François Topino-Lebrun

François Jean-Baptiste Topino-Lebrun (11 April 1764, in Marseille – 30 January 1801, in Paris) was a French painter and revolutionary. He worked in the Neo-Classical style and was said to be the favorite student of Jacques-Louis David.

His father was a furniture dealer and his uncle was a master cabinet maker. He began his studies at the Académie de Marseille under the direction of Jean-Joseph Kapeller, one of its founding members. He went to Rome in 1784, where he met Jacques-Louis David, who was then working on the "Oath of the Horatii". Back in France, he settled in Paris where, from 1787 to 1790, he worked in David's studio at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. He returned to Rome from 1790 to 1792 and was one of group of artists who supported the French Revolution.

Under threat by the authorities of the Papal States, he fled to Paris and lived with David. The following year, he was selected to be part of a mission from the Interior Ministry, charged with assessing the political situation in Marseille. On his return, with the support of David and Pierre-Antoine Antonelle, he was appointed to the Revolutionary Tribunal. In that capacity, he was part of the jury that tried Georges Danton. He barely managed to retain his position after the Thermidorean Reaction, and next appears in late 1794 as a jury member at the trial of Jean-Baptiste Carrier and other members of the "Revolutionary Committee of Nantes". The following year, perhaps after a brief stay in prison, he became an associate of Gracchus Babeuf and Marc-Antoine Jullien de Paris then, in November, he accompanied Jean Bassal (one of the Montagnards) on an official mission to Switzerland.

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