The One with David's The Death of Marat

David's The Death of Marat is one of my (many) favorite paintings, so getting to read an in-depth study on just this work was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the cover of the book I read so I'll just use a picture of the painting itself instead.

33. Title & Author: David's The Death of Marat (Masterpieces of Western Painting) edited by William Vaughan and Helen Weston (192 pages)
Genre: Nonfiction--Art History
Completed: 28 April 2008

Summary & Review:
This volume was a collection of six essays examining David's masterpiece, The Death of Marat. The essays looked at the work from various methodologies and each brought interesting insights to the book as a whole.

Most of the essays were excellent, although I am not really into the psychoanalytical methodology applied to anything done before 1850, but that's just me. Here is a quote that I really liked and thought was an excellent observation. It was in the fifth essay, by Helen Weston, in regard to why Charlotte Corday (Marat's killer) was not included in the picture. She compared this to other works depicting this event where Corday was shown. She said, "But it is not clear (in the one's that depict Corday) whose side we should be on. This image produces precisely the kind of confusion between competing sites for virtue that David needed to avoid at all costs. His representation of Marat had to be unequivocally positive and virtuous and his evocation of Corday unequivocally negative and treacherous." (133)


Rating: 8.0