Focus on Oath of the Horatii and explain the Commissioning the work.
In 1774, David won the Prix de Rome with his work Érasistrate découvrant la cause de la Maladie d’Antiochius. This allowed him to stay five years (1775–1780) in Rome as a student of the French government. Upon his return to Paris, he exhibited his work, which Diderot greatly admired; the success was so resounding that King Louis XVI of France allowed him to stay in the Louvre, a privilege greatly desired by artists. There he met Pecoul, the contractor for the actual buildings, and Pecoul's daughter, whom he married. The king's assistant, Charles-Claude Flahaut de la Billaderie, commissioned Oath of the Horatii with the intention that it be an allegory about loyalty to the state and therefore to the king. Nevertheless, David departed from the agreed-upon scene, painting this scene instead. Although the painting studies were begun in Paris, it was not painted in Paris, but in Rome, where David was visited by his pupil Jean-Germaine Drouais who had himself recently won the Prix de Rome. Ultimately, David's picture manifests a progressive outlook, deeply influenced by Enlightenment ideas, that eventually contributed to the overthrow of the monarchy. As the French Revolution approached, paintings increasingly referred to loyalty to the state rather than the family or the church. Painted five years before the Revolution, the Oath of the Horatii reflects the political tensions of the period.
In 1789, David painted The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, a picture that was also a royal commission. Shortly afterward, the king went up to the scaffold also accused of treason, as the sons of Brutus, and with the vote of the artist in the National Assembly, which supported the execution of Louis XVI.
Érasistrate découvrant la cause de la Maladie d’Antiochius Rome Prix de Rome The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons Diderot Horatii French Revolution Louvre