Oath of the Horatii
Three brothers swear to die for Rome. The women on the right are already mourning. David sets severe, straight lines against the playfulness of the Rococo: duty before feeling.
Three arches, three groups, three swords – the picture is built like a stage.
Jacques-Louis David received the commission from the French Crown in 1784. He travelled to Rome to paint the picture there and study ancient art. It was shown at the great art exhibition in Paris, the Salon, in 1785 and caused an enormous stir. It is more than three metres high and four metres wide and is now in the Louvre. He made it larger than had been commissioned, which caused some irritation.
The story comes from the Roman historian Livy. Rome and the neighbouring city of Alba Longa were at war. Instead of a great battle, three brothers from each city were to fight one another: the Roman Horatii and the Curiatii from Alba. The families were also linked by marriage and betrothal. The oath itself, which David shows, does not appear in the ancient sources. It was probably David’s own idea. According to Livy only one of the Roman brothers survived, and he then killed his own sister when she mourned her dead betrothed.
On the left stand the three brothers with their arms stretched out towards the swords. Their bodies are taut and form a closed, angular group. In the centre the father holds up three swords. On the right the women sit slumped in grief. One of them is the brothers’ sister, betrothed to one of the Curiatii. Another is a Curiatian woman married to one of the Horatii. Behind them an older woman embraces two children.
The background consists of three Roman arches on Doric columns. Each arch frames a group: the brothers, the father, the women. The space is plain and austere. Light falls harshly from the left, casting sharp shadows. The contrast between the men’s straight lines and the women’s soft, curving forms is the heart of the picture. The stone-flagged floor leads the eye into the room.
The surface is smooth and the details are crisp. The brushstrokes are barely visible. The colours are subdued but with strong accents of red and white. The style was a reaction against the light, playful painting of the Rococo. David wanted to create an art that exhorted virtue, duty and self-sacrifice. Every detail, from the helmets to the flagstones, is sharply defined.
The picture was commissioned by the Crown, but has often been seen in hindsight as foreshadowing the French Revolution, which broke out four years later. That reading is partly a retrospective construction. David himself became an active revolutionary and voted for the king’s execution. Later he became Napoleon’s court painter.
Oath of the Horatii became the manifesto of Neoclassicism. It influenced generations of painters and teaching at the academies of art. It shows how a historical story could be used to convey a moral and political message to the present. Its order and clarity remained an ideal for the academies for a long time.