793, during the height of the Neoclassicism movement. The painting stands among the artist's most recognized achievements.
The composition reveals Jacques-Louis David's command of visual elements. Color, form, and spatial arrangement work together to create a unified whole. Technical skill serves expressive purpose, rewarding both immediate impression and sustained looking.
The painting now resides at Louvre Museum in Paris, where visitors experience it firsthand. Seeing the original reveals qualities of brushwork, scale, and color that reproductions cannot fully convey. The museum's collection provides context alongside other significant works from this period.
Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) was a French artist associated with Neoclassicism.
Historical Significance
A powerful piece of political propaganda and one of the most iconic images of the French Revolution.
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About The Death of Marat
It's at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels. Jacques-Louis David painted it in 1793, just months after the assassination. David was a friend of Marat and a fellow radical.
Jean-Paul Marat, a radical journalist during the French Revolution, was stabbed to death in his bathtub by Charlotte Corday on July 13, 1793. He bathed frequently due to a painful skin condition. Corday gained entry by claiming to have names of counter-revolutionaries to report.
David was the official painter of the Revolution and a close ally of Marat. He depicted Marat as a secular martyr: calm, dignified, Christ-like in his suffering. The empty upper half of the canvas creates an austere, almost religious atmosphere. Corday and the violence are absent. Only Marat's noble sacrifice remains.
It measures 165 cm × 128 cm (65 × 50.4 inches). David painted it in the Neoclassical style: clean lines, restrained emotion, classical composition. The wooden box serving as Marat's desk bears the inscription 'À MARAT, David' like a gravestone dedication.
It transformed a political assassination into a timeless image of sacrifice. The composition references Renaissance depictions of Christ's deposition. David stripped away all distracting detail, leaving only the essential: a murdered man, a letter, a knife, a pen. It's political art at its most powerful.
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