Death of Marat

La Mort de Marat
Artist	Jacques-Louis David
Year	1793
Medium	oil on canvas
Dimensions	165 cm × 128 cm (65 in × 50 in)
Location	Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium

The Death of Marat (French: La Mort de Marat or Marat Assassiné) is a 1793 painting by Jacques-Louis David of the murdered French revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat. It is one of the most famous images of the French Revolution. David was the leading French painter, as well as a Montagnard and a member of the revolutionary Committee of General Security. The painting shows the radical journalist lying dead in his bath on 13 July 1793 after his murder by Charlotte Corday. Painted in the months after Marat's murder, it has been described by T. J. Clark as the first modernist painting, for "the way it took the stuff of politics as its material, and did not transmute it".

Marat (24 May 1743 – 13 July 1793) was one of the leaders of the Montagnards, the radical faction ascendant in French politics during the Reign of Terror until the Thermidorian Reaction. Charlotte Corday was a Girondin from a minor aristocratic family and a political enemy of Marat who blamed him for the September Massacre. She gained entrance to Marat's rooms with a note promising details of a counter-revolutionary ring in Caen.

Marat suffered from a skin condition that caused him to spend much of his time in his bathtub; he would often work there. Corday fatally stabbed Marat, but she did not attempt to flee. She was later tried and executed for the murder.

As well as being the leading French painter of his generation, David was a prominent Montagnard, and a Jacobin, aligned with Marat and Maximilian Robespierre. A deputy of the Museum section at the Convention, he voted for the death of the King, and served on the Committee of General Security, where he actively participated in the sentencing and imprisonment of many and eventually presided over the "section des interrogatoires". He was also on the .

...
Wikipedia