\paperw4800 \margr0\margl0 \plain \fs20 \f1 French painter.\par
Jacques-Louis David was one of the main protagonists of European neoclassicism and the master for a series of young pu
pils, including Franτois GΘrard, Antoine-Jean Gros, and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. During his early period in Paris, he painted pictures of mythological and historical subjects. His stay in Rome from 1775 to 1780 was decisive. While there he studied
Renaissance and seventeenth-century classicism, and, above all, ancient sculpture, and was influenced by the new neoclassical theories of Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Anton Raphael Mengs. Back in France, he devoted himself to representations of episode
s from classical history and legend presented as examples of virtues, as in \i The Grief of Andromache\i0 , (1783, Paris, Ecole des Beaux-Arts). The civil and political implications of DavidÆs classicism were demonstrated in the large picture that establ
ished his reputation, painted during a later visit to Rome from 1784 to 1785 û \i The Oath of the Horatii\i0 (1784, Paris, Louvre). David played an active part in the Revolution, devoting numerous works, often of an intensely dramatic character, to even
ts and figures of the time û \i The Palm Court Oath\i0 (1790-91, drawing and sketch for the never completed painting at Versailles), or \i Marat Assassinated\i0 (1793, Brussels, MusΘes Royaux des Beaux-Arts). \i The Sabine Women\i0 (1799, Paris, Louvr
e) was painted after his imprisonment following the fall of Robespierre. Fascinated by the figure of Napoleon, he became his official painter and produced a series of extraordinary portraits of the emperor, like \i Napoleon Crossing the Alps\i0 , (1800,
Malmaison, MusΘe National du ChΓteau), as well as the enormous painting celebrating the \i Coronation of Napoleon I\i0 (1805-07, Paris, Louvre). In his very fine portraits, such as the one of \i Madame RΘcamier\i0 (ca. 1800, Paris, Louvre), David revea
ls a great capacity for psychological insight. With the Restoration, the painter went into exile in Brussels, where he returned to the mythological and historical subjects of his youth, as with \i Mars, Venus, and the Graces\i0 (1824, Brussels, MusΘes R
